The Temptation of Jesus

Matthew 4: 1-11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’ Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

Discussion Questions:

1. Satan tempted Jesus with the three “P’s, prestige, power and possessions. What role do these worldly powers play your understanding and experience of temptation?
2. How do you experience temptation in life? As an “external force” trying to lure you toward bad behaviors, or as conscious and unconscious choices you make to serve yourself, rather than others and God? In other ways ?
3. How does seeing yourself as a beloved of God, help you to recognize and resist the temptation to betray that image in thoughts and actions?
4. God is present in our brokenness. What new self-knowledge have you gained from the failures in your life? Has this led to transformation you can name? (an inward and ongoing change of heart) 

Biblical Context

Margaret Nutting Ralph 
Matthew 4: 1-11

The story of Jesus’s temptation centers our attention on Jesus’s identity by having the devil tempt Jesus to abuse his power in order to prove that he is God’s, son: “If you are of the son of God…” the reader already knows that Jesus is the son of God from the previous three stories. Jesus does not have to prove anything. The temptation story teaches that Jesus is the new Moses by using “Moses imagery”. The setting is the desert, and Jesus has fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, reminiscent of Moses and the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the desert after the Exodus. Jesus is hungry and needs bread, reminiscent of God’s gift of mana to the hungry Israelites. 

The first temptation that the devil offers the hungry Jesus is to use his power, not to serve others, but to serve himself: “if you are the son of God, command that these stones become loaves as of bread “Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, as he overcomes this temptation: “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” When Moses spoke these words, he was teaching the Israelites that God let them experience hunger in the desert and then fed them with Mana so that they might learn to trust God’s Providence an to obey God’s Commandments. Jesus does trust God’s providence. His only desire is to do the Will of the Father.

The second temptation that the devil offers Jesus is to abuse, his power by using it to simply for show, to create a spectacle to draw attention to himself. The devil quotes “Psalm 91 as he assures Jesus that God would certainly send angels to protect God’s own son from harm. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16 to refute the devil’s argument: “you shall not put the Lord God to the test.” When Moses spoke these words, he was urging the Israelites to obey God’s Commandments when they had entered the promised land. They should not test the Lord with disobedience as they had in the past. Jesus will not abuse. His power to draw worldly acclaimed to himself. This is not the Father’s will.

Finally, the devil attempts Jesus to seek political power over “all the kingdoms of the world” by worshiping him. A third time Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 as he overcomes this temptation: “The Lord, your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.” As we continue to read Matthew’s Gospel, we will realize just how important it is, that Jesus has overcome all temptations to abuse his power. When Jesus teaches his disciples, he will have to help them overcome the temptation to seek political power, see Matthew 20:20 through 28. At Jesus crucifixion, he will again be tempted to prove his identity by abusing his power to save himself. However, as God’s own beloved son, Jesus, uses his power for only one purpose to do the Will of the Father.

Lent and Self- Knowledge

 Fr. Michael K. Marsh

Over the last several years I’ve begun to see and understand Lent and temptations, the struggles in my life, in a different way. It used to be that I thought about those things in terms of self-denial: just say no, don’t do this, don’t do that; and everything will be fine. But then life got complicated. It wasn’t that simple or easy. Just say no and self-denial were no longer enough. I don’t mean that I exchanged self-denial for self-indulgence. I am saying that our lives deserve and demand more than “just say no.” Here’s why I say that.

I suspect we’ve all had times and experiences in our lives when just say no did not apply. It just wasn’t relevant because the issue wasn’t a yes or no kind of question. Or maybe there were times when the rules simply didn’t cover or speak to the situation. What then? Where do we turn?

There have also been times when I followed the rules. I did the right thing. I said, “No.” I was who I was supposed to be and did what I was supposed to do. Despite all that it didn’t work out the way I wanted or thought it would. Something was amiss, lacking. There was no sense of integrity or wholeness. I was compliant but not changed or transformed.

Other times I claimed particular values and virtues as the things that would guide my life but then I went out and did the exact opposite of what I claimed to be important to me. Have you ever done that? There was a disconnect between what was going on inside of me and what went on outside of me. It wasn’t enough to just say no. I wanted more. I wanted congruency between my inner life and my outer world.

So, I’ve begun to think about Lent and those places of struggle, what we often call the temptations, not so much in terms of self-denial but more in terms of self-knowledge. Maybe those situations offer us important learnings about ourselves.

I think we often hear today’s old testament lesson, Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and today’s gospel, Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, and we hold them in opposition to each other. On the one hand, Adam and Eve got it all wrong, and on the other hand Jesus got it all right. On the one hand, Adam and Eve were bad, and on the other hand Jesus was good. I don’t necessarily think that’s wrong, it just seems a pretty superficial, literal, and exteriorized reading of those texts.

I’m not suggesting Jesus got it wrong or that Adam and Eve got it right. I simply want us to find a deeper meaning. I want us to find that deep thread that runs through and connects those two stories, and I think that deep connecting thread is self-knowledge. When you move beyond the dualities of good or bad, right or wrong, what you discover is that both stories are about self-knowledge.

Think about Adam and Eve. They eat the forbidden fruit. Do you remember what happens after they eat? Their eyes are opened. So, what does that mean about their eyes before they ate? They were closed. They were seeing with closed eyes, a partial seeing, a blindness. There’s something about eating the fruit that opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, that gave them a new awareness, that awakened them, and brought them to a new level of consciousness. 

So, maybe they didn’t fall into sin as much as they fell into consciousness. They experienced something of themselves and the world in the same way as does God. They knew good and evil. They saw it all. Life and their world just got a whole lot more complicated, and potentially more real and more beautiful.

Immediately before Jesus goes to the wilderness he is baptized. While Jesus is standing in the baptismal waters a voice from heaven speaks and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”. Then Jesus is led by the Spirt into the wilderness to be tempted. He goes to the wilderness having been told that he is God’s son. He goes to the wilderness having heard that he is beloved of God. He goes to the wilderness knowing that his Father is pleased with him. And all of that is a given before Jesus ever faces the first temptation. Whether Jesus said yes or no to the temptations would not determine if he is God’s son, if he is beloved of God, or if God is pleased with him. Those are not the consequences or rewards for passing the wilderness temptations but the preconditions of those temptations. Grace always precedes us.

Maybe Jesus’ time in the wilderness wasn’t so much about proving or giving something to God as much as it was about Jesus learning and experiencing something about himself, that he really is God’s son, that he really is God’s beloved, and that God really is pleased with him. Maybe there was something Jesus needed to learn about himself so that he could come out of the wilderness knowing who he was, knowing to whom he belonged, and knowing his message for the world. The self-knowledge Jesus gained in the wilderness formed and shaped his public ministry of healing, teaching, and preaching.

If the wilderness was a place of self-knowledge for Jesus might it not also be for us? If the garden and their failure to say no was a place of self-knowledge for Adam and Eve might it not also be for us?

So, what if we took these next forty days of Lent and we let go of the questions about good or bad, right or wrong, and whether we are enough, and we sought self-knowledge? I am not talking about self-knowledge in a narrow, selfish, and egotistical way. I am talking about that self-knowledge that is deep and profound, that reveals our truest and most authentic self, that makes us face and examine ourselves; not to make judgments or inflict punishment but to seek healing and new life. I’m talking about the self-knowledge that turns our gaze back to God.

If we choose the path of self-knowledge then we’ll need to observe ourselves, be watchful, and ask difficult questions. What are the painful and wounded places in me that cause me to act out in ways that are not good for me or others? What are the buttons in me that get so easily pushed, that cause me to react with words or actions that I really do not want to say or do? What are the ways in which I have contributed to the pain of the world, and how might I now begin contributing to the healing of the world? In what ways have I knowingly or through fear lived a life less than who God knows me to be? When and where have I fallen short and missed the mark? What are the patterns and habits that direct and control my life? What possesses me? Do I truly believe I am God’s beloved son or daughter? If so, how do I live that? If not, why not? In what ways am I living an authentic life and in what ways am I not?

This self-knowledge will take us so much further than willful self-denial. The doesn’t means self-denial is not important or that it does not have a positive and necessary role in our lives and in Lent. I just want to give self-knowledge a higher priority and put self-denial in service of self-knowledge.

I think of past Lents when I gave up meat and wine. For forty days I denied myself meat and wine. And you know what I did on Easter? I had a nice steak and a glass of wine! What did that do for me? How did that grow me and change the way I see and engage the world? What did that do for my relationships? Did it make me more real, more loving, more authentic?

It was a successful Lent but I am not sure it was a holy Lent. I am not sure it really changed me or brought me to a new life. What did I learn about myself? I don’t know that it did much other than prove I can give up meat and wine for forty days. While that’s not necessarily bad or wrong, I think there is more to Lent, more to you and me, and more to our lives. I think God wants more for us, and offers more.

What if we went through this season of Lent, thinking about God asking us, “What are you learning about yourself? And what do you need from me?”

That just might be the start a holy Lent. It would be Lent in which our eyes were opened to the truth about ourselves, who we are, and what we do. It would be a Lent in which, despite things done and left undone, we would rediscover and maybe hear for the first time that we too are God’s beloved children with whom he is pleased. Maybe it would be a Lent in which we could let go of judgments and score keeping. Maybe it would be a Lent that would lead us to new life, a fuller life, a life in which we discover that we are God’s glory.

Have you ever thought of yourself as the glory of God? Most of us probably don’t. Maybe that’s because we don’t really know ourselves in the way God knows us. Maybe if we could we might see, think, speak, and live differently. “The glory of God,” said Irenaeus, a bishop of the third century, “is a human being fully alive.”

What are you learning about yourself? And what do you need from God?

Selections from Breaking Open the Lectionary: Lectionary Readings in Their Biblical Context for RCIA, Faith Sharing Groups, and Lectors—Cycle A, by Margaret Nutting Ralph, Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Nutting Ralph. Paulist Press, Inc., New York/Mahwah, NJ. Reprinted by permission of Paulist Press, Inc. www.paulistpress.com.

Reflection from, Interuppting The Silence, Fr. Michael K. Marsh. used by permission.