Precise Bliss

Text: Matthew 4:1-11
Other texts: Genesis 3:1-7

The Gospels are not exactly history. They are a different form of writing, a different genre. They tell a truth, but the order of presentation and the rules of evidence are not the same as a modern history might be. What is left in or left out has a particular purpose. Which is to reveal God in the person and life of Jesus Christ. Every passage in the Bible was a choice made by the original compilers, and a choice repeated century after century by copyists.

So for every one of these passages, we have to ask: why is this here at all? why is it here in this particular place? and—since this is a story in the Bible and therefore about God—what does this passage tell us about God? We should always ask these questions, and especially so when the events in the passage are otherwise unobserved, when there are no witnesses.

As in today’s passage. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he, alone, fasts and meets the devil. This story also appears in variations in Mark and Luke. Evidently the early Christians felt it was important to them. Some tale that circulated among them, some story that told them about Jesus.

Jesus is tempted, our Bible says. In English, the word implies something alluring, some captivating force that tries to seduce upright persons into performing questionable deeds. But these offers by the devil? what is so tempting about them? Is Jesus so hungry for food, security, and power that he finds them appealing?

Rather than tempted, Jesus is tested—the word also means examined. The identity of Jesus is at stake here more than his character. He is being offered a choice. There are two ways of life ahead of him. More about that choice in a moment.

Jesus may not find the offers of the devil tempting, but we would. These things are exaggerated versions of things every creature needs. Food to sustain us, a place to be safe from peril, some control over the forces and structures that affect us. These are human needs. No human being can live without them. If we lack them, our lives are at risk from starvation, danger, and oppression. What the devil offers Jesus is to be free from the conditions of humanity. To be not human. To have instead the power of gods.

This is at the heart of the offer made to the man and woman in the garden. You will be like God, the serpent says, knowing good and evil. This is not primarily an offer for moral wisdom and judgment. It is not a corruption of sweet innocence that leads somehow to divine abilities.

It is instead an offer of power. The appeal of the knowledge of good and evil is the power it gives to see distinctions and to differentiate between consequences. The power to influence the future more predictably and to plan more confidently. It is the power behind politics at its best, behind childrearing, behind inculcation of social values.

But it is also the power behind life-and-death judgments that we feel justified making, the hubris that we can tell what is good and what is evil, and the arrogance to control the lives of others or to take them on the basis of only human knowledge. The power we have been given in the garden is always much less than we think, and more destructive. Even though knowing good and evil, we have not become gods. The serpent lies. Even having succumbed to its temptation, we remain human.

It is not in us to escape our humanity, even with serpentine assistance. The point of this garden story near the beginning of creation is not that we once were perfect, but are no longer. We never have been perfect. We are flesh and blood, with all that messiness and organic-ness. Creatures each of whom is semi-organized and tremendously complicated. We are particular biological beings of the earth and its current conditions of temperature, light, and pressure. Humans. The point of the story of the garden is that we grieve the gap between what we are and what we fantasize it is possible to be.

Stone will not turn into bread. We will not be able to fly off steeples. None of us will be wise and strong enough to rule one harmonious world. Sorrow is sad and pain is painful. It is not helpful for us—it did not help the man and the woman in the garden—to be tempted by contrary promises.

Yet the world is very good. That is what God declares in the first chapter of Genesis. Pain and sorrow are our condition, but they do not spoil life. They are part of it, as limiting but not more so than our inability to fly unaided and make bread from stones. That we can jump and walk and make bread from wheat is not a disability, but a gift. A particular bliss. It is a gift of God to humans: that joy is better than power.

The word for devil is a verbal noun that means literally to throw over or throw across. Thus the devil is a misleader, a diverter. The devil is a distractor. The job of the devil in the story in Matthew is to distract Jesus from his mission, his nature, and his love. And the job of the devil is to distract us in the same way. To turn our attention to what we do not have and to make us wish that we were gods, having infinite resource, pleasure, and power.

Jesus in the Gospels is tested throughout his life by one singular temptation. Shall he give up his ministry? Shall he back off from his humanity? Shall he claim his divine power? He is tested here in the desert, and again with Peter in whom Jesus hears the voice of Satan, and again on the cross when he is taunted to save himself.

Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit as the first event in his ministry. There he meets the devil, who offers Jesus this choice. Which Jesus must make before he begins his work here. The choice is not to turn stone into bread, or not.

The choice is to be human, or not. To maintain solidarity with people he serves, or not.

The story is here to show us that Jesus made an intentional and willing choice. Jesus chose solidarity with us. The rest is history.