In an essay on ministry in the midst of the many changes facing the church in the world, the Ven. Dr. Alex Hughes (Archdeacon of Cambridge, Church of England) writes of “Anxious Toil and Daily Bread,” and traces how the many anxieties about the future tempt the church to find (secure) our future by ‘managing’ ourselves out of various problems. Archdeacon Hughes highlights the danger of spending a great deal of energy managing our life and strategizing “to the point where ministry, mission and relationships are seen in [the] functional or instrumental terms” of how something serves to buoy up the church in the short term, but doing so as if it is all up to us to get it going and keep it going. In a way, that’s true, of course. There is always much to do. And good management matters to any organization. But Hughes points out that a focus on “management becomes especially attractive when things are chaotic (‘crisis management’), or when things are scarce (‘resource management’),” and notes that this serves as “a means of control, and it places human initiative at the centre of any enterprise” (Hughes in For God’s Sake: Re-Imagining Priesthood and Prayer in a Changing Church, ed. Jessica Martin and Sarah Coakley [Canterbury Press, 2016], 161-162).
As I reflected on Hughes’s words, it struck me that the First Sunday in Lent always gives us the reading of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (this year, from Luke 4:1-13). This unfolds following Jesus’ baptism, from which Jesus is “full of the Holy Spirit”, and is then led by that same Spirit into the wilderness, where he encounters the devil(ish) temptations.
Were I to attempt a paraphrase of these temptations, they might go something like this:
- breaking the fast by turning away from the purpose of being in the wilderness in favour of the immediate satisfaction of the luxurious banquet;
- bowing down to the powers of this world so as to be granted power for oneself;
- turning faith (trust) toward certainty by treating God as a magic genie for self-protection.
To distill these further, these are the constant human temptations to have plenty, to hold power, and to be secure.
In many ways, these are the goals of management in any business or organization – and often, they are at the heart of political gambits to attract our votes with promises of all three.
They are all at the heart of human desire.
But that is precisely the point of Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is “tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is at the heart of human desire, but draws those desires back to their source:
“One does not live by bread alone.”
“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”
“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
In this we are returned to the simple core of what it means to carry the faith – to look to the ‘daily bread’ of sustenance, to find our strength in God’s ways and wisdom rather than in power over others, and to keep the faith in the midst of uncertainty and anxiety.
At the heart of this Lenten text is the simple word “led.” Jesus is “led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” The wilderness in scripture is a crucible – a place of challenge, a place where many different routes can be taken, a place where it is necessary to navigate by paths both ancient and new, a place that cannot simply be managed. But it is also the place where the Spirit is at work – and so it is a place of formation, of seeking the wisdom of God by the leading of the Spirit.
And so in the midst of all our Anxious Toil, the season of Lent begins with Jesus drawing us back to our Daily Bread.
Archdeacon Hughes closes his reflection with a reference to Psalm 127:1-2, which offers a fitting conclusion:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives sleep to his beloved.
