MATTHEW, Mark, and Luke — three Gospels with a similar point of view — all tell of Jesus’s temptation. We know that this event matters, because a version of it is set every year for Lent 1. Matthew and Luke are probably following the same source (no longer extant), which Mark either did not know, or (more likely: Mark 1.13) chose not to retell in full.

Of the three versions, I would choose Matthew’s without hesitation. Losing Mark means losing the “wild beasts” (Mark 1.13). Losing Luke means losing the information that the devil has been given authority over the world (Luke 4.6). Only Matthew tells the three temptations in full, in the correct order. The “human” temptations come first, as the devil twice tries to get Jesus to prove his identity to himself; they lead to the third — Satan’s true objective — to make Jesus worship a god who is not God.

Luke feels a need to explain how the devil can offer Jesus the kingdoms of the world. Matthew does not: he assumes that Satan is not telling the truth. John would surely agree (8.44). Luke also makes the end into a cliffhanger moment, with that disturbing image of the devil biding his time (4.13).

One detail that Matthew records, which is shared with Mark but lacking in Luke, is the angels who “waited on” Jesus after his temptation. “Waited on” makes me think of hovering restaurant staff. I wish NRSV had stuck with the AV’s translation, “ministered to him”, and not just because of neophobia (which can be a positive survival strategy, as well as a diehard preference for the archaic). The old translation is churchier, but it shows us Jesus in a way we need to keep in mind (see, for example, Matthew 26.7): he receives ministry as well as offers it.

Following Christ means serving others, but also accepting the services that, out of love and faith, others offer to us. To be fully human, we should accept others’ ministry to us, welcoming the part of recipient as well as giver.

The idea at the heart of this mutual offering and receiving of care is diakonia. The “diaconate” may be a calling for the ordained, but diakonia is a mark of all Christians (1 Corinthians 12.5; Ephesians 4.14). Turned from Greek to Latin, diakonia becomes “ministry” (minister is Latin for “servant”). The Christian faith is, for everyone, a calling to ministry; to service of others. It applies to caring for people’s bodies (their physical well-being), their minds (their capacity to approach God rationally), and their spirits (their need for growth in godliness).

Back to Matthew’s ministering angels. The temptation story ends with their ministry, showing that those angels do more than just authenticate Jesus’s divinity, or defend him physically: the time for Michael and the angelic host to fight against the devil and his evil angels (Psalm 78.49; Revelation 12.7) is not yet.

I think the angels are there because the Son of God is also the Son of Man. In other words, he has angels to tend to him because that is the deal that God makes with all his children. We are not alone. We have angels to watch over us in this life (Matthew 18.10), and angels to help us from this life to the next (Luke 16.22). They do not tend Jesus (or us) because we are important (in a worldly sense), but because we are not.

Romans 5 encourages us with the thought that, in Christ, grace and righteousness will be ours. Whether or not angels are part of our spiritual thinking, Jesus our brother — who is the friend of sinners — has ensured that righteousness will be a “free gift”, not a struggle, an effort, or (God forbid) a “work”. Perhaps by now we have already failed in our chosen Lenten discipline. But Romans 5 keeps us hoping for that righteousness and grace.

Finally, unlike the Synoptics, John does not record Jesus’s wilderness temptation. But he does give us, in its place, a visual theology of the Son as the bridge spanning that otherwise eternal gulf between us and God, giving the angels a way to reach us, and giving us a way, in God’s good time, of reaching God: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (1.51).