All I said was this piece of fish was good enough for ...

Well, I have been thinking about Lent. It is fast approaching and I am having the usual difficulty in choosing something to give up. More than that, I have been thinking about the time Jesus spent in the desert before he began his ministry. They are another part of the gospels that we all know so well. It sometimes seems to pas us by. Inspired by Nick Page’s The Wrong Messiah, I have decided to write a few things about the temptations Jesus faced in the hope that it can help me understand those temptations that I have to go through. Firstly the setting of the scene. This is something that is important to note. Who is this being tempted? Of course it is Jesus, that much is obvious but for the Jews who would have been reading the gospels he was also Elijah spending time in the wilderness and Moses in the desert trying to follow the word of God. An interesting point here is that both of these two key figures were followed in their ministry by someone with the same name. The names Elisha and Joshua have the same root. The same word gives another name; Jesus. This time before the ministry of Jesus is almost like him going through what Moses and Elijah went through in order to become their successor. The first temptation is an obvious one. Christ must have been hungry. Who wouldn’t be after days in the desert? The devil appears to him and tells him that he can simply order the stones to turn to bread and they will. He is cunning. He twists the words of scripture to fix this point in Jesus’ mind. (As an aside here, this is something that quite often happens, those who dislike the Bible and what it says are often the most literal and picky in quoting from it). Christ also knows scripture (he did write it after all) and uses it to reach the right conclusion. It must have been difficult though. There may be more to it though. Bread is an important symbol. Messianic tradition had it that when the Messiah came to save the Jews he would feed the hungry. When we look at the feeding of the five thousand we see that the Jews tried to make Christ king after this. They knew what the miracle meant. He who could provide bread in the desert was the Messiah. The devil may have been asking Jesus to prove he was who people wanted him to be. On the other hand, Jesis was probably very very hungry. The second temptation was very different. If the first was about meeting the needs of Christ, this one is all about politics. Satan takes Christ to the top of a hill and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. If he would only worship the devil, he could have control of these kingdoms. They have been given over to Satan and are his to dispose of. What on earth does that mean? Are the governments of the world controlled by a Satanic conspiracy? Perhaps they are but I think that the gospels are saying that the human world can easily be manipulated by Satan and that as tempting as this may seem, giving into worldly desires for power and influence is something that ultimately leads us away from God. Christ then, deals well with the first two temptations. He shows a sound knowledge of how to understand and apply scripture and shows a remarkable degree of self-restraint. The wilderness experience is working well for him. And then he leaves the desert. We are not exactly sure where the first two temptations take place. Some tradition gives the location as the mount of temptation but we simply don’t know. We do know where the third one takes place. Or at least we think we do … Before we move on to the next temptation, here is a little diversion … I hope you enjoyed it. It is one of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest films ever. It doesn’t really have any bearing on the temptations but I thought I’d like to include it anyway. The third temptation seems to be similar to the first one. It is about showing off your powers and getting God to do what you want. In my interpretation, every time I hear this I see Christ being taken by magic, through the air to the very roof of the temple. Here the devil tells him to throw himself off the top and to see if the angels of God will save him. Christ of course says no and the devil then leaves him alone. Did he fly there? Possibly but he could easily have walked to the temple in Jerusalem. Just because he can, it doesn’t mean he always did. Matthew 5:4 tells us that he was taken to the ‘pinnacle of the temple’ (NIV) and I have always thought of this as the roof. Not so. It was in fact the highest point of the temple complex which was the south-eastern corner of the wall. It was covered by a portico called Solomon’s Colonnade. If we look at what the devil asked him to do, we can see that it could have been done on the same high spot as the previous one. The devil must have had a reason for choosing the temple. This point, is the point where, traditionally, blasphemers were thrown from prior to being stoned to death. This is seen in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History when he tells us that this is what happened to James in AD62. He was thrown down and then beaten. We see in Luke 4:29 that the locals wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff for his blasphemy. This is what happened at a stoning, not the image shown in the video a little further back! In John’s gospel Christ is twice threatened with stoning at the temple and in one of these it happened in Solomon’s Colonnade (John 10:23). So perhaps the devil was tempting Jesus to change the ending. He knew (as did Jesus) that eventually the Jews would reject him and kill him. He could stop it says the devil. It doesn’t have to be this way he whispers. You could change it. It is something that is repeated in the cruel mocking words at the cross. “Come down and save yourself” the people cry. It is repeated later in Matthew’s gospel when Peter tells Jesus that he won’t die. Christ even calls him Satan which is quite a harsh insult (Matthew 16:23) for such a devoted disciple. It is the constant refrain of Satan in his dealings with Jesus. ‘You don’t have to do it this way’, ‘You could do something different, God won’t let you be hurt, just ask him and He can stop it’. Christ resisted this temptation on all the occasions it rose up before him. He knew that this path, the path of ‘blasphemy’ and rejection, was the only path that would accomplish what God needed and wanted. I for one am grateful that he did.