“Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil.” “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.”
The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples—what we call the Lord's Prayer—drew from Jesus' experience in the wilderness. He also said his disciples should pray: “May thy kingdom thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” “Give us this day our daily bread.” The strong connection between Jesus' testing in the wilderness and his understanding of God's way seems clear. Each of Jesus' wilderness temptations and the need to resist them, trusting in God no matter what, finds expression in this prayer. Indeed, Jesus' temptation in the wilderness provided a foundation for his entire ministry. For Jesus' responses to the personification of evil—Satan, the tempter—demonstrated his commitment to the mission God began with the incarnation of God's self. Jesus of Nazareth—fully God, yes; but fully human as well. In his humanity Jesus revealed a deep trust in God's protection. His trust in God was firm as he resisted these three temptations. He answered each of Satan challenges with a quote from the Torah, specifically quotes from the 6th and 8th chapters of Deuteronomy.
Both St. Matthew and St. Paul wrote to show the first century followers of Jesus, and by proxy us, exactly who Jesus was. They want those who hear or read their texts “to learn Jesus.” This phrase “to learn Jesus” is used by contemporary scholars to indication a path of faith in Jesus, rather than a path of trying to know the Jesus of history. By “learning Jesus,” these scholars say, we will strengthen our faith and our trust in God. By “learning Jesus” we prepare to become his disciples who follow him and put his teachings into practice. How appropriate this process is for Lent!
Let us turn first to St. Paul's letter to the Romans as a means of “learning Jesus.” St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that Jesus came to earth and live as one of us and be God's free gift of grace. Jesus came to repair the breach in humanity's apparent close relationship with God before we learned about good and evil. I say “we,” not Adam and Eve, because I am certain the writer of the second and third chapters of Genesis would draw a direct line between humanity's failure in the Garden of Eden and humanity's failure now to love God with all our heart and mind and strength and our neighbors as ourselves.
St. Paul certainly agreed with this connection. He says: “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” Protestant reformers called this “the utter depravity of human nature.” “Learning Jesus” will lead us to reach out to him and accept God's free gift of grace and, with it, our “justification” in God's eyes. Jesus came to show us God's love—even when it meant facing the power on evil in the world on the cross. Through the cross Jesus repaired the breach between humanity and God—as Jesus was “beloved” by God, so God's love for us has been made clear in Jesus. So then our sinful nature will no longer separate us from God's love. God's loving grace becomes ours to claim!
Now let us turn to the gospel written by Matthew. What does he tell us to help us “learn Jesus?” He shows us the deep roots Jesus had as a faithful Jew. The amount of time Jesus spent in the desert wilderness parallels the amount of time Moses spent on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24, Deuteronomy 9) communing with God and receiving two tablets of stone with the revelation of the Law and the commandments. It also parallels the time Elijah spent on Mt. Horeb when encountered God in the sound of sheer silence (I Kings 19). Matthew want those who listened to or read his gospel to know that Jesus' experience in the desert was as important as the experiences of the great men of God before him.
Matthew also puts the title for Jesus “Son of God” in the mouth of Satan. That was one of the kingly titles the Roman emperor used. Matthew shows Jesus rising above the temptation to claim earthly power and prestige. With that sort of power, Jesus' offering his life out of love to cover our sinfulness would make no sense. By rejecting the path of Satan offers, Jesus honors the path of obedience to God's way, confronting the evil of the world with only the weapon of God's Word. So the Jesus we learn in Matthew's gospel has deep roots in the faith of his ancestors and a commitment to live out that faith despite extraordinary temptations to live more spectacularly and with great power.
Whom have you known or known about who had “learned Jesus” well enough to follow this path of fidelity to God's way—in the face of very attractive temptations? Patrick Willson, a Presbyterian pastor, in a commentary on this passage writes that Matthew's account of Jesus' temptation resists practical application for keeping a holy Lent. Perhaps so, but I believe it—and the theology St. Paul shared in his letter to the Romans—both these have real application for living a holy life. As Christians, we should trust in God's love and grace, as seen in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Then because of that trust, we will find the strength to resist the temptations in our world. We can recognize the temptation to make wrong choices, arising from our desire to never lack for anything, our desire to have fail-safe security, and our desire to always have the power to control any situation. These are our temptations today that parallel the ones Jesus faced. Then with the strength we have gained in “learning Jesus,” we can resist these temptations in our lives—and in our society—as we seek to follow God's way as seen in Jesus.
Reference: Patrick Willson, commentary on Matthew 4: 1-11, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol 2, p. 45.
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