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This is the first Sunday of Lent and the traditional theme for the day is temptation. It is often the case that over Lent people take up the practice of doing without something that will be difficult to do without. On the noble side, some will take up the practice of daily skipping a meal and take what they would have spent on the meal and give it to a foodbank. The thinking is that since Jesus fasted those forty days and hungered, we can experience a taste of this spiritual hunger by fasting a meal as well. Add to that, any cravings that we might have and how we resist them can teach us about what it was like to be Jesus resisting the temptations that Satan threw at him.
But this sort of practice has gotten out of hand and truly has nothing to do with what Jesus went through when Satan tested him. Our little exercise of denying ourselves simple stuff and resisting the cravings has nothing to do with what Jesus went through. It’s really quite tacky. If I were Jesus, I’d be a bit insulted that my followers are trying to identify with me and Satan’s testing of me by denying themselves chocolate, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, or screentime or even a meal and thinking that what Satan confronted me with was simply avoiding the habitual practice of lesser addictions. Jesus is not being tempted here in the way we think of temptation – this moral, lustful, craving thing.
Just to give you the Greek lesson, the Greek word we translate as “to tempt” is really better translated as “to test” as in testing someone to see what they’re made of, their character. Satan is not tempting Jesus to see how long he can go without chocolate, coffee, or alcohol. He is testing Jesus as to whether or not he will be true to who he is as the Son of God become human to save us and all of creation from sin and death. If he is the Son of God, how will he use his authority and abilities to serve God the Father’s intentions or will he use them to serve himself. Will Jesus be true to who he is? The tests that Jesus faces here are specifically aimed at him the Son of God become human and whether or not he will succumb to acting like a sin-sickened human or be faithful to the God he called Father.
Now, something to make you think. This passage is probably the only passage in the Gospels in which we put ourselves in the place of Jesus. When we read the stories in the Gospels, we naturally will try to say what do I have in common with whichever of the characters in the story. Usually, we find ourselves being like one of the disciples or the Pharisees or the paralytic on the mat or the guy who has to bury his father before coming to follow. But we never put ourselves in the place of Jesus. That really is like putting ourselves in the place of God. It is inappropriate for us as individuals to put ourselves in the place of Jesus in this passage and reduce its meaning to simply Jesus giving “me” good advice on how to deal with “my” temptations.
Now let me push you a little further. What we can do here is put the Church in the place of Jesus. I am not Jesus. You are not Jesus. We, us together, we are the body of Christ. The Church is his body and he is our head. We are bound to him and one another by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Us, this fellowship of believers in Jesus bonded together in the Holy Spirit, we are the body of Christ and we, as the body of Christ together face the same three tests that Jesus faced at the hands of Satan.
So, what does this passage look like when we place us as the body of Christ in the place of Jesus? The first test sounds like this, “If you are the beloved children of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” We the church in North America are in the wilderness and very hungry these days. The Church as we have known it has lost its authoritative place in our communities. The local congregation is wasting away into obscurity. This stones to bread test for is found in taking the route of institutional survival over and above being the body of Christ. We try to make ourselves relevant or appealing to the community around us rather than being a fellowship of believers that simply lives by loving God, one another, and our neighbours sacrificially and unconditionally expecting nothing in return. The church does not live by buildings and programs and doing whatever we can to keep these programs going. It lives by the Word of God, Jesus, who gave us one commandment – to love one another as he has loved us, sacrificially and unconditionally.
Moving on to test number two. Satan tries to get Jesus to prove who he is as the Son of God by going to the highest part of the temple in Jerusalem and jumping off knowing that he’s not going splat on the ground because according to Scripture the angels will catch him. If Jesus done something like that in Jerusalem at the Temple, he would have proven to the religious authorities beyond a doubt that he is the Son of God, the Messiah. They would have set him up as the Messiah to welcome in their version of the Kingdom of God. In turn, Jesus wouldn’t have to go to the cross to put sin and death to death and be raised as the firstborn of a new creation.
For us, this test for congregations is when we do things that we believe churches ought to do believing God will prove faithful to our efforts rather than having the faith to actually trust that God will speak and lead us into things God has for us to do. This is the “what can we do to get people through the door and into the pew” mentality. We have to get comfortable with what will likely feel like doing nothing to us until God gives an inkling to one or more of us of what God would have us do. This is going inward before going outward. Praying together, studying together, eating together…doing things together to grow in care for one another.
The third test has to do with how the church tries to rule the world. The history of Christianity in the Western world is the story of an institution readily corrupted by the power of empire. Paul tells us that we reign with Christ (2 Tim. 2:11-12), but the type of reign that he is talking about is not establishing Christian governments and ruling the world in the belief that we do it on God’s behalf. Whenever the church tries to take political power as it has done for the last 1,700 years in the West, we fail this test and the results are devastating if not diabolical.
The type of reign that we share in and with Jesus the Christ, the Lord of all Creation, is exhibited and exercised by how we love one another. How different would our local communities be if local churches simply got down to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, looking to the needs of the elderly and children and stopped trying to ensure its waning if not deceased institutional place of privilege.
Well in closing, as the children of God, the body of Christ, we – this Christian fellowship, this congregation – we participate always in all times and all places in the ongoing work of worship and reigning that Jesus does. That is a given. Since that is the case our task, our purpose as a congregation is exclusively to simply be a prayerful communion of people who love God, who love our neighbour, and who love each other sacrificially and unconditionally and to do so openly in word and in deed without reserve expecting nothing in return. To focus on anything else truly is succumbing to the devil’s testing.
So, the lesson for us to learn in these three tests that Satan threw at Jesus is first, they have little to do with how we as individuals face “temptations”. They are about how we together go about being the body Christ in the world. As the beloved children of God and the Body of Christ, do we faithfully love as Jesus faithfully loved or do we use of giftedness in pursuit of institutional survival. Do we simply just go about doing what we believe churches ought to do or do we prayerfully wait for God to speak and lead us. Finally, do we try to rule the world or do we simply serve in unconditional love. Amen.
