From the Lectionaries
By Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow
Lent 1 in Year C
Luke 4:1-3
21 February 2010
The First Sunday in Lent may very well be called “Temptation Sunday” for the same reason that the Last Sunday after the Epiphany may very well be called “Transfiguration Sunday.” The Gospel on Lent 1 always is Jesus’ temptation by the devil or Satan in the Synoptic Gospel associated with the particular year in the three-year cycle.
In Mk, a source for Mt and Lk, the temptations are not specific. Just after John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, we read, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (1:12-13).
In Mt (4:1-11), as in Lk, the temptations are specific. And they are in Mt:
1. The devil asks Jesus, famished, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (4:3).
2. The devil takes Jesus to the holy city and places him on the pinnacle of the temple and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down” (4:6).
3. The devil takes Jesus to a high mountain, showing him all the kingdoms of the world, and says, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (4:9).
In Lk, the temptations are those of Mt, but the order is different. “Stones to bread” is first in both lists. The remaining two are reversed in Lk:
1. After Jesus fasts forty days and is famished, the devil asks him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread” (4:3).
2. The devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours” (4:6-7).
3. The devil takes Jesus to Jerusalem and places him on the pinnacle of the temple, and says to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here” (4:9).
When Mt and Lk agree substantially and disagree with Mk, as they do in their versions of Jesus’ temptation by the devil, their similarity is ascribed to a second source (Mk is the first) whose name is unknown but is referred to as “Q” for Quelle or source. The specifics of the temptation Mt and Lk independently take from Q as they are absent in Mk.
It is worth noting, too, that in Mk “Satan” tempts Jesus and that in Mt and Lk “the devil” tempts Jesus.
The reversal of temptations two and three in Mt and Lk, I believe, has to do with the centrality of Jerusalem in Lk’s conception of the direction and growth of the kingdom of God, of “the way.” In the Gospel, the direction of movement is toward Jerusalem, and so it is in the temptations. The location of the third temptation is Jerusalem, and so the movement of the temptations has been toward Jerusalem. Mt, incidentally, does not name Jerusalem but refers to it reverentially and wistfully as “the holy city.” In Acts, the sequel of Lk, by the way, the direction of movement is away from Jerusalem.
The temptations have an applicability, a generality, that we were best not to miss. If one can turn stone into bread, one can transmute lead into gold, mold into penicillin, fossils into fuel, and those ancient bones into incalculable power in the world. The desire for that power could just be enough to make war an acceptable risk or worse, an acceptable payment, depending, of course, on who is doing the paying. A stone becoming bread figures most profitable transactions. How do we put bread on the table without such transactions? Do they mean that we have succumbed to the devil?
In Lk’s order, Jesus’ love of pleasure, love of possessions, and love of power are tested. Will any one of them come between him and God? This understanding suggests that Jesus leads us in our Lenten disciplines, that he leads us on our way as we refuse pleasure, possessions, and power. The suggestion also is that we should likewise be able to refuse the temptations in Lent and thereafter: a sinless one to Communion came. This path is rocky and austere. Who can travel it without several pairs of shoes? I have found that it leads along the road to guilt and self-reproach, and certainly to a failed Lent. When I look in another direction, I think I am doing more than just avoiding them.
That other way hangs from the phrase “if you are the Son of God.” We cannot turn a stone into bread even if we can turn fossils into fuel. Turning a stone into bread is a temptation of Jesus’ divinity not his humanity. “If you are the Son of God” appears in Lk’s third temptation, the temptation that puts Jesus’ special relationship to God to the test: “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you” (4:10 following Psalm 91:11). By putting that special relationship to the test, this temptation also is a temptation of Jesus’ divinity.
Lk’s second temptation does not include “if you are the Son of God.” It’s the temptation, however, of switching sides, of trading worshiping God for worshiping the devil who in Lk, particularly, commands a kind of counter-kingdom of demons and unclean spirits. This is a temptation at which we in our humanity can easily fall. But the consequences would be far more devastating if the Son of God falls to it.
By refusing temptations to his divinity and his humanity, Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves as he also does on the cross and in the resurrection. God sends Jesus for this reason precisely because we cannot save ourselves or even conclude Lent successfully without God’s help.
HS
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