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).