Passing the Test 2017-03-05-YearA-Lent1 Forty days and nights in the desert with no food and Jesus was famished. Actually, a more literal translation would be that Jesus was hungry. Famished implies an intensification of the language that is not present in the original, except insofar as anyone who hadn’t eaten for forty days and nights would be famished—or perhaps more accurately, dead. Matthew doesn’t intensify the level of Jesus’ hunger because the point of saying forty days and nights wasn’t to describe the literal amount of time that Jesus went without food and his miraculous survival capacity. Instead it was to tie Jesus to an Old Testament legacy of wilderness waiting. 40 days and 40 nights is likely most intended to connect Jesus with the 40 years of wilderness waiting of the Israelites following their escape from Egypt. The connection with the 40 years in the wilderness is probably strongest because all of Jesus’ responses to the devil, which come from passages in Deuteronomy that describe that period in Israel’s history. But there are several other 40-unit periods of waiting in scripture. Noah and his family spent forty days on the ark, waiting for the rain to stop. Moses spent 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai waiting for the two tablets of the covenant. Elijah had a forty day- and forty-night journey through the wilderness to Mt. Horeb where he waited to hear from God. So, you might want to make a note, if you ever find yourself wandering in the desert for some forty-day or forty-year or forty-unit period of time, expect to hear from God. 1 Forty days of waiting or forty years of wandering. Either way, it’s a long time, a time of preparation, hoping, and learning. And it is most definitely a time of testing. A time in which trust in God is comes up hard against limited and all-to-human expectations of God. But after Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness he doesn’t finally hear from God. Instead he is confronted by the devil who comes to him with what the devil might well imagine are interesting and helpful opportunities. The devil offers Jesus the opportunity to speak stones into food, to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple into the arms of God’s angels, and, perhaps most appealingly, the chance to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. We might picture the devil coming to Jesus cartoonishly, trident in hand, in a red robe with the tell-tale horns and forked tail peeking out from behind a cape. Or we might imagine the devil dressed in black, wreathed in smoke and giving off the scent of sulphur. But maybe the devil comes to Jesus dressed as an ordinary 1st century Palestinian, looking very much like Jesus’ disciples, neighbors or followers. Maybe the devil came in completely ordinary guise, with his seemingly beneficial suggestions. He might be saying, “C’mon Jesus, it’s all good.” “You’re hungry… the people are hungry… turn these stones to loaves of bread, feed yourself and then you can feed everyone else. Give the people what they want!” “Not only will you take care of immediate needs, you’ll build a relationship with them, it’s a good strategy.” He might be saying, “C’mon Jesus, it’s all good.” “God loves you and will always take care of you.” “Why not just demonstrate that with a dramatic and exciting spectacle? Imagine the response!” “Then the people will see it and will follow you by the thousands.” 2 He might be saying, “C’mon Jesus, it’s all good.” “Just take the power that is already rightly yours. Think what you could do with it!” “I’ll be your silent partner, I’ll drive the bus, but you can be out front, burnishing your reputation, showing off your power.” C’mon Jesus, it’s all good. The devil tempts Jesus with security, safety and authority. The devil tempts Jesus with the values of the world. The devil tempts Jesus with the opportunity to build a following—even if it is through coercion, trickery, bribery and manipulation. The devil tempts Jesus with the appearance of power. Do these things and you will be “like God,” the siren song that Adam and Eve first hear from the serpent in the garden. Like God… even though in the end each test would separate Jesus from God, and particularly from God’s intention for Jesus. But Jesus is not tempted by all the devils offers, not by the power, not by the safety, not by the security. In each case, Jesus turns the devil away by holding out God, by speaking God, by offering God. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” In the end, Jesus’ earthly ministry is, in every way, a repudiation of the shallow and worldly offerings put forth by the devil. Jesus turns down food for himself and later provides food to thousands of followers, maybe miraculously, maybe by empowering what was already present among them. Jesus turns down a chance to use his relationship with God to secure his own safety, but later goes willingly to suffering and death on the cross. 3 Jesus turns down leadership and authority over all the kingdoms of the world, but throughout his ministry invites all people into God’s kingdom, and in particular, invites those that no one else would welcome. Jesus’ very life and death are a repudiation of all the supposed benefits offered by the devil. Jesus’ life and death become the way that God’s love turns aside, rejects and disempowers all in the world which is not of God, which is not from God. See ya later devil… There’s a line from an old country song that goes, “Lead me not into temptation, I can find it all by myself.” In 2013 the Barna Group did a survey examining the temptations with which Americans say they most commonly struggle. What would you put at the top of your personal list of temptations? At the top of the list from the Barna survey, each garnering a 60% response were procrastination and worrying. Immediately after that came overeating, spending too much money and spending too much time on media. What would be considered more substantial temptations, perhaps, inappropriate sexual behavior, abusing alcohol or drugs or lying or cheating were way down on the list. Which may mean people aren’t tempted as much by those behaviors, or maybe more likely, they’re not as willing to admit to them. Temptation is a desire to do something bad, wrong or unwise—at least according to my Merriam-Webster dictionary. And sin is a temptation acted on. But do worry and procrastination count as sins? Certainly they could easily be described as unwise, but are they bad or wrong? 4 Procrastination is putting off something that we are supposed to be doing. And worry never solved anything. One saying goes, “Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” But more to the point, worry and procrastination, along with other sins, want to separate us from God. We worry instead of trusting God, and we procrastinate by putting our needs ahead of God’s intention for us. Sometimes the ways we sin hurts other people. Sometimes the ways we sin hurts us. But for sure, our sin always puts a barrier between us and God, sin always keeps us from fully living the life God intends for us. The opportunities offered by the devil to Jesus would be appealing to all of us, safety, security and power—maybe not power over all the kingdoms of the world, but who wouldn’t like a little more power over the things in their own lives? That’s the shape of the opportunity to sin that confronts each of us every day. It’s not always obvious that the temptation facing us is one that would be bad, wrong or unwise, but we can tell it is a sin if it doesn’t come from God, if it is not of God, if it has the potential to hurt us or others, or maybe most importantly, if it will separate us from God and detour us from God’s intention for us. But we have powerful tools in our tool box. We absolutely have the word of God, which provides direction, hope and a path to follow. We hear God’s word in scripture, learn God’s word as we study the Bible together and we are strengthened in God’s word when we worship together—speaking and hearing God’s word in community. But more than that we have Jesus. 5 Jesus who is God’s love for us alive in the world. Jesus, who in human form resisted every word of the devil. Jesus, who as a human, repudiated every offer of the devil, through his teaching, healing and finally, on the cross. Jesus, who provides for us forgiveness, redemption hope and healing for all those times we fail to pass the test, for all those times when the word of temptation is stronger than our ability to resist it. Jesus who shows us a way forward, who is our way forward.