What does it mean to be messiah?

First Sunday in Lent, February 21 2010

Deuteronomy 26.1-11 | Psalm 91.1-2, 9-16 | Romans 10:8b-13 | Luke 4:1-13

Rev Páraic Réamonn

Every time Roger Federer walks out on the court, it’s another opportunity to demonstrate that he is
probably the finest tennis player the world has ever known; and almost every time, he does that.

It’s tempting to read Luke’s story of Jesus and the devil in the wilderness on the Federer model.
Three sneaky serves from the devil; three devastating returns from Jesus. Game, set and match.

And we have some excuse for doing that.

Luke places his account of the temptations of Jesus almost immediately after the story of his
baptism, with only a brief excursus to outline his family tree, tracing his origins back to Adam and
so to God. But here in the Auditoire it’s taken us more than 40 days to make the same journey; and
all that time, the lectionary has been rubbing our noses in the reality of who Jesus is.

Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning to make manifest, to make obvious, to make clear.
And in the five Sundays after Epiphany, we’ve been led from the baptism of Jesus through the
wedding in Cana in John’s gospel, then back to Luke for a confrontation in the Nazareth synagogue,
then Jesus calling his first disciples, and – last but not least – Luke’s story of the transfiguration,
which puts Jesus right up there with Moses and Elijah.

Jesus is God’s beloved son, the messiah of Israel. If we haven’t got that by now, we haven’t been
paying attention.

But the question in today’s story from Luke’s gospel isn’t whether Jesus is God’s son; the question
is what that means. And for Jesus of Nazareth, probably the finest messiah the world has ever
known, the answer isn’t clear.

How is he to be messiah? How is he to bring about the liberation of Israel and of the world?

We can picture the temptations, if we like, as a play with two characters who encounter each other
in the wilderness of Judea and talk. Or, thinking perhaps of our own experience, and remembering
that Jesus after 40 days fasting wasn’t just hungry but famished, we may prefer to imagine instead a
set of seductive ideas that take advantage of the aching hollow between his ribs to creep into his
mind.

If you are the son of God...

Why shouldn’t Jesus satisfy his hunger with a little bread, and wouldn’t it be great if he ruled the
world instead of the hated Romans, and how impressive would it be if he flung himself off the
temple roof and a multitude of the heavenly host flew down to rescue him?

The temptations of Jesus in the wilderness echo the temptations of the Israelites in the wilderness.
They too were tested about trusting God to provide, and worshipping only God, and moving
forward into a way of life under the rule of a God of justice, mercy, and peace. And the passages
from scripture Jesus quotes in answering the devil come from the story of Israel in the wilderness.

“One does not live by bread alone”: This comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8, where Moses
reminds the people how God humbled them by letting them hunger and then feeding them with
manna, so that they might understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that
comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut 8.3)

“You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”: This comes from
Deuteronomy 6, where Moses warns the people that when God brings them into the land and they
have eaten their fill, they must take care not to forget the Lord who brought them out of the house
of slavery. (Deut 6.10-13)

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose; and in the third temptation, he does that, quoting Psalm
91, which the choir sang as an introit (Hymn 55):

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their
hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. (Ps 91.11f)

Being the devil, of course, he misuses the text; and the psalm itself corrects him. Only those who set
their love upon God can trust him to deliver them. But Jesus goes further still, quoting more words
of Moses to the people from Deuteronomy 6: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you
tested him at Massah.” (Deut 6.16)

Jesus chooses to trust God for his bread. He chooses to ascribe all power and majesty to God, not to
himself. He chooses to believe in a God who is not to be tested – and whom he has no need to test,
because God is with him always.

The struggle in the wilderness, captured by Luke in 250 telegrammatic words, is precisely about
what it means to be messiah.

The temptations of Jesus in the desert were live options in first-century Palestine, ruled as it was,
either directly or indirectly, by the Romans. The Jews of his day looked back to the exodus from
Egypt and the return from Babylon as key moments when God had acted to save them. But when
they, or many of them, contemplated the current reality of life in the land, they were convinced that,
for all they were home, really they were still in exile. Salvation lay still in the future.

Different Jewish groups had different responses to Roman rule. The writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls
at Qumran separated themselves from a wicked world and waited quietly for their God to act. The
Herods and the chief priests sought to get along with their Roman overlords as well as they could
(and to do as well as they could out of Roman rule) and hoped that God would somehow validate or
at least excuse their compromises. Jews of a more revolutionary temperament said their prayers,
sharpened their swords, and got ready to fight a holy war, expecting God to give them victory as he
had with Judas Maccabaeus two hundred years before. It was by no means clear exactly how
someone who believed himself to be the Lord’s anointed ought to act, what his programme should
be, or how he should set about implementing it.

Jesus can’t have been indifferent to the plight of his fellow Jews, as they were systematically
crushed, economically, politically and militarily, by Rome. The temptation to be the sort of messiah
many wanted must have been real and strong. But it was, as he came to see it, precisely a
temptation.
Thus, the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness prefigure the temptations of his life and ministry.

Jesus refused to work remarkable signs to impress the public; when people asked him to do so, he
saw it as a snare and a delusion, evidence of their hardness of heart. He did not engage in violent
subversion against Rome, with world domination in view. Nor did he puff his own consequence.
When a certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to
him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Luke 18.18f.)

Jesus was announcing and inaugurating the reign of God in a new way, a way that would
ultimately lead him to the cross.

Third, then, the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness also prefigure the temptations of his
passion and death.

He is tested in the garden of Gethsemane. Isn’t there an easier way to save the world? To his Father
he prays, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.”
(Luke 22.42) To his followers he says, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” (Luke
22.40)

When they realize he is about to be arrested, they ask, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?”
One of them strikes a servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. But Jesus says, “No more of
this!” (Luke 22.49-51) The temptation here is to fight fire with fire, violence with counter-violence.
But the cycle of violence has no exit. It offers no salvation. It goes against everything he has taught:
love your enemies; don’t retaliate; live under the reign of God’s forgiveness, forgiving those who
sin against you.

When Jesus is arraigned before Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, he is again tempted, tempted to
compromise with power. Caiaphas and Herod knew exactly what was involved in such
compromise. It was the fine line they walked in ruling as Jews under Roman authority. But for
Jesus this is to worship the rule of the devil instead of God’s.

And when, finally, he is on the cross, the Jewish leaders scoff at him, saying, “He saved others; let
him save himself if he is the messiah of God, his chosen one!” (Luke 23.35). The Roman soldiers
and even one of the Jewish rebels hanging beside him join in. The temptation again is to test God;
but even more than that, not to follow through his calling to the end. Jesus can be the messiah of
Israel and the saviour of the world, as he has come to understand, only by going all the way through
death to new life.

And that, of course, is the point: new life for the world, and new life for us.

How are we, in this season of Lent, to tap into this new life? The short answer is that we don’t have
to. We just have to allow it to tap into us.

Here’s a slightly longer answer.

It was his single-minded commitment to God’s will for him (which is really what it means for Jesus
to be without sin) that characterized the whole course of his life and finally led him to the cross.
And we are called to be similarly single-minded. God calls us to know, love and worship him, and
in this way to discover our true humanity and to reflect his image in the world.
Temptations lure us to lower our sights and settle for second-best or worse: to fall short of the call
to true humanness, to be less than we can be. Most of us are mediocre sinners: we aren’t
warmongers, child molesters or Bernie Madoff.

But we shouldn’t settle for being mediocre Christians.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that Lent began when the followers of Jesus had stopped expecting too
much from God or themselves.

They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian,
and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large. They blended
in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out
loud.

Taylor says we should treat Lent as a time to spring-clean our souls. But Lent isn’t so much a
season to do religious things as to be open to the transformative things God wants to do for us. We
have Lent each year, so that again and again God can offer us the salvation that only God can give.

The letter of James has some encouraging words for us:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have
its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing... Blessed is
anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of
life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. (James 1.2-4, 12)

But Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it better:

...The Bible tells only two temptation stories, the temptation of the first man and the
temptation of Christ, that is, the temptation that led to humanity’s fall, and the temptation
which led to Satan’s fall. All other temptations in human history have to do with these two
stories of temptation. Either we are tempted in Adam or we are tempted in Christ. Either the
Adam in me is tempted – in which case we fall. Or the Christ in us is tempted – in which
case Satan is bound to fall.

Sources

All sermons are plagiarized; but some sermons are more plagiarized than others. This one draws on:

Herbert McCabe, “A Sermon for Ash Wednesday”, God Still Matters (London/New York: Continuum,
2002), pp.223-225.
NT Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996)
—, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992)
Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2001)
—, Twelve Months of Sundays: Reflections on Bible Readings, Year C (London: SPCK, 2000)

William Martin Aiken, “Luke and the opportune time: reading the temptation story as preface to
kingdom and prologue to passion” (http://girardianlectionary.net/res/aiken_luke4.doc)
Kate Huey, “Wilderness companions” (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-21-2010.html)
Paul J Nuechterlein, “Lead us not into temptation”
(http://girardianlectionary.net/year_c/lent1c_2004_ser.htm)
Preaching peace, Lent 1, Year C (http://www.preachingpeace.org/yearc/lent1.htm)
Preparing for Sunday, First Sunday of Lent C (http://liturgy.slu.edu/1LentC022110/theword.html)