In the Passion, we receive a story of innocence murdered. But that story’s foundation is all so much temptation.
Good Friday, the Passion, and Trust
Good Friday | Luke 22:39-23:56
As Jesus brings his followers to the end of their journey together, he offers them words of caution:
“Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.”
The translators for the NRSV (the version we use) offer another way of reading that warning:
‘Pray that you may not come into the time of temptation.’
As if he is saying The hours ahead will test you. Because they will tempt you.
My mind is immediately brought back to the very beginning: when Jesus is baptized, brought by the Spirit into the wilderness and is tempted by the devil for forty days. Tempted with power.
The temptation Jesus refers to isn’t eating another cookie. It’s the power to condemn, abuse, destroy.
“Pray that you may not come into the time of temptation.”
But they will. Immediately.
The First Temptation: Swords
Jesus warns them of the temptation to come. Because he knows the temptation is well underway.
He asks them to buy swords so they could pretend to be revolutionaries. But they already have some. They don’t have to play pretend. They already are.
Then the soldiers arrive. And Jesus’s followers, protecting the Prince of Peace, draw first blood. They choose violence, thinking they are protectors, avatars of the movement. Believing this is what Jesus wants—even as he has preached the opposite. Warned them of the temptation of power. To violence.
How wrong, how stupid this is. Objectively. And how utterly not the way of Jesus. How opposite the things Jesus has taught.
And yet, how completely normal to the way of Rome. But not just Rome, of course. Occupiers. Empires. Conquer, best, destroy, protect, wall, kill.
Victims of such oppression themselves, the disciples know of no other way. So the temptation doesn’t come dressed as tempting. It comes to them sounding like “realism.”
But Jesus heals the slave who was attacked. Not a soldier, a slave. The victims of oppression victimize another victim. And Jesus heals him and accepts his fate.
The Second Temptation: Safety
Peter follows the soldiers to see what happens to Jesus. He tries to blend in. But citizens spot him. They can tell he’s not from there. He’s from the north. They ask him if he’s connected to Jesus. He denies it, of course. He protects himself. No doubt imagining he can’t keep track of what’s happening to Jesus if he’s noticed.
Of course, it’s too late. He can’t blend in. No matter how much he tries.
So he lies. Denies knowing Jesus. To fit in. And it feels like the right thing to do in the moment. So why then does he also feel so guilty?
The Third Temptation: Abuse
Rome has the Prince of Peace in custody. One who preaches non-violence and curing the sick. Who just healed someone before their eyes.
They mock him. Abuse him. Beat him. A prisoner in their custody who can’t hurt them. Who has no power. They have the power. And they use it.
Is it internal: that they can’t help themselves? Or is it structural: that they take the opportunity? But does it really matter when it keeps happening? When officers beat people in their custody? When soldiers rape and maim those under their control?
The Fourth Temptation: Order
Jesus is brought before Pilate who shrewdly understands why Jesus is there. Just not so much why Jewish leaders are rejecting him.
The temptation to maintain order is so very strong. Like order itself is the purpose of life. As if order is the highest virtue. For those at the bottom: don’t rock the boat. And for those at the top: make sure the trains run on time.
Pilate knows that order is at the heart of the Empire. Herod, of course, does too.
Up to this point, the King was a tragic figure. He was enamored of John the Baptizer and seems to have been infatuated with Jesus.
As the king of an occupied country, whose people long for freedom, it would be easy to sympathize with Herod…if he weren’t his own kind of villain in the story. A villain who is, himself, obsessed with order: preserving his own power as much as his country’s.
“That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.”
The Fifth Temptation: Execution
The culmination of the temptations to power, Rome and the Jewish leaders teamed up to murder Jesus, thinking it could bring order and safety to their lives through violence and abuse.
They sought to end their moderate, immediate suffering through a scapegoat to bear their burden and remove their sin.
This, of course, is our own justification of the moment, isn’t it? Removing our own culpability for present violence as we foist the burden of this crucifixion upon some genetic defect in the human heart and our own will to evil.
Execution is the excuse of the weak-minded to justify pessimism and blood-lust. A refusal to accept responsibility for our own actions in the now. That we are, in fact, called to do it differently.
The Final Temptation: Cowardice
Peter is so often a prescient stand-in for the reader. And his three-part denial sets the tone for our response to the Passion. That we might look away from it and not face it as Jesus did.
But the same goes for those tempted to protect order, abuse the powerless, or seek violence as a solution to our problems.
As macho as these actions seem, they are displays of extraordinary cowardice. They reveal such weakness—refusing to use any other method of problem-solving; just power over. It is cutting off all of our avenues for seeing the world but one.
There is so much cowardice in this moment, we might overlook the ones displaying the bravery of Jesus. The ones who are able to move through the moment with their whole selves.
We are left, in the end, with these people. All of the unnamed women and Joseph of Arimathea. Who see what has happened. Mourn. Bury the dead with honor.
Opportunity
In warning us of the temptation, Jesus is showing us that while the temptation is inevitable, our succumbing to it is not. We are not bound by our biology or our culture to do this. Neither nature nor nurture compel us unwillingly to power.
Our own fears (temptations) don’t actually control us. We aren’t bound by any of it.
Today we get the fear part of the story. The moment in which we look at our savior lifted up on a cross, crushing our own dreams of rebellion; our own thoughts of victory over evil. That maybe we will see our enemies crushed under the boot of power.
But we also don’t get the release. We must wait for it. The opportunity to see what that new Messiah means. How God can bring us into a just world without violence.
Today, all we get is trust. Trust that God’s way is right. That God is good. And that hope in resurrections is our way.
We know the proof will come. On the third day. At this, as we near the close of the first day, we are left with trust. And each other. The material Jesus said from the beginning is all we need.