Jesus and the rejection of supremacy
Lent 1A | Matthew 4:1-11
Jesus entered the public stage at his baptism. When John the Baptizer was proclaiming the Good News of repentance at the Jordan River and dunkinging people into the flowing water, proclaiming the transformative power of God to restore them, renew them, transform their lives. And Jesus joined the masses as the one who came to lead them. Among them at the grassroots, experiencing the same transformation. And as he came out of the water, the voice of God proclaimed him beloved.
From there, he was whisked into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to spend forty days in quarantine, separate from people, his home. It was common then, there, to take a retreat like this. Not a bougie retreat with spas and yoga, but time alone in the desert, watching bugs crawl out of the cracks in the earth at night, when the sun’s heat is gone, and life starts to return to the space humans declare is desolate and empty.
Jesus was driven there to observe and wait, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. The sermon that will come after this, beginning with the beatitudes of blessing no doubt grows from here. Like John’s ministry, in the wilderness, wild and dangerous. Here, too, the danger is not so much overblown as misunderstood. And the perceived safety of the cities is, too.
After his quarantine,
As Jesus is preparing to return to his place, from wilderness, the river, to begin everything, to follow the crazy commands of God, of the one he dared call Father, the one who made Joseph his Dad by a miraculous bloodline, by love and devotion, the Adversary appears to block his path. He is an obstruction. A stumbling block. Better to hang a millstone around his neck and throw him into the sea than do what he does to Jesus. Not only tempt, but to attempt to destroy.
Jesus, for his part, is incredulous. He takes the appearance for what it is. Not from God. Not of God. Against. Obstruction. A giant rock in the way.
The narrative, I think, would depend on a certain base level of temptation to enhance the tension. The reader needs to think this is a life or death situation. That Jesus is really struggling. Stories rely on tension and people need to believe that the stakes are high here.
Theologically, though, we need a perfect Jesus who isn’t tempted at all. Who is super smart and outwits the wiles of the devil. We need smart and faithful and Godly Jesus here. So, for theological reasons, we want there to be no tension here at all. Just inevitable Jesusy victory.
What if both of these are a miscalculation? In part because we assume the tension comes from the tempting itself and not the substance of the story — what the devil assumes a fully human Jesus could not resist. And, if we also believe Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, there would have to be some tension in his spirit here? That Jesus would need to work at least a little to resist. And that we, as readers, need to wrestle with our own version of this specific temptation?
Three things, the adversary offers Jesus.
Three specific things that he promises Jesus would exercise power over. Power over existence (sate his hunger); God (force God to save him); and humanity (control the world). Temptation to exercise power over others, to control for oneself. Supremacy.
The Adversary tries to tempt Jesus to use power he is confident Jesus already possesses. Power to transform the world and do what he wants. Not that the devil could give it to him in exchange for his soul, like Faust. But we all know that is the bargain. That, to take supreme control is to surrender our soul to evil. There are no benevolent emperors flowing the streets with freedom and justice by disempowering the people and marching armies in those very streets.
He invites Jesus to exercise this power to control the world by quoting scripture, by putting a religious gloss on it, telling him God must want him to do this. Here’s a verse in the Bible to defend my argument!
We can recognize these moves, can’t we? Because we see the very same ones in our world. Promises of safety through domination, protecting our power and wealth by force, declaring God is on our side in all of it. These aren’t the signs of evil, but the means of justifying it. Bad intentions filtered through good desires. Safety is good, but tyranny is evil. And this is always the exchange. The promise. They mess up the railroads and promise to make them run on time. Then the people don’t even get that. And the point is not the trains, but the believing. To make us think that this is the trade: authoritarianism for effectiveness. But Benito Mussolini didn’t make it happen. It was always the worst of both worlds.
The Easier Way
The temptation that power offers is control. Domination. Supremacy. But really, it is about making things easier. An easier way to consensus, to opportunity, to peace. And meanwhile we always think we can use it for good. We can so easily convince ourselves that we are the exception!
Yet what we see Jesus do is reject the premise by rejecting the offer. The offer to exercise the power itself. In Tolkien terms, to use the ring, even to save himself. Something Frodo couldn’t resist. To reject the power of God and to end the evil of the world by dominating it, controlling it, declaring peace has just come to the world because I’ve made the fighting stop. But there is no peace when there is no wholeness, restoration, health, freedom, and justice in the world.
Jesus sees through the Adversary’s attempts because none of this is consistent with the Dream of God. None of this reflects the love and generosity of God. It is, in short, the wrong way.
What we will see in Jesus’s journey, which began at the river and was forged in the wilderness, goes from here to the north, to collect some students, some disciples. Jesus will offer them, not the world, security, safety, or an easy path to wealth and righteousness, but the way. A way of moving, of being, that has to be experienced for itself, that they have to experience first and then share with others. A way that they could only describe using that very word: The Way. That’s what they called it. The Way.
And every failure and moment of stumbling would teach them that The Way is a journey. One that is so rarely easy, but is quite easy to experience when you’re on it. That it is both challenging and easy. Obvious and opaque. But when you are doing it right, you just know it. You can see it. In the fruits. What grows.
The Way
This is The Way that we are following, Friends. A way of being that is experienced by living it. By loving and sharing and giving. We find it by facing our challenges alongside others and when we witness the incredible Spirit of God in the lives of those around us. It is a joyous and worthy way to be in the world.
The question I ought to ask each of us consider then is this: what tempts you? I don’t mean chocolate or coffee or whatever you might choose to give up for Lent. I mean deeply. Look for it. Dig within, interrogating your past choices, when you are sensitive to criticism or reacted harshly. What gets to you? Dig for and think about what is behind it. It is often the same things: control, safety, security, power. And under that it is about being loved and respected and wanting to be treated like we matter. And these insecurities (hear that word in-secure, it is always about power), these insecurities drive us toward safety and security, toward embrace and adoration. To even be worshipped like a god.
Find what tempts you and know that this doesn’t lead us along The Way, God does. And this season of Lent is designed for self-discovery. To examine these parts of us that the Adversary uses to tempt us, to trick us to abandon The Way, to trip each other up, to masquerade, even with scripture. But when we see the trick and know what it’s about, we don’t have to fall for it. We can let it go.
We can be free. Free of those expectations and temptations. Free to be of service to one another, to love one another. Fiercely and with the love of God. For this is our calling and command, our way and our light, our work and our devotion. That God’s Kin-dom, the blessed community is joyous, present, open to all of us.