March 1, 2020

Helen Jacobi

Lent 1     Matthew 4:1-11

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Jesus is in the wilderness, in the desert for 40 days; alone, hungry. 

Jesus goes into his wilderness time straight after his baptism. 

He has heard the words “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Words of affirmation, words of love, words of promise. A good start for Jesus and his ministry. But then …

“Then he is led into the wilderness to be tempted.” oh. Doesn’t seem like a promising start.

Jesus spends 40 days fasting in the wilderness – what is this supposed to remind us of? The 40 years the people of Israel spent in the desert after escaping from Egypt. The time of the exodus, absolutely crucial and formative for the people of Israel. So this is to be a time of formation and preparation for Jesus too. And also the 40 days Moses spent on Mt Sinai before being given the law and the 10 commandments. (Ex 34:28) Jesus is the new Moses.

So then the “devil” comes along with three challenges. 

If you are the Son of God – if you heard correctly – this is my son the beloved with whom I am well pleased – if that is right – then what is to stop you turning these stones into loaves of bread – after all you are hungry …

hey you could feed the hungry of the world at the same time.

Jesus replies with words of scripture from the book of Deuteronomy 8:3 “one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

– words of Moses to the people of Israel reminding them that God fed them in the wilderness, and showed them they were completely reliant on God. Just as Moses taught the people so Jesus is teaching the devil. He will rely on God thank you very much; not on his own power or desires.

The devil responds with like – he then quotes scripture back at Jesus – he takes him up to the top of the Temple and says well,

let’s see if this scripture you quote is worth anything and he quotes some lines from Psalm 91

For he will command his angels concerning you
   to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

But the devil doesn’t quote the next line of the psalm

You will tread on the lion and the adder,
   the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

(Hidden humour from the gospel writer Matthew I think)

Jesus says – do not test God (Dt 6:16);

I the human Jesus am not God, and I will not put myself in God’s place. Adam and Eve made that mistake way back at the beginning of time.

The devil tries one last time; I will give you all the world if you will worship me. Angry this time, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy (6:13-14) “worship God alone” and sends the devil away “Away with you Satan!” And the angels came and waited on him, fed him, helped him.

The temptations of Jesus are all things that will take him away from who he really is. The reality of how much he believes that he is beloved is what is being tested here. Will he rely totally on God to supply his needs? Will he be tempted to have a go at a few magic tricks? Will he trade the kingdom of God for the kingdoms of the world?

Or will he remain the faithful and beloved one. It is the human Jesus who is being tested here; he was hungry, tired and might have been very ready to try a different way.

The temptations are also all things that we want Jesus and God to be or do. We want to be able to pray that God will magic away all our problems; stop the Covid 19 virus; stop the bushfires; stop war; stop people from dying.

Turn stone into bread – feed the hungry. Intervene when are foolish enough to have thrown ourselves from the Temple by destroying our planet – we are in freefall and we expect God to hold us up.

We want Jesus to bless our kingdoms and their splendor – our successes, rather than the Jesus way of humility and love.

Stanley Hauerwas says “the devil is but another name for our impatience. We want bread, we want to force God’s hand to rescue us, we want peace – and we want all this now. But Jesus is our bread, he is our salvation, and he is our peace.” [1]

In Take this bread Sara Miles recounts her unexpected and totally surprising encounter with Jesus as bread.

She opens her book with: “One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans – except that up until that moment I’d led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.” [2]

Later she says “I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told. But neither could I go away: for some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again. I wanted it all the next day after my first communion, and the next week, and the next. It was a sensation as urgent as physical hunger, pulling me back to the table at St Gregory’s through my fear and confusion.” [3]

Those of you reading Sara Miles’ book this Lent will follow her journey from this amazing day and she what she does as a logical next step – feed others, from the altar of the church.

Which ends up being a bit shocking for the regular churchgoers.

Thinks about today’s passage and who the devil might be, as you read her story.

Those of you reading Climate Church, Climate World by Jim Antal may have read his commentary on another bread story – Jesus feeding the 5000. [4] He comments that Jesus used what he had – a basket of fish and bread – gave thanks and began to share it.

And Antal assumes others then did the same. Working with what they had and then joining with their neighbor, piece by piece, person by person. We do not need Jesus to turn stone into bread, or miraculously feed 5000 people. We have been given the tools to use, the bread to share. It is our choice what we do with it.

As we begin our Lenten journey our world is facing the anxiety, not just of climate change but of the Covid 19 virus. There are many temptations in front of us: panic, obsessive reading of accounts in the media; denial; fear. Let’s help each other with those temptations; help each other to stay calm and real. Stay connected and tell each other what we need – and be a community to each other. It feels like we might be entering a wilderness time; but we can be the angels who waited on Jesus. We can attend to each other and journey through to the other side.

[1] Matthew p 55 

[2] p.xi

[3] p60

[4] p26