Lent 1B – George Yandell
In a mystical drama between the powers of good and evil, Jesus is led by God’s spirit to be tempted by Satan. In Luke’s gospel, elaborating on Mark, the intimate, seductive offers that Satan makes cut to the core of human identity as created beings- Satan suggests that if Jesus is created as God’s own child, Jesus can make the very stones of the earth transform into bread to soothe his intense hunger after fasting 40 days. Satan urged Jesus to test the saving power of God by attempting suicide. And Satan offers to give Jesus ruler-ship over all the world if he will only worship the fallen angel. Jesus responds to these tests each time by quoting the Hebrew scriptures and saying, “Keeping faith in God, serving God alone, provides all things necessary for life, and saves us.”
Who is telling the story? The gospel writer, in the 3rd person. More intriguing, who is the source for the story? Who could it be? Well, it certainly wasn’t Satan- it would never choose to display a failure on its part. So the source must have been Jesus. What was his point in recounting this dream-like episode from the beginning of his ministry?
In each temptation Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy where Moses is described as receiving the Law from Yahweh on Mt. Sinai. The temptation story is thus a retelling of that ancient story but substituting Jesus for Moses. Just as Moses and Israel were tempted during their 40 years in the wilderness, so Jesus was tempted during his 40 days. Israel was tempted by hunger; they complained loudly to God, and God sent “manna that fell from heaven” each day. Jesus is tempted by hunger, but refuses to turn stones into bread. Israel was tempted by idolatry and crafted golden calves to worship; Jesus is tempted to worship Satan. Israel as a people succumbed to their temptations, yet Jesus does not. Luke utilizes this story as a way of foreshadowing the kind of life Jesus would lead. [Borrowed in part from Acts of Jesus, pp. 41 -43, Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, 1999]
This is the great drama into which you and I have been thrust as people of faith. The temptations Satan offered Jesus are temptations we meet every day, in diverse ways. Temptations alter our course in life. In fact the course of creation changes, every time we act within the tensions of good and evil now. We are created whole and good, yet also are incomplete and flawed. In the gray area in our souls, tugged and tempted, we learn the lesson Jesus learned in the wilds- we learn our need of God.
Do you and I hear these temptations as only individual to Jesus? We centered on personal, individual temptations in the Ash Wednesday service. But the original Jewish hearers of this story would have immediately thought of Jesus as symbolically representing the whole Jewish people.
It’s all right here, Jesus demonstrated. The polarities of good and evil tug at humans every day. All manner of twists and turns are offered to deter us from fixing our attention on God alone. The church is not exempt from these same desires. Indeed, clear and strange parallels of temptation are going on in the church’s life at this very moment.
I hear this message today- Yes, resisting personal temptation is essential to moving on the Way of Jesus. Resisting my own devils renews me in moving toward the holy- it repoints me toward the joy of serving God with my whole self. But it’s tempting, as the collective people of God, to shrug off our mutual responsibility for all those whom God loves. We are the Body of Christ, and have corporate temptations we rarely address. Sometimes it’s a lack of attention to those we have vowed in our baptismal promises to serve. On our refrigerator at home, Susan and I used to have a small note card inscribed with an etching and a saying by Archbishop Desmond Tutu- the picture is of an elephant standing on a mouse’s tail- the words under the caption say, “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
But if we accept our share of blame for evil in this world, and confess to one another that we do not resist evil fully enough, we renew our corporate focus. If we claim the ministry of Jesus together, then we are partners with God. If we hold each other accountable for living out our forgiveness in works of justice, then we’re getting the deep message of Jesus. If we work to change the structures that allow evil to flourish in our world, then we might just find our actions yield a deeper joy that rests on doing God’s justice as the collective Body of Christ. There is holy, joyful power in numbers of people working for God’s justice shoulder to shoulder with other followers of the Way of Jesus.
The devil expected to have a field day by using these temptations out there in the wilderness with Jesus. But the gospel as Jesus understood it and as we’ve received it confronts every one of the false priorities that divert us from working as partners with God. As God’s partners, we have vowed to make this world a heaven-like place for all. God works to bind us together to share in heaven now.
Jesus is here at table with us, erasing centuries of warfare and hatred, teaching us to discover our common humanity, easing us out of our historic complacency and into the shared language of love. Love which makes this gentle, but firm demand of us — “You shall worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve.” (Borrowed in part from Out of Nowhere, 2-22-07, online commentary by Lane Denson)