In the Gospel
today Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread, tempted to fall down and
worship the devil, tempted to throw Himself off the parapet of the temple and
be caught by angels. What???
Now I have
been tempted, many times and in many different ways, but never have I
ever had the slightest temptation to turn stones into bread, nor to fall down
and worship the devil, nor even to jump off the tower of our church to be
caught by angels, a sort of spiritual bungee jumping.
This makes it
kind of hard to identify with this Gospel passage. Would it not have been more instructive for
St. Luke to show us Jesus being tempted to gossip, or to anger, or to lust, or
just to plain old laziness? What if the
Devil said to Jesus, ‘You’ve been pushing yourself pretty hard. Why don’t you knock off for a couple of days
and go fishing with the guys? There will
be plenty of time to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Relax.
Take it easy.”
You know the
temptations, the kind of things we face every day. And then see how Jesus deals with it. That would be more instructive for us? But turning stones into bread? What is going on here?
Well, first of
all, the scene of the temptation is a highly stylized theological account. Much prayerful reflection has gone into the
way St. Luke presents this material.
This is not a newspaper report of just the facts, but a very deep
spiritual reflection , and should be read in that light.
The passage
begins, “Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan. “ What
was Jesus doing at the Jordan? Fishing?
NO, He was getting Baptized.
And at His Baptism “the holy Spirit descended upon him in
bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved
Son; with you I am well pleased."
This must have
been a truly wonderful experience
for Jesus. I mean, imagine if you heard
a voice come from heaven declaring, “you are my beloved son/daughter, with you
I am well pleased.” Wouldn’t it be easy
for you to think, ‘hey, I am pretty hot stuff?
Somebody up there really likes me!’
It would not be hard to feel proud and pretty soon start getting puffed
up. “Hey, did ya hear what heaven
said? I’m the beloved. The BIG guy is
pretty pleased with me too.”
It would be
pretty easy for this to go to anybody’s head, and that is true also for
Jesus. The temptation would be to stay
in that special, elite, proud feeling of being the Beloved Son.
The problem with that is that it keeps Jesus
from entering fully into our human condition.
If He emphasizes being the Beloved Son, the tendency will be to pull
back from true solidarity with sinful and fallen human kind like you and like
me.
And that is
what I believe these temptations are all about.
The temptation to turn stones into bread is a temptation for Jesus to
rely on His power as Son of
God, and not truly enter into the weakness and vulnerability of being
authentically human. Jesus is tempted to
escape human pain and physical hunger, including all the hungers of the heart,
and just pretend to be truly human.
Jesus would look human, but still rely on His divine power to protect
himself and satisfy His needs. It would
be only a charade.
The devil has more to offer Jesus. Having shown Jesus "all
the kingdoms of the world" the devil makes an offer many humans have,
to one degree or another, accepted: Jesus can gain power and influence by
worshiping at the altar of power, compromise and shady deals.
We see it all
the time. We know and fear that money
and power are what politics is really
all about.
In rejecting
this temptation, Jesus chooses to live an ordinary life, to undergo the
subjection endured by his neighbors in an occupied land. He will walk the path of the oppressed. Those
without name recognition will see in him one who is totally faithful to his
choice to be human.
The devil goes
on: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it
is written, ‘God will command the angels concerning you, to guard you..." It is tempting to think that a proof of
God’s love for us is a comfortable and pain free life. Certainly, this notion of a protected life, of
expecting to be spared of all pain and disappointment as God’s beloved, would
be a temptation throughout Jesus’ entire life.
It is also for us.
Where is God
when we are suffering? We say to
ourselves: “I thought God loved me. If God really loved me I wouldn’t be in this
pain... this confusion ... I would not have failed at this project.... I would
not have been betrayed by those I trusted...etc.”
But there is
not an escape clause written into Jesus’ being one of us. He didn’t get out in just the nick of time;
and so His followers must resist the temptation to opt out when the path of
discipleship brings suffering. Standing
in a protective circle of angels is not what it means to be human, and
so that’s not what it will mean for Jesus as He fulfills His word to truly and
completely be one with us.
Through all
the temptations, Jesus remained faithful to His mission, and faithful to His
Father. He also remained faithful to us,
sharing fully in our situation, truly being one of us, so that we could be one
with Him.
Like Jesus, we
are tempted to break faith, to not be true to God our Father or to
ourselves. In these forty days of Lent,
by our Lenten practices of penance, and by God’s grace, we seek to uncover
these temptations, and all the compromises we have made with evil, the little
concessions we make with the devil, and then to cut them out and return to the
path of faithfulness.
Jesus is our
model. He is our source of
strength. In Him, we can do it. Blessed Lent!
No comments:
Post a Comment