No to Superman, Yes to Jesus

Matthew 4:1-11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Temptation of Jesus

4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
    and serve only him.’”

11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Honestly, I don’t know what I think of the devil. I mean, does he even exist? Is he the snake in the garden? The red guy with the horns and the pitchfork? That little demon on our left shoulder, whispering in our ears that we should eat that cake, drink the beer, cut in line, run the light? Or is it not really a being, but rather this thing outside of ourselves that we’ve personified in order to explain why we do things we shouldn’t do? Or is it some part of ourselves, inside of ourselves, that tells us we’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not wealthy or pretty or hardworking enough? Or maybe the devil is that evil we can’t explain any other way - the cancer, the war, the child hunger? Maybe it’s the Powers and Principalities — those systems and structures that we feel powerless to, or the -isms of racism and consumerism and ablism and sexism? 

Or maybe the devil is just a scapegoat to get us out of feeling responsible for our own actions.

Who made the devil and why does “he” exist?  I have no idea.

I do think, though, that the devil, Satan, the “tempter,” Lucifer, our egos, or the darker sides of ourselves, whatever we want to call him or her or it, reveals to us our true humanity. And maybe that’s not all bad. What if, deep in the wilderness, high on that mountain, Satan was giving Jesus a choice, a choice to be human, and in that choice is revealed our chance to be connected to God and to each other. Maybe the tempter is that bad thing that gives us the opportunity to choose the good.

Let’s just think about it for a minute. Let’s at least entertain the thought.

What if Jesus had said, “yes. Sure, Satan, whoever or whatever you are, I will take that bread”? What if he said, “Yes, Satan, I think I will jump off this building and see if the angels will help me fly”? What if he’d accepted Satan’s offer from atop the highest mountain to rule the world and everything in it?

What if? What if Jesus became that thing that fixes all of our problems for us? 

What if Jesus was our President who could regulate the stock market and negotiate world peace and house the homeless? Or our superhero who could save us from our car wrecks and our runaway trains and our evildoers? 

Wouldn’t it make life so much…easier?

Would it have been so bad for Jesus to have said “yes” to these questions from the devil? 

Where once there were stones, there’s now bread. What’s so bad about that? Bread’s not such a bad thing. 

Where once Jesus was stuck on a high tower, now he can fly, zoom from place to place, defying the laws of gravity and physics and time and place? He could get to everyone in need and save them, like the Flash or Superman.

Where once we had tyrants and homicidal kings and demagogues, we now have Jesus, powerful but benevolent, just, fair ruler of the world. He’d make everyone equal, he’d feed all the hungry, wars would cease and, like Woody Guthrie says, we’d all get a job and a pension. What’s so bad about that? 

What if Jesus had said yes to these things? Would it really have been all that bad?

Why does Jesus reject Satan and his offers, really? 

I mean, I know he’s Satan, and that’s bad. I know he’s the embodiment of all things evil and corrupt and broken. But are the things he’s offering Jesus really all that bad in and of themselves? Don’t we want Jesus to do these things for us? 

When we hear of starving children in Syria, what’s wrong with wanting a little bit of bread?

When we hear of cancer diagnosis, what’s wrong with wanting a little bit of death-defying healing?

When we are subject to tyrants and power-hungry rulers, what’s wrong with wanting Jesus to be in charge for once?

What if Jesus accepted Satan’s offers? Would it have been all that bad? 

These are the temptations of Jesus. And this is our temptation: to turn Jesus into a superhero, a president, or even a defier of all the laws of nature. We want a Jesus who can heal our cancer, stop our car wrecks, give us world peace, and feed all the hungry children. And sometimes, that’s the Jesus we get. Sometimes, Jesus steps in, and somehow, I don’t know how, the hungry are fed and the cancer is cured and the derailed train gets back on the tracks. But what about those times when Jesus doesn’t? What about those times when the cancer comes back and the kids freeze to death and the bombs explode and the stock market falls? What about those times when the virus spreads and the drug cartels win and the fires burn? Where’s Jesus then? Where’s Jesus when we need a superhero? 

Sometimes, I think Jesus is still on that mountain, wrestling with Satan. Sometimes I think that Jesus is still up there, seriously contemplating defying gravity and ruling the world and making bread out of nothing. He could go back anytime. He could become more than human at any point. Jesus is really and truly tempted to be our superhero. Jesus is really and truly tempted to be our president. He’s tempted to turn stones to bread and to feed himself and everybody else that’s hungry. 

But Jesus says, “No.” 

I’m not sure why Jesus heals some and not others. I’m not sure why some people live a life of comfort and privilege while others struggle. 

But I think I know why Jesus said, “No,” on that mountaintop at the end of his forty days and forty nights. 

To say yes would have meant that he denied his own hunger. To say yes to the bread and to the flying and the world domination would have meant that he was different from human, that he wasn’t really tempted, that he could have whatever he wanted without really ever needing it. He’d be the kid who’s supposed to be living on his own but his dad still pays his cell phone bill. He’d be the Son of God who only kind of sort of maybe almost gets what it’s like to be human. He’d be the Savior who’s supposed to know what it’s like to be human without actually having been so. He’d be a demigod, half god and half human, but not fully either.

Let me try to explain.

If we always get what we want, we never really experience what it means to really want it. 

My kids always say they’re starving. But they have no idea what that really means. 

Dan and I comment about how broke we are. But we have no idea what poverty is really like.

If Jesus got whatever he commanded, if Jesus could turn stones into bread and fly off of buildings and rule the world, he’d have no real idea of what it’s like to be hungry, what it’s like to be bound by gravity, what it’s like to be subject to Roman rule. 

Jesus was bound by these things. Because Jesus chose to be. 

This temptation in the wilderness is Jesus’ choosing to be human. Choosing to be limited. Choosing to be Emmanuel, “God for us and with us and in us.” 

If Jesus had said yes, he’d be our superhero. Our president. Our czar of the world. But he wouldn’t be our Savior. He’d be something else, something other. Something different. 

And that’s a real temptation for us. So often we want Jesus to be something other than God-with-us. We want Jesus to swoop in and fix our relationship, solve our money problems, cure our diseases and protect our children. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s ok, it’s normal, to want these things. Jesus wanted these things. But Jesus didn’t want them if it meant being something or someone other than who he really was. He didn’t want them if it meant being anything more or less than being human, bound by human frailty and weakness and fragility and brokenness. Jesus chose to be human. 

And I think that’s what Lent is all about. It’s us taking some time to choose to be human. It’s time to recognize that we are bound by time and space and history. We are limited. We are broken. We can’t turn stones into bread and we can’t fly and we can’t rule the world. 

Whether we give things up or do something extra or fast or volunteer or do whatever kind of religious discipline we want during Lent, we’re going to fail, we’re going to be distracted by our own desire to be more than human, to be more than broken, to be more than weak and failing. Lent is an opportunity to set our sights high, and then to watch as we fail. It’s a time to choose our own humanity. 

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We should absolutely try. And then we should watch as the grace of God catches us when we fail. 

It’s what Jesus did during those forty days and forty nights. The Spirit drove him out into the wilderness and left him alone. After his baptism and hearing the voice of God and this idealistic, amazing, theophany, after this powerful proclamation that he is God’s Son, the beloved, Jesus is dragged into the wilderness in order to test his humanity. He’s left with nothing but his memory of the word of God in his mind to feed and sustain him. He’s left with only the things that we have, our stories, our relationships, our memories, and the word of God. We don’t have super powers. We don’t have unlimited strength or the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We can’t shoot lasers from our eyes or webs from our wrists. We can’t fix the world’s problems with a signature and a promise. We’re just people, doing the best we can with what we have. 

And as Jesus wrestles with the devil in the wilderness, he wrestles with his own humanity, his own limitations, and he chooses them. He didn’t have to. And that makes all the difference. He chooses the stones even though he’s hungry. He chooses to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground, even though he wants to fly. He chooses to be a disruptive peasant insurrectionist even though it is going to get him crucified. He chooses his humanity. 

And in that choice is our freedom. In that choice is our salvation. 

Because God chose to be human, God chose to be with us. God chose to be one of us. And that means that God can fully relate to us, and we can fully relate to God. There is no more division. Now, God knows what it’s like to be hungry. God knows what it’s like to be limited. God knows what it’s like to not be able to fix all of the world’s problems. God knows. 

I know this is small comfort to those of us who are actively suffering right now. That God is with us in our cancer and our car wrecks, our hunger and our divorces, doesn’t make us glad that these things are happening. That God is with us doesn’t make us stop longing for the day when we are fed and cured and renewed and there’s world peace. 

God is with us in the longing, too. 

But this hungry, longing, frustrated, hurting, crucified God is the God we get. The God who crosses the barrier between us and the other, the God who crosses the bridge between us and the sacred, the God who entered in to death so that death doesn’t have the last word is the God that comes to us through Jesus Christ. God says yes to God’s humanity, and this means everything to us. God is finally with us. 

This Lent, let’s practice. Let’s practice our humanity. The parts of ourselves that long to be perfect, that long to fix and to feed. And the parts of ourselves that fail to be perfect, that fail to fix, that fail to feed. 

May this be our time in the wilderness when we say "no" to the thing that wears us down, and “yes” to our humanity, and that includes our failures and our pain and our need for forgiveness. Jesus is with us in the wilderness. Jesus has said yes. 

This Lent, let us also, say yes.

Thanks be to God.