Temptation

First Sunday in Lent, Luke 4:1-13

“. . . for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” – Luke 4:18

During the late 1990s, I gave in to temptation. I kept hearing stories about people who had earned a huge profit in the stock market. These were the same people who drove new SUVs and went on tropical vacations every winter, while I chugged around in an old Chevy and spent my winters buying cold medicine for the children. 

One day, an idea came to mind: I would delay the purchase of a car, defer a vacation, and open up an account in “The Internet Fund,” a mutual fund buying into new technology. I did. My account performed very well. 

Then, I read an article in a financial journal about how much more flexibility I would have if I opened a brokerage account so I could buy and sell the best-performing securities. So I closed my account in The Internet Fund and opened an online trading account. I started reading articles by financial journalists.  Based on their analysis, I purchased shares of stocks. Some performed well, some held their own, and a few went into a tailspin and down in flames. 

After a year or so, I closed my online trading account, with an overall net loss. I was one of the lucky ones: my investing hobby never jeopardized my house payment, or even my church pledge. But my family could have taken a nice vacation with it. I could have traded in the old car with a few less towing trips to the auto repair shop. 

During my brief foray into the financial trenches, I knew that I was ignoring good advice I had received from my dad. At a deeper level, I knew that you can’t time the market, and that the high cost of frequent trading minimizes the benefit of owning stocks. But it was a time when new technology seemed to be overcoming old rules, and was just too novel, too exciting, and too tempting.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and, today, in Luke, we read about Jesus experiencing temptation.  These are narratives that tell us about Jesus’ human nature. He wasn’t a disembodied ghost who roamed the earth with no experience of human emotions. One purpose of our text is to assure us that Jesus understood physical needs, appetites, and desires.

A struggle in the wilderness was not a new thing when Jesus experienced it, but rather part of the tradition Jesus had received. Jesus knew about Moses’ forty days on the mountain without food, Elijah’s forty days escape to the mountain of God, and Israel’s forty years of struggle in the wilderness. A struggle in the wilderness in preparation for one’s vocation is a part of many religious traditions, and might be thought of as a ritual of spiritual purification.

Much has been written about Jesus’ temptations, and how similar temptations manifest themselves in our lives. The first temptation is usually said to be the temptation of personal security, the attempt at all costs to possess that which will satisfy our physical appetites, and to give first place in our hearts to those things.  The second temptation is often labeled the temptation of power, the desire to control as much of our world for our purposes as we can.  The third temptation is sometimes called the temptation of privilege, exploiting our relationships or position of leadership in order to get attention or prove how important we are.

Theologian and preacher Fred Craddock writes, “It is important to keep in mind that a real temptation beckons us to do that about which much good can be said.  Stones to bread – the hungry hope so; take political control – the oppressed hope so; leap from the temple (and be saved) – those longing for proof of God’s power among us hope so.  All this is to say that a real temptation is an offer not to fall but to rise.  The tempter in Eden did not ask, ‘Do you wish to be as the devil?’ but, ‘Do you wish to be as God?’”[1]

Christians may make good progress in the battle against the temptations of possessions, power, and privilege.  Yet, they may lose the war when confronted with another temptation, perhaps the greatest temptation of all. It’s the temptation of pride.

Some of you are familiar with the writings of C.S. Lewis, the famous 20th century British professor and theologian.  His book The Screwtape Letters records the fictional correspondence between the Devil, named “Screwtape,” and one his junior officers, his nephew “Wormwood.”  Wormwood has been assigned as a “tempter” to one particular human being.  His job is to do whatever it takes to lead that person down the path to hell.

For a while it seems that Wormwood is making poor progress.  His charge becomes a new Christian, and is growing in faith.  In a letter to the distraught tempter, Uncle Screwtape offers him this advice: “I see only one thing to do at the moment.  Your patient has become humble; have you drawn attention to the fact?  All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility.  Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By Golly! I’m being humble,” and almost immediately pride – pride at his own humility – will appear.  If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt – and so on, through as many stages as you please.  But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humor and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.”[2]

Like C.S. Lewis, the Gospel of Luke identifies the source of human temptation in a powerful spiritual being.  Luke, like Matthew, calls him “the devil” (“the slanderer”); Mark calls him “Satan” (“the adversary”).  In other parts of scripture, the source of temptation is described in different ways.  It is identified with tendencies residing within each human, a powerful angel gone astray, a cosmic power, or forces organized against the will of God.[3]

If you’re like most people, then you’ve probably wondered how literally to take these descriptions.  Is there a spiritual reality apart from human beings that is the source of temptation?  Or is temptation really the result of human weakness, a manifestation of human sin?  If there is a Satan, is he or she a definable, personal spiritual being? Or is Satan an “it,” another name for the impersonal, but very real force of evil in our world?

Putting aside all the academic discussion, I’ll let you know that I believe there’s more to evil that can be neatly explained and organized in a textbook. My experience of evil was tangible from the moment in childhood when a group of older boys decided it would be fun to surround and punch me until I cried. I lived with a father who bore his own emotional scars as child refugee of World War II. I’ve worked in a congregation in which ministers regularly became ill and even died, in a pattern that could be traced in records for more than 100 years, due to that congregation’s culture of conflict and scapegoating. Today, I watch the news out of Ukraine, and see things like a tank run over the car of a senior citizen, and hear things like the screams of children after a bomb blast. I’m quite willing to believe in an evil force at work in our world, whether he or she goes by name of Satan, the Devil, Voldemort or Vladamir.

When I pause long enough over this traditional Lenten scripture to listen to what is going on in my mind and body, I realize that I am not some isolated observer of these things, but that Satan is on the prowl on the edges of my life, watching and waiting for an opportune time. It’s like the prayer request I read this week out of Ukraine, first to stop the aggressor, but then wisely to respond “with Christian character, and not from human hate.”[4] I know that if hate grows in my heart, then I will become that against which I fight. And so for me and for you, a portion of Jesus’ model of prayer is as pertinent today as it has ever been: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

NOTES

[1] Fred B. Craddock, “Luke,” Interpretation Commentary, Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, p. 56.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters,” chapter XIV.

[3] Craddock, p. 55.

[4] Jayson Casper, “As Russia Invades Ukraine, Pastors Stay to Serve, Pray … and Resist,” Christianity Today, 24 Feb. 2022,   https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/february/russia-ukraine-invasion-putin-war-christian-churches-prayer.html?fbclid=IwAR2DJsmuN4UU0S5xw2siWFWS-qc8FFPsu23egLZHb7vBoppcqKIjSnOQhHY accessed 2 Mar. 2022.

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