Temptations Four Through Six

A revised version of a sermon shared with the residents of the Chelsea Retirement Community, March, 2010

Scripture: Luke 4:1-13

This familiar passage from the gospels describes the three temptations that Jesus faced during his time in the wilderness. Biblical scholars have suggested ways we might relate those temptations to our own experience.

First, the devil tempts Jesus to turn a stone into bread. This offer must have been very alluring, because the text tells us that Jesus had been fasting and was “famished.” Many commentators have compared this to the temptations that come to us from basic needs like hunger, shelter, and survival.

Second, the devil offers Jesus “authority” over “all the kingdoms of the world.” As with all such “opportunities” there’s a catch: Jesus must bow down and worship Satan. Commentators often compare this to the temptations that come to us from our appetite for power.

And, third, the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple in order to prove that He is the Son of God. We might have a tougher time associating this temptation with the sort of temptations that you and I encounter. But I think that Peter Gomes has a wonderful insight here. He writes: “This [temptation] appeals to the sense of identity and the need to prove who we are … No one likes to have his identity challenged or threatened; we are insecure enough without someone demanding proof that we are who we say we are.”

These are pretty traditional views of the scripture and I agree with them, at least as far as they go. But they raise a question: does this scripture still have anything to say to us if those three temptations are not our temptations? After all, they may not be. 

We might not know the temptations that come with crippling hunger or with deep uncertainty about shelter and safety. We may always have lived in a comfortable place with plenty to eat. Or, if there were times when resources were scarce, they may be well behind us.

We also may not worry much about acquiring power. We may have reached an age or a state of mind where we see power for the impostor that it is. There is a story about Edward Bennett Williams, the legendary trial lawyer, political insider, and confidant of the rich, famous, and infamous. One afternoon, Williams’ son found his father lying down, chilled and nauseous from the cancer that was killing him. Williams tossed his son a copy of a magazine he’d been reading, which described him as one of the most powerful men in Washington. “They don’t realize what power really is,” Williams said to his son. “I’m about to see true power.”

And as for proving ourselves, well, that may not be as big a deal for us as it once was either. For many of us, growing older brings the grace of no longer feeling the irresistible impulse to establish our credentials with every poor soul who will sit still long enough to listen. Mark Twain once observed that “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.” Certainly, this would save us all the pain and frustration that attends those early years when we are fashioning our identity and trying to get the world to take it seriously.

So we might look at this list of three temptations and say to ourselves “eh, not so much” or "been there, done that." We might question whether these particular temptations still bedevil us (so to speak) the way they used to. We might conclude that this passage does not have for us the same poignancy it may have had earlier in life.

But I want to suggest to you that this text does not describe only three temptations. It describes many more, at least some of which remain with us throughout our time on earth, regardless of our place or age or station. I want to talk here about three of them, which I will call “temptations four through six.”

Temptation four is the temptation to do what is easy rather than what is right. If we look closely, we can see this temptation in this passage. Jesus can eat, know comfort, and have authority over all the kingdoms of the earth if he will only do what Satan asks. It certainly sounds simple enough. But Jesus instead chooses the hardest path imaginable, one that leads him through rejection, grief, betrayal, torture, suffering, and death.

Most of us struggle with this temptation our entire lives. To borrow a phrase from James Russell Lowell, it is in the nature of human existence that we will necessarily encounter “moments to decide” between that which is comfortable and expedient and that which is uncomfortable and righteous. And we will encounter those moments almost every day. Again, to borrow a phrase from Lowell, “the choice goes by forever.”

Think, for example, of all the times we hear the voice of cruelty or bigotry or hatred and we do not call it out for what it is; we let it pass; we pretend it didn’t happen. We do the easy thing. But it doesn’t sit well with us. And, I fear, it doesn’t sit particularly well with the one who made us, either.

Temptation five is the temptation to forget who we are and what we know. If we look closely we can find this temptation in the scripture as well. After all, there is a sense in which Satan is asking Jesus not to prove that He is the Son of God but to forget that He is the Son of God.

Jesus does not take the bait. He remembers who He is. He remembers what He knows.

I think this is why Jesus responds to all three temptations by quoting passages from the Hebrew Bible. Jesus shows that He remembers what He was taught to value; He remembers the sacred texts He studied in his youth; He remembers the ideas that He shared with his elders in the temple while Mary and Joseph were looking around for him. Memory preserves Jesus, as it often preserves each and every one of us.

And then there is temptation six. It is a whopper. Temptation six is the temptation to elevate our physical being over our spiritual being.

We find this temptation in this scripture as well. Jesus is invited to feed all of his appetites. He is offered the opportunity to have all the world’s pleasures at his command. In short, he is urged to define himself by his body, by what Delmore Schwartz in a wonderful and whimsical poem calls “the heavy bear who goes with me, clumsy and lumbering here and there, in love with candy, anger, and sleep.”

Our bodies do this to us. They knock incessantly at the door of our consciousness to reiterate that they’re waiting for us to attend to them. They work hard and constantly to define us--and our culture happily conspires with them to this end.

The form this temptation takes may change as we get older, but the fundamental impulse remains the same. The stiffness in the neck, the soreness in the back, the clicking noises in the joints, the little pains that move around the body like a dog circling and circling before it lies down--these, too, are ways in which our bodies cry out for our attention and claim eminence. And as we age the cries get fussier and more frequent.

In this passage, Jesus answers this temptation, too. And it may help us to remember that this text does not give us the strident voice of the strong carpenter’s son at the peak of his vigor. It gives us the voice of one who is worn down, tired, wanting for energy, yearning for comfort.

Yet, in just that voice, Jesus offers us consolation that can bring "the peace that passes all understanding." For, here, Jesus assures us that there is something else; something greater than the “heavy bear” that we tote along with us on our mortal journey; something beyond "bread alone."

Teilhard de Chardin once observed: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."In calling us to know the life that lies beyond bread alone, Jesus invites us into the heart of that truth. And in the heart of that truth lies our transformation and our salvation and our greatest, indeed our only, hope.

Charles Baudelaire suggested that the greatest trick of the devil was to persuade us that he does not exist. I'm not so sure. I think that maybe his greatest trick is to persuade us that we are something less than what we are.

For the overarching message of temptations four through six is this: you are a child of the living God; you are immortal in your spirit and boundless in your soul; you were placed here to do the holy and sacred work of Love Itself.

Fear nothing in the wildernesses of your life.

Except those things that tempt you to believe otherwise.   
 
Amen.