A Lenten Invitation: Accept the Gift Given

One of my Christmas presents this past year was an album called The Carpenter, by The Avett Brothers. And the first track on the album is called “The Once and Future Carpenter.” The song is more memoir than anything else, so it isn’t really about Jesus (the carpenter), but I like to imagine that Jesus might have enjoyed the song — maybe even sung along with them — all the same. In particular, I’d like to imagine him singing it while in the wilderness.

Every year, on the first Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. And always, those 40 days follow directly on the heels of his baptism. Dripping wet, Jesus heads out into the dry, dusty desert. That much is always the same.

The way Luke tells it, though, Jesus was never alone: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1).

The Spirit leads, while the devil tempts.

I wonder what precisely it means. We’re told, after all, what the devil had to say, but what about the Spirit? What, if anything, did the Spirit add to the conversation? Did the Spirit remind Jesus of what the voice from heaven said to him after his baptism? “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased'” (Luke 3:22).

It seems likely. At least two of the temptations open with a very blatant challenge to what Jesus heard after his baptism, explicitly questioning the idea: “If you are the Son of God …”

At the heart of all of all three of these temptations, I think, is a fundamental temptation to call into question his God-given identity and to exchange it for another kind of life. And that is the temptation Jesus consistently resists. He accepts who he is as a gift, all the while rejecting the idea that he could — or should — have to prove anything (to himself or to anyone else).

It will cost him, in the end. For each decision to remain faithful to who he is — and to the God who made him that way — means that he will be vulnerable. He will know hunger. He will know impotence. He will know suffering … and ultimately death on a cross.

Rejecting the temptations is costly. But it comes with a reward, as well. That’s why I like to imagine Jesus singing along: “If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to die.”

We face a similar temptation to Jesus. Not in the particulars, of course. We’re not likely to imagine we can change stones into bread or water into wine. No, the particulars are not the same, but the fundamental temptation is not so very different all the same.

Parker Palmer once put it this way: “The root temptation here is almost irresistible. It is not the temptation to do a magic trick, which most of us know we cannot. It is the temptation to prove our identity, which many of us feel we must.”

But we weren’t put here to prove anything. We were put here to accept the gift we’ve been given. And that brings me back to the line from that song by The Avett Brothers: “If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to die.”

There’s another line from the song: “And when I lose my direction, I’ll look up to the sky.” I hear that line as a prayer. And I hear it as an encouragement to look back to the source of our life and our identity, to be reminded that like Jesus we, too, were named a child of God at baptism. To live the life God has given is all that any of us can be expected to do. And if we live the life we’re given, we need not be afraid of anything.

Easier said than done, I know. But perhaps this season of Lent can be an invitation to make the effort to accept the gift of who we really are, with no apologies and no tolerance for any who might suggest that we need do anything to prove ourselves — to ourselves or to anyone else.

And if you want to hear/see The Avett Brothers sing the song, go to http://vimeo.com/31556556