Tested

Propers: The First Sunday in Lent, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

If you are the Son of God—! If you are …

Who or what is the Son of God? Well, that phrase can cover a lot of ground.

Adam was the Son of God, according to Luke’s Gospel: Adam, the “earth-critter,” the primordial human being, made in the likeness of God, breathing the Spirit of God, given the Image of God. Adam is all of us, all of humanity. He even precedes gender, as there is no reference to man and woman, male and female, ish and ishah in the Hebrew, until after Adam is split in two, with one half now named Eve.

Israel is the Son of God, according to the book of Exodus: Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the family God has chosen as a special priestly people, so that He might bless all the families of the world through them. And of course, the King of Israel is the Son of God according to the Psalter: adopted through Temple rites, anointed with sacred chrism, and sent to earth to serve as the embodiment of divine justice and merciful loving-kindness.

The irony is that in all three cases this phrase “Son of God” applies to human beings. And human beings, as we know, are fallible and fallen. All these Sons of God have failed. Adam failed to trust the goodness of the Lord and to steward His Creation. Israel failed to remain faithful to Yahweh who liberates slaves and abolishes debts. And the kings—well, you could fill entire books with all their cruelties and sins. In fact, we have: there are several such volumes in our Bibles.

And this is not an outside criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures, but the judgment of those Scriptures themselves. The fall of Adam, the fall of Israel, and the broken line of kings are all clearly documented—and lamented—throughout the Old Testament. I’ll say this for Israel: they were always honest about their failings. Modern scholars may criticize the accuracy of their history, but at least they were trying to write history, to be honest about their own past, honest about their own sins. Most ancient peoples wouldn’t dare.

Because of all this, by the time of the Exile and the Return, by the time of the Prophets, the people of the Bible by and large are no longer looking for a human Son of God, but for a divine Son of Man. That’s what Daniel saw in his visions. Daniel saw a divine figure descending from heaven “like a son of man”—which is to say, someone who appeared merely mortal but who was also so much more.

This Christ, this anointed priest and king, wouldn’t be like the priests and kings of old, who failed so miserably and so catastrophically. He would be a new kind of Christ, an eternal cosmic Christ, of whom all the other anointed were but faint echoes and dark shadows. The Prophets are waiting for the new and true Christ. So again there’s this irony in the time of Jesus that the phrase “Son of God” can apply to a person, or even to an evil spirit, while the phrase “Son of Man” applies to a god: to the Christ for whom they have waited, lo these many centuries.

All of which brings us to today’s tale: the infamous Temptation of the Christ. At this point in the narrative, Jesus—God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God—has come into the world as a human being, born of the Virgin Mary. Luke takes pains to trace for us Jesus’ genealogy through the whole history of Israel, right back to Adam in the Garden—“Adam, son of God”—because Luke wants to show us how Jesus is the rewriting of the entirety of human history.

First is Jesus baptized in the River Jordan, an event that inaugurates His public ministry. And immediately following this, He is driven by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness, there to be tempted and tested for 40 days and 40 nights. This parallels the history of God’s people, the history of Israel; for when God led the Israelites out from slavery in Egypt, they passed through the waters of the Red Sea into the wilderness, where they wandered and were tested for 40 years.

As you’ve heard me say before, that number 40 always has significance in the Bible, because ancient peoples knew that it takes roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. 40 represents a time of hardship, growth, and tribulation, culminating in new birth and new life. Hence, these 40 days of Lent.

At this point, out comes the devil, a supposed son of God, fallen from angelic heights to become the spirit of pride. “If you are the Son of God,” he says to Jesus, here famished from His fast, “then command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Note that the devil’s line of attack has to do with questioning Christ’s identity: “If you are the Son of God—!” This is how the serpent tempted Adam and Eve: not just with food, but also with the promise that they too could be like God.

But Adam and Eve were already like God, already His children: given His likeness, given His Spirit, tending His paradise. The devil could not give to Adam anything we didn’t already have, anything that God hadn’t already promised to us. Adam failed. Adam fell—as do we all, for we all were him. Yet Christ does not fail. Christ does not fall. “It is written,” He says, “one does not live by bread alone.”

See, back when Israel was in the wilderness, God provided them with miraculous bread, sweet and nourishing and effortlessly gathered. And still they complained! But Christ will work no miracle simply for Himself. Everything He does is selfless. Everything He does is for others. He already knows that He’s the Son of God; He doesn’t need to put His Father to the test. The Word alone suffices. The Word alone abides.

So the devil tries again: he shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, and boastfully proclaims, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority … if you then will worship me.” But the kingdoms of the world are not in fact the devil’s to give. The second Psalm sings that God grants the nations to His anointed, to His one true King. And Christ moreover is not to be a merely political Christ. He will not conquer as people expect Him to. He will not rule with an iron fist. He is beyond violence.

“It is written,” He replies, “worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.” Thus does Christ undo the long and bloody history of the rulers of this earth. If only Judas would’ve paid attention.

So now the devil takes Him to the corner of the Temple Mount, some 300 feet above the rocky valley below, and he says to Him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” And the devil takes now his own page from the Scriptures, attempting to fight fire with fire: “For it is written,” he says to Jesus, “that God will command His angels concerning you, to protect you, that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”

This, incidentally, is taken from the 91st Psalm, and the devil pointedly leaves out the very next verse, which reads: “And the serpent you will trample underfoot.” Jesus simply answers him, “Do not put your God to the test,” which is of course exactly what Satan’s doing. And that’s it; that’s all the devil’s got. So he departs from Jesus until an opportune time—when he will meet Him in Jerusalem once again.

This story, my brothers and sisters, is not intended as an instruction manual. The message here is not, “This is how we withstand our temptations.” Quite the opposite. The truth is that we will encounter trials and temptations throughout our life. The devil will find us in one guise or another, to test us as silver in the crucible. And as the long history of our race has proven time and again, we cannot seem to beat him.

We are easily swayed by promises of personal benefit, worldly power, and exalted status—especially displayed before others, from the very pinnacle of the Temple. Adam fell; Israel fell; kings fall every single day. But Christ—! Christ never fails. His identity is never in doubt. He is the New Creation, the new and ancient Adam, our eternal Son of God. He is Israel, distilled down to one single Man. He is our King, our High Priest, the one true Christ, and our promised Son of Man.

He is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End: Conqueror of Satan, Harrower of Hell, and the Death of Death Itself. Christ is tested as steel in the forge and cracks the very anvil upon which He is struck. In Him have we all won!

So to hell with the devil and all the empty promises of this world. We have Jesus. We are Jesus. And He will not rest until every last corner of this cosmos has been saved.

The devils, they all know this. And they tremble.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.