21st February, 2021.
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My dear friends,

Once or twice in the past week I have been woken in the morning by the sound of birdsong coming from the trees in the field next door. Not many birds, admittedly, but one or two brave feathered friends have been chirping away, doubtless celebrating the disappearance of the recent snow and ice. Winter has not lost its grip, but it is an indication that Spring, though distant, is nevertheless on its way.

We all hope that the arrival of warmer weather will help us cope better with Covid-19; and it rather looks as though the coming of Spring will coincide with more and more of the population received the Covid-19 vaccine. I am sure that we will gradually emerge from lockdown as the Spring progresses. It will be good to be able to visit people in care homes – I shall be jolly glad to see my mother again. I shall also be immensely pleased to have a haircut: the words ‘short back and sides’ have suddenly begun to sound very attractive.

I was sorry to learn that Prince Philip had to be admitted to hospital after feeling unwell last week. I am sure The Queen must be missing him at Windsor. I am sure, too, that you would wish to join me in praying for The Queen and Prince Philip. I hope His Royal Highness will soon be feeling much better and look forward to celebrating his hundredth birthday in June.

​​With my prayers and all good and warm wishes,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
LENT 1 – 21st FEBRUARY 2021.
On Ash Wednesday 2021 (note the timing – at a time when Christians are trying to draw closer to their Lord during Lent), the media was suddenly full of reports that the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, who had raised such a wonderful amount of money to support the NHS during the present Covid-19 pandemic, had been bombarded with internet trolling and hate mail during the last few months of his remarkable 100 year life.

Captain Tom was thoroughly decent man, who thought of other people. His daughter said that his family had had to conceal this hate mail from him, as he wouldn’t have understood it. From the pictures on the television news, this has had a devastating impact on Captain Tom’s daughter, in addition to her grief at his death. We find ourselves asking: how could people behave in such a cruel way towards such a kind person as Captain Tom?

This leads us on to the further reflection that there have been times when we too have each done or said something cruel. Afterwards, we have probably felt terrible and may have perhaps asked ourselves: ‘Why on earth did I do that? I knew it was wrong, and yet I still carried on and did it?’

This certainly happens to me from time to time, and I don’t suppose I’m alone. The explanation is temptation. We read about Jesus being tempted in today’s Gospel.
 
And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
 
In children’s cartoons, temptation is portrayed as a little devil perched on someone’s shoulder, whispering into an ear: ‘Go on! Do it! You’ll be ok.’ At the same time, a little angel – representing our conscience – whispers into the other ear: ‘No, don’t do it! It’ll all end in tears!’ There is more than a grain of truth behind this cartoon image.

            Sometimes, our temptations can be put down to our being overtired, confused, unwell, or upset. But on other occasions, temptation cannot be so easily explained away. Why, for example, do men and women sometimes hurt the people they love most? It is a deep and complex subject; and in order to try to understand temptation, we must begin by thinking about Evil. We must understand that life isn’t simply a choice between doing God’s will or doing something else that is somehow neutral. There is also a power or spirit of Evil at work in the world, which we term the ‘Devil’ or ‘Satan.’ When we do something that is not God’s will, whatever it is, is sinful. I am anxious, though, that we don’t simply think of a funny man in red, with horns and a toasting fork. That is just an image; but Evil is very real. The objective of Satan is to prevent us loving and serving God, and ultimately to stop us believing in Him.

Before we get too alarmed, we should remind ourselves that Christians believe that Evil isn’t nearly so powerful as God’s love. Evil was defeated once and for all by Jesus Christ on the cross. But, like a defeated army in full retreat, the Devil is still capable of doing a great deal of damage as he goes to his appointed end.
            We can learn much about Evil and temptation from today’s Gospel. For a start there is the question of timing. This took place after Jesus was baptised in the Jordan. Before setting off on his public ministry, Jesus went off into the wilderness to pray and prepare himself spiritually for his work, because he knew there would be no-one and nothing to distract himin the desert. However, Satan was waiting for him, with some subtle temptations. Hardly surprising, really, because Satan knew that Christ had come to earth to defeat him.

            From this we learn that when we are serious about our religious faith, Satan will find extra ways of tempting us, distracting us, trying to put us off. He wants us to be lukewarm Christians, soft, not very prayerful, only partially committed.

Lent and Holy Week are times of extra-temptation for all of us. This is because at this time of the year we are consciously striving to draw closer to Jesus Christ in readiness for our celebration of Easter; which, of course, is not at all what Satan wants, and he will try to find ways of putting us off.

            Another observation: Satan is a very subtle operator. He tempts us with what we most want. He isn’t going to tempt me to chuck in my priestly ministry and become a Pop star! But he might tempt me to spend too much money on books, or to spend so much time on my pastoral work I don’t have enough time left to say my prayers, so that I become dry and arid and don’t function very well.

            Temptation, we may observe, leads us astray gradually. An unkind word. A grudge cherished. A little laziness. Prayers not said. Wrong priorities. A little self-justification. Our old sins in new guises. ‘I am special, after all!’  Before we know where we are, we cannot see God very clearly. We know He is there, but a mist or fog seems to have grown up between us. Satan has contrived to get between us and God.

I would suggest three things to help us cope with temptation:

Firstly, we need to have a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. This means that we must think about our faith. We must try not just to drift along, for there is a danger we may drift away. We must think about how we practice and nourish our Christian faith, and seek deliberately and consciously to put Jesus first in our lives, so that he is more important than anything or anyone else. This is not something we can do in an afternoon, but something we work at all our lives.

Secondly, when temptations occur, we need immediately to offer them to God in prayer. We also need to be sensible: if we think we will be tempted by going somewhere or talking to someone, we shouldn’t go there or have that conversation. We should walk away from the temptation. It isn’t wrong to be tempted. It is only wrong to give way. Remember, Jesus said we will never be tempted beyond our powers of resistance, so long as we rely upon him.

Thirdly, temptations and sin are inevitable because we are flawed and sinful men and women because of the Fall and Original Sin. But, we should not give way to despair. Despair is perhaps the worst of all sins. Heaven is full of Christians who have sinned, repented and carried on again, perhaps many times in their lives. We must each repent, over and over again, sometimes of the same sins, many times. Little by little, God’s grace enables us to make progress.

            Let me draw to a close by referring again to Captain Tom. I am very sorry he was trolled and sent hate mail in his last few weeks of life. I expect that now that he has died, some of the people who sent him such horrible messages may be feeling rather silly and regretting their behaviour. I pray for Captain Tom’s daughter and her family – and perhaps you, too, would pray for them when you say your prayers today – that God will heal these bad memories. With time, they will surely fade away, and we shall be left above all else with the memory of a very gallant old gentleman, walking up and down his garden, raising millions of pounds to support National health Service workers during a very difficult pandemic.

            This, if you like, is a dim reflection of the much greater work of God, throughout our lives on earth and also on the Day of Judgement, when He will unscramble everything. Jesus, we might remind ourselves, knows what it is to be tempted and to suffer, though he alone never gave way and sinned. Jesus is not unsympathetic when we are tempted or fall into sin; in fact, quite the reverse is true, because when Jesus was dying in agony on the cross, he was in some sense thinking of you and me, offering his life to God the Father as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

            Yes, temptation is real, and the power of Evil behind it is dangerous. But the love of God is greater than the worst Evil. That’s the truth we shall celebrate at Easter when we remember Christ’s death on the Cross and his glorious Resurrection three days later.

Let me try to sum all this up in one longish sentence: We Christians should try to resist temptation when it comes, we should repent when we fall into sin, we should never despair of God’s mercy, and we should think often of the love of God.