Archive for March, 2020

“Jesus and the Slanderer,” (Sermon, March 1st, 2020)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ 4But he answered, ‘It is written,
“One does not live by bread alone,
   but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” ’
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you”,
   and “On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’
7Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; 9and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ 10Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
“Worship the Lord your God,
   and serve only him.” ’
11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11

Several weeks ago I was given a rare gift: the chance to tell the story we just read to someone who had never heard it before.

I have a Muslim friend who’s connected to the Sufi community with whom I play and sometimes worship. Her name is Eda and she is a Turkish beauty with a deep voice and a wide open heart.

Washing dishes after our prayer service, we started to talk about Lent. She knew it was a season similar to Ramadan, but didn’t know anything else about it. She asked me why we observed it.

I told her it was to commemorate Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, and she asked me to tell her the story.

She listened, rapt, as I leaned with great delight into the drama of the tale.

“And THEN, the third time…”

“OH!” she gasped. “THREE TIMES Shaitan tempted him!”

There’s nothing quite like hearing a story anew in the telling.

This year, we’re reading Matthew’s account. It’s slightly different from the other Synoptic Gospels, Mark and Luke. Luke has the temptations happening in a slightly different order. Mark, of course, is very brief, almost abrupt. There is no dialogue – the whole story is confined to a single line. Each writer makes narrative decisions to bring forward a particular agenda or thesis.

When we hear it as we just did, alongside the story of our first temptation, some very interesting themes emerge.

Matthew describes the temptation very matter-of-factly, not just in the way it’s recounted, but in the very fact of its occurrence. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

Why? Why was this necessary? I can buy that he would have to be tempted like us, but why in this strange, almost ritualistic way, rather than in the everyday temptations with which we are all so familiar?

While the writer of Matthew would shape his narrative of Jesus to highlight similarities between him and Moses, other early Christian writers like Paul would reflect on the idea of Jesus as a new Adam, a new root for humanity to blossom upon, like a nurse log giving new life to lichen and moss.

Here in this strange story, Jesus repeats the journey of Adam – our journey – but in a deeply deliberate way.

Where Adam is placed in the Garden, Jesus descends to earth, a child of Mary through the Holy Spirit according to Matthew’s story.

Adam and Eve find themselves confronted with a temptation of sorts placed exactly in the middle of the garden. Why would God do that? Oh, but isn’t that always the way of it, the very thing that intrigues and tempts and teases at us always seems centrally located, right in front of our eyes. And there is the serpent, making sure that even if we’re innocent enough to obey the rules, we’re made aware of the attractiveness of this beautiful thing we desire.

For Jesus, though, the source of temptation is in the wilderness, far from his family and friends. He has to seek it out. Who would do that? God’s reckless, wild heart, of course. And indeed, Matthew writes that the very Spirit that made a covenant with Mary in order to bring Jesus into this new Garden is the one that leads him toward it, without any pretense of what he is about to confront.

And finally, where Adam and Eve feast, Jesus fasts.

And now we come to the meat of the story, as it were. He is here to do business with the one Eda called shaitan, the devil, tou diabolou in Greek, quite literally the Slanderer, the false accuser, later elaborated as ho peirazon, the tempter.

The Slanderer, oddly enough, not only knows who Jesus is but uses the proper title, Son of God. Again, we’re called to see Jesus as a new Adam. Here, he engages with the tempter in order to rewrite the story of humanity.

First volley: The Slanderer says, “You’re hungry, you’ve been fasting for days. Aren’t you powerful enough to fix that?”

Jesus is just as crafty, though. He knows what the real invitation is: make his own forbidden fruit. He refuses. “I don’t need to. God’s word is my fruit, because God is my source.”

Second volley: The Slanderer says, “God’s word is certainly salvation. Show me! Let’s see you prove it!”

Unlike Eve, who like a child cannot hear the subtext in the serpent’s words, Jesus hears the words beneath, hears the irony of the devil quoting Scripture. Jesus came out here to be tested. He didn’t come to test God. And indeed, throwing yourself off the pinnacle of the holy city is a fool’s way to test God’s love. How convenient would it be for the Slanderer and his mission should Jesus find himself broken into pieces on the ground below!

Final volley. The Slanderer is getting desperate. He offers not wisdom, something which actually has an inherent and deeply spiritual value, but the far more venal and fleeting pleasures of power and wealth. Perhaps this is the most impressive chiasmus of all: we who are fleeting and mortal are tempted with Godly gifts, while the Holy One is tempted with mortal gifts. And maybe that reversal is what truly breaks the old order and forges something new. Jesus says, “Hypago, Satana!” A quick word study from the Helps Ministries website shows a fascinating note, quote: “Hypago, properly, to lead away under someone’s authority…literally, “going under” indicates a change of relation which is only defined by the context.”

Jesus once again turns everything upside down. The Slanderer is now beneath him. All the attempts to enslave the new Adam to temptation have failed. The Slanderer leaves, subject to Jesus’s word and will. No wonder Jesus had such a reputation as an exorcist. What could lesser demons do when their chieftain had been bested here?

Of course we know that this is not the final word in the story of Jesus and the Slanderer. At the end of our Lenten journey, entering into Holy Week, we’ll hear how one of Jesus’s own disciples is pressed into the Slanderer’s service, literally doing his job, making a false accusation to the religious authorities.

But we’re not there yet.

We’re just at the beginning.

And we might be wondering what any of this has to do with us here in 2020. For we are certainly not Jesus, confident and reckless enough to just tell the devil to go away with the expectation that he’ll listen.

But that’s the whole point. We don’t need to. That reversal, and indeed the grander reversal which will occur forty days from now, has put the Slanderer under a new authority.

We still struggle with temptation. All too often the concept has been used to shame us for very ordinary and human desires, and that’s not helpful. It seems more important to see it as something which pulls us away from the intent to live in balance and with compassion. It’s the voice that worries constantly that there won’t be enough, that I won’t be enough, that the only way to raise oneself up to greater power or riches or worthiness is to walk on the backs of others. It’s the voice that lashes out in anger at a stranger who annoys us without seeing them as a full human being, the voice that feeds all of our deepest insecurities, the voice that demands we break ourselves and others in half to be worthy of love and acceptance.

Lent gives us the chance to make our own conscious choice, as Jesus did. To confront that voice and tell it that it ain’t the boss of you. To explore oneself with curiosity, to wonder about the things that feed that voice, to try tuning it out in favour of a deeper voice, the one that knows what you need and endlessly breathes into the silence that you are worthy of receiving what you need.

We all have it.

It lives there, between heartbeats, deep in your core, gentle and a little playful, whispering all of its wild reckless ideas for our own grand reversals.

Lent is a chance for us to listen to it.