In today’s world, Satan seems superfluous. Who needs an eternal being, divine but corrupted, to be the source of evil, when we are so capable of evil on our own. Sand Creek, Nanking, Auschwitz, Memphis, 9/11, Paris… We do not need Satan, and indeed, many progressive Christians no longer believe, even if Jesus saw himself as in conflict with this dark power. Then again, Jesus was in conflict with someone, and usually multiple someones’ throughout his ministry. He cast out demons, chastised Pharisees, challenged Roman authority, and even called Peter “Satan†at one point. Still, there is this story, the formative story. So what are we to do with this passage, this threshold that marks the beginning of Jesus’ active ministry?
It is true that prophets and healers, those called to speak God’s truth and God’s judgment, often traveled into the wilderness to be tested. So we could deconstruct the story using the tools of reason and history. The purpose of these rites, like the walkabout of the Aborigine, like initiation ceremonies still used by indigenous people around the world, was meant to move the initiate to a thin place, where the spiritual was near at hand. Or the hallucinatory, depending on your tolerance for the spiritual. Some arrive at the thin place by way of narcotics, others by sensory overload, and many, like Jesus in this story, by way of hunger and exhaustion.
If we take this route, if we view this as a historical story of Jesus hallucinating in the desert, then we only have one question to ask: What does the story teach us about Jesus’ understanding of his own identity and mission? And there is much there, enough for hundreds of books, dissertations and sermons.
But in following that path, we risk narrowing the field too much and losing the thread that ties this story to earlier stories, and to stories right up to our own lifetimes. For this story is not meant to be history as we understand it now, a recounting of facts that can be verified. The division of story and history into separate categories didn’t exist when the gospels were written. Then, as now, both contained truth.
The temptation in the desert is haggadic midrash, a teaching story in the Hebrew tradition, intended not as a recounting of events, but as a lesson. Specifically, the temptation in the desert is meant to connect to the story of the Exodus. The forty days are both the forty years in the desert and the forty days Moses fasted. Jesus is to succeed in tests Israel failed, proving himself worthy as savior and messiah.
The Hebrews in the desert, fleeing the brutality of slavery in Egypt. In their hunger, they rebel against Moses and the God he represents, Yahweh. They doubt God’s ability to feed them. God, of course, comes through, sending manna and quail. Satan challenges the hungry Jesus to use his divine power to turn stones into bread. Jesus refuses, trusting in God, and citing a passage from Deuteronomy, one of the texts in the Torah that recounts the story of the Exodus and the religious laws that followed. “You shall not live by bread alone.â€
Satan then dares Jesus to jump off the Temple, to test whether or not God will save him. I can hear Mary now, “If all the other prophets jumped off the Temple, does that mean you have to do it?†The story is meant to echo the event at Meribah and Massah, where the thirsty Hebrews tested God by demanding water, something so infamous that it makes it into the 95th Psalm. “Harden not your hearts, as your forebears did in the wilderness, at Meribah, and on that day at Massah, when they tempted me, tested me, though they had seen my works.†Again, Jesus responds with a passage from Deuteronomy, “Don’t test God.â€
Now, to be fair, I think the Hebrews had legitimate grievances… hungry, thirsty, in the desert. They had a point when they asked Moses if it was better to die of starvation and thirst in the desert than to live in slavery, but at least be alive. But this is the story the Hebrews told themselves generation after generation, a teaching story meant to instill important religious values. They had a reason for telling the story in this way.
Satan’s final challenge is the biggest of them all. On the mountaintop he offers Jesus a sweet deal. “Worship me, and I will make you the ruler of all the earth.†For surely this would be the ultimate rebellion, a violation of God’s very first covenant command. “I am the Lord, your God, you shall have no other gods before me,†also found in Deuteronomy, and which Jesus cites in rejecting Satan’s final offer. For the Hebrews failed in even this test, making for themselves a golden calf, which they worshiped just as so many worship the bull of Wall Street.
Jesus passes the basic tests that the Hebrews failed. Trust God to provide. Do not test God. And do not worship other gods.
And here the lesson, at least for the early Christians, was complete. The story both reenforces core teachings of the Hebrew tradition, and makes clear the role of Jesus in that living story. Jesus is what Moses and the Hebrews were not, obedient and faithful, even in the face of possible destruction. Jesus is the agent of ultimate deliverance, a savior.
Notice that the weapon Jesus uses in combating temptation, in fighting off personified evil, is scripture. Today, we might say he knew it “chapter and verse.†Of course, the entire system of chapters and verses didn’t exist at that time, but the idea is still the same. Jesus knew his bible, the Hebrew texts he quotes again and again. And so did most of those he addressed. Oh, maybe not the odd centurion or Syro-Phoenecian woman, but certainly every Hebrew he encountered. Scripture, the great story, midrash, these were the context of his ministry, the sea in which he swam, the source of comfort and challenge. Jesus was that obnoxious person of faith we all avoid who has a biblical answer for everything.
And on the evening of April 3rd, 1968, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared to those gathered in support of striking sanitation workers that he had “been to the mountaintop,†most everyone in the room knew what he was saying.
For like the authors of Matthew, Pastor Martin was drawing on that great story of the flight from Egypt. He was a modern day Moses, just as William Lloyd Garrison named Harriet Tubman over a century earlier. King was placing himself in a context, he was connecting to a story that connected to another story and another, and all that connected back to our God. Moses, a stuttering murderer, an imperfect servant who lead the people of God, but who, in his imperfection, lost the right to enter the Promised Land himself. Moses on the mountaintop watching the people for whom he risked so much journey on to freedom and deliverance without him, for he would die on that mountaintop. Jesus on the mountaintop being tempted with worldly power if he would only forget God’s strict commands.
Martin, beloved leader, adulterer who was with his mistress, not his wife, that evening. “I have been to the mountaintop.†And like Moses, he would not enter into the Promised Land.
And we are not all there yet.
King’s sermon that last night was a teaching that connected. It had the force of scripture, of a story stretching back three thousand years, golden threads woven into a tapestry that includes disaster and triumph, compassion and failure, condemnation and salvation, the story of entire nations, and of individuals, great and small, all imperfect and amazing.
That story is our story. That beautiful tapestry is our context. God has not cut the thread. There are certainly some moth-eaten spots in need of repair. Some spots that are soiled and stained. A few blood stains, a few wine stains. But it is a good cloth, a beautiful cloth, a living and growing cloth, and we are called to be the weavers. But we will fail in our task if we do not know the pattern. We must look at the whole cloth, see the flow, the changes, understand where the weavers worked in new motifs. And then we take our place and weave ourselves into that cloth.
The authors of Matthew saw the story, saw the pattern. Moses on the mountaintop. Ahab on the mountaintop. Jesus on a mountaintop. He would be back on a mountain, joined by prophets, at the transfiguration. He would be on a hill of another sort at the end, lifted high, once again the voices of temptation would challenge him. If you are God’s son, why not have the angels save you?
The patterns, the flow, the history, the story of our faith. We must know it, not only so we can take our place in it, but also because it is our greatest comfort, our strongest shield, our brightest star. The words in it contain the promises of God, ones we turn to when we are sick, when someone dies. Think of some passages that you carry with you. The proof text of my life: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. Or how about the passage in Psalms that reminds us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made? Jesus’ telling us “Be not afraid.†Paul reminding us that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
A madman attacked NYPD cops with a hatchet, yet we do not abandon hatchets. Which is a good thing, or there would be some cold Boy Scouts. Why do we abandon the Bible because some misuse it to create false gods?
The bible is hard work, and you might not have as much time for it as Jesus did in the years before his active ministry, or for that matter as much time as me, for I am blessed to have scripture at the center of my life. But it is worth owning a copy written in language you can understand, and spending some time reading the stories, for in those stories you will see yourself, you will see us, and you will find God.
Jesus used scripture and understood himself in the context of the great ongoing story of our faith as found in scripture. King found strength in scripture, saw his work in the context of the great ongoing story of our faith as found in scripture. We can find strength in scripture, and take our place, weaving ourselves into the great ongoing story of our faith.
See the pattern. Weave yourself into the story.
Amen.