Reject Empire

The Temptation, by Simon J. Fletcher

Lections: The First Sunday in Lent, AD 2026 A

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.

Immediately following His Baptism in the River Jordan—when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him as a dove, and the voice of the Father proclaimed the Christ as His own beloved Son—Jesus is driven by the Spirit, into the wilderness, in order to be tested by the devil.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m a middle-aged man with children ranging from junior high to college, and I still have the occasional nightmare about not being ready for a test—mostly math tests, which is weird, because I was good at math back in the day. I think it fair to say that this is what we tend to think of today when we hear the word “test.” We think of school examinations, of passing or of failing. But 2,000 years ago, testing had more to do with metal. You had to test a tool, to see whether it were strong enough.

This is what the devil does, in Matthew’s narrative. His testing has to do with identity, with worth. Is Jesus up to the task? Is He strong enough, good enough, true enough, to be the Holy Spirit’s agent in this world, the royal Son of God the Father on high? The Father doesn’t need to test Him; the Father already proclaimed His Son as worthy. But the devil has a vested interest here, and so do we. God has entered His Creation as a man. But men are weak. Men are fallen. Men, historically, do not pass the test.

The wilderness is a place of hardship, a place of testing, stripped bare both of comforts and of distractions. Spirits dwell in the wilderness, as do prophets. For 40 days and 40 nights Jesus fasts. Presumably He must’ve had some little to survive on, as your average human being can go but three days without water and three weeks without food. Fat and pampered as I am, I have a hard time just giving up sweets and snacks for Lent. I get hangry rather easily. Thus I sympathize when the devil begins by offering Jesus food.

“If you are the Son of God,” Satan whispers, “if you can really do what you’ve been sent here to accomplish, then turn these stones into bread. I know you must be hungry. Let’s have a meal together, out here in the desert.” And Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy: “One does not live on bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.”

Very well. The devil tries a different tack. “I can quote Scripture too, you know; I was there when it was written. Doesn’t the Psalter say that God will command His angels concerning you, to bear you up, so that you do not dash your foot against a stone?” And here the devil whisks Him up to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem; a height, mind you, of some 300 feet. “Throw yourself down,” Satan sneers. “Let’s see if you can fly.”

But Jesus, again with Deuteronomy, replies: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” And this has a bit of a double-meaning for us, doesn’t it? Because on the one hand, Jesus affirms that He will not test His Father. Yet on the other hand, in tempting Jesus, Satan indeed is putting God to the test: for Christ is Emmanuel, God-With-Us, as Matthew told us in Chapter One.

Finally the devil takes Jesus up a mountaintop, revealing to Him the kingdoms of the world, and boasts, “All of these I will give to you, if you would but fall down and worship me!” And one last time, Jesus whips out Deuteronomy: “Away with you, Satan, for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.’” Thus the devil flees.

Now, much could be said regarding this rather remarkable episode. Often we like to couch the story in terms of the Fall of Man: Eve and Adam failed the temptations of the devil, bringing ruin to the world. Yet here in Christ, humanity passes the test. And that’s all well and good, even if I’m not certain that’s precisely what Matthew was stressing in this story. But nor is he the only one who tells it.

I would like to emphasize two aspects of this tale. First is the remarkable admission by the devil that he’s the one who rules the kingdoms of the earth. In Matthew’s day, of course, that would be Rome. And you know me; I have a love/hate relationship with ancient Rome. Mostly because I am convinced that we are Rome, the Western world is Rome, in all the ways that yet matter. Reading their history sounds a lot like current events.

But so often I encounter well-meaning Christians who seem to believe that everything that happens to us is the will of God. And I am here to tell you that this is emphatically not the case. This world of ours is fallen; it’s broken and unjust; and all of us know it. Moreover, we are plagued by sin, and sin by definition is against the will of God. If everything were working as God intends for it to work, then we wouldn’t need a Savior come to rescue us from death, from Hell, from the cycle of Samsara, whatever you want to call it.

The devil is in charge of the kingdoms of the earth. He is the prince of this world. Not forever, mind you, for he knows his time is short. The ending of our story is the victory of Christ, handing over His Kingdom to His Father, that God at the last shall be all in all. But in the meantime, when bad things happen, I want you to know that this is not the will of God, and He will not let it stand. Sin, death, injustice have their day. But a new day is dawning, we have seen it even now, and Christ comes with healing in His wings.

The other thing I want to emphasize is that the devil tempts Jesus, by and large, with good and decent things. People in Jesus’ day were highly food-insecure. And let me tell you, the Holy Land is full of rocks. When you read this story with Israelis, they inevitably crack a smile; for if Jesus turned their rocks to bread, then every man would feast.

As for the kingdoms of the earth, wouldn’t we imagine we’d be better off with Jesus at the helm? Then maybe we’d have a government that does something other than siphon trillions upon trillions of dollars away from all of us and to the one percent. Even Satan’s suggestion that Jesus throw Himself from the Temple Mount is a twisted way of asking Him to place His trust in God. But Jesus already places absolute trust in His Father’s presence, in His Father’s Spirit.

Not for nothing, note that Satan readily quotes the Scriptures: a reminder, I should hope, that we place our faith in Jesus, and not simply in the Bible on its own. For indeed, we revere the Bible as the Word of God, when it gives us Christ. But without the Spirit of Jesus to guide us in our reading, we end up inevitably in Satan’s Bible Study.

The truth is that Jesus goes on to accomplish all of these wonders on His own. He does miraculously feed the hungry by multiplying loaves of bread, to the tune of thousands at a time. He is revealed to the world, and ministered by angels, upon a mountaintop—more than one, in fact. And He inaugurates a Kingdom, not of this world but His own. That Kingdom, we believe, shall someday encompass the cosmos.

And He manages to do all of this in such a way as to reject the imposition of power over people. Jesus’ rule is that of love, of compassion, of mercy, of consent. The devil imagines displays of power devoid of the self-giving, cruciform love of God. He would have Easter Sunday without Good Friday. And so would we today.

When things get scarce, when money loses its purchasing power, when we feel threatened by a strange new world, we tend to turn to empire, to the imposition of order with an iron fist. That is precisely what Jesus rejects. We have been weighed, we have been tested, and we have been found wanting. We would gladly take the devil’s deal, wrapped up in a flag.

Yet Jesus has been tested, and has proven true. He is the agent of His Father’s Spirit. He is the New Adam, born of the New Eve. He is the One whom all of us we were meant to be, and will be at the last. The devil could not challenge who He is, but could only unveil His identity, His humanity and divinity. Christ has conquered all the ills of humankind. And He welcomes us to a Kingdom built on sacrifice, community, relationship, and love—where the poor are fed, and God is known. And none of it shall He impose by the sword, or the bomb, or the gun.

Reject empire. Embrace the Cross. And know that Christ has won.

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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