Thought for the week - 22 February 2026

We can see some beautiful things in the course of our lives. I think particularly of a field in Alsace on a blazing hot day, with the heat making the corn shimmer, or sailing into Stralsund harbour and seeing a townscape largely untouched for centuries or walking into Kykkos monastery for the first time and taking in the sheer opulence. Last summer I climbed to the top of the central cathedral in Berlin and was rewarded with a stunning view of the city. This urge to climb or sail seems to have been present in human beings for thousands of years, and the experience of looking down at the earth from a great height or seeing things from a fragile ship in deep waters is one which takes us beyond the physical. We can be struck by the wonder of creation in the smallest and closest things, but there is something awe-inspiring in looking out to the horizon and seeing the world down below, or far away.

When you float on the ocean, or fly in the sky (and I recommend very much being in a small jet with only a few seats to see how flying really feels, and the knowledge that there really is very little keeping you up there), or ascend a great tower, the experience can raise certain questions or emotions in us. It would be a very worrying person who did not pause to think what am I in this vast world? How small I seem in comparison to the great expanse below and the vastness of the universe above. Is my life here just a chance event or is there something beyond all change and decay; something which I can hope in despite all that might befall me in life? The sea beneath me is so deep, the mountain so high and the heavens above so infinite that I am, to all practical measurement, insignificant.

In the Gospel today St Matthew tells us how Jesus is set by Satan on a very high mountain and offered the kingdoms of the world in return for worshipping him. The picture is a vivid one, and it powerfully engages our imagination. From the great height Jesus is tempted with the question which is put to each of us, if you could hold the world in your hand what would you do? If it was all given to you in its entirety, what would you do with it? Would you want it to know that you had power over it? Would you want to force it to love you?

On the mountain of our religious imagination we can open our lives to that which is beyond us, or we can close our grasp on that which lies beneath. Not all of us are great rulers, surveying the extent of our kingdom, but each of us has been entrusted with some share in God’s creation. The temptation is this: through pride, greed or fear to hold fast to that portion of the good things of this world we have been given. It is this temptation which Adam and Eve succumb to in the garden. They grasp for the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, but rather than rising to be like the gods they fall and lose their innocence. They try to be like Gods, as the Devil does, but fail to grasp that Gd does not grasp, or make us love Him, or make His power known, but becomes man that we might find Him in the familiarity of the flesh.

In the second reading, which is from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, we are told that ‘as one man’s fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life.’ Here St Paul is referring to the cross; it is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ which brings life, where the grasping of Adam had brought death as the grasping of Satan does as well, and as our grasping, or attempts to force power or love will also die. We are brought to another tree, one set on a hill, from which Jesus looks down upon the world. Jesus has rejected the temptations of Satan and now he completes his victory over Satan. Whereas Adam and Eve grasp at the apple, Jesus opens his arms in his great prayer of thanksgiving to the Father. Whereas the Devil grasps at humanity, we trust in love and surrender ourselves to it and therefore to God and to each other.

On the cross Jesus Christ utters his great ‘yes’ to the father, to the gift of creation, a ‘yes’ that he makes on behalf of each one of us, and he invites us to share in this prayer of thanksgiving – to live our lives in the hope of the resurrection, not the despair of our own desires, not the fulfillment of our own need for attention or control.

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus made the journey that no-one had made before, through the wilderness and into the Promised Land. And then, having forged a path through the desert of sin, he turned around, and came back to fetch the rest of us. His victory over Satan whose beginnings we hear about today was won for us, to break the bonds of sin that hold us in weakness and death. So today let us remember our sins and remember that they have no more power over us. Let us remember death and remember that its sting is gone. Let us remember Satan, the Evil One, and remember that his house has been plundered, his kingdom is destroyed, his dominion is ended; and let us rejoice in this holy season, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.