This week's thinking bit... |
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This week's thinking bit... |
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AN
INTERESTING SHARED AGENDA... The story rests on some shared assumptions between the devil and Jesus: that Jesus is the Son of God (if not, why tempt him in such a way?); that scripture shows us God’s will (it silences the devil); and that the kingdoms of this age are to some extent influenced by the devil. It’s also worth a thought that the only way we could know of these temptations is if Jesus shared with his disciples this most intimate of experiences of his journey...
The temptations are actual quite subtle.. they didn’t demand of Jesus gluttony, debauchery, outrageous or obvious things... they were about proper desires fulfilled in an improper way:
The devil tempts Jesus to feed people - which he does later on with the 5,000 and the 7,000; and talks of himself as “the bread of life”
The devil tempts Jesus to try and gain the world - which he does later by his passion as the world was redeemed and won back for God through his sacrifice
The devil tempts Jesus to ‘show God off’ to use flashy miracles to draw the crowds - and later we see huge crowds following him hoping for healings, we see him raising the dead, casting out demons.
The subtly of the temptations is not that the devil asks Jesus to do the unreasonable, but the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way... What of us? How often are we tempted by second best - or putting things in the wrong order, or being distracted from what we know we need to do by something good...? We know we ought to say our prayers, but it’s such a lovely day, let’s go for a walk instead... we know we need to phone a friend or visit someone who’s poorly, but the garden needs digging...
Perhaps we do well to see these temptations of Jesus as a kid of condensed version of his journey from manger to cross... and let us also reflect that we face the same kind of temptations on our journey:
to dilute the quality of our commitment - even to shift our commitment;
to offer to God what is satisfactory rather than what is the best;
or even having caught the vision of the way things might be, to be tempted to rush ahead with impatience trying to achieve
God’s goals by means which are alien to his character...
such were the nature of the temptations which faced Jesus, and they are there for us too, during our journey through life, so this Lent let’s pause to reflect on the subtly of proper desires fulfilled in inappropriate ways...
Fr Andrew Perry
Rector,
St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea
