The devil’s bargain.
A trade off.
We get what we want but we give up who we are.
All the stories of the devil’s bargain and cheating the devil involve clear moments of decision.
They are stories of warning.
Don’t play the game.
The devil’s bargain in real life, however, is more elusive and subtle, a slow slide into oblivion, a thousand moments wasted a little at a time, the game is secret and hidden.
If only it were as simple as Johnny playing his fiddle in the devil went down to Georgia.
Temptation.
The story of Jesus being tempted for forty days is a story about who Jesus really is, about what it means to be the new Adam, the new humanity starting over and what it means to be God’s son.
Jesus could have solved all his problems and all the problems in the world, he just had to give up who he was, just like the first Adam.
Just give up on being fully human, just give up on living the will of God, and all the bad stuff goes away…
What tempts us from who we are? What tempts us from being fully human? What tempts us from making God’s image seen in the world?
Have we lost our humanity?
Have we lost God?
Have we traded them away?
In the sacred history of God’s people wilderness time is the long painful journey of finding what was lost, both what we forsook, and what was stolen by others.
What have we stolen from others?
What have we tempted others into becoming?
When have we been the deceiver, the devil, the slanderer? Bending others to our will?
In the wilderness we find that we always lose when we play the devil’s game.
But, there is something else, something more.
In the wilderness we find that God is trickier still.
God out foxes the fox, out deceives the deceiver, out tricks the trickster.
In the wilderness we learn that God can be trusted.
That the world is being renewed not forsaken.
That our humanity is being restored not abandoned.
That captivity is being taken captive setting the prisoners free.
It isn’t about the devil’s bargain.
It’s about God’s faithfulness in the person of Jesus.
It’s about God’s bargain, God’s wager that hell itself is too small for the goodness that fills this life.
The devil’s game. It is subtle and elusive, a game that is ultimately about control and twisting and force.
God’s game is more subtle still, it is about falling in love and setting one another free.
The trade off?
The trade off is learning what it means to be free to love.
And we find that only at the foot of the cross.