The Devil Is Not Very Original

Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 91

Immediately after his baptism, Jesus “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil.” And when “the devil left him, suddenly angels came and served him.”

We usually read the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness on the first Sunday in Lent. Which makes some sense, because the 40 days of Lent is of course modeled on the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, and if you have the practice of giving up something for Lent, or taking on some special devotion or act of service during Lent, dealing with the temptation not to follow through is a common experience.

The narrative lectionary, however, takes the story of Jesus – and indeed the whole story of Scripture – in chronological order, and so today we read this story as it appears in the gospel narrative, simply following up on last Sunday’s story about the baptism of Jesus. The first thing Jesus does after his baptism – the first thing Jesus does after hearing the voice from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” – the first thing Jesus does is to spend time alone in the wilderness. Just as Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea and then spent forty years in the wilderness trying to figure out what it meant to be God’s beloved people, Jesus passes through the waters of baptism and then spends forty days in the wilderness trying to get clear on who he is and what his mission will be.

And so the temptation of Jesus is not really about the temptation to eat chocolate during Lent, or the temptations of “worldly desires,” which is what I think the average person probably thinks of when one hears the word “temptation.” The temptations Jesus wrestles with in the wilderness are the same ones that Israel wrestled with in the wilderness and beyond. The temptation to abandon the call from God to be God’s beloved, the temptation to give up on the call to be a blessing for the whole world, the temptation to walk away from the God who invites us into covenant and relationship and conversation, the temptation to substitute a different god who – so we think – would be easier to serve, would be more amenable to our ideas about who God should be, except for the fact that the god we would prefer does not exist and so inevitably disappoints.

These are temptations that Jesus faced, because they are the temptations that Israel faced, and they are the temptations that we face as we try to live up to our own baptismal callings. The devil may be cunning, but one thing I’ll say is that the devil is rarely original. Temptation may be subtle but they tend to be the same basic ones, over and over and over again.

The first temptation: Jesus is hungry, the devil suggests he use his divine power to turn stones into bread. Use your power to take care of yourself. After all, when Israel was wandering in the wilderness, God provided food – manna in the morning, quails in the evening. Why shouldn’t God take care of you now?

But the thing about divine power is that it is never private and personal, it is always relational and communal. God is a Trinity, God is a communion of persons, and so divine power is always about loving the Other … and receiving love from an Other. That’s why we receive communion from the hand of another and we don’t just go up and take it for ourselves – the gifts of God are gifts, they’re given, by somebody, for us to share with somebody.

Of course, community is difficult. People are complicated, we don’t all think alike, other people don’t always live up to our expectations, we are often disappointed in other people and even hurt by other people. Which is why we fall for the temptations of Satan the individualist, the devil who tells us to take care of ourselves and forget about everyone else. In this moment of being alone in the wilderness with God and his thoughts, Jesus hears the temptation to make his relationship with God something that serves his personal, private need – and he rejects that temptation. And indeed Jesus will use his divine power to create bread – but only in a community where loaves and fishes are already being shared.

Then the devil tempts Jesus to do something spectacular like jump off the top of the Temple in Jerusalem. And the devil quotes our psalm today: God will guard you and protect you, God will send angels to bear you up on eagle’s wings, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

And indeed the promises of Psalm 91 are true – God does indeed watch over us and protect us and has promised to bring us safely home, no matter what. The problem is, of course, God rarely helps us and protects us in precisely the way that we think God should help us and protect us. You have no doubt experienced this in your own life. I think we can be confident that God will help and protect us no matter what, and in fact that God will help us and protect us even better than we would have done – yet it is often very difficult to see in the moment how that can possibly be true.

Even Psalm 91, which seems to say that nothing bad will ever happen to us, ends with this promise from God: I will deliver those who cling to me, I will uphold them, because they know my name, they will call me and I will answer them, I will be with them in trouble.” It doesn’t say there won’t be trouble. It says, I will be with them in trouble. God never stops being with us in trouble. There is no trouble that can separate us from the love of God. But when we are tempted to think, God promised us a get-out-of-trouble free card and where is it already? – this is where we go astray.

Once again, the life of Jesus shows us that God does not work on our schedule or on our concept of what we would like God to do. Yes, Jesus performs healings, sometimes miraculous healings, but often when it is too late, by our standards. Think of Lazarus – Lord, if you had been here, my brother would never have died. The promise that Jesus brings is that, when God has finished with creation, everything will be made right, and that in faith everything right now is being made right – and not just for Lazarus but for the countless others who have died and who have not yet been raised from the dead. But it is only when we have persevered to the end of our limits that we really learn what it is to let go of our own agendas and trust in God to hold us up.

Or think of Peter, when Jesus says that his enemies will crucify him, and Peter says, No, Lord, God forbid that any such thing will happen to you. How does Jesus respond? Get behind me, Satan! Jesus has heard this one before, already, in the desert. It is Satan who says Jesus should get to decide how God is going to save him. And Jesus sees this as another temptation to be rejected.

And the third temptation, the temptation of political power, the temptation to be able to tell people what to do, to force people to comply with your directives, or else! Certainly if Jesus had the power to force people to do the right thing, the world might be a better place – but we would not be human, we would not be able to choose, we would not be the kind of creatures God wants us to be. Divine power has nothing to do with force or coercion and if Jesus is going to show us who God is and how God acts in the world, then Jesus must have nothing to do with coercion and domination. And whenever the church has allied itself with governments and political movements to improve its status in society or to force people into better behavior – every single time it ends in disaster, both for the integrity of the gospel and the well-being of society. And I fear that our contemporary Christian nationalist movement is making exactly the same mistake and falling into exactly the same temptation yet again.

The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin. Jesus emerged from the wilderness having directly confronted all the temptations that the people of God have always been subject to – the temptation to hoard God’s blessings for ourselves, the temptation to dictate to God how and when we will be blessed, the temptation to command and dominate others and claim we’re doing it for their good and in God’s name. Jesus rejected those temptations from the beginning, and then in everything he did he showed us what divine power really is, what the kingdom of God is really like. So that when the devil comes at us with those same old temptations, we will know what to look for and how to respond, and how to remain rooted as Jesus was in the Spirit of God and the power of God that is making the world right.