Led Into Temptation
Led Into Temptation
Matthew 4:1-11
I spend a lot of time thinking about God but very little time thinking about a personified God. You know the God I mean—the guy with the beard who sits on a throne and judges people, controlling the world, deciding who has been “naughty” or “nice.” This is the God that people tell you about…just before they tell you they don’t believe in that God. (Me, either!) Then, they tell you what they would do if they were God: “I’d even the score! Bad things would happen to bad people and good things would happen to the good. Life would be fair!” At that point the only thing left to say is, “Wow, it’s too bad you’re not God!”
I spend no time thinking about a guy named, “Satan,” the guy with the pitch fork and the red suit and the horns who inspires all the evil and horror in the world. Is there evil and horror in the world? Of course there is! We’d have to be blind not to see it. However, we are the problem—all of us. Satan has always just seemed to be a way to get ourselves off the hook. ‘Who’s responsible?' “Not me! Not us! The devil made me do it!”
The God whom I know and do spend time thinking about is revealed, for me, in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I also catch glimpses of that God in Buddhism, in Native American spirituality, in nature, and in the small everyday miracles of this life. This God is not completely captured by any one religion or any one name or any one perspective. This God permeates the world and yet is more than this world. This God is a spiritual force, a current that sometimes carries us along and at other times gently pushes back on us. This is the God who whispers to us, “Come on! Join me. Walk with me for a while.”
This God shows up when we show up ready to help. This is the God who’s presence we feel in our hearts when we are in the right place at the right time: when we walk through the door of the hospital room of someone who really needed to see a friendly face; when we place the call we felt compelled to make to the person who needed to know that someone cared; when we rise in a tough meeting and speak the truth that needs to be told. The immersion, the little endorphin rush, the deep satisfaction—that’s how it feels to join God for a little while. Once you’ve felt it, there’s this nagging desire to feel that feeling again. We find ourselves drawn to be a part of something “greater than” we ever would have dared to imagine possible.
Of course, to show up and pray, “I’m here! Help me to be helpful,” to have a chance to be a part of something greater than ourselves, we have to clear a few hurdles first. We have to own our own tendency to act out of self-interest. We have to identify what tempts us to be “less than” what we might otherwise be. In my view, we don’t need to name the “tempter.” Instead, we need to look ourselves in the mirror and realize that we are responsible. We have to make choices that are grounded in faith, not in our most base instincts.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus shows up at the River Jordan, argues a bit with John, and is baptized. Then, with hardly a moment to enjoy the “glow,” he is led into the wilderness to be tempted. (We would do so much better if we could just remember that often when we’re doing the right thing, early on, thing get hard first.) There is no coffee hour. There are no handshakes all around. Before he can do anything else, he has to come to grips with what might get in his way. Jesus has to face his own “demons” before he can rise to his highest calling.
In the wilderness, Jesus starves and thirsts and gets more and more dirty and smelly by the day. He is deprived of the chance to meet his most basic needs. We all know that we are only a missed meal or a parched afternoon or a sleepless night away from not being able to think about anything else. Heck, take away my morning shower and I’m not going to be my best self for the rest of the day. Don’t even ask what happens when the power goes out and I can’t have my morning coffee. When basic needs go unmet, the internal alarms go off: “Feed me, now! Find me some coffee, now!”
Of course, this is the horror of having so many people in our world have such basic needs go unmet ever hour of every day. Without enough food, without clean water, without being safe enough to sleep, millions upon millions of human beings are reduced every day to being dominated by survival needs. People who might have cured cancer, who might have led their nation to peace, who might have written a book that would change the world, are reduced to looking for their next meal, instead. I have suspected for a long time that the whole world pays a heavy price by having so much of the world’s population be reduced to a focus on survival.
Jesus’ first temptation is to make his needs come first. “Have all your needs been satisfied? Have you made yourself priority one? Of course, we’ve all known plenty of folks whose needs are never really satisfied right? Food’s a basic need until we allow those basic needs to turn into a five star, life-long, food obsession. “Sure, water is a basic need but have you tried the latest artisanal, craft, small batch water? It’s amazing!” It’s so easy to devote our lives to our own escalating needs. There are an army of smart people who recognize this and keep pointing us to the next thing which, for sure, this time, will totally meet our unending needs.
Jesus’ second temptation is to demand proof. Jesus, in the text, is taken to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem. The temptation is easy, “Jump!” Throw yourself off the temple. The instant that you are saved and not a hair on your head is harmed, you’ll know, you’ll really know, that you’re on the right track. You won’t have to do the whole “faith” and “trust” thing. You can be confident. You can move like the champion you are because you will know—for sure—that you’ve already won!
Or course, rising to become our better selves, becoming a part of something greater, requires different sacrifices. We do have to set aside our own needs and learn how to live with less or just learn how to defer our needs for a little while because someone else’s might actually be more important. I also have to learn that some risks are worth taking, that sometimes you really do have to trust, that 99.9 percent of the time, the choice to be a loving person is made without the benefit of certainty. We have to realize that we may get hurt, that the pain will be real, but that all of that pain and sacrifice might just be worth it. We also may have to realize that “throwing ourselves off the pinnacle of the temple” or testing God in any other not so clever way is just plain foolish.
Here’s the thing. Most of us aren’t going to live lives of pure selfishness, just dialed in on our own needs. Most of us also aren’t going to get lost in looking for proof, either. Don’t believe me? Most of us got married or had kids or signed a mortgage or did some other act of completely irrational trust without a shred of proof on how things would go. Deep down, we know that the best things in this life almost always involve embracing the kind of risks that can knock the wind right out of you. It’s not that we don’t do our homework. I just don’t remember thinking to myself, “Okay, now I have all the data I need. We can have a child!”
It’s the third temptation that bites most of us. Jesus is taken to the top of the temple and shown all the kingdoms of the world. He’s told that everyone will worship him if he is willing to worship the tempter, the one who is less than God. Earthly power belongs to “Satan” in this text which ought to be a lesson to us all. Power is his to give to anyone who is willing to sell his or her soul by elevating the lesser things of this life to absolute values. All you have to do is make power the one thing that you want more than anything else in this life.
We already know this to be true. You’ve worked with this person. Maybe you used to be married to this person. Maybe he or she was a great friend…for a while…until they threw you under the bus because there was power to be gained by doing so. It’s the person who organizes their entire life around becoming the next CEO or CFO or, even more frighteningly, simply has his or her eye on the next minor bump up the corporate ladder but they’ll still cut your throat to get there. It’s the writer or artist or athlete who is great at what they do but is an otherwise awful human being. It is the husband or wife, mother or father, who will do anything to have control. Everyone wants something. The question is, “Are you willing to do anything to get what you want.” If you are, then that “thing,” whatever it is, has become your god. Worshiping anything that is less than God is a problem but it is such tempting thing for human beings to do.
Let me be careful here. Not every successful person is an awful person but I have to tell you, the world has seen a lot of successful people who are. Some successful people are gracious and kind and generous and God bless those people. The difference is that the personal balance that they have as they reach the top is a balance that they have fought hard to live all the way up. They were so gifted or they were so unconditionally loved along the way or they were just so well put together that their souls were never for sale at all.
The rest of us, though, can be tempted. Not by everyone or everything but by the thing that has our name on it. There is a reason that we pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” When what’s really tempting comes our way, we know we are responsible. With luck, we can hold out for a little while. However, God help us if we have to hold out for long. Without God’s help, we’re in trouble: “Maybe, God, can we just skip the whole temptation thing?” Power, in all of it’s shapes and forms, makes people do crazy things.
Jesus isn’t going there. Surprised? Not really, right? The possibility that we might not go there, too, now that’s a different notion. It’s possible that we might need to be more than our needs, that we might have to live on faith and trust and not just hold out for proof, that there might be something better to do with our lives than chase power. Jesus faces his own temptations so that one day, he can look us in the eye and say, “I understand your struggles. Here, let me show you a better way to live…”
Not every need will be met on demand. Not every question will be answered. In the world’s eyes, you’re never going to win. What if he can show you, though, a deeper way, a greater way, or more meaningful and loving way to live. What if Christ can show us how to be greater than we otherwise ever would have been on our own?