Lent 1. 2026.

“and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

Today we hear the account of Jesus in the wilderness and his temptations – his testing time. I have always been fascinated by the words that come at the end of this reading, “Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

I get this image in my head of angels with napkins over their arms coming to bring food and drink to Jesus after a long fast. OK you may say that says more about me than the gospel story! But I still find it a nice image – here Jesus is literally being served, attended to, ministered to, waited upon.

When we used to visit our son John in the US he took great delight in taking us out to some wonderful places to eat. As we sat at the table the waiter would come and introduce themselves. “I am so and so and I will be looking after you this evening.” I have to say a bit of a step up from what we have sometimes experienced in restaurants in this country. I am remembering a wonderful evening we spent at Biltmore in North Carolina in the Blue Ridge mountains, the estate of the Vanderbilts – railway tycoons. That’s how they made their money and built the amazing house on the estate. Great service that night and the best meal I have ever eaten in a restaurant. We were definitely waited upon that night in splendid fashion.

Angels came and waited upon him!

Jesus definitely needed a bit of attention! After his baptism and just before he begins his public ministry. He is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested. The testing focusses on Jesus’ identity, linked to the words heard by Jesus at his baptism “This is my son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased” The devil’s words “If you are the Son of God…..If you are the Son of God” Doubts are being sown and Jesus identity challenged. “If you are the Son of God” what must have been going through Jesus’ mind at this moment? This time of testing seems to me all about diverting Jesus from the road that his Father has laid out before him to follow. It challenges a singleness of heart and mind. It challenges  a faithfulness to God, and at the end of this wilderness time we hear the words of Jesus in the face of all of this, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” This singleness of mind is to be the driving force in Jesus’ life – he wills one thing and that is to be faithful to his identity and calling, in the service of God and his people. He is the one who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many.

Can I be honest I do struggle a bit with the story of the temptations as I am not sure how much they actually chime with our lives and experience. I have not held conversations with a visible devil or been whisked from place to place like Jesus in this story, or thought about throwing myself off the pinnacle of the temple. The temptations that he faces are I think peculiar to him and may seem a bit remote from us. We may think well my temptations are a bit different….. So what am I to do?

Perhaps there is a common denominator with our experience and the experience of Jesus. Does it revolve around a temptation to treat God as less than God? Do we forget to trust God’s readiness to strengthen us to face our trials. We are tempted to self-sufficiency and we forget the promise “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” 2 Cor. 12.9. Lay hold on the promises of scripture as Jesus himself did and rest faith in the fact that only God is God. He is there and he is with us.

Anyway let’s return to that image of angels with napkins over their arms. It essentially a wonderful image of service to someone who needed some TLC. The word translated as “wait” in our reading this morning comes from the verb “to serve” in Greek and is the same verb which gives us the word deacon, one of the ordained orders of the church. It is a good reminder at the beginning of Lent that as followers of Jesus, as disciples of Jesus the servant King we are called to serve. Remember we follow a servant King whose ultimate act of service was to give his life. He is the King who washes his disciples feet as an example to us all. He stoops low that we might be lifted up.

So how do we wait upon Jesus – as the angels did in the wilderness? It all begins by being able to recognise that each one of us is made in the image of God and that we open our eyes to Christ in others – remembering that what we do for the least of our brothers and sisters we do for him. We can serve Christ in our neighbours. We can wait upon Christ in our neighbours, recognising their need.

There is strong link here to the words of St Theresa of Avila “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

As we wait upon others, we wait upon Christ.

Canon Stuart Bain