“Now Jack, remember who you are.”
I’ve spoken many times about my grandmother, and her frequent reminders for me to remember.
Clearly, I was very forgetful.
When I was older, and was ordained as a priest she would still be aghast at my continued forgetfulness, my general sassiness.
Except now the reminder became, “Jack, remember you are a minister.”
I miss her reminders.
We forget who we are.
We become someone else.
Something tips us in that wrong direction.
We are tempted.
How many times have we fallen? In Big ways, and in all those so many small ways, that incremental slipping away.
Who reminds us? Who puts our mind right?
A child of God. That is who I am.
You are a child of God. That is who you are.
We are the children of God.
And that not only means something, it means everything.
Jesus was in the wilderness, forty days, alone, fasting, preparing, waiting.
Then the bell rings, and the confrontation begins.
The temptation.
They weren’t to do things that were bad, in fact they could be seen as solutions to the enduring problems of humanity, hunger and the abuse of power.
The temptation was to forget who he was. The Son of God.
Adam and Eve forgot in the Garden.
Israel forgot in the wilderness.
This time Jesus remembers, he remembers for all those who have forgotten.
The devil can quote scripture.
The devil can tempt with the good, as well as the bad.
The tempter wants us to forget that we are God’s children, that is the long game.
Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is a unique event. It is singular. It accomplishes something. We do not repeat his experience. Jesus’ experience casts the devil out.
We are set free by the one who did not forget who he was. Jesus remembers for us, we are reminded who we are, the children of God.
In Matthew’s Gospel the Empire of God is challenging all the empires of this world and the one who owns them. It is a challenge to the death.
The empire of power? Or the empire of the suffering servant?
We are given the choice. Who will I serve? Whose game will I play? Whose rules will I play by? Whose child am I?
The Holy Spirit is leading us into the wilderness.
We are being prepared.
As the Spirit whispers, over and over, “Remember who you are.”