Matthew 4:1-11
March 1, 2020
My parents moved back to Minnesota
from Nashville when I was in seminary, which meant that their home was one that
that I visited but never lived in. That also meant that when I would visit,
there were things, elements, particularities, that I had to discover. When I visiting
them one summer, I was going from the kitchen, through the laundry and mud room
into the garage. I noticed that there was a little door on the wall of the
laundry room. It was a little piece of plastic – the kind of plastic light
switches are made from, and it was set apart from the wall on a box made of the
same plastic.
It was a door on the wall. I’ve read
plenty of great fantasy books where an adventure or mystery began with finding
a strange and unexpected door, so I opened it. I don’t know what I thought
would be behind it – an entrance to some alternative universe. Perhaps it was
the American, muggle opening entrance to Hogwarts. I didn’t know. What was
behind the little door on the wall? A light switch. The box with the door was a
light switch cover. I clicked the switch a few times to see what would happen –
nothing that I could see. It was anticlimactic to be honest, and I was about to
go on my way. Then my dad saw me messing around with the switch. He said,
“Amy. That switch is for (whatever
it was for, I no longer remember). I put that box over the switch so the
grandchildren would leave it alone. I didn’t expect you to get into it.”
He laughed at me, and I sort of
abashedly apologized, but I was thinking,
“Did you just meet me?”
You put a little door on the wall,
and you expected me not to open it? If it looks closed for a reason, I want to
know that reason. If it looks like it might be forbidden, you just offered me a
tantalizing new fruit that I must have.
I’ve always been that way. If I wasn’t
supposed to touch something when I was a kid, I’d want more than anything in
the world to touch it. If my parents put something away so that I couldn’t find
it or get to it, and I knew that it was in the house, I’d search that house
high and low until I found it. Don’t even talk to me about birthday or
Christmas presents. It would take every ounce of willpower I had not to go in
search of them. It seemed that in my case the word “no” was an incentive for
disobedience.
I’m sure I wasn’t unique in that
respect as a child. And I realize that children are not the only ones
susceptible to this. Our Old Testament lesson is about the very first humans to
hear “no” as “yes.” Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; unashamed, uninhibited,
blissfully ignorant of certain things; till that serpent comes along and tempts
them.
Now I know that tradition and our
translation of scripture dictate that Eve is the one who is originally tempted,
then she in turn tempts her husband. But the Hebrew contradicts that. The
conversation may have been between Eve and the serpent, but the grammar asserts
that Adam was there as well, a silent, complicit partner in all that happened.
Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden
fruit, they give into temptation and everything changes. They are forced to
leave the garden; their idyllic existence is disrupted and their relationship
with each other and with God is changed forever.
That is one powerful story about
temptation. Yet, we also have the gospel story. Here is another story of
temptation, only this time it is Jesus who is tempted.
Jesus has just been baptized by John
in the river Jordan. And now he has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness
to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights and
afterwards he is famished.
And it is then, when he was at his
most vulnerable, that the tempter appears. After that long without food, it is
an understatement on Matthew’s part to say that Jesus was famished. He must
have been weak with hunger. He was weak with the kind of hunger that would make
most of us vulnerable and desperate for any sustenance someone offered. The
tempter appearing at this exact moment can’t be coincidence. Temptation is at
its strongest when we feel most weak and vulnerable.
The devil’s first temptation is to
offer Jesus bread. The word translated as “if” here would be better translated
as “since.” The tempter is not trying to throw Jesus’ relationship with God
into question. He is trying to find cracks in that relationship.
“Since you are the Son of God,
command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
Jesus answers him with scripture,
“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth
of God.”
Then the devil transports him from
the wilderness to the holy city and places him on the summit of the temple.
Looking down across the multitudes, the devil says, “Since you are the Son of
God, throw yourself down, 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.”
Jesus returns scripture for
scripture, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Then in the final temptation, the
tempter takes Jesus to a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the
world and their splendor.
“All these I will give you,” he says, “if
you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus commands, “Away with you,
Satan! Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”
At this the tempter leaves and
angels appear to wait upon Jesus.
If you think about it, all these
temptations sound … good. Turning stones into loaves of bread. Think of the
poor that Jesus could feed. Throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the
temple and having angels bear him up. Surely that would be a miracle that could
convince even the most skeptical of skeptics. Having power over all the
kingdoms in the world? We have to believe that Jesus would govern them with
justice and mercy.
Real temptation often tempts us to
do what we think is good and right for others as well as for ourselves. My
internship supervisor once told me that true temptation does not come to us as
darkness, it comes to us as light. Temptation slips in under the guise of good.
But the tricky thing about
temptation is that what seems good now may not be so good in the long run.
Jesus understands this and turns the tempter on his head.
Yet later in his ministry Jesus does
some things very close to what the tempter offered. He takes loaves and fishes
enough for just a few and feeds thousands. He walks across the water as a sign
of his divinity. And certainly, we believe him to be the true ruler of all that
is in heaven and on earth. So why was this time in the wilderness seen as
temptation? Maybe because as I said before, the tempter wanted sever the
relationship between Jesus and God. He was trying to weaken it, to distract
Jesus from his obedience to God.
Temptation in the guise of good.
That’s what gets us, isn’t it? The question we must ask ourselves is “are we
really doing what is good or are we just being pulled away from God?” Is our relationship being weakened or
strengthened? Are we going to accomplish something wonderful or are we just
reaching for forbidden fruit or a door on the wall?
The different accounts of Jesus
being tempted in the wilderness are always given for this first Sunday in Lent.
The idea of Jesus in the wilderness, fasting, for forty days and nights is a direct
correlation to our forty days and forty nights of the Lenten journey.
This story is to be our help and our
guide throughout these forty days. If Jesus can resist temptations such as
these, then surely we can find a way to resist our own temptations. This story
is our model, our shining example. Jesus was tempted just as we are, but he did
not sin. That is a powerful statement to make, but whenever I hear it, it makes
me feel not empowered to do as Jesus did, but ashamed that unlike Jesus, I do
sin. I fail in the face of temptation, repeatedly.
It makes realize that when we say
those words about Jesus, we imply, without meaning to, that Jesus not only did
not sin when it came to temptation, he was unable to sin. He could not have
sinned. He was Jesus. But that would mean that he really wasn’t like us. It
seems to me that many folks have this deep down, hidden belief, that while we
say Jesus was both human and divine, we really think of him as superhuman. He
was a superhero – ordinary looking on the outside, but when danger appears, he
would rip open his robe to reveal a red, white and blue suit with a giant “S”
on his chest for Savior. It’s a bird. It’s a sheep. No, it’s Super Jesus!
Super Jesus may have looked like he
was being tempted, but in reality, he had everything under control. But that
idea of Super Jesus doesn’t work. It’s not scriptural. It isn’t what we profess
to believe when we say Jesus was fully human. If he was fully human, as well as
divine, then he was tempted. To be tempted means to be confronted with a
choice. If there was no choice, then it was not true temptation. What that
means is that Jesus could have chosen differently.
But he didn’t. Why? If he wasn’t
Super Jesus, then why did he make the choice he did? Maybe, just maybe, because
his trust in God was greater than the temptation before him. That’s why I can’t
seem to stop messing up and sinning and falling down and falling short. Because
I put more trust in myself than I do in God. All three temptations offered by
Satan were about power; power to turn stones into bread, power to command
angels, power to rule the world. Jesus knew that a big problem with power is
that it makes us think we are doing it all ourselves. Jesus’ trust in God was
greater than the temptation to hold power.
O, if only I could remember that I
am making my way through this life on my own steam. O, if only I could remember
that I am where I am and I am who I am because others have helped me. O, if
only I could remember that it wasn’t God who failed me or forgot me or left me
alone, I have done that to myself.
Jesus’ ability to resist temptation
was not because he was Super Jesus; it was because he trusted God wholly,
completely and without reservation. We are called to do the same. We are called
to trust that God is with us. We are called to trust that God does not always
make everything okay, but that God is with us even things are not okay. We are
called to trust that God is with us, that God loves us, that God is working
good for us and through us for others. We are called to trust that God will
call us to do what seems hard and will lead us where we feel we cannot go, but
that God will give us what we need to do what we are called to do and go where
we are called to go. God is with us. And the good news is that even when we do
fail in our trust, even when we do give into temptation, God is still right
there, calling us back, offering us a second and a third and fifty-fifth chance
to follow once more. Jesus trusted God, and his trust was greater than the
temptation before him. May we trust God in equal measure.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment