26 February 2023 Lent 1

Our Gospel passage is often referred to as Jesus’ temptation by the Devil.  But is it the devil tempting Jesus or is he just going through one of those periods many of us go through where we start arguing with ourselves because we are unsure where we should be going and what we should be doing.  And a book I recently have been reading suggests why we might not attribute this temptation to ‘the devil’, because, according to Miranda Threlfall-Holmes[1], there was no cultural reference, at the time, equivalent to what our modern-day imagination characterises as the devil.  She suggests the passage simply reveals the embodiment of the strong but shadowy forces of temptation we all experience. Jesus has just been baptised, he has heard the voice from heaven declare him to be ‘my Son, with whom I am well pleased’, and he has seen what looked like a dove descend on him.  And then the Holy Spirit ‘drives’ him into the wilderness.  Why?  What is he supposed to be doing there, why is he in this barren place all alone, having just being declared to be God’s Son.  And I think this is where the ‘’ comes in.  Jesus is familiar with Scripture.  He knows the book of Deuteronomy and the Psalms, and this is where these passages quoted by the ‘tempter’ and by Jesus come from.  So is this just an example of Jesus just trying to ‘work out’ who he is, what he is supposed to be doing, where he is going, and basically working out the direction for his life now that he has left the obscurity of the carpenter’s hut, left the leadership of John the Baptiser, and put himself on the world stage as a leader in his own right.  Or at least he will be a leader when he leaves the isolation of the desert, having worked through all these things.

 Yes, Jesus is being tempted.  But is the temptation one of personal dialogue, or is there really a ‘flesh and blood devil’ talking with him.  All of the challenges the tempter poses are taken out of Scripture, and the answers and rebuttals of the temptations are also quotes from Scripture.  Even if we accept the devil as a separate entity, the passage just reveals a conversation between two protagonists who are throwing well-known pieces of Scripture at each other for different reasons and with different outcomes.  And it prompts us to reflect on our use, and maybe sometimes misuse, of Scripture.

 Jesus is well versed in the Hebrew texts, and all the quotes he uses to rebut the protagonist’s statements come from the book of Deuteronomy, and the quote used by the protagonist is from Psalm 91.  The Deuteronomic quotes come from the passage immediately following the giving of the 10 Commandments, and they summarise the whole story of the wilderness experience of Israel.  Jesus’ temptations, at the end of 40 days in the desert, mirror the temptations experienced by the Israelites in their 40 years in the desert.  Tempted by hunger, tempted to put God to the test, tempted to idolatry.

 All three temptations start with ‘If you are the Son of God’, and it would not be unreasonable to see this as Jesus arguing with himself.  What does being ‘Son of God’ mean, if I am Son of God, I could ‘turn this stone into bread’, but his cognitive mind throws back a response from Deuteronomy ‘man does not live by bread alone’.  And so the struggle with himself continues.  But these responses are more than just good answers to tempting challenges, they evoke Israel’s wilderness story and imply that Jesus is personifying the story of Israel.  Jesus’ response to the if you are is an emphatic, of course I am.  This is my heritage, these are the promises I can take hold of and own, this is the greater story in which my story takes on a wider meaning.  My identity as ‘beloved child of God’ rests unshakably on this because these are firm foundations.  And with that, the tempter leaves, and Jesus emerges out of the desert to commence his public ministry, confident of who he is and whose he is.

 But this passage is not only about temptation, it is also about putting Jesus in the position of recapitulating in his own person the salvation history of Israel.  Jesus relies on Scripture as a firm foundation, a ‘good and safe place to stand’.  And it is no coincidence that when confronted by self-doubt; or when his identity is called into question; Jesus returns to one of the foundation books of Scripture, Deuteronomy.  And this is something we can learn, when our identity is called into question, or even when we start to doubt our own identity, knowing our roots, as Jesus does, is important. 

 So what does your self-talk say to you.  What arguments or debates do you have with yourself.  And what do they say about you.  Are you good enough.  Why can’t you do, or have, ‘that’.  Where is God in ‘this problem’, and why do I have to go through this anyway.  Isn’t God on my side; this hurts, this is hard; I am falling, why won’t God save me.  What does your self-talk say about how you trust God to be in your life.  What does it say about you being beloved of God.

The tempter uses direct quotes from Scripture to try to entice Jesus to ‘test it’.  We, as Christians are often challenged by people who throw statements at us like “If you are a Christian …” or “If you really believe that the Bible is the Word of God then ….”.  or maybe those conversations are happening in our own heads.  We can follow Jesus’ lead in responding to these challenges.  The question in our text is not whether this really is something our Scripture says but, whether Jesus should engage in dangerous activities or behaviour because of it.  We can find a degree of liberation in the realisation that Jesus does not believe that you should always act on what Scripture literally says.  Just because the psalm says he will command angels to protect you is not a good enough reason to jump off a high building.   What would Jesus do? – sometimes he would tell the tempter to leave me alone and stop being so stupid.

 Temptation does not cease.  The reality of temptation calls us to self-awareness and prayerfulness.  Knowing we are in God’s care enables us to act with grace and boldness in seeking justice and wholeness for our whole community and the planet.

 As we start our Lenten journey, I encourage you to spend some time reading Scripture, and praying through the foundations of your faith.  Jesus spent 40 days in retreat.  It did not make him vulnerable to temptation, but because he had contemplated and thought about his roots, and was confident in those roots and his faith, he was able to withstand being tempted to ‘step outside’.  Spend time reading your Bible.  Take advantage of opportunities for retreat when they arise; pray.  Then, when doubt starts whispering annoyingly in your head, and believe me it will, you can fall back on your inheritance of faith and stand firm.  Let us do as Jesus did, enter the desert; stay and look evil in the face; hear evil’s voice; recognise the allure it presents and confess its appeal; then stand on ‘safe ground’ and be confident in your roots.  And then decide who you are and whose you are.  Lent is not a time to do penance for being human.  It is a time to embrace all that it means to be human.  Human and hungry; human and vulnerable; human and beloved.

[1] How to Eat Bread, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes