First Sunday in Lent; 26 February 2023; Lent 1A (RCL); Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11.
I had a Cambodian friend who read this passage in Genesis as a coming-of-age story. According to him, children in Cambodia were not gendered until about the age of five, “when they put their pants on.” It’s about the same age there were expected to begin to know right from wrong. Adam and Eve recognize their nakedness once they have eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That throws an interesting light on the story — temptation as a step along the way to growing up.
The temptations of Jesus in the wilderness also provide an insight into the human condition. The temptations occur after his baptism, and if the Gospels function as formational documents for Christian communities, this would suggest to those recently baptized that they shouldn’t expect to be immune from temptation. At his baptism, Jesus hears the voice from heaven that he will hear again on the mountain of transfiguration, and then the spirit drives him into the wilderness for forty days and nights. We can’t miss the connection to the cross of the Red Sea and the sojourn in the wilderness.
In one of the temptations, the devil leads Jesus up a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and offers him all that authority. We might recall Moses on Mount Nebo, being shown the extent of the land the Children of Israel were about to enter. Again, we can’t miss the connection to Moses, Elijah, and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. This got me looking for other mountains in Matthew’s Gospel.
There is the Sermon on the Mount, which lays out the ethics of the renewed covenant, and finally, Jesus meets the disciples on a mountain in Galilee after his resurrection, where he instructs them to make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Trinity. As I see it, here is the crux of the temptations: the devil doesn’t tempt Jesus to do anything he won’t otherwise do, he just tempts him to short-circuit the church.
Jesus will feed two multitudes in the wilderness, one of five thousand and one of four thousand, but in each case, he will start with resources the disciples have on hand, meager though they seem. The devil tempts him to turn stones to bread, bypassing the meager resources of the disciples. On the mountain, the devil will tempt Jesus to take authority of all the nations, without the preaching of the disciples. On the mountain in Galilee after the resurrection, Jesus will give this task to the disciples. Note also that Jesus instructs them to baptize in the name of the Trinity, again connecting this episode back to his own temptation after baptism.
The devil also tempts Jesus to test God for his own safety, surely a temptation present to the early Christian communities facing persecution. But in the Garden, Jesus will accept the trial before him, just as Christians would accept the trials they faced.
So the long and short of it is, that none of these things can happen in the way God intends without the mediation of the disciples. With Jesus’ help, we feed the crowds in the wilderness, our meager resources multiplied by God’s grace. With Jesus’ help, we face down trials, and are raised to new life by God’s grace. On Jesus’ instruction, we make disciples of all the nations, bringing them to participate, by God’s grace, in God’s coming kingdom.
I think it was Pope Francis who said, “First you pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.” Our temptation is to expect God to short-circuit us, and do these things without our help. Not even Jesus takes that route.