Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 21, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Every time I read or hear the account from Luke that we just heard of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness I’m shocked. I’m shocked to hear, of all things, the devil quoting scripture! How can the devil quote scripture? Isn’t scripture supposed to show us to path to salvation, to show us God’s way? How can the devil use God’s way? My first reaction always is that this just doesn’t make sense. But there it is. The devil quoting scripture. Can we make any sense out of that at all? It’s there, so I guess we have to try.

The place to start in an effort to make sense out of it, I think, is with the scripture that the devil quotes. We just heard it. The devil quotes lines from Psalm 91. That Psalm is the source of the lyrics to the famous anthem “Eagle’s Wings,” which the choir just sang. Those lines are very familiar to many of us, if only from that anthem. Psalm 91 is a beautiful, poetic statement of an idea that is very common in Hebrew Scripture, especially in the book of Deuteronomy and in the many Psalms that reflect a Deuteronomic view of things. That view of things says that if you are righteous, that is, if you are in good with God and trust God, God will keep bad things from happening to you. Psalm 91, in lines the devil does not quote, says “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” And: “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.” Believe in God, trust God, and nothing bad will happen to you. That’s the message of Psalm 91.

Now let’s look at how the devil uses that message in Luke’s account of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. In that account the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, where Jesus is “tempted by the devil” for 40 days. He fasts that entire time, and at the end of the 40 days he is “famished.” That’s where Luke picks up the story with details about Jesus’ encounter with the devil. Luke recounts three temptations that the devil places before Jesus. The first is “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus is starving, but he resists this temptation, saying “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” In the second temptation the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says they can all be his if he will only worship the devil. Jesus replies: “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Then comes the third temptation, the one in which the devil quotes Psalm 91. Jesus has defeated the devil in the first two temptations by quoting scripture at him, so the devil decides to throw Jesus’ technique back at him and quotes scripture himself. He says to Jesus “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” Then comes the quote from Psalm 91: “for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you’, and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” The devil has thrown scripture at Jesus, but Jesus throws it right back. He replies: “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Whereupon the devil gives up and departs from Jesus “until an opportune time,” apparently a reference to Jesus’ Passion.

So what’s going on here? I think we can take another step in trying to figure that out by looking at what the three temptations of Jesus have in common. What they have in common, I think, is that they are all temptations for Jesus to put himself first, to rely on himself and his own powers. You’re hungry. Turn stone into bread to meet your personal, bodily needs. You can have ownership of and power over the whole world. Grab it and make yourself rich and powerful. It’s pretty clear how these first two temptations are the temptation to put yourself and your personal needs and desires first.

But what about the third one, the one in which the devil quotes Psalm 91? I think that it too is a temptation to Jesus to put himself first. It is the temptation to rely on one’s own interpretation of scripture and the temptation to prove the power of one’s belief. The devil is saying: You know what scripture says! Prove that you believe it. Prove that you have faith. It says God will bear you up. It says no harm will come to you. Prove that you’re a spiritual giant! Throw yourself off the temple to prove your faith! Put yourself and your faith first! Just like the first two temptations, this one is a temptation to put one’s self, one’s ego, first. To put one’s self, one’s ego, at the center of one’s life. The temptations Jesus faced were all about putting his own ego first. Make sure you have everything you need. Grab for the wealth and power—for yourself. Be so sure of your own beliefs and interpretations that you’ll risk everything to prove you’re right. The devil is tempting Jesus to say: It really is all about me.

And maybe we say, yes, that’s what the devil did with Jesus; but those aren’t our temptations. We can’t turn stones to bread. No one is offering us the whole world. We’d never be so foolish as to throw ourselves off a high building on the strength of a literal interpretation of a few lines in scripture. We may think: These may have been Jesus’ temptations, but they aren’t ours.

Well, not so fast. As with so many Bible stories, this story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness isn’t to be understood that literally. Like so many Bible stories it is using specific instances to point beyond those instances to a larger principle. This story is telling us, if we have ears to hear, that the greatest temptation that we and all people face is to put our own egos first, to put our own egos at the center of our lives. The specifics of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness may not apply to us, but that general principle sure does. We all face it. Most of us, myself included, usually give in to it.

Jesus didn’t, and therein lies the real lesson of this story for us. What did Jesus do when he was faced with these ego-centered temptations? He refused to put his ego at the center of his life. Instead, he put God at the center of his life. “One does not live by bread alone,” he says. That line comes from Deuteronomy, and its original form it reads “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” We live, truly live, when we put God at the center of our lives, not our own individual needs. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,” Jesus quotes to the devil. Don’t serve a false god. Don’t make yourself a false god by putting yourself at the center of your life. Put God at the center of your life. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” Jesus says. Let God be God God’s way, don’t try to force God into being God your way. Put God, not your conception of God, at the center of your life. This story is about who’s at the center of your life, yourself or God.

So maybe it does make sense to have the devil quote scripture after all. It makes sense as long as we understand that the devil is quoting scripture accurately as far as the words go, but he’s doing it for an improper purpose. He’s using it not as saying trust God to help you but let God do it God’s way, which is the real lesson of Psalm 91. He’s misusing it to try to tempt Jesus into putting himself and his own understandings at the center of his life. He’s misusing it, trying to get Jesus to act on a simplistic, literalistic understanding of the passage, arrived at in isolation and out of Biblical context.

The devil can indeed quote scripture. It’s one of his best tricks. So we must always remember to ask: Who’s at the center of our lives? In any decision we make, we must ask: Does that choice put God at the center, or does it put my ego at the center. The Eastern religions know better than we do that the spiritual life isn’t about the ego, it is about what they call non-self. In this story, Jesus is practicing non-self. He is putting God at the center. He calls us to follow his example. Amen.