In the Genesis story, I take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the gift of God for human freedom. The freedom was that the man and the woman were able to say No to good food—a freedom from nature that other animals do not exercise.
Every time they walked past that tree, by being able to say No to that good food, the two of them were maintaining their enjoyment of God’s gift to them of freedom from nature. They were able to maintain their freedom and their special status among the creatures by remembering God’s Word to them every time they walked past that tree. They got their freedom and, indeed, their distinctive humanity, from their loyalty to God’s Word.
I do not take the serpent as the devil in disguise. The serpent rather gives voice to the attraction of the natural world, to the appeal of creation in its compelling possibility. It is the lure of the flesh, the draw of our appetites, all innocent, that we could simply satisfy if we were just ordinary animals. But God has called our species to freedom, for that special relationship with God, for which we must resist the voice of the inevitable temptation of the natural world with its naive concupiscence.
So the Genesis story is always true. The point is not whether it actually happened, but that it’s always true. It’s paradigmatic, we keep repeating it. In the garden it was a serpent, today it is economic growth, or political necessity, or the free market, or sexual freedom, whatever, the “why not” of the world. It is beguiling and attractive, reasonable and convincing. It never actually tells a lie, just never the whole truth.
The Genesis story is always true because we cannot sort out good and evil from only within the world. It can’t be done. The only way to sort out good and evil is by reference to something outside the world, by reference to the Word of God, by reference to the will of God.
The Genesis story was true for Jesus. He had to sort out what was good and evil in his life, and even Jesus could not do it from within himself, he too had to sort it out by reference to the Word of God. Even Jesus. Our gospel story takes place just after his baptism, when that voice from heaven had called him the “Son of God.” Well, now what? How shall he figure out how to be the Son of God? Into a garden to contemplate? No, into the wilderness to fast and pray, in the desert to seek the will of God, and how to do this thing that no one had ever done before.
These temptations were not three easy choices. The temptations that most compel us are not to do what is sinful or evil, but to choose the wrong good, what might be good in other situations. Had Jesus not had these thoughts himself? If he is the Son of God, should he not act like a god? Twice the devil dares him to: “If you’re the Son of God, then act like it. Why not use your superpower? Just as your Father did for the Israelites in the wilderness, miraculous manna and water from a rock! If you saw five thousand hungry people and you had only five loaves and two fishes, wouldn’t you do a miracle?” The devil only asks him what we pray to him ourselves. “Use your power, O Son of God. We are suffering, O Lord, use your power, relieve our suffering.” What could be wrong with that?
As Jesus determines how to be the Son of God, he makes two choices. He will not do miracles to save himself, and he will not break the laws of nature to prove himself. Yes, he will do miracles, but he will prove himself as the Son of God by human obedience, by faithfulness to the Word of God, even at great cost. His superpower is his moral power, not in being superhuman or invulnerable, but in his faithfulness. So Jesus answers, “A human being does not live by bread alone—a fully-human human-being, like me—but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.”
By refusing the first temptation he brings on the second. “Oh, every word of God? Well, how about this one: it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you.’ Live by that word, Jesus, give yourself in to God’s incredible promises, I dare you. Why aren’t you jumping? Do you doubt the promise of your Father to rescue you?” Where is your God? Where is your faith?
This test is artificial, even if it uses scripture verses. This is not a true-to-life example of how you have to put your trust in God. It’s not for getting rescued whenever you’re in a scrape or for having a nice and easy life. God’s special care for you has the specific purpose of enhancing your mission, it is your incentive to risk a life of love and service, the love and service that might well increase your suffering! The purpose of God’s special care for you is to get you through the suffering that is the by-product of your mission, not to keep you comfortable.
Jesus does not accept this artificial test. Three years later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he will pass a harder test in the same subject. And he will take his final exam upon the cross, and enter the cold, dark tunnel of death instead of his Father’s warm and loving care. He will trust in a silent and distant God without resorting to his superpower. He will submit to all that we endure, and he will ask of God no miracle to exempt him from the burden of ordinary human existence.
Our Lord’s refusal of the second temptation brings on the third. “All right then, so you’re not going to resort to your superpower, you’re going keep yourself within the confines of nature, you’re going to be righteous within the limitations of humanity. Okay, that means you’re going to lose. Because our side has the power, we are in control. We will beat you and break you, and you won’t have a chance. But look, why not be realistic and work with the powers of the world? I’ll even make you Number Two, I’ll let you run the whole thing, like Joseph did in Egypt. He was Number Two to Pharaoh. That’s how God used him to save his people. I’ll be Pharaoh, you be Joseph.”
What would this have looked like? Jesus cutting deals with the Romans and the Sadducees? Or meeting halfway the scribes and Pharisees? Casting out some demons here but tolerating bondage over there? The devil represents the powers and principalities that effectively control the world.
The devil is not a voice from hell, he doesn’t even live in hell. In the Bible the devil dwells upon the surface of the ground. The devil represents the powers of the world, the natural temptation of its possibilities, like the serpent in the garden, only no longer naive and innocent, but now corrupted by all the human sin and evil since Adam. It now has the pride of its misery, sophisticated doubt and well-developed deconstruction, angry ingenuity and bitter independence. It seems more real. Compared to this, obedience seems unglamourous, unheroic, unattractive. It feels that way to me. I don’t want to be out of it with the rest of the world. I want to get along, and I want to be included.
What are your temptations? Well, what’s your mission? You will be tempted there. Or this: what can’t you live without? What do you depend on? What do you need in order to be happy? What commitments have you made, what vows to yourself? What are you trying to demonstrate with your life? What are you trying to prove? Can you stop all that? Be nothing? Be nobody? Be a failure? Let go. Give up. Surrender. What does that feel like? What have you got left?
This Lenten season I’m not asking you to be more loving, or more obedient, or do more mission and service. I’m asking you to do less, to be less, and be still. I’m inviting you to listen to your temptations. Not to obey them but to learn from them. When you give in to them you silence them, you can’t hear all they have to tell you, nor can you learn about yourself from their pull on you. Don’t be afraid of your temptations, so that you feel you must give in to them, rather resist them in order to keep on hearing them.
Feel your hunger, keep feeling it, and discover how hungry you are and all you hunger for. Feel your thirst, don’t satisfy it, don’t fear it either, as if you must give in to it. Feel your fear, don’t fear your fear, and don’t give in to it in order to get rid of it.
Yes, let your temptations be your guide. Let them show you the tunnel you must enter and keep on going through. The tunnel is Lent. At the other end of it is Easter. The journey through the tunnel is how you learn the will of God, the Word of God, it’s how you recover your power for being loving and obedient. Don’t rush it. For the next five Sundays don’t try to be happy, nor solve the problems of our suffering, but sit with your hunger and thirst and fear, and not be afraid of them, and I invite you to believe that even way down here it is God’s love that is carrying us.
Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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