Tempting Jesus!

Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

The temptation of Jesus may be viewed as archetypal of the temptations which every human being faces. How is this true? Before answering this question, consider some observations concerning the details of the gospel story of Jesus’ temptation. First, it is the Spirit of God that leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. According to James, God is neither tempted by evil nor tempts any human being. 

James 1:13-15 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

This rather terse statement, written by the Hebraist, James, may call our interpretation of this story into question. If the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, can you get God off the hook, so to speak, even though it is the Satan who does the actual tempting? Or, does this beg another question. Are all temptations inherently evil?

Is it possible that most temptations humans face center on choices that may be either good or evil with the determination made by the one choosing? Is this the case in this gospel account of Jesus time of testing? Are the temptations faced by Jesus archetypal for all temptations faced by humanity? For the subject of discussion, let’s assume that they are archetypal.

Archetypal Temptation #1

At the end of his prayerful fast, Jesus is famished. The time for the fast is forty days. Literally, forty days has a meaning. Frequently, the literalness of the forty days commands our attention. After all, forty days is forty days? Correct? Forty days is a metaphorical phrase signifying a complete period. How long did it rain in the flood story? Forty days and 40 nights or long enough. How long were the Hebrews in the wilderness? Forty years or long enough for the doubting generation to die. How long was Moses on Mount Sinai? Forty days or long enough to receive the law of God. That is the picture. Forty signifies a period that is long enough to accomplish it's end.

Without doubt, it was long enough for Jesus to experience great hunger. He was famished.  A person who is famished will do almost anything to satisfy their hunger. They feel close to death. They feel the physical threat of their condition and the instinct to survive takes over. At this juncture of Jesus temptation, the Satan offers Jesus a "quick fix." "Turn these stones to bread," he challenges.

The middle east is full of stones--wonderful, beautiful, mineral laden stones. Stones for building. Stones to enrich the soil. Stones, stones, stones. Why not make them bread, if you have the power?

This is something that human beings do all the time. We make stones into bread. The Mississippi Delta could feed the world. In places, the top soil is 40 feet deep. However, at one time the delta was swamp land until the levies drained the swamp and the “stones” turned into bread.

The Holy Land is full of limestone. Limestone is a primary stone in the rebuilding of the Temple. Stones into bread? Or, in this case, stones into the center of religious life. Stones=bread. Everyday.

The idea of stones into bread concerns the physical world which human beings, according to scripture, inhabit for a period as sojourners in time. Later in his ministry, the gospel writers will let us know that Jesus has the power to turn stones into bread (to continue the metaphorical application of this temptation). After all, he will feed the multitudes on more than one occasion with a few loaves and fish with baskets left over. 

So why not turn a few small stones into bread when you are famished. After all, as Robert Capon said in his book, “The Third Peacock,” it’s as if Satan says, “You have the power, use it for your own benefit.”

The battle over the spiritual and the physical is as old as creation. Adam and Eve will choose a piece of fruit over faithfulness to God. Cain will choose violence over cleaning up his own life. Esau will trade his spiritual birthright for a bowl of soup. Balaam considers and ultimately does sell his prophetic powers to the highest bidder. Many of us just want enough money to pay the bills and have a few things for which we hunger. After all, what's so bad about that?

Jesus response to Satan brings the spiritual into focus: "Adam, humanity, cannot live by bread alone." Later, Jesus will testify: "Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after the right path ...." 

The most basic of all hungers may be the baby crying for a bottle (bread). Soon however, out of all the parents and grandparents in the world, that child will cry for a particular parent or grandparent. That second cry, to know and be known, may be the substance on which life and civilization is built. The second hunger will ultimately create community and can us into a relationship with the Creator -- or not.

Yet, it is the that first hunger, the cry for bread, that threatens to overshadow our hunger to "love mercy and walk humbly before the Lord," to "have no other Gods before me." The basic cry to satisfy physical needs can overshadow everything else if we succumb to it. Focus on it and you will never make enough money, never have enough clothes or pairs of shoes. It can cause you to lose sight of all else and the tempter knows this is true.

Jesus answers the Satan by quoting from the scripture in Deut. 8:3. It is helpful to read the entire verse: 

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Duet. 8:3 TNIV)

Archetypal Temptation #2

When physical hungers fail to sidetrack Jesus, the Satan offers Jesus another one of those golden opportunities to have his name appear in lights. After all, if one is going to become influential, a friend once said, you cannot do so in Waycross, Georgia. The city, there's the action. Go to Atlanta, New York, Los Angles, somewhere big. Look for your chance to do something sensational. People will get to know you. Once you become a star, they'll ask your advice on any number of subjects whether you know anything about them or not. There is no high that compares with standing on stage and hearing the applause. Is this the second temptation?

In Jesus day, Jewish life centered on the Temple. It was to the Temple that people looked for guidance. The Romans sought to control the high priest and thus to control the people because the high priest led the great celebrations in the Temple on the highest of the holy days. To go to the Temple and throw himself down would have created quite a stir. Satan was saying: Do it. It will be a spiritual act, a spiritual high for you and for the people. After all, influence is what you came to exert, isn’t it? In offering this temptation, Satan quotes scripture:

Psalm 91: 11-12 “For he shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. ¹² They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

In his gospel, Matthew wants us to know that angels do “bear him (Jesus) up” as they minister to Jesus at the end of the temptation -- but not in the way the Satan suggests. When Satan quotes Psalm 91:12 "It is written, 'He will bear you up lest you cast your foot against a stone," he uses it in a way that focuses on the literal hungers of our humanity.

As a young minister, a former senior pastor called me to ask if I would come and serve with him for three years. After three years, I’ll step down and you can be the senior pastor. The church was by far the largest church in that Conference. The conversation went as far as a visit to the bishop of that area. At the end of the three hours we spent together, he said: “The time has past when we have to bring a prima donna from another area into our great churches, but I trust [the senior pastor] and the congregation. They feel this is best for them and we will do it.” Then he turned to me and asked wisely: “Everyone has an ego. You do realize your ego in this?”

It was true. With three small children at thirty-three years old, was this wise? The tempter said, “You’ll never have another chance like this one. If you are in that church, people will recognize your leadership. There will be no stopping you.” From what? Stopping from what? The most difficult part of saying no was disappointing the pastor who was my friend and the people in the church that I loved. Although my tenure there was during my student years, they had accepted me as one of the ministers of the church. No was the path but the glitz and the glitter called loudly. 

The contrast is unmistakable. The angels come at God's direction after the temptation and not at our command or our testing the promises of God. Look at the movement of the mystery of God. Jesus will live for a time in relative safety in a city controlled by Herod Antipas (Capernaum). For a time, he has the favor of the crowds. What he does not do is use his spiritual insight as fodder in any quest for influence or power. As he submits to the will of the Father, Jesus will die and refuse to stay dead trusting the promise, “He will bear you up….”

Archetypal Question #3

Temptations two and three may appear out of order. Think about it. How does it feel? Could obtaining a false spiritual influence and power be easier to attain than temporal power (see the magician Simon in Acts 8). Set up a booth, open a physic telephone line, make a few good predictions or just plain good guesses and people may come to you in numbers. Real spiritual power and influence takes longer to establish for it is not within the temporal or secular world’s realm. The test of the true prophet is in the fulfillment of the prophesy -- not the moment of making the prophesy. What about temporal or earthly power?

Temporal power is something else. You can be born into it, buy it, work for it and even be in the right place at the right time. In the temporal realm, Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world. It is the great deceit.

When I first read that passage, I thought that Satan was offering Jesus the "big house." For a poor man, born in a barn and raised in a cave, palace life certainly would have appeared splendid. After all, everybody wants and needs a home. Even Jesus will lament his lack of a place: "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."

This is not the issue here. Jesus faced that temptation in temptation number one: Turn these stones .... Now he faces something else--something even more sinister. The kingdoms of the world.

Some years ago, one of my peers remarked: "When we get the power ...." His implication was, when we are in places of influence, we'll do things differently. The truth: if we do not master the power and influence already in our hands with it's current potential for good, we will not use any other power or influence for good, no matter how well founded our intentions.

The lure of authority is strong. What could we do with money and power!! Who has not considered it. Certainly, we would work differently than any other leader who has ever attempted to wield the monarch's scepter. Just pass a few decrees. Make it law. People will have to change. When you are King or Queen and you speak, everybody listens! What a sinister lie. From the outside, it may look this way--if we have the power….

Later, Jesus walks away from the Galilee villages and seeks the lonely places when his movement grows strong and the people want to make him King. The deceit: Change the World by Being Powerful. The truth: Change the World Through Weakness for it is in our weakness that God is made strong.

The response of Jesus is clear. It is this response that ultimately answers every temptation. All you have to do is worship me, the Satan declares. Set your goals on the physical world and the power it wields. Worship it. Worship me, says the Satan. Jesus response is unambiguous. In Luke 4:10, Jesus said to the adversary, Away from me, Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only."

It is not that the world is inherently evil for after all, the world is the creation of a loving God. To love of the created above the Creator, that is evil. That is the deceit. That is the lie. Make that choice and the fig leaves of life cannot hide you from the corruption of mortality -- as in Adam, all die.

 Turning away from the lure, the deceit, the lie, the temptation, this is the only answer. It is the significance of the question asked in traditional baptism about evil. Do you reject evil in all it’s forms? Only after this  “... the devil left (Jesus), and angels came and attended him.”