Defense against All Devils: A Reflection on Mark 1.9-15 and Abba Macarius 11

Back in my teens and twenties I was involved in retreat weekends for teens and young adults. These were always good and for many represented a formative religious experience. But on the last day, we always had to give a talk on ‘the real world’, that, as wonderful as these experiences are, they aren’t meant to last forever and not only do we always need to go back down the mountain (so to speak) into the real world, but also that the real world was going to hit with a vengeance. This has been a reliable truth, for me at least, over the decades. Whether in my spiritual life or my life more broadly speaking, the times of greatest joy and consolation, when I am most aware of my identity and vocation, are always followed by times of struggle and temptation.

In today’s Gospel reading, from the Gospel of Mark, we see just such a situation happen for Jesus. Mark is by far the shortest of the four Gospels, and this has an interesting impact on how we read it. It almost feels like reading Luke or Matthew zoomed out, so that more comes into view in a single story, even as you lose detail. And that’s what’s happening in today’s reading; it’s just seven verses long, yet covers three easily recognizable stories: Jesus’ baptism, temptation in the desert, and continuation of John the Baptist’s prophetic ministry. It goes like this:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him 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. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1.9-15)

Jesus has an amazing theophany experience at his baptism, where God acknowledges him as the Beloved Son, a major turning point in his life. Yet immediately after this confirmation of his identity, Jesus is compelled out into the wilderness, where he is tempted for forty days. We know from the ‘zoomed in’ versions of this story that he is temped by Satan, with food for his hungry body, with exercising the privilege that comes along with his newly-confirmed identity as God’s Son, and with earthly power. Each time, Jesus resists by reciting Scripture, by reminding himself of what he knew to be true in the face of convenient and attractive lies. This response is a lesson in humility. Jesus doesn’t fight lies with lies, or power with power. In this case, turning the other cheek meant returning lies with truth, and perhaps hardest of all, being so certain of his identity and vocation that he didn’t need to prove it. And this humility is what allows him to truly best Satan and thereby begin his ministry in earnest.

There’s a story in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers that reiterates this message. Here, a monk is minding his own business and going about his daily tasks, when he is confronted by the devil:

When Abba Macarius was returning from the marsh to his cell one day carrying some palm-leaves, he met the devil on the road with a scythe. The devil struck at him as much as he wanted to, but in vain. He said to him, ‘What is your power, Macarius, that makes me powerless against you? All that you do, I do, too; you fast, so do I; you keep vigil, and I do not sleep at all; in one thing only do you beat me.’ Abba Macarius asked what that was. He said, ‘Your humility. Because of that I can do nothing against you.’ (Macarius 11)

It’s an interesting story for a couple of reasons. First, I love the fact that it flat out states that sacred practices are not signs of true faith or piety in and of themselves. Keeping in mind that the original audience of this story would have been monks — people who dedicated their lives to prayer and fasting — it would have been humbling indeed to be reminded that the devil too neither eats nor sleeps! But more to the point of today’s Gospel lesson, Macarius’s unstoppable weapon against the devil is his humility.

We might ask ourselves why this would be? Why in both stories is humility the answer to temptation? First, I think we need to remember the adage that humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less. Low self-esteem is not humility — in some ways it’s the opposite, since it often involves a lot of thought about oneself, even if those thoughts are negative! So that’s not what the tradition has in mind. No matter what we may think of the idea of ‘the devil’, it’s a helpful concept; the word (like its Aramaic version, Satan) simply means ‘deceiver’ or ‘confuser’. A devil is someone who delights in sowing doubt and confusion, in muddying the waters, who twists half-truths into convincing arguments. And these arguments generally are all about the ego: Some of devils’ lies puff the ego up, some try to wound it. But, the smaller it is, the smaller the target for those lies to attack. If I know I’m worthy of love at my deepest core, someone telling me I’m not is just going to bounce off — unless it isn’t good enough for me to know, but I need other people to know and acknowledge it too. That shift in my relationship to the truth is about ego, not identity, and that’s where the lies can hurt. On the flip side, if my sense of value and accomplishment comes from doing my work well and not from other people’s recognition of it, I’m at less risk of being inflated by praise or hurt by a lack of validation. I think these principles work through all the different kinds of temptations we face. The less invested we are in things external to our relationship with God, the less vulnerable we will be to the lies of devils.

So, as we enter into this first full week in Lent, may we all keep this in mind, and remember that, in a world full of people, powers, and systems that want to puff us up or tear us down (sometimes at the same time!), humility is our greatest weapon.