The Judean Desert is as unlike American deserts as possible. American deserts are filled with beautiful flowers and plants which bloom after it rains, and numerous varieties of cacti, especially the impressive, towering saguaros. The Judean desert is much, much hotter, empty, chalky white, filled with deep ravines ; it stretches from East of Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. Urban areas situated in the Judean Desert include Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho. How did Jesus and his disciples cross this punishing terrain, walking from town to town, so often? Some have suggested that they probably traveled at night. Fr. James Martin, S.J., ( in "Jesus: A Pilgrimage") recounts visiting the Holy Land and walking in the blistering heat, fearing fainting or a heart attack. His friend refers to their walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death as a "Death March." Fr. Martin quips "I wondered...if we would go straight to heaven if we died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land."
Learning about the Judean desert can make us better appreciate the depth of Jesus' commitment by focusing us on the physical adversity he faced during his ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing. Jesus went out to the people where they were, regardless of physical and mental strain. Thinking of Jesus struggling through the desert gives new meaning to the Psalmist's words "Even though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (Hebrew consonants for "dark valley,") I fear no harm for you are at my side."
Every time Jesus crossed the desert, he must have been reminded of the time at the beginning of his mission when the Holy Spirit led him into extreme physical adversity by driving him into the desert for a time of prayer and testing. Jesus had to discover for himself what he would be facing in his ministry, build up his spiritual and physical stamina so he could endure everything ahead of him, learn to put his Father's will above all things.
In the silence, the heat, the sunlight and shadow, the barrenness, Jesus was inescapably confronted by the fragility of his human flesh, and the power of human temptations, with nowhere to hide from them. Like us, he had to listen, over and over, to the voices that do not come from God. These are the voices of our inner demons that try to hide our true identity as children of God from us so that we'll whimper, hopeless, in the shadow of potential spiritual death instead of standing tall and strong in the light of God's protective love.
Jesus' first temptation is to always put his body's comfort first. Of course, it's a good thing to care for our bodies. But Jesus is tempted to command stones to become loaves of bread for himself - in other words - "Sacrifice everything for your physical needs, not just for food, but for anything you crave - because you deserve it. Your body, your comfort, your physical well-being, come before anything else." (Fr. James Martin, S.J.)
Today's churches are shopping malls. Today's liturgy is the shopping trip. How much advertising ends with the line - "Buy this because you deserve it!" Love, today, is buying your loved ones the biggest, the best, the most. And how many of us don't even recognize this as temptation, as a subversion of the spiritual, unselfish nature of love? Pampered bodies can't recognize that love requires physical discipline and self-sacrifice, not "more things."
Jesus' second temptation is to throw himself from a high perch of the Temple and let God save him. The voice he hears is telling him "Show everyone how great you are. Show people that God loves you the best. You're on top."(Fr. James Martin, S.J.) It's the temptation to indulge in spiritual ambition, to aim for spiritual status. It's the opposite of Jesus' desire that we should humbly serve each other in a community of equals. It's the opposite of Jesus' action of washing his disciples' feet instead of indulging in superiority.
How many Christians insist that they're superior, that "God loves Christians best"? That Christians are "on top"? Jesus wants us to quietly care for the broken, the bitter, the lost as our brothers and sisters, equal children of God. Jesus wants us to recognize that people of other faiths can also find God and hear His Voice if they search and pray with sincere hearts. And, in our own communities, how often do we indulge in spiritual rivalry and jealousy by forming rival cliques, acting as if we're "holier" than others?
Jesus' third temptation is a temptation for power at any cost: he can rule all the kingdoms of the world if he will bow down and worship Satan. "Do anything to acquire and to hold on to power - power at work, at home, over all others. Grab it and be willing to sacrifice compassion and charity to keep it." Jesus rejects this selfishness. His power is the power of humility, of service. (Fr. James Martin, S.J.)
In our society, one of the main virtues is competitiveness, which enables us to get higher and higher positions at our company, make more and more money. Our company is the God who demands our allegiance, our time. so that we ignore our families to "get ahead." Big Business reigns so that the little guys are trampled. Or our marriages fold under the strain of more subtle power struggles in which neither one will bend, yield, or compromise - because each one insists he or she is "always right."
Perhaps our own struggles with these temptations are less dramatic, less clear-cut. But all of us face them. All of us face multiple temptations to buy more, spend more, to find happiness in shopping. All of us face temptations to become parts of competitive cliques in spiritual rivalries. All of us have to work in a constant balancing act of the needs of our families versus the insistent pressure of companies that want to be our "all in all."
There are other temptations, darker voices that attack us in our own self-imposed deserts. Whispering that we are hopeless, that God could never love us. That we're worthless. That God is too busy to ever take time for us. We crawl into caves of self-pity to avoid the purifying, regenerating light. We defend the barren, lifeless ground of our souls. We use silence and isolation in our own technical or chemical worlds as protection against the invading horde of people in our lives who make demands of us to have loving relationships.
And then, when we are truly alone in the desert of our heads, truly at the mercy of the temptations to selfish indulgence that assail us, we hear his voice. Jesus is traveling toward us through the suffocating heat, across the burning sands. He is climbing up and down the hills, across and through the deep ravines, even walking through the Vally of the Shadow of Spiritual Death.
Suddenly, we fear no evil because Jesus has come up beside us. He asks if we trust him. He asks us what we want him to do for us. Do we want to change? Or do we want to remain barren and lifeless? He is the one who was in our deserts first, who fought through the temptations that we endure now. If we allow him to, he will show us his power to vanquish all sin and temptation in our lives. For now. Our own demons will visit and re-visit us the rest of our lives.
But Jesus will always cross the burning deserts to be close to us, to fight beside us, to help us vanquish our temptations and demons. He will always be close to us as we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Spiritual Death. Because Jesus is our Way and our Truth, our Path through the desert to flowing streams of everlasting Life.