At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.” (Matthew 4.1-11)
On this First Sunday of Lent, the liturgical calendar each year offers us for our reflection the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. Today, we find Matthew’s version of the story which bears a strong similarity to Luke’s own telling with minor differences. Mark’s version is truncated into two brief sentences. However, in each instance, the story follows on the heels of Jesus’ baptism in which a voice from the heavens declares Jesus to be “my beloved Son.”
Also, each version states that it was the Spirit that led–or as Mark says “drove”–Jesus into the desert. It is the same Spirit that had descended upon him at his baptism and which will remain side-by-side with him along the way as he travels the roads of Galilee fulfilling the will of the Father who has sent him to heal the sick, to forgive the sinner, and to welcome the stranger.
While the story of Jesus’ going into the wilderness or desert after his baptism is commonly called the “temptation of Jesus,” a more correct title, at least in Matthew’s text, would be Jesus’ “testing” in the wilderness. Not only does Matthew use the word testing rather than tempting, but the whole of the story as Matthew intends it is to retell the story of the Hebrew slaves’ testing as they wandered in the desert for forty years–with one important difference–Jesus passes the test whereas the Hebrews failed it.
The foundational statement that sets the stage is found in the Book of Deuteronomy in which Moses reminds the Hebrews of their history, telling them, “Remember how for these forty years the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the wilderness, so as to test you by affliction, to know what was in your heart: to keep his commandments, or not” (Deut 8.2).
As we have already seen, Matthew, more so than the other gospel writers, has the Hebrew scriptures and the Hebrew experience in the background of his text, reinforcing his thesis that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise made to the Israelites over the ages. So, here in the story of the testing in the wilderness, Matthew wants his readers to see that Jesus now repeats the experience of the Hebrews, but passes the test, unlike his Jewish predecessors.
In passing the test whereas the people of Israel had failed it, Jesus stands before the people as a sign of what the people should have been in contrast to whom they were at Massah and Maribah, places where, according to the scriptures, “the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord in our midst or not?’”
The test for Jesus, of course, is found in the threefold offer of Satan, each an attempt to have Jesus redefine his sonship. Hence, each offer is prefaced with Satan’s words, “If you are the Son of God.” While the third offer does not state the words, it can safely be inferred that, once again, Satan is testing Jesus’ understanding of his being the beloved Son.
Arguably, at least in my mind, approaching the story from the viewpoint of a matter of testing instead of a matter of temptation offers us a deeper understanding of the purpose and the intent. While we more often than not portray Satan as tempting us, leading us to indulge in a sin or two, we can see something even more significant in Satan testing us, by which he intends to “prove what is in our heart,” as the Hebrew scriptures aptly defined the test.
That, of course, is the real question. Not our skirmishes with sins, but what is at the root of our doing wrong. The root, as always, is found in our heart. If we have a pure heart, then our deeds will be good; if our heart is evil, then our deeds will be evil. It is in the well of the heart that the test is always put before us, won or lost, as we decide to do the will of God or to do our own will.
It is for this same reason that it is important for Matthew to show his community that Jesus endured the same testing that is part and parcel of a world that is Satan’s playpen, but, unlike the Jewish ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai, he proved himself able to stay strong, choosing to remain true to his identity as the beloved Son.
The core problem for the Hebrew slaves, of course, was that they did not show the same commitment to the covenant relationship that was central to their identity. That relationship was summed up in the promise spoken to them by the Most High God when he said, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” For his part, he kept his promise, never abandoning the people.
However, the same could not be said of the Hebrew slaves who, when tested in the wilderness, forgot their duty to be the people chosen by the Most High God as peculiarly his own, and, in the clearest example of their turning their back on the relationship, built a golden calf and danced before it, making fools of themselves, not to mention liars.
Not only the slaves in the desert, but the same could be said of the Israelites in the Promised Land. Regularly, the Lord God would raise up among them a prophet to remind them that their heart was supposed to be given to the God who had brought them out of Egypt, not to the gods of other peoples. For example, Hosea, commanded by God, marries a prostitute as a symbol of what the people have done.
The Lord God instructs Hosea, “Go, love a woman who is loved by her spouse but commits adultery; Just as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”
Several hundred years later and the hearts of the people are still turned against the Lord God. The sixth century B.C.E. prophet Ezekiel, speaking for the Lord God, says to the people, “I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” He concludes with the words of the covenant, “You will be my people, and I will be your God.”
With this long history of failing the test, their hearts turned against the Lord God, the people needed more than words to remind them of their vows, and so the beloved Son stood before them, and he entered the wilderness as did their fathers before them, and he was tested as they had been by Satan, but he withstood the test, walking out of the wilderness not weaker, but stronger, proving that his heart was true to the heart of God, not towards a heart of darkness as the people had shown far too many times before.
Matthew, learned in the Hebrew scriptures and the history of Judaism, intentionally places before his Jewish-Christian listeners a replay of that history when they had been put to the test and failed, but now the One who enters the wilderness to be tested prevails in this instance, his example serving as a reminder to the people that the human heart can beat in unity with the heart of the Most High God.
There is no guesswork necessary to understand why this particular text is placed here at the start of the season of Lent. These forty days had been intentionally selected in the early years of the Christian community to serve as an opportunity to repeat the experience of Jesus, the beloved Son, asking those who follow in his footsteps to enter the wilderness where they also will be tested, the hope being that they will pass the test as he did, not fail the test as the people of God had done on too many occasions to be counted.
With this fuller understanding of the story as one of testing, not one of temptation, we can turn our focus away from resisting those flighty temptations that float before us each day and instead look deep within our hearts where both good and evil originate. These forty days allow us the time to ask ourselves if we truly are people of integrity, of good character, and of faithfulness to the ways of God. In short, we must decide who we really are just as Jesus had to decide that he would be the beloved Son in the face of the tests put before him.
We also will find the answer in the tests that are put before us each day. These tests will inform us of whether or not our hearts are the same as the beating heart of God. And what are the tests that we might expect to face? They show themselves in the everyday opportunities to conform our ways to the ways of God, our will to the will of God, our loyalty to the God who is loyal to us.
We do not have to look far because the tests are always the same. How do we treat the poor? What is our attitude towards the foreigner? What is our response to the cries of the mistreated, the marginalized, and the maligned? To whose side do we rally–those in power or those without power? Which causes do we support–those that help the helpless or those that abandon the helpless?
These tests and many others reveal to us the condition of our hearts and prove our hearts to be hearts of flesh or hearts of stone, hearts near to God or hearts far from God. And they will tell us the truth about ourselves, which, after all, is the purpose of these forty days–to face ourselves with the truth about who we are, not on the surface, but deep down in our hearts.
Perhaps that will be the greatest test of all–to face ourselves with nothing but the truth. And as with all tests, that will require great courage of us. C.S. Lewis in his “Screwtape Letters” reminds us that “courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” Time will tell us how much courage we actually have.
–Jeremy Myers
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