Dealing with temptation

The intrepid salesman had finally got his chance to make the really big sale… the kind that makes careers and “legendary” reputations.   As he was ushered into the office of the executive buyer, an assistant brought in a can of soft drink, placed it on the desk, and left again. The atmosphere was cordial, and he knew he was giving his best presentation ever. Then the assistant tapped on the door, re-entered the office and spoke briefly with the executive.  She stood and said, "I apologize, but I have to tend to a matter.  I'll just be a minute or two." And she followed her assistant out of the room.

The sales representative saw her family pictures on her desk.  Then he noticed a contract on her desk.  She had evidently been studying a bid from a competitor.  Leaning forward, he could see the column of figures, but it was obscured by the diet soda can. He was tempted to move the can and see the bottom line of his competitor's bid.   After wrestling with himself a while, he finally decided to take a peek. As he lifted the soda can, he discovered that the can wasn't filled with soda at all.  Instead, the bottom of the can was not attached to the top and the can filled with thousands of little pellets that gushed out, and ran all over the desk cascading down onto the carpet.  His attempt to short cut the competition was exposed.  

We all face temptations every day. And perhaps from time to time we encounter a temptation that is very great and hard to pass up that we then find is very costly to us in some and often many ways. In those moments after we have been found out, we so desire to have a second chance, a “do over” because we know what to do the next time. Perhaps the sad thing is we have not yet done it. And that is where Jesus comes in. Jesus is portrayed as the second chance – the second Adam. It is the ultimate in the “do over” department. Jesus follows the leading of the Spirit and goes out into the wilderness where the nation was in times past to deal with their mistrust, their failings, to discover who God is and thus who they were because of whose they were.

This important because we need to recognize that Jesus has just had his identity confirmed in his baptism by the Father. He has been told who he is. Now he has to live it. Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus as the devout and pious person who goes out into the wilderness to, in a sense, confront his demons. The tempter does come with a series of tests which will push Jesus to assert his true identity or accept the identity the world wants to give him. When taken as a whole, the temptations assert Jesus’ true identity because the tempter repeatedly says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God…” Secure in the knowledge that he knows not only whose he is, but even more from the knowledge that he is loved by his Father, Jesus responds with Scripture and with the lessons that the nation of Israel was taught in that wilderness. Israel remained in the wilderness for forty years learning these lessons and as a punishment for their mistrust of God in spite of the ways in which he had broken the power of the Pharaoh and brought the Israelites out of Egypt and through the Red Sea. Both the Israelites and Jesus emerged from that experience to accept the role and the mission that God would have them fulfill, having strengthen and purified their relationships.

Taken separately, the temptations are tests to see whether Jesus might put his trust somewhere else – that was the failure of the first Adam. The serpent calls into question God’s trustworthiness and apparent unwillingness to be more forthcoming about revealing the master plan but he does not lie to Adam and Eve. The fist Adam seems to believe that there was more to life than God was telling and realized that it was possible to know more and so ate from the forbidden tree. Adam was tempted and chose to give in and to try and make a go of things himself instead of trusting God to be faithful and to provide. Adam through the eating of the forbidden fruit did become more like God knowing good and evil. And then humanity had to take the consequences of the mistrust allowed to grow in human hearts. Jesus is tested as to whether he will allow mistrust to grow within him. Will he make a display of his power? Will he put God to the test by endangering himself before his appointed time? Who will Jesus worship?   The tempter appeals to Jesus’ strengths not to his weaknesses to try and get him to mistrust God and to go it alone and do it himself.  

So where does this leave us? We too need to learn the lessons of the wilderness. We too need to learn the discipline of the wilderness so that we move to purify our relationships with God; that we might be stronger and bolder as witnesses to Jesus’ life death and resurrection. We are tempted to give in and to just be ourselves rather than the holy people God desires to make us. And like Jesus we can learn the lessons of the wilderness to remind each other of the necessity of placing our trust in God because we know whose we are and that we too are loved by God. And lets remind each other that we’re on the way back to that Garden where we will wait and watch as Jesus faces the temptation again only to hear the answer, “Not my will but yours be done”.