Day 1158 - Bread, Glory, and The Thirst for Life

A consideration of the temptation of Jesus after his baptism for the bible study group at Second Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, TN.

The reading: Luke 4:1-13

Fred Craddock noted that Luke approached the gospel as a preacher and theologian. Luke seeks to bring to the listener themes about the relationship of church and synagogue, Jesus to the church, the church to the larger world, how the Holy Spirit relates to the life of Jesus and the church, and more.

My predilection, however, is to eschew the use of the word “church” except in its universal sense, the body of all believers. I prefer to talk about the church as particular congregations of believers who seek to know and perfect the way they walk in the world among real, individual persons as a witness to the grace God has shared with us.

Luke’s relation of the temptation of Jesus after his baptism seems peculiarly out of synchronization with Luke’s purpose unless we understand it as a validation of every act Jesus makes and every word he speaks between his baptism and his death. We could as Mark did and leap entirely over the history of the first three chapters of Luke and begin with his baptism and this reading.

This passage has a power to it, and an atmosphere that seems to clarify the divine and steadfast loyalty of Jesus to God the father as well as what is his mission and exactly where the powers of opposition to it lie. They do not lie in internal conflict, but the conflict of the external desires of humanity for bread, glory and its thirst for life. To a great extent we will hear from Luke they arise from the desire to escape poverty and the lure of wealth. Luke paints us a sublime and subtle differentiation between the power to resist evil by the man Jesus and ourselves. This event stands alone validating the full authority of Jesus as the “new Adam.”

Luke 4:1-4 describes the temptations after the baptism of Jesus. Jesus has been baptized and immediately goes into the wilderness. The words “full of the Holy Spirit” bring to mind the voice from heaven as he was baptized when the Spirit descended upon him. The “wilderness” and forty days evokes the forty days of Moses on the mountain without food confronted by the Lord (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 9:9), the forty-year travail of the people of Israel in the wilderness before they entered the promised land (Deut. 8:2-6), and the flight of Elijah to the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:4-8). The hunger for bread evokes the cry of Israel against God asking for food when the lord gave them quail and manna. 

If we read the whole passage deeply, it also clearly evokes a comparison to the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1-7) and our own personal temptations. The validation of the absolute obedience of Jesus to God unfolds here. It characterizes what separates him from us.  In essence, these scenes prove the credibility of his mission and qualification to do it.

Luke 4:5-8 steps up the intensity of the temptation. The connection to the temptation in the Garden of Eden emerges here. Though Luke uses the Greek word for devil through out the passage, we should acknowledge the power of evil in the world is characterized variedly in scripture. Evil is described as tendencies within ourselves. It is attributed to an external being outside our self, to a powerful angel gone astray, or to a cosmic force or forces allied against the will of God. Perhaps we should be somewhat humble about attributing evil to external sources rather than intrinsic, human sources.

In my sense, attributing the power of evil to external beings rather than the pull of the world on our desires diminishes the power of sin and the reality of the intrinsic human condition. The central key throughout scripture is that the evil in the world is a powerfully strong force that appeals to human desire encouraging us to pull us away from God.

The power of this passage should not be lost. This is not some divine part of God being tempted, this is the human Jesus facing the concrete forces that pull at the human longing seeking to separate us from God. In each temptation Jesus falls back upon a passage closely connected to the Law that repulses the temptation.

It is noteworthy that Jesus quotes Deut. 6:13-14 as a retort to the tempter. This temptation represents the intent to have Jesus acknowledge power comes from someone other than God.

Then we come to Luke 4:9-12 and the temple. Jesus is tempted to leap from the pinnacle of the temple so that angels of the Lord will protect him. This would demonstrate his divinity by his own connection to God, yet would destroy the unconditional love and the intent to use the cloak of humility as defense. Jesus refutes the core heresy of the temptation, saying we fail if we put the Lord to the test.

Jesus declines the temptation to use his power to reveal himself to Israel and Judah at the Temple in Jerusalem through an act that is contrary to his calling to bring people to him by faith. wouldn't succumbing to it invalidate the message of the entire gospel about the thirst for life - dying and being resurrected by God?

Then we come to the prophetic conclusion of that truth, verse 13. Here in the early verses of his gospel story, Luke gives the first signal of what lies ahead of Jesus, the opportune time marked by the beginning of our Lenten contemplation.

Reflection:  These quotations by Jesus in response to temptation cement the connection to the Exodus story where Israel was humbled by falling short doubting the steadfast love of the Lord to sustain his people yet receiving the gift of manna. The parallel to the first temptation in the Garden of Eden is inescapable.

Luke forces us to place greater significance to this event, the temptation of Jesus. This event draws a human parallel to the acts of our human disobedience, of falling to the power of sin by the people of Israel. This series of resisted temptations demonstrates that this man Jesus, the new Adam, succeeds where humanity will always fail. Jesus is glorified. This account takes on a significance that is almost beyond Luke’s focus. These events demonstrate this exemplary yet unobtainable power of Jesus to resist temptations that every human would succumb. It points to the message of the good news that will unfold in Luke.

 It sets us up for the greatest gift, something not even mentioned in the account, the gift of grace, the gift of forgiveness that comes from the unrequited love of God.

We come away from this mindful of the temptations we all face as we enter the season of Lent. It ought to give us pause as we leave the Ash Wednesday service with the cross marked on our forehead with oil and ashes, to be gracious to our fellows and thankful to the Lord that the glorification of Jesus is our own unjustified glorification.

While this story is a kind of theophany, testifying to the power of God; it also a sobering reminder of how real temptation is. It reminds us how the focus of our thirst for life is constantly torn between the comfort of personal “glory” and the gratification of our material desires and being led by the Holy Spirit that guides our work to be about God’s business.

Amen