Follow Me. I Know the Way Out.
Hunger, powerlessness, and inadequacy: These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with. Very often, we focus on the battle and Jesus’ subsequent victory and overlook the temptation of the desert itself.
For us, going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food and an ample supply of water. Jesus had no such store of supplies. He was alone and fasting. Fasting allowed him to experience need. On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people, and that centering one’s life around physical desires is a great deprivation (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Bread is a figure for the communion of friendship and community. This deprivation of human contact is a crucial part of his “desert experience”. He could turn those rocks to bread, but he would eat alone. Notice Satan does not want to give Jesus bread (communion) he simply is tempting Jesus to assuage his physical hunger.
Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness. Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries in exchange for devotion. Look at what being submissive to God had gotten him: hunger pangs and loneliness. Milton’s Satan would have whispered into Jesus’ ear: “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”. He replies to Satan, quoting again from Deuteronomy: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.” How often our fear of being powerless leads us to believe that getting power is the answer rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God. Too often, even “good causes” can become soiled with the ego of creating a utopia.
The final temptation came in the form quite unlike all the others. It was the showdown. In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence, and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability. Just give me a sign of your love! Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well. Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test. Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:
“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Satan quotes from Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: You shall not put your Lord God to the test”. The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him. How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon?
This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat. Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired. But like Jesus, we may be for a time in the desert; however, simply because the journey gets tough doesn’t mean we walk it alone. At every turn, the community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert. Consider the well-known story among those in recovery from addiction:
A man had fallen into a pit and could not escape. The first person who passes by offers him comforting words and moves on. The second person writes a prayer for the man and drops it into the pit and also leaves. The third person jumps into the pit with the man. Astonished, the man in the pit yells “How is this supposed to help?! Now we are both stuck here.” The man replies, “Yes. But I have been down here before, and I know the way out”.
