Hitting the Wall

Dear Followers,
Thank you for reading these heretofore-weekly posts on the Revised Common Lectionary texts that I/we have been doing for the last six months or so.  I seem to have hit a wall of sorts - maybe it's Lent, maybe it's work demanding more of my energy - whatever the case, something has to give and I have decided to take a break from this project.  I may continue to post when a text strikes me in a particular way, but I need a hiatus from posting every week.  Thanks for reading!
God's peace -
Andy(&Susan)

Lent 1 – March 13, 2011

            You can view this week’s Revised Common Lectionary texts here: http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=24 (right-click the link to open a separate tab or window).

The first Sunday in the seven-or-so-week season of Lent (forty days, not counting Sundays) always gives us the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness from one of the gospels.  For a long time I have been fascinated by these stories because they appear in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but Mark’s version is very different from the other two – just two very spare verses compared to eleven in Matthew, thirteen in Luke.  One detail all three agree on is that Jesus was in the wilderness – or more accurately, the desert – for forty days.  Matthew and Luke say he fasted for that time and then was tempted; Mark just says he was in the desert being tempted for that long.  Either way, not much difference, and it’s appropriate that this story of Jesus facing his humanity and vulnerability head-on opens our Lenten season of fasting and preparation.

Matthew begins his narrative by telling us that the Spirit led Jesus into the desert in the first place, “to be tempted by the devil.”  I imagine this makes us kind of uncomfortable, as we’d much rather think of temptation as something that just happens instead of something the Holy Spirit leads us to!  I don’t have a good answer for that, except to point out that this story is nestled right between Jesus’ baptism and the start of his public ministry – so it’s about his identity as God’s son being confirmed.  In 3:16, the Spirit descended on his to reveal him as God’s son; now the Spirit is taking him out for a test drive, so to speak, to see what kind of stuff he’s made of.  Once in the desert, Jesus fasts for forty days – recalling Israel’s forty years in the wilderness, which also involved going without food (more on that below).

When Jesus has been fasting those forty days, the “tempter” comes and challenges him to turn stones into bread, “if you are the Son of God” – to which Jesus replies with a quote from Deuteronomy.  This is the basic pattern of the temptations:  (Devil) “If you are the Son of God, do x; (Jesus) “No, because it’s written that y.”  All of Jesus’ Scripture quotations here are from Deuteronomy, which to me is a clue to the point of this whole story.  For instance, Jesus responds to the stones-into-bread challenge by quoting a bit from Deut. 8:3.  If we look at what comes just before that bit in Deut., Moses tells God’s people, “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.  He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”  (emphasis added)  It seems to me that Jesus’ temptation is about seeing “what is in his heart” and whether he’s going to be a faithful servant of God on Israel’s behalf. 

The second temptation in Matthew’s version has the devil testing Jesus to see whether he’ll test God – challenging him to throw himself off the Temple and have God catch him.  (Presumably this would also make quite a show.)  Jesus’ response this time is from Deut. 6:16, and again if we look at its context, Moses is telling the people, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.  You must diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his decrees, and his statutes that he has commanded you.  Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you….”  The “Massah” reference is to an episode in Exodus where the people get thirsty on their journey in the wilderness and demand water from Moses – which the Lord causes to spring from a rock.  To Moses this amounted to the people saying, “We’re not going to trust God unless God meets our demands.”  The problem with “testing God” is that it treats God as our servant instead of the other way around. 

Finally, the devil offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” if Jesus will offer the devil his worship.  It’s interesting that Luke’s version of the story reverses the second and third temptations.  Why?  Well, it makes sense in terms of following the narrative thrust of the gospel to end the sequence in Jerusalem, as Luke does; on the other hand, in Matthew “falling down and worshipping” is something that has particular significance and happens over and over (see 2:11; 14:33; 28:9), so it perhaps makes sense that Matthew ends with this one.  Anyway, here Jesus quotes from Deut. 6:13, and again the context is as follows: “When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.”  In other words, the earth and all it has to offer don’t come from anybody but God, so God is the one we worship.

Just to briefly tie this in with the other readings, Paul says in Romans 5:19 that Jesus’ obedience to God (which is shown in the Gospel lesson) has the effect of reversing Adam’s disobedience (which we see played out in the OT lesson).

Transfiguration – March 6, 2011

            You can view this week’s Revised Common Lectionary texts here: http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=22 (right-click the link to open a separate tab or window).

            The last Sunday before Lent – and the last of the season of Epiphany - is always Transfiguration Sunday, owing to the general location and function of this story in the gospels.  That is, it’s a big, powerful revelation of Jesus’ identity before the events leading to his passion and death.  As the Epiphany season commences with a voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism identifying him as “my beloved son,” so it closes with that same voice again identifying Jesus and telling his inner circle of disciples, “Listen to him!”

            I’ve always thought the Transfiguration story was one of the strangest episodes in the gospels – to me it’s always seemed to just come out of nowhere, this big interruption in the flow of the narrative.  Truth is, though – and maybe it has something to do with its strangeness – it’s one of the best attested stories in the gospels.  It appears in Matthew, Mark (9:2-10), and Luke (9:28-36), in each following Jesus’ prediction of his coming death.  It’s referred to in 2 Peter, as we see in the week’s Epistle reading.  Even John includes a story with some odd similarities in 12:28-30: Jesus is speaking about his death and there’s a voice from heaven, which the crowd thinks is just thunder (cf. the “cloud” in the other gospel accounts??).

            As I read the story now, the occurrence of the Transfiguration in Matthew’s narrative makes a little more sense to me.  Since Jesus’ baptism, he’s been calling and teaching and working with his disciples, they’ve seen him heal and feed and calm storms, and the time comes in ch. 16 for a serious conversation about who he is – what you might call the first semester final exam, which must be passed before they can go on to Discipleship 102.  “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks, and Peter has the answer: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”  Jesus then hands Peter his A+, commending him at some length in a bit (vs. 17-20) that the other gospels don’t include.  Then in 16:21, they jump right into the second semester material: “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering…”  The learning curve is too much for poor Peter, who just can’t get his mind around this new concept: “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you.”  To which Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan!” and then tells them all that if they want to be his disciples they must deny themselves, take up the cross, and lose their lives.

            And that’s the point at which the Transfiguration occurs.  It’s as if, here at the beginning of the second semester the disciples – maybe Peter especially – need a refresher on who Jesus is.  What’s interesting to me about this story is (1) the way it ties together past and future, and (2) the way it’s both similar to and different from Jesus’ baptism. 

On the first point, obviously the vision of Jesus chatting with Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the great prophet (and traditionally the forerunner of the Messiah) ties Jesus to Israel’s past and makes plain that he’s on par with these other figures.  Matthew seems particularly intent on echoing the story of God giving the Law to Moses in Exodus 24 (see this week’s OT lesson).  In that story, Moses takes just Joshua with him, they go up Mount Sinai, the “cloud” of God’s glory covers it, and God speaks to Moses.  Here, we see Jesus taking just his “inner circle” of disciples up a “high mountain,” where a “bright cloud overshadow[s] them” and God speaks.  (Note: here God speaks not to Jesus but to the disciples.)  Matthew also has the added bit (v. 2) about Jesus’ face “shining like the sun,” which recalls Moses when he came down from the mountain (see Ex. 34:29).  This bit about Jesus shining like the sun also clues us in that this is a vision of Jesus’ future as well: earlier in his story (13:43) Jesus said that “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” 

On the second point, this story is certainly similar to Jesus’ baptism in its focus on Jesus’ identity; in its location here at the beginning of Act II (as the baptism started Act I); and in the voice from heaven identifying Jesus as “my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased.”  The significant difference here is the command to “Listen to him!”  The idea being, I think, “Listen to what he’s saying about suffering and death and the cross and losing your life, or you’ll miss the point entirely.”  There’s also, it seems to me, an urgency to the “listen to him!” like “don’t lose focus now because things are only going to get harder from here on out.”

Which brings us back full circle to the place of Transfiguration Sunday in the Christian year.  We’re reminded that the season of Lent that we’re about to enter is really important, as it leads up to the events and the mysteries that are at the very heart of our faith.  As if God is saying to us too, “Pay attention!” 

Works Consulted:

Dennis Duling’s notes to the Matthew text in the HarperCollins Study Bible