We don’t think much about God being tempted. I mean, we think about us being tempted, and we hear the story about Jesus being tempted (but we assume that’s his humanity), but it seems strange to think of God being tempted. Yet, in the Bible, God seems to be tempted several times.

And what seems to be most tempting also seems to be most understandable: in Genesis we’re told that God "saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, . . . and the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created . . . for I am sorry that I have made them.’"

Tempting. These humans are obviously from a bad batch. Just let it rain forty days and forty nights and then start over. "After all," God must have thought, "they’re rebellious and hurtful and disobedient, and what’s more, they want my job."

But of course that’s not what happened. "Noah," we’re told, "found favor in the sight of the Lord." And after the familiar story of the ark and the flood, God gave us the sign of the rainbow as an everlasting covenant that God will never be tempted again to send a flood to destroy the earth.

It turns out that God was more committed to this experiment with humans than even God seemed to have realized. So when God gave us the sign of the rainbow God made a deep and profound and ultimately mysterious and inexplicable commitment to humanity. Because loving human beings and sticking with us clearly was going to be a messy, painful business.

And it certainly turned out to be just that way. God tried, mostly in vain, to get these humans to live out having been created in God’s image, created good, instead of just acting like they were from a bad batch. And through it all, God stayed with the rainbow promise. But it got costlier and costlier; it snowballed; it kept going over budget; it got out of hand and required more and more and more of God until one bright day in Palestine — God’s Son came up out of the water.

The water was not now the water of flood and death, but was now the water of baptism, of commitment, of life, the same water that split the sun’s light into the colors of the rainbow. And God ripped the heavens apart and said to that wet man, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." "With you, I am well pleased."

How odd that right after that, right after Jesus is baptized and the heavens are split open, the Spirit — well it doesn’t "suggest," or "encourage," or "lead", or "draw", or even "nudge,"— no, the Spirit "drives" Jesus into the wilderness. This is not a sweet Hallmark message that "God loves you so your problems are over." This is harsh. Jesus is "driven" into the wilderness, the Israeli desert, a severe, unforgiving place of no water, no food, sharp plants that draw blood, jagged rocks, dust. This is a place of hostility, of desolation, a place where God seems absent. And Jesus is driven there to be tested by Satan.

I think most of us have had a trip or two to the desert, a time in our lives when the universe seemed hostile and God seemed to be nowhere in sight but temptation was everywhere. I’ve had lots and lots of people talk to me from desert places. Talk of divorce, of disease, of families held together by anger, of careers in tatters, of depression, of a lost loved one, of betrayal. The list goes on, of course, but these were all desert places for those folks. And when I’m listening I have to be careful, because I don’t want to diminish or dishonor the depth of emotion and despair these people are feeling, but I almost always feel like, "Wow! Now here is a moment God can use in this person’s life."

You know, I’ve been to the desert myself; I’ve been depressed; I’ve lost loved ones; I’ve felt disillusionment and despair, and I know how hard and discouraging the desert is. So I wish it weren’t so, but it just is: some of God’s best work is done in the desert.

And that was true with Jesus. It wasn’t enough that he was baptized; he had to go into the desert. And when he came out, he lived into the fullness of his being; he was never less than his true best nature. Isn’t that what we long for — to never be less than our true best nature? And so Jesus comes out of that desert proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

The Great Litany invites us into the desert. No, it drives us into the desert. This morning we made some pretty revealing statements about how costly it is to make a rainbow covenant with the likes of us. We acknowledged right off that we offend, that we sin, that we are wicked, that we are blind of heart, that we are prideful, vain, hypocritical creatures full of envy, hatred, and malice. We admitted that we have sinful affections and hardness of heart and contempt of God’s Word and commandments.

It goes on. The point is that the Great Litany fixes a steady, steely, penetrating gaze on us and without blinking speaks the hard truth about the cost of being in a rainbow covenant with us.

This morning is a desert morning. But the point of making eye contact with the Great Litany is not to depress us or make us feel unworthy; it is to help us to face probably the greatest temptation, the temptation that Jesus had to face in the desert. And that is the temptation to be less than God created us to be.

So, hang in there. And if your desert all around you feels overwhelming, look up. Get some perspective. Remember that even though it doesn’t seem like it, God is in that desert with you. Look up from your desert into the heavens in which God set that unimaginably costly rainbow. Look up from your desert into the heavens God ripped apart to say to Jesus, and through Jesus to us, "You are my Beloved." And trust that God does good work in the desert.