Today our gospel reading presents Jesus as a character in a
brief story told by Luke as an ominscient narrator. Jesus is the protagonist and the devil is the
antagonist. The conflict centers on
Jesus, made weak and vulnerable by fasting, being tempted to short-circuit his
mission as God's revelation of God's self.
To defeat the devil Jesus quotes God's revelation of God's self in the
written words of the Hebrew
scriptures. The denouement tells us the
devil departed in apparent temporary defeat, but will return at an opportune
time. Game, set, match! Jesus is tested; Jesus overcomes. Seems simple, doesn't it? Like a morality tale? A story with a moral for us—resist when the
devil tempts you and you will be fine.
On the other hand, thoughtful Christians have struggled to
interpret this story in greater depth.
On Ash Wednesday about 11:10 I went down to the room where the AA folks
were just about cleaned up after their meeting to let them know at 11:30 the
church would be in silence for the next hour and a half for prayer and the
imposition of ashes. A young woman still
sitting in her chair asked me what Lent was all about. As I begin to explain, I mentioned that the
forty days of Lent were based on the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert fasting
and being tempted by the devil. She
asked what the temptations were and how they relate to us today. She wondered about what giving something up
for Lent was all about.
On the General Ordination Exams these sorts of questions are
posed in a section seminarians call “coffee hour” questions. You must answer briefly with clarity. Your answers must reflect biblical and
theological accuracy as well. I hope the
answers I gave that young woman met those standards!
In any event, today I have the advantage of time to prepare
to explain the meaning of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness. The explanation I treasure most is by Henri
Nouwen, the Roman Catholic theologian who left academia to live and work in the
L'Arche community with cognitively challenged adults. He describes the temptations as the dangers
all Christians who have a leadership roles face (and in a small church almost
everyone is a leader in some way): the
temptation to be relevant – turn those stones into bread so people do not need
to go hungry any more; the temptation to be powerful – how much good you could
do in the world if you possessed lots of power; and the temptation to be
spectacular – let everyone one see how God miraculously takes care of God's
holy ones. These temptations place us
at the center of things: our intentions rightly applied to the problems of life
will make all the difference, so what is good will prevail. If we succumb to the belief that our
holiness and our good deeds will make the difference in bringing in
God's reign, we will have yielded to the devil's challenges and lost our need
to keep connected with God.
For some reason as I prepared for today, I questioned what
Greek word Luke used to identify the devil and if that could offer some depth
in interpreting this account of Jesus' temptations as well. Often we are too much influenced by pop
cultural depictions of the devil from the red guy with horns, a tail and a
pitch fork to the one who presides over the burning sulfur in some region below
the earth. Luke's word, translated as
devil, is diabolou and means “slanderer” and is the root of the English
word, “diabolical.” Who is the
antagonist slandering in this story?
God, of course. This diabolical
one, this slanderer sought to depict an easy way to achieve what we call “the
age to come,” a time of abundance, a well-ordered, just society and victory
over death—if only Jesus would agree to take the easy way.
This easy way would involve the tyranny of imposing the
“good” and taking back the gift of freedom God gave God's creation. It is slander to say that God rules by
anything but the power of love. From the chesed of God in the Hebrew
scriptures—translated as God's “loving kindness”—to the declaration in
the Gospel of John that “God so loved the world . . .” we see that tyranny will
never be God's way. And tyranny, even
tyranny in the cause of what we believe is good should never be our way. God offers us love in Jesus and hopes for our
love in return. God offers us love in
Jesus and yearns for us to freely offer ourselves to God in love with humble
obedience as Jesus did. To love as Jesus
loved means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our
neighbor as ourself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian killed by the
Nazis, wrote about the need to be grateful when God shatters the “wish-dream”
of a perfect Christian community, because that forces us to relate to each
other—despite our inadequacies and our sins—through Jesus Christ, to center our
community in Christ. In our freedom we
have all fallen short in one way or another, but in our freedom we can look to
Jesus' compassion and relate to each
other through his compassion. That's the
freedom that will allow us to accept God's love and forgiveness and share God's
love and forgiveness with others.
So what I believe Luke's account of Jesus' temptation
teaches us is to reject the slander that there is an easy way to establish
God's reign if God in Jesus would only “step up.” Love can never be the easy way, because there
are costs, particularly the risk of rejection. But God chose love from the beginning
of creation. God chose love in sending
God's self to become human in Jesus. And
Jesus chose love, not tyranny, which led in the end to the sacrifice of his
life at the hands of human sin and evil.
Yes, God in Jesus chose love to overcome death and lead us to into
salvation and eternal life. To say that God should have chosen an easier way
and fixed it all through power—that is indeed slander. Luke's portrait of a vulnerable, yet
steadfast, Jesus, choosing God's way of love should be our guide.
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