Text: Matthew 4:1-11Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Temptation of Jesus
4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” 7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” 11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Temptation is Big Business.
Anybody who’s ever turned on a TV or a radio, or has ever gotten a newspaper, or has gotten an armload of flyers in the mail, knows this. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry that pervades just about every nook and cranny of modern life. Everything from chocolates to mufflers, from shoes to vacations, is brought to our attention – And every ad from every vendor has the same goal: To entice, to tempt, us to visit their store or website and buy what they’re offering. We’re so used to this that we think it’s normal. The use of ads goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, but modern advertising, or “professional tempting,” as you might call it, didn’t begin until the 1920s, when a fellow by the name of Edward Bernays, who’s considered the founder of Madison Avenue-style advertising, created ad campaigns for the tobacco industry. Most advertising is not necessarily “bad” – sometimes we’re happy to know that there’s a sale on some item we need; and when you think of public service announcements, for example, you recognize that sometimes advertising helps our common welfare. But, outside of that exception, all advertising really is a form of temptation.
Generally, though, when we hear the words “tempt” or “temptation,” we almost always associate them with something bad; when we’re tempted, it always seems to be in the context of being led astray, or being seduced to do wrong.
That’s certainly how generations of Christians, including this one, have always understood this passage. After all, the heading for today’s lesson states in bold print “The Temptation of Jesus.” But there’s a problem with that understanding when reading some parts of the Bible. For example, in Genesis 22:1, we read in the King James Version “And it came to pass…that God did tempt Abraham…” Now, immediately we ask ourselves how it could be that God would actually tempt someone to do something evil, like sacrifice one’s own child. The problem is not that God was actually “tempting” Abraham, but that the translators of the King James version of the Bible got the verb wrong. Modern translations get it right: The Revised Standard Version puts it this way – “After these things, God tested Abraham…”
Something similar is going on with today’s lesson: The Greek word that is translated as “tempt” is “peirazo,” (πειράζω), which is more correctly rendered as “to test.” So, instead of reading “the tempter,” we should more accurately read “the tester” in this passage. The difference in meaning might seem subtle, but it really isn’t. There’s a huge difference in meaning between “tempt” and “test.”
How many times have we heard that old line, “Life is a test”? As the Prophet Micah wrote some 700 years before the birth of Christ:
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,[a]
and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8, RSV)
Jesus said something very similar – different words but the intent is the same: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And that, right there, is our test. We have the ability to choose. God did not create us to be a bunch of lab rats in some grand experiment; he created us to be his children. He gave us that awesome gift of free will to choose to do justice and love kindness, and to walk humbly with him.
Lent is the season of the church year when we all are confronted with the recognition of those times in the past year when we have not, in fact, done those things Micah talks about; when we “fess up” to our own shortcomings (also known as “sins”!), but above all when we have the opportunity to clean out the clutter in the attics of our souls, and seek to make amends. It is meant to give us, as you no doubt read in the latest issue of “The Chatter,” the chance to offset spiritual complacency and to increase spiritual diligence. It is meant to be a period of soul-searching and soul-refinement.
The tests in our lives mostly come, not because God deliberately puts challenges in our way, but when we are faced with the choice to use our God-given free will to either “walk humbly with [our] God,” or to use that free will God gave us strike out on our own.
The story of Adam and Eve is probably the tale of what happens when we go off the rails. God told Adam and Eve that the entirety of creation was at their disposal except for that one single tree. That was off limits. So what happened? That was the one thing they had to have, even though they knew that eating of that fruit would cause their destruction. They manage to avoid eating of that forbidden fruit – until the Tester comes along and lies to them by saying, “God just said there’d be punishment because he knows you’d become just like him – so go ahead! Eat your fill!” So they do, and the rest, as they say, is history. Edgar Allan Poe once wrote a short story titled “The Imp of the Perverse,” in which he describes exactly that impulse we have to do those things which we know full well we shouldn’t do, but do anyway: “I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution.”[1] That is to say: We know we shouldn’t do it. Our minds tell us that we shouldn’t do it. We can think of numerous reasons why we shouldn’t do it. But we do it, anyway. We are faced with a test, and we fail.
This reminds me of that old poem about tobacco:
Tobacco is a filthy weed,
It satisfies no human need.
It makes me thin,
It makes me mean,
It takes the hair right off my bean.
It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen.
I like it!
Katie says that this was one of her grandfather’s favorite poems, because, doctor though he was, he was also a smoker. (She tells me he didn’t inhale, though…)
“I like it.” I think we’ve just put our finger on the source of our problem. We know what we should do, but we choose to do something else, because we like that “something else” better.
It’s no accident that this lesson was chosen for the First Sunday in Lent. All the usual attributes we’ve come to associate with Lent are there – fasting, abstinence, spiritual discipline, temptation, and testing. The Rev. Edwin Johnson tells us: “Unlike Adam, Jesus resists temptation, passes the test, and goes onto live a ministry that changed the world and brings life to many. The message, in contrast to Adam, is clear: spiritual discipline is good, so is abstinence, may Lent be a time to practice both and be right with God.”[2] “Spiritual discipline” sounds like a tall order – it brings to mind a bunch of monks chanting in the wee hours of the morning; but it can be as simple as two minutes of prayer in the morning or two minutes before bed, or a moment of silent devotion anywhere at any time during the day. If you do it regularly, over time, it will change you – and you will change the world you live in.
But the lessons don’t stop there. Jesus is sent out into the wilderness to strengthen his focus on God. He was in the wilderness in a physical, but also a spiritual, sense. There was no help for him to combat the testing but this reliance on God. So, for us, abstaining from something – like coffee, or chocolate – for example, is pointless unless it leads to a deeper awareness of our relationship and reliance on God. When we find ourselves, then, in our own wildernesses – whatever they might be – let’s recall that the one thing we can always rely on is the relationship we have with God, who never fails, who never lets us down. Next time you’re stressed out, just say these words to yourself: “Jesus, I turn my burdens over to you,” take a deep breath, and relax. I’ve actually done it myself; it works. Back when I was going through the process of being reinstated as a UCC pastor, there were times when I felt like I was at the end of my rope. In those moments, some of them in the still of the night, I would say something like, “God, this is up to you.” Even though my burdens were still there in the morning, I knew that I was no longer shouldering them alone – and that really was a relief.
In his blog post for this week, David Lose makes another really good point about this passage, and one I’d never thought of. He tells us that Jesus was able to withstand the tests thrown at him because he remembered both who he was and whose he was. He says that: “[W]hen push comes to shove, all the various temptations we may encounter stem from the primary temptation to forget whose we are and therefore to forget who we. Because once you don’t remember who … and whose you are, you’ll do all kinds of things to dispel the insecurity that attends any human life and to find that sense of security and acceptance that is essential to being happy.”[3]
The most unrelenting test we face in life is to remember that we are the beloved children of God. Sometimes we don’t feel too beloved. Sometimes we feel as though our shortcomings are so big and so numerous that we are outside the circle of God’s people. That, too, is a test. Jesus gives us the rock-solid assurance that we belong to God, forever, and that nothing that happens to us in this life can ever change that.
Lent is a way for us to really clarify that in our own minds; it is a way to focus our souls. Imagine this: We’re standing, in the dark, on the doorstep of a grand mansion. We’re facing the door, but it’s closed and locked from the inside. We can see a little bit of golden light shining through the crack at the foot of the door. These 40 days are our time to remember who and whose we are, to make amends where we need to, to place our trust in God, and to get ready for that Great Day of Easter – for, on that day, that door will be thrown open wide, that golden light of Christ will wash like a tsunami over us, and we will be invited into Heaven itself!
Let us face those tests in our lives with courage and prayer, and with the knowledge that God will and does give us the strength to overcome them – for he loves us as his children, and we belong to him!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Imp of the Perverse,” in Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems, New York, New York, Castle Books, 2002, p. 212
[2] Johnson Edwin, Rev., “Engaging Lent, Lent 1(A) – March 5, 2017,” Sermons that Work, http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2017/01/25/engaging-lent-lent-1a-march-5-2017/
[3] Lose, David, “Lent 1 A: Identity as Gift and Promise,” In the Meantime, http://www.davidlose.net/2017/02/lent-1-a-identity-as-gift-and-promise/