Reading: Matthew 4:1-11
He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and
said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."
Matthew 4:2-3
Jesus is led, St. Matthew tells us, by God's own Spirit into the wilderness, the dry God-empty
desert. Why does God send dryness to his No.1 beloved Son? Why does God send us daughters
and sons into deserts? If we are God's children, why those wildernesses, those parched deserts?
It doesn't compute.
The tempter makes a very plausible proposal: If you are God's Son--better still, since you are
God's son--why should there be any dry periods in your life at all? And if they do arise, then
shouldn't your status give you privilege for getting rid of them? It all seems so sensible.
But the One whose Son he is is not a God who flees the wilderness. Instead he enters our
wilderness-world. And once there he empties himself of all divine privilege, the divine perks.
Why? So that he may pour them into us, the real empties. His words: "I thirst" signal the last
chapter of his total emptying--for us, into us. Finally on the cross he is the fulness of God filling
us empties.
Not surprisingly, this Son of God does not exempt his disciples either from going back into the
world's wildernesses. Nourished by him, we get wilderness assignments, for and with others
who know only dryness and are dying in their deserts. He is the Word that comes from the
mouth of God, a promise to live on, no matter how deadly, how demonic, our desert.
Prayer: Nourish us, God, in our deserts today. Open our eyes to see your Son joining us in our
dry places. Feed us with his Word so that as we flourish, the desert, too, blossoms where you
have sent us to serve. Amen.
He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and
said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."
Matthew 4:2-3
Jesus is led, St. Matthew tells us, by God's own Spirit into the wilderness, the dry God-empty
desert. Why does God send dryness to his No.1 beloved Son? Why does God send us daughters
and sons into deserts? If we are God's children, why those wildernesses, those parched deserts?
It doesn't compute.
The tempter makes a very plausible proposal: If you are God's Son--better still, since you are
God's son--why should there be any dry periods in your life at all? And if they do arise, then
shouldn't your status give you privilege for getting rid of them? It all seems so sensible.
But the One whose Son he is is not a God who flees the wilderness. Instead he enters our
wilderness-world. And once there he empties himself of all divine privilege, the divine perks.
Why? So that he may pour them into us, the real empties. His words: "I thirst" signal the last
chapter of his total emptying--for us, into us. Finally on the cross he is the fulness of God filling
us empties.
Not surprisingly, this Son of God does not exempt his disciples either from going back into the
world's wildernesses. Nourished by him, we get wilderness assignments, for and with others
who know only dryness and are dying in their deserts. He is the Word that comes from the
mouth of God, a promise to live on, no matter how deadly, how demonic, our desert.
Prayer: Nourish us, God, in our deserts today. Open our eyes to see your Son joining us in our
dry places. Feed us with his Word so that as we flourish, the desert, too, blossoms where you
have sent us to serve. Amen.
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