Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 13, 2011

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.

We Christians have a lot of titles for Jesus. One of those titles comes up in the reading we just heard from Matthew. It’s the title “Son of God.” We know that in a very real sense we are all sons and daughters of God, but when we Christians call Jesus the Son of God we mean something more than he is a son of God the way we all are sons and daughters of God. The Christian faith confesses that Jesus has his origins in God in a different way than we do, in a timeless, cosmic way. That’s what those stories of his virgin birth and of him being the Word of God made flesh are all about. He arises so directly from God, he has such a strong and intimate connection with God, that he is for us the eternal Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, become human.

Yet all of that doesn’t really express what Jesus being the Son of God means. What it means in the world, what it means for us. Calling a human being the Son of God in sense we mean when we call Jesus that opens the door to some pretty wild expectations. After all, God can do anything; so it’s easy to expect a real show from Jesus, to expect divine fireworks and impossible feats displaying the power of God. There is of course some of that in the Gospels’ stories of Jesus, but I think Matthew’s story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness that we just heard is telling us something else about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God.

It may not be obvious that this temptation story is about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God, but I think it is. Matthew’s story, his struggling with what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God, actually begins before Jesus is off in the wilderness being tempted. That’s why I included a few lines from the story of Jesus’ baptism by John which immediately precedes Matthew’s story of the temptations. It is in the baptism story that Matthew establishes that Jesus is the Son of God, or at least it is one of the places where he does. In that story, after Jesus is baptized by John, the divine voice from heaven says “This is my Son.” Jesus’ divine Sonship is thus established, and the temptation story that immediately follows is then about what that Sonship means.

After the divine voice has established that Jesus is the Son of God, Matthew tells us, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil. Jesus has nothing to eat for a long time, then the devil appears to tempt him. There are three temptations by the one Matthew first identifies as “the tempter.” As the devil begins his work of tempting Jesus Matthew ties the temptations directly to the divine declaration at Jesus’ baptism that Jesus is the Son of God by having the first thing the devil says be “If you are the Son of God.” Scholars tell us that the Greek word translated here as “if” can also be translated “since.” The devil isn’t trying to prove that Jesus isn’t the Son of God. He assumes that Jesus is the Son of God. The original Greek here doesn’t raise a question about whether Jesus is the Son of God, it takes it as a given that he is. So we see that the point of the temptations is not whether Jesus is the Son of God but rather what it means for him to be the Son of God. So just what do these temptations tell us about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God?

The first temptation is for Jesus to use his divine power to create food for himself out of rocks. He refuses. He says that one does not live by bread alone, quoting scripture. This first temptation introduces the question of food into the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. We know that Jesus doesn’t mean people don’t need food. In the stories in the Gospel that follows of his multiplying the loaves and fishes he does seem to use divine power to provide food for hungry people. Yet here he won’t use that power to provide food for himself. We learn, I think, that Jesus being the Son of God is about food, but it isn’t about Jesus helping himself. His being the Son of God isn’t about food for him, it is about food for us and for everyone. Jesus being the Son of God isn’t about him, it is about us.

The second temptation also begins with the devil saying “If (or since) you are the Son of God…,” continuing the theme of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. This temptation is for Jesus to demonstrate his divine Sonship by throwing himself off a high building, something that would kill a mere mortal. Again he refuses. The second temptation introduces the notion of saving, of salvation, into the consideration of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God; and Jesus’ refusal to do what the devil asks says, I think, that while Jesus’ divine Sonship is about salvation, it is not about saving Jesus. Indeed, we know that in the end Jesus wasn’t saved from human suffering and death. So if Jesus being the Son of God has something to do with saving but it isn’t about saving Jesus, who is it about saving? I think the obvious answer is—us. Jesus being the Son of God isn’t about Jesus and/or God saving Jesus, it is about Jesus and God saving us.

The third temptation is a little different in form from the first two because it doesn’t begin with the phrase “If (or since) you are the Son of God….” It is, however, the next and the last in a series that has focused on the meaning of Jesus being the Son of God, so I think it is safe to consider that this one too deals with that question.

The devil offers to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus will only worship him. Again Jesus refuses. This temptation introduces the issue of rule into the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. We learn, I think, that Jesus being the Son of God isn’t about him becoming a literal ruler of the world, a ruler in the earthly sense. So if it isn’t about that, what rule is it about? God’s of course. Jesus being the Son of God is not about a continuation or perpetuation of the kingdoms of the world only now ruled in the same way by Jesus. It is about the Kingdom of God. It is about learning, as Jesus says in this temptation, that we are to worship God and not to worship the devil the way earthly rulers invariably do, in practice if not expressly. We are to worship God, and worshipping God is about God’s Kingdom. It is about being committed to building God’s kingdom of justice and peace as an alternative to the world’s kingdoms of oppression and violence.

So when we look at the story of Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness as a story about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God, what do we learn? We learn that Jesus being the Son of God is about there being food—and the other basic necessities of life—enough for everyone. It is about food for us and for all. We learn that Jesus being the Son of God is about salvation, but not Jesus’ salvation, our salvation, everyone’s salvation. And we learn that Jesus being the Son of God is about God’s Kingdom, God’s Reigning on earth, not about a continuation of the empires of the earth but about their transformation into the Reigning of God.

Does it sound to you like I’m reading more into this story than is there? Maybe I ask the question because I wonder about that myself. But this story is set at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and as that ministry unfolds in the Gospel that follows we see that these three themes are major elements of Jesus’ message. Jesus does call us to collaborate with God in making sure that all have enough to live. Jesus does show us God’s salvation for ourselves and for every person. Jesus does call us to collaborate with God is establishing the Reigning of God on earth in all its fullness of justice and peace.

It’s the first Sunday of Lent. Those lessons from the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness are a lot to learn, but we could do no better than to spend Lent learning them. Amen.