First Sunday in Lent; 6 March 2022; Lent 1C (RCL); Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13.
None of the things the devil tempts Jesus with is evil in itself, and in fact, in Luke’s telling, Jesus will in fact accomplish them. What makes them wrong is motivation and purpose. Looking at world events today, it is good to be reminded that we are not God.
In fact, the three temptations are all temptation faced by Israel in the wilderness. At the edge of the Red Sea, the children of Israel faced certain destruction, and yet God protected them. Once in the wilderness, they complained to Moses that God brought them out only to kill them with hunger, and then the manna came. As they journeyed through the wilderness, they sent spies into the land of Canaan in preparation for its conquest, but lost heart at the report, and so were defeated when the attempted to take it (Numbers 14), but later did achieve its conquest with God’s help.
In this way, both Matthew and Luke (following Q?) have Jesus recapitulate the epic of Israel, only passing the test where Israel failed. Unlike the children of Israel, Jesus does not complain about God’s plan, but sees it through (note the foreshadowing in Luke that the devil departs until an opportune time — Gethsemane).
Jesus would in fact feed the hungry, not by turning stones to bread, but by multiplying the assets of the community, breaking five loaves and feeding five thousand. Jesus would in fact become Lord of the whole earth, in Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts. And God would vindicate Jesus, but only after the crucifixion.
If we were given the power to feed the world by turning stones to bread, would we take it? If given the opportunity to be king of the world? Or to live without harm? Looking at what is going on in Ukraine right now, I am tempted to want to be king of the world. If it were up to me, I’d send jets to bomb that convoy of Russian vehicles stalled on its way to Kyiv. But, I’d probably initiate a much wider conflict by doing so.
The devil tempts Jesus to take the short-cut to what is his final purpose anyway. It’s the shortcut that is evil, pursuing those things for our own ends and by our own means, rather than letting God be God. The passage from Deuteronomy is a ritual intended to remind the inhabitants of the land that the bounty they enjoy is not their own doing, but gift from God. When we think we can accomplish God’s righteousness and justice by our own devices, we are guaranteed to make things worse.
Putin wants glory, and he has made a terrible miscalculation on how to accomplish it. I will not be surprised if this is the beginning of his end. Jesus shows us that the only way to God’s glory is the way of the cross.