1st Sunday of Lent
Tripos in the Wilderness
9 March 2025
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance.
When we say that Lent is a time for self-examination, we hearken to 2 Corinthians: “examine yourselves — peirazete – to see if you are in the faith” Peirazō is the word that Luke uses in today’s gospel as well: peirazomenos hypo tou diabolou, “being tempted by the devil.”
Temptation. Trial. Test. Examination. Context (and intention) determines which sense is intended, or indeed if both apply simultaneously. Our Gospel today might be called: Jesus’ Great Tripos in the Wilderness.
Testing and examination is a given in the life of faith. You will be tested. Apologies to those of you who are students now, where exams seem always to be looming over your shoulder; and apologies to those who still wake up decades later with nightmares about taking exams unprepared — or indeed nightmares about invigilating them. We all resent examination.
But perhaps we can take a lesson from the desert mothers and fathers, who taught their novices to Rejoice in their trials and examinations. A well-designed exam will review both the breadth and the depth of your field, that you might synthesise and articulate what you know. Perhaps this Lent, a well designed temptation will encourage you to review both the breadth and the depth of your faith, that you might synthesise and articulate what you believe.
Let me be clear at this point about one thing: Jesus taught us to pray that we not be lead into temptation. He knows our weaknesses. And, equally importantly, testing is different from suffering. There’s a difference in both intent and agency. I do not believe that God delights in our suffering, — nor is it right to tell someone who is suffering that they are being tested when calamity — biological, political, personal or otherwise — strikes.
Still. When we refuse to go to the wilderness to face the Deceiver, the wilderness comes to us: Not out of petty vengeance on God’s part — but an inevitable consequence. The Deceiver comes to us where we are the most likely to go on auto-pilot whether through confidence or simple self-indulgence, hoping that when we find ourself sliding off-road into the slough of despond. If we fill our lives with noise and static, if we fill our hearts immediate gratification, If we fill our minds with denial of reality rather than self-denial, then too quickly we find ourselves swept out into the wilderness. It’s like digging into soft sand, the sides collapsing in on ourselves.
As individuals, as a church, as a nation, what do we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness? Do we call stones bread? Do we throw ourselves to destruction? Do we despoil our faith in exchange for the principalities of the world?
Yet Jesus finds and feeds us where we are weakest, in the wilderness, not condemning us for our sin but by Grace transforming our sin into the most direct path to salvation. So pay attention to how you are tempted —those temptations reveal your strengths and your weaknesses. They show you what needs mending, what needs further review and study — in your relationship with God, and your relationship with neighbour.
I’ve been looking at advice for students preparing for Tripos examinations, and folks generally suggest four things:
• Look at past papers
• Backup your work
• Don’t stress
• Ask for help
The same might be said of our life of faith.
Look at past papers — look at the stories in scripture, the lives of the saints, the struggles that others have had with their faith. Look at past papers — the prayers and traditions of the Church across the ages. Pray, and pray often, so that when you really need that time of prayer in a moment of stress, prayer is already a familiar skill.
Back up your work — keep a journal of your prayers and your struggles, or engage in an examen, a prayerful review of your day each evening, Giving thanks to God, review your day, note the blessings and joys, face your shortcomings, and look forward to the day to come.
Don’t stress — and in Lent that might be as simple as not panicking when you feel racked by doubt, or your faith feels dry. It might mean remembering to breathe. But it might also mean not doomscrolling on your phone, praying for guidance and help rather than rubbernecking the roadside accident of our present moment in world history.
But most importantly: Ask for help. Don’t do this journey alone. Even Christ turned from the wilderness and the mountaintops to be with friends and family, with people who would support him — and people who would challenge him. Only in Cambridge do we have to remind people not that we need to go to the mountain to be alone, but that we have to come back down from the lofty places! We’re terribly private about our faith here in Britain. Perhaps it’s time for that to change, not because we need to force that faith on others, but because we cannot get through this examination alone. Draw people into your life of faith, not because you think they are weak and need the help, but because we know that we are weak, and we need their help.
Lent is the time to revise, to gather your study partners, to ask for help and to give thanks for the weakness that we have, that we might learn to depend on one another and put our trust in God almighty, praying, as the words of our collect plead:
Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations;
and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us,
let each one find you mighty to save.
Amen