So. Jesus climbs up out of the Jordan, and this voice comes out of heaven saying “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And he doesn’t take a step—Mark says immediately—he hardly has time to breath before the Spirit leads him out into the wilderness to, as Matthew says, be tempted by the devil. Now, we all know that the Greek word rendered in our translation as “tempted” can be translated as “tested,” and it’s perhaps good to hold those two renderings in tension, to think of both temptation and testing as we consider what Ol’ Scratch is doing here.
And Jesus has no chance to catch his breath, he has no chance to bathe in the accolade that has just been laid on him—after all, he’s just been called God’s beloved—before he’s chucked into the so-called “wilderness, and this isn’t some kind of recreational area, with trout-filled lakes and picturesque mountains, or a lush jungle or crashing seashore: it’s just about the worst country you might imagine, with nothing at all to eat or drink, as is evidenced by the fact that he had nothing to eat for forty days and nights, and he comes out of that experience as one hungry guy. He’s famished, as Matthew puts it, and it isn’t apostolic hyperbole, he didn’t just appear famished—he could have eaten a camel, he was so hungry. That’s the first indication that Jesus wasn’t just playing at being a human being, he wasn’t God in a human-suit, he was human in every sense of the word.
And that’s one of the keys to this story: Jesus’ temptation or testing or whatever you want to call it is real. He is really being tested or tempted here. He has a real choice . . . if he doesn’t, then what good would it do us? And how could it be true, as it says over in Hebrews, that “we do not have a high priest”—talking about Jesus, here—“who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin?” To be “tested as we are” admits at the possibility of failure, the possibility of making the wrong choice, of failing the test. And what good would it be if the reason Jesus was without sin was because he couldn’t do it? To make his testing worth anything at all, to make it instructive to us as his followers at all, there has to be the possibility of his making the wrong choice.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “the Bible tells only two temptation stories, the temptation of the first man and the temptation of Christ, that is the temptation that led to humanity’s’ fall, and the temptation which led to Satan’s fall.” In this regard, it is useful to think of Jesus as the second Adam, and in fact that’s what Paul calls him, and we all know about Adam’s testin, we all know that Adam’s temptation didn’t turn out so hot . . . In fact, Bonhoeffer claims that “All other temptations in human history have to do with these two . . . Either we are tempted in Adam or we are tempted in Christ. Either the Adam in me is tempted – in which case we fall. Or the Christ in us is tempted – in which case Satan is bound to fall.” And this understanding is crucial: what we explore today isn’t Adam’s temptation, or my temptation, or your Aunt Tilly’s temptation. It is the temptation of one Jesus of Nazareth, under very specific circumstances: that within his relationship with God, whom he called Abba.
It’s not an accident that this happens just after the declaration from God of just who he is—we’re to get the point of this context, that although Jesus is being tested as the human being that he is, and that he has the same choice as you or I, it is within his context as beloved child of God that the temptation takes place.
So. What about the temptations themselves? There have been a lot of writing over the years, a lot of different spins put on them. One I like in particular, and which you might hear preached some day out of this pulpit, is pastor and theologian Michael Hardin’s theory that it is akin to a vision quest, of the sort engaged in by certain Native American Indians, where the subject enters the wilderness, often fasting, for a period of days to receive spiritual guidance.
But for today, let’s just take a look at what Matthew says about the three tests. The devil—the tester, the adversary, or whatever you want to call this personification of evil—the devil sees that Jesus is pretty hungry, and evidently thinks he can get at Jesus through his stomach—after all, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and Jesus was mighty hungry. So he says—and I imagine it’s a reasonable, soothing voice, not some cackle or hiss like in popular conceptions—he says “If you’re the son of God, command those stones over there” and he gestures at some dusty rocks “command those stones over there to become loaves of bread.” And it’s important to note a couple of things. First, the word our translation renders as “If” can just as easily be translated “Since,” as in “Since you are the son of God . . .” In other words, the devil isn’t contesting that fact, he’s not trying to get Jesus to prove it, he’s saying “Because you’re the son of God, command those rocks over there to become bread.”
The second thing to notice is that the devil doesn’t say “change those stones to bread,’ he says “command those stones to become bread.” In other words, he’s asking Jesus to exercise his power over nature, his control over something that his Abba has created. And even though Jesus can do it, that’s not the point: he doesn’t have the right to change something that God has made, he doesn’t have the authority. The devil is tempting Jesus to abuse his power, to exercise it without having the authorization. Sure, he could command those stones to become bread with one hand tied behind his back, but it would be an abuse of his power as child of God.
But wait . . . there’s more! He’s not being tempted to abuse his power just for the fun of it, he’s hungry, he has a need. He’s being tempted to abuse his power to take care of himself, instead of trusting his Abba to do the job for him . . . and hmmm . . . who does that remind us of?
But hungry as he is, Jesus is having none of it, and by way of refusing, he says “"It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" In other words, we live by what God promises us, we live by that trust, which is contained in the Word.
Ok, the devil thinks, this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. This particular child of God has got some backbone, he’s got some spine. And he knows scripture, too. Well, two can play that game, and he whisks Jesus off and stands him up on the highest point of the temple, and now he quotes scripture: “Since you’re the Son of God and all, throw yourself off; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" There, thinks the devil, that oughta’ do it.
But Jesus isn’t going to be fooled that easy. “Again it is written,” he says, “'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'” Do not try to force God to do anything, do not try to exercise power over the almighty. And it’s important to see that at heart, it’s the same temptation as the first: Ol’ Scratch is trying to get Jesus to put himself above God his Abba, or at least on the same level. He’s tempting Jesus to, in effect, command God. To force God to do something, to make a choice, which is what would happen were Jesus to take a header off the temple. And what son can command his parent?
The devil tries to get Jesus to put himself in a superior position to God, which is the natural position of tester to testee . . . and Jesus isn’t buying it. And the devil thinks Rats!—only it’s not really rats, what it really was, I can’t say in church—he thinks rats, this guy’s really good. Time to bring out the big guns, to go for the gold: He takes Jesus up onto some high mountain—apparently, the temple isn’t high enough—and Jesus sees the whole world laid out before him, but more than that, he can see all of creation, all of time . . . he sees lions knifing through the African veldt, the mighty skyscrapers of Manhattan far outstripping the ziggurats of Babylon, he can even see the first Adam, there in the garden with Eve.
And now the gloves are off, this is the whole enchilada: Jesus is tempted with ultimate political power, ultimate God-hood. Think of all the good he could do, think of all the hungering mouths he could feed, all the sickness and violence he could cure. And all of it would be his, says the devil, if he’d just fall down and worship him. But Jesus just quotes scripture again—demonstrating, you understand, just how to live by the Word—he just says “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'”
And so we can see that the three temptations of Jesus—to command over nature, control over God, and ultimate political rule—are just variations on a theme, that theme being power, control. It is the temptation to put himself in God’s place, to set himself up as the ultimate power. It’s the same temptation that Adam had, and the church itself has been more like the first Adam than the second. The very notion of Christendom which seems to be coming to an end, though it held sway for some 1600 years, is the domination—thus the dom in Christendom—of Christianity over other religions. Note that I didn’t say the dominion of Christ, but of the Christian religion. And this dominion was often enforced at the point of a spear, or the muzzle of a gun, and it is still used as a reason to put the interests of Western nations above that of others . . . we’re Christians, God’s on our side, therefore our cause is righteous.
But there are many ways that Christians try to control their own destinies, to control that which God should by rights control. We do this on a personal level—we strive and strive and strive, and then suppose that it is our own doing when we succeed, when we get ahead, forgetting, as the Psalmist wrote, that the Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.
And we do it on a corporate, community level as well . . . we all have ideas about what is best for the church, we all try to be God and decide what is right, what will revive or transform God’s congregation. We tell ourselves that studies prove this or that—I’m sure some of you have heard me say this—we tell ourselves that we’ve heard that young people like this thing or another, and that of course God wants us to have plenty of young families, and be the church we once were. But that is just us talking, that is us trying to lead God, rather than the other way around.
Jesus resisted that temptation . . . he resisted the urge to seize control, to take matters into his own—undoubtedly capable—hands. But he didn’t do it alone, did he? He didn’t do it without help . . . it was through his relationship with God, whom he called Abba, that he was able to resists the blandishments of the tempter. He was declared “God’s Son, God’s beloved,” and it was through that relationship, as that child of God, that he was able to resist the temptation to control, and guess what? That’s how we can do it, too. Through Christ, and through our baptisms in him, we are beloved children of God. And in that family, we can take anything Ol’ Scratch can throw at us, can’t we? Amen.
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