Tag Archives: temptations of Jesus

Tempted in every Way as We Are

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The author of Hebrews makes the bold and startling statement that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are yet he did not sin. (Heb. 4: 15) In our experience, when we are tempted, we sin sooner or later. We can be greatly encouraged that when we experience temptations, we know that Jesus knows from the inside what we are going through. That Jesus resisted the temptations can give us hope, even as we fail again and again.

The only thing in Hebrews that hints at how Jesus actually experienced temptation is the moving account of how Jesus cried out with tears to his heavenly Abba, the one who could save him from death; a clear allusion to the Garden at Gethsemane. (Heb. 5: 7) Matthew and Luke flesh out Jesus’ temptation a bit more in two similar, compact, narratives at the beginning of each Gospel.

These archetypal narratives are rightly assumed to provide insight into what is fundamental to temptations as we experience them. Taken as a group, they seem comprehensive: sensuality, human relationships, and relationship with God. What is common to all three temptations is manipulation, although each temptation deals with manipulation at a different level. The temptation to manipulate creation gets at the heart of the ongoing ecological crisis we face. Perhaps the crisis and its perceived scarcity sharpens our temptation to grab and hoard what we can before somebody else hogs it all. The temptation to power is straightforward enough but devious when actually dealing with people when fear of vulnerability tempts us to make pre-emptive strikes of power against them. As the author of Hebrews makes clear, Jesus felt this temptation most sharply in Gethsemane when he embraced his vulnerability and commended himself to the will of his heavenly Abba. The temptation to throw himself from the temple is directly manipulating God. Perhaps Matthew chose to put this temptation in the middle to show that this is the heart of all temptation as all manipulation is ultimately manipulation of God.

With each temptation, Jesus responded by referring back to his heavenly Abba. Rather than being absorbed in the need for bread (a legitimate need after forty days of fasting!), Jesus broadened his scope to being fed by the words of his heavenly Abba. As an allusion to the manna in the wilderness, we are reminded of how Yahweh curbed avarice by only providing the amount that was truly needed each day and no more. With the temptation to power, Jesus responded that he would serve his heavenly abba and not his own temptation to manipulate people to his own ends. With the temptation of presumption, Jesus straightened out the distortion in the way Psalm 91 was used by the devil by insisting that trust in his heavenly Abba did not mean testing him in any way. Rather, the verse truly means that we should rely on our heavenly Abba to sustain us when and how He wills.

This recipe for resisting temptation seems simple and, in a way, it is. Jesus’ responses to the temptations invite us to relax in God and let God and God’s angels bear us up in God’s way and in God’s time. But it is difficult when actually dealing with the material world and even more in dealing with other people. Relaxing is the thing we least want to do when we feel threatened by others exerting power against us. This is why we have the season of Lent as a time to focus on the discipline of relaxing into God, seeking to make it more of a habit than it has been up to now, knowing, as Hebrews tells us, that Jesus is the pioneer, the one going before us, in this very discipline. Most important: Jesus commended himself to his heavenly Abba most deeply when he was on the cross and Hebrews tells us that Jesus was raised so as to be the great high priest who intercedes for us.

See also On Living with Temptation

Living With Jesus’ Temptations

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Every year, the first Sunday of Lent has us reflect on Jesus’ testing in the desert. In two of the three years, the Gospel narrates the three temptations presented by the devil. We have been over this terrain many times, but since we struggle with temptation and fall, each year we need to see what insight we might get from the way Jesus dealt with the three temptations. With the help of Luke’s ordering of the temptations, it is easier, compared with Matthew, to see the first two temptations as focused primarily on our relationship with the material world while the third is focused on our relationship with God.

This year, I realized that in the first temptation, it is the devil who offered the stones as raw material for bread. This ties into the second temptation where the devil claims that the kingdoms of this world are his to give. If the devil believes he owns the kingdoms, it is small wonder he thinks he owns the stones in the desert. So who gave the stones and the kingdoms to the devil? God? Hardly, as Jesus makes clear in his reply. The only other possibility is that humans have given the kingdoms and stones to the devil. What does that say about us? I can’t help but think of Jesus’ rhetorical question: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?” (Mt. 7: 9) But when we think of all the carbs, fat, sugar, and other junk that goes into so much food these days, aren’t we practically feeding each other stones? This thought leads to the suggestion that in offering the kingdoms and their authority, the devil is offering mountains of stones that threaten to bury us. And with the overwhelming social injustices in our country, not least the racist system that entangles all of us, our social relationships consist of throwing stones at each other rather than offering each other wholesome bread.

The first temptation is closely linked to the feedings in the wilderness narrated six times in the four Gospels. Significantly, Jesus does not pick up stones and turn them into bread; he takes a few loaves of bread and makes many loaves to feed the people. Jesus is not concerned with feeding himself; he is feeding others, and he is using the initial generosity of the disciples (or the boy with some loaves and fish in John) and extending that generosity. Generosity creates abundance while parsimoniousness creates scarcity. There is much we need besides bread alone to live on, and one of them is the willingness to share with others. The same principle applies to our relationships with kingdoms and their authorities. The stones that the devil offers feature sacrificial practices where the well-being of many is sacrificed for the benefit of the few. That is certainly the case where maximizing the bottom line in a business becomes an absolute value to the exclusion of everything else. It is tempting here to wax eloquently about the dictator of a certain country who has unleashed an invasion of another country, but we must not let that distract us from how we ourselves handle social and power relationships.

This brings us to the third temptation. As a promise of care and protection, Psalm 91 is among the most comforting in the Bible. That the devil should quote it to pervert the assurance that the angels will bear us up lest one dash a foot against a stone (Ps. 91: 12) is especially painful. When Jesus replies with Deuteronomy 6: 16: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” he gets to the heart of the matter. Yes, we are to trust in God’s providence but not in a way that focuses on self rather than God. We ourselves put God to the test in the same way if we assume we can do what we want and God will protect us from the consequences. The late Tom Truby, a good friend of mine, said in a sermon on this Gospel that our ecological situation is an example of this presumption. The demonic voice says: “Go ahead, jump into environmental free fall, nothing will happen to you.” With this attitude, we are testing God, expecting God to clean up our messes. Instead, we may dry up all the drinking water on the planet.

There came a time when Jesus indeed fell into the pit of death and needed to trust his heavenly Abba and the angels to catch him and raise him up. But far from self-centeredly making a spectacle of himself, Jesus gave his life for the sake of us all. If we think and care deeply for others, we will enter difficult and sometimes dangerous situations for their sake. This is what the psalm verse is about. God and the angels will protect us but, as with Jesus, the protection does not necessarily leave us unscathed in this life. After all, we are venturing into the Paschal Mystery. As material goods such as food and our social relationships need to be focused on the good of others, our dependence on God’s protection must be focused even more deeply in the same way. As Jesus depended on his heavenly Abba and the angels to sustain him during the temptations in the desert and throughout his life and death, so we also must depend on Jesus and his heavenly Abba.

On Living with Temptation

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altarDistance1The temptations of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are stylized accounts of three temptations that may not have happened in so neat a fashion in real life, but are clearly meant to be comprehensive of the fundamental temptations that challenge all humans, Jesus included. Jesus’ responses to the three temptations, which would have been particularly strong during his forty days of solitude in the wilderness, are a guide to dealing with the same temptations in our own lives.

The first temptation, that Jesus should turn stones into bread, can stand for all sensual temptations. It is surely not a sin to satisfy one’s hunger but it is a sin to be focused on physical sustenance to the neglect of all else, to make god our belly. (Phil. 3: 19) The devil’s proposal puts bread front and center, which sparks the competitive tendencies of humans to seek more material goods for the sake of having more material goods than others. Jesus’ reply puts bread in a wider context, implying what Matthew spells out, that we not only need bread but “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Mt. 4:4) Within this broader context, bread is provided in the wilderness by God as it was to the Israelites in their desert journey after escaping from Egypt. When bread is a gift from God, then it should also be a gift between humans as well.

Lust for power is often thought to be the greatest human temptation, as Matthew suggests in his ordering of the temptations, but Luke makes it the second greatest temptation. We might think that the devil’s offering Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” as being out of our league, but all of us tend to seek power in our own social settings. That is, we try to build up what sociologists call “social capital.” This is what Jesus was warning us about in the Gospel for Ash Wednesday when he told us not to fast or give alms “like the hypocrites” who compete for human admiration. (Matthew 6) In seeking social capital, we try to build our little kingdoms piece by piece. As with the first temptation, Jesus responds with the larger picture grounded in God by alluding to Deuteronomy 6: 13: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” That is, we should seek our social capital first with God rather than with humans. By worshiping and serving God, we will then serve other people rightly and thus gain social capital in less competitive ways.

The third temptation is the most subtle and the most dangerous. The first two temptations proposed substitutes for focusing primarily on God. The third temptation focuses on God. The devil quotes Psalm 91 to assure Jesus that if he threw himself from the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus’ heavenly Abba would surely save him, as promised in the psalm. But the focus on God is distorted in what amounts to an attempt to manipulate God, which would make God a competitor among human competitors. Catching this distortion, Jesus clarifies the right focus on God by saying that one should not put God to the test. The distortion of the third temptation is subtle because it is based on the profound truth that God cares for each of us and takes care of us. But to assume that we can do anything, no matter how heedless and reckless because God will take care of us is presumption, putting God to the test. If there is anything the prophets have taught us, it is that God allows us to live with the consequences of our choices. Otherwise, what meaning would free will have?

The imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our frailty as mortal creatures. The temptations of Christ, the same temptations we experience daily, remind us of our moral and spiritual frailty. If Jesus had to remain mindful of his heavenly Abba and guard against distortions in that relationship, we should do no less. Let us take comfort that, as the author of Hebrews said, precisely by being tempted in every way as we are, Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. (Heb. 4: 15, 12: 2)

How Jesus Was Tempted as We Are

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field1Mark tells us that immediately after his baptism, the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness where he was tempted, or tested, by Satan.

Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark tells us nothing else about the testing so we do not get a set of three drawn-out temptations to analyze. We are left with the bare fact of testing. What night the testing have consisted of in addition to, or underlying, the longer accounts?

René Girard has given us a new and profound way to understand “Satan” in scripture by noting that the word skandalon (the Satan) literally means a stumbling block. Girard has demonstrated the ways humans become stumbling blocks to one another when they become conflicted. (Satan is well known to be a sower of discord.) In this model, it takes at least two to have a stumbling block, so how could Jesus, alone in the wilderness, have dealt with conflict unless he was fighting a supernatural creature? I, for one, know that when I am alone, many other people are still with me, particularly anybody with whom I happen to have a conflictual relationship. In fact, being alone during a time of conflict is a great way to become obsessed with a rival—OR—to let go and listen to a deeper voice free of scandal, such as Jesus’ heavenly Abba.

As soon as Jesus began his public ministry, it was immediately clear that he knew scripture and the tradition of his people very deeply. Many biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness recapitulates the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land. Surely Jesus would have been deeply mindful of that journey: his people’s gratitude for the escape from slavery, their hopes for the future, but also their violent social conflicts and rebellions. These events in the journey would have given him much to reflect on as to how humans make themselves stumbling blocks to others.

Jesus also demonstrated from the start an acute awareness of what many of the Jewish leaders were like, surely enough to give him strong premonitions of how they might react to the religious vision inspired by the heavenly voice at his baptism and strengthened in the silence of the wilderness. He was most likely tempted to rehearse his arguments with the elders and think of ways to get the better of them. To overcome this challenge, he would need to find a way to interact with these leaders in a non-rivalrous way so as to embody the non-rivalrous character of his heavenly Abba. More important, he would have to begin facing possible outcomes of his ministry in the face of the Jewish and Roman leadership in Palestine. Since all of us have to deal with the small and great conflicts that tempt us to become stumbling blocks to others, Jesus was himself, as the author of Hebrews said, tempted in every way as we are. The uncanny way Jesus managed to deflect conflicts with the Jewish leaders away from escalations and, at the end, his willingness to die rather than use violence to save himself, show us that the Spirit, after driving Jesus into the wilderness, had indeed strengthened him to absorb the nonviolent ways of his heavenly Abba for the sake of our salvation.

For an introduction to René Girard, see my essay Violence and the Kingdom of God.

Stumbling blocks in the Desert: the Temptations of Jesus

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freshBread1When Jesus went out into the desert after his baptism, he became aware of the fundamental temptations he would have to fight throughout his life. James Alison helps us understand the social nature of these temptations by pointing out that “devil” (diabolous) means “divisive obstacle.” Such an obstacle requires two or more people to stumble over it. That is temptations are unavoidably social.

The social implications of the first temptation are spelled out in John 6 where Jesus feeds the multitude in the desert. The feeding is a sign of God’s willing of abundance (see Divinely Created Abundance) but bread, like any material good, exists in a social context.  The temptation presented here is to align bread with economic and political power. The people who have been fed fall into this temptation and try to seize Jesus and make him king (the glory of all the kingdoms of the word–see Ignominous Glory). Jesus had to resist the temptation, go off alone, and then return to preach about bread from heaven, bread that is a gift from God.

In the temptations, the devil taunts Jesus as being the “son of god.” Likewise, when Jesus casts demons out of people possessed by them, the demons call Jesus “the son of god.” Thinking back to the attempt to seize Jesus and make him king, Jesus’ ordering those he has healed to tell nobody makes a lot of sense. Jesus was focused on healing those who had need. The demons tried to politicize the healings to make them part of a thrust for social power. This dimension is particularly apparent in the name of the demon possessing the man of Gadara: Legion.

When Jesus predicts his imminent suffering and death, Peter is called a “satan” when he tries to dissuade Jesus from following that course. As with “devil,” the word “satan” means a stumbling block. Lacking support from his closest followers could only have multiplied Jesus’ difficulty in holding the course laid out by his heavenly father. How much better would it be to fling himself off the roof of the temple and force his heavenly father’s hand? The devil was right to quote the verses from Psalm 92. God would bear up the son of man, but not until the son of man had truly and deeply put himself into the unforced hands of the heavenly father by allowing himself to be handed over into the hands of angry sinful humans.

Like Jesus, we must be alert to where the stumbling blocks are in our relationships with other people and with God. Like Jesus, we must learn that the stumbling blocks are too heavy for human hands to lift and toss away. Like Jesus, we must turn to our heavenly father who is always waiting for us to ask him to toss the stumbling blocks away.