Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

The season of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday, is a time for the church to join with Jesus on precisely this journey.  Lent is a desert time, a wilderness time, when God calls every follower of Jesus to take leave of ordinary time and space for a while, and enter into the sacred time of prayer and the sacred space of soul.  The journey is a difficult one for the church, as difficult as it was for Jesus, because the very first thing many of us encounter in this wild place of prayer is not the warm glow of God’s comfort, but a devilish darkness which disturbs and shakes the very foundations of our lives.  It is not surprising, then, that a great many Christians give the whole Lenten experience a bit of a miss.  It is never easy to come face to face with one’s own darkness.

For that is what the devil figure represents in these stories of temptation.  He personifies a voice we all hear loud and clear if we begin on the journey of prayer.  It is a voice from deep inside.  A voice which is constantly cajoling and persuading us to forsake God’s mountain path for the gentler demands of a valley way.  This is a voice which introduces gods who are easier to understand and easier to worship.  Gods like material comfort and a full stomach. A voice which promises more reward for less effort.  Like greater financial success if we’re prepared to make a few ethical shortcuts. Or, most disturbingly, a voice which imitates God. The devil, too, knows the Scriptures you see.  But he misuses them terribly, so isolating words and phrases from their spiritual foundations that Yahweh ceases to breathe within them.  All such voices have this in common:  they promise a great deal but they deliver very little.  The spirit dies which lives on bread alone.  The one who gains the world forfeits a living soul.  The one who is spiritually certain eventually atrophies in a spasm of inertia, never having left his or her comfortable chair.  In the Lenten desert we discover that the devil’s voice is our own voice: that the awful enticements encountered in darkness are an externalization of our tendencies towards inertia and laziness.  And it’s a terrible thing to come face to face with one’s own darkness.

But there is no other way to find freedom.  To find the oasis, to drink the waters of life, one must pass through the truth-making struggles of desert prayer.  In Tim Robbin’s marvellous film Dead Man Walking, a young man awaits execution for the brutal rape and murder of two teenagers.  Throughout his trial, sentencing, and imprisonment the young man, whose name is Matthew, persists in the claim that he is innocent.  On that basis, he seeks to stay the execution.  And it is a nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who chooses to be his companion through that journey.  As the time of his execution comes nearer Matthew becomes increasingly troubled.  He and Sr.Helen have been reflecting upon the great themes which touch everyone when death is near: what makes life meaningful?  where is the worth and dignity in who I am and what I’ve done? how do I find forgiveness?  how do I make my peace with God?  In other words, the two companions have been walking the desert road of Jesus.  In the midst of that journey into his soul’s darkest places, the young man eventually finds the courage to face his own truth.  In brokenness and tears, he confesses his desolation.  And though the State succeeds in eventually putting Matthew to death, we are left with the memory of a man redeemed.

‘Only the truth will set you free, Matthew’, says Sister Helen in the closing stages of the film.  And that is what God says to all of us as we enter this Lenten period.  By the Spirit, God leads us into the desert of prayer, where Jesus has gone before.  There we face the devil.  There we face the truth of our darkness.  And we are confronted with an awful choice.  To continue in the deceit of inertia and laziness, with its slow leakage of soul and meaning.  Or to confess, with Jesus, God’s truth, finding therein both life and vocation.

Which will it be?