Below is the lightly edited manuscript of a sermon I preached on Feb. 24, 2021 during LSTC weekly online Service of Word. The text from which I preached was Matthew 4:1-11. A recording can be found on LSTC’s YouTube channel.
Picture this scene. Jesus, divine glory in humble human flesh, weakened from forty days and nights of fasting. The cool waters of the Jordan…that voice from heaven…the loving embrace of his big cousin John…distant fragments of the memory of his baptism. Jesus, this exhausted child of God, hunger gnawing at the frayed edges of his will, is confronted by the devil, the tempter, who offers Jesus anything a person with his traumatic history, driven out into the wilderness, could want.
How do you picture that scene? Is Jesus skin and bones, weathered by sun and wind, worn by hunger and thirst? Is his hair dull, matted with sweat, falling out from malnutrition? Is the air hazy, wavy with desert heat, the land rocky and dry?
And what about the devil? Is he snakelike, bestial, barely human? Or somehow disturbingly beautiful, an angel fallen from grace but still bearing the touch of the divine?
What would you say if I told you I know what face the tempter wore? What would you say if I told you I know what face the devil wears today?
Matthew writes of a dramatic showdown in the wilderness. The personification of corruption and evil meets the embodiment of grace and love. This dramatic showdown was neither an exception to the ordinary course of life nor the climax of some hidden struggle between divine order and its unholy distortion. Rather, this tale of temptation is an object lesson, a dramatization of everyday life under imperial rule.
I’m going to highlight three dimensions of this lesson—the temptation, the wilderness, and the power of the Spirit—before I say a bit more about what the devil’s up to these days.
The devil offers Jesus three temptations.
First, the devil says, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread,” offering bread to the starving savior.
Second, the devil dares him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” He offers unequivocal proof of physical safety to someone who had grown up fearing for his life, terrorized by a ruthless, child-murdering tyrant.
Finally, the devil promises, “All these [kingdoms] I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” To Jesus, who was well aware that others had already died in his stead, who was, furthermore, a child of an occupied nation, the devil offered the power to ensure his people’s freedom and fulfill David’s legacy of mighty kingship.
My teacher, Willie Jennings, has taught me that hidden within these temptations is a deeper temptation: the lure of understanding divine power—which is so often mysterious and intangible—in terms of attainable, reliable imperial power. To conjure bread from stones requires that one compel creation to ensure one’s prosperity, without regard for the integrity of any particular creature. Such was the power of Roman agriculture and resource extraction. To call upon angels to protect yourself in a situation of obvious danger is to exert the power to demand that your body is inviolable. Such was the power of Roman military might, offering safety to Roman citizens in hostile, occupied lands. To assume ownership of the kingdoms of the earth is to claim the power to determine the destiny of nations. This was the power implied by Roman citizenship, open to those who are willing to be remade in the image of the loyal Roman subject.
In offering Jesus imperial power in place of the vague signs of divinity Jesus would offer throughout his life, the devil effectively says, “If you wish to be recognized as the Son of God, show me what Caesar shows the world, the power of mastery over all creation, from the fertility of the soil to the fate of nations.” After all, the divinity of Caesar was already widely acknowledged. Caesar and mighty Rome had made it plain: if you want to survive in the wilderness of this world, accept that the power you need – the power on which your existence depends – is imperial power.
The temptation in this lesson is one offer of imperial power in threefold form. How about the wilderness?
The wilderness, traditionally, was a space where God’s people were tested. It was a space in which God’s people were wholly dependent on God’s power for their survival. Lost in the wilderness, one can only look to God for manna, the sign of the creator’s faithfulness to their beloved children.
Under imperial rule, however, temptation—the testing of God’s children—was hardly left behind on that long journey to Canaan. It was woven into everyday life in community. The market offered those with coin the fruits of Roman mastery over land and sea. Physical safety was assured to those who could find their way onto the nearest Roman official’s good side. And the power of Roman citizenship was available to all those who would take on a Roman name, serve in the Roman legions, and embrace Caesar as their savior, in essence, if not in active worship.
God’s people lived in the wilderness every day, then. They were tested constantly. They were wholly dependent on God’s power for their survival in a land that was inhospitable to the survival of the faithful.
Temptation was the way of life under Roman rule. Imperial power made disciples of its subjects. The temptation of imperial power wasn’t offered by strange, monstrous men in the lonely, barren corners of the land. Rather, it was offered by priests, by parents, by teachers of trade and law…the devil wearing so many caring, concerned faces, counseling their favored children or kin to “make the smart choice” and figure out how to make the best of Rome’s presence in their land.
Jesus—and the rest of God’s people in the Holy Land—were tested in the wilderness. So let’s talk about how the power of the Spirit enters into this lesson. It has everything to do with the wilderness. After all, the wilderness wasn’t only a space of testing and dependence; the wilderness was a space that revealed the limits of human mastery over creation.
It was obvious that Jesus was called into a place where food was scarce and help was distant, but in reality, there was no place in the empire where safety and prosperity could truly be assured, especially for the majority of Rome’s subjects. In reality, Roman claims of mastery over creation were false. Imperial civilization was a desert mirage, a tempting illusion of safety for people wandering through life in a world that would never be fully brought under human control.
Jesus met the devil in that wilderness space, where all human mastery is questioned, its limits laid bare, and the truth of divine power was revealed. For Jesus was led into that wilderness by the Spirit. The same Spirit that descended upon him in the river in Matthew, chapter 3, bearing God’s message of love and blessing. The same Spirit whose power was displayed in the ministry of healing and fellowship that began as soon as Jesus returned to Galilee later in Matthew, chapter 4.
The temptation of mastery is sandwiched between these two displays of divine power: the power of the Spirit to assure us of divine love for God’s children and the power of the Spirit to bring together those who would serve God and neighbor, rather than the mighty.
Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted with imperial power, but he resisted this temptation by claiming his identity as God’s beloved child, who was to demonstrate that divine power was to be found in the bonds of community among God’s people, not in imperial mastery. In this encounter, the illusion of human control over creation was dispelled, and the truth of the divine power of love and connection was revealed.
This dramatic story of temptation, wilderness, and the power of the Spirit is a lesson about the everyday story of God’s people and their life in community under Roman rule. They were trying to survive in the wilderness, a land where they were not in control. They were tempted with the possibility of mastery over that land, if they would only accept imperial power as divine. And they were empowered by the Spirit to recall that they were God’s beloved children, called to love one another and serve their neighbors, rather than the mighty.
What does this mean for us today?
Rome has passed away, replaced by empire after empire, culminating in what we have today: a global system of exploitation and violence, Empire without a discernible emperor…imperial power operating in its own right, served fanatically by the ultra-wealthy and the many who somehow believe they could someday be on top, or that faithful service will be rewarded by even a fraction of the wealth and security Empire promises.
Contemporary Empire exceeds even Rome in its ability to weave temptation into the fabric of our communities. For imperial subjects like you and me, temptation is the blood-fouled water in which we swim, staining our everyday choices and common sense assumptions about the world. In the US, at least, temptation is the dominant mode of relationship. Our connections—intimate, familial, professional, and ecclesial—are vectors for capitalist marketing and nationalist propaganda. Our desires to take care of one another and be desirable to one another are corrupted by the need of Empire for eager and willing participants in a recklessly consumptive global economy and the systemic evils that sustain it.
Empire disciplines us to become the devil to one another. Temptation made flesh, we proclaim to one another the words of patriarchy, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, American exceptionalism, white supremacy:
“If you want to follow your call, make sure you hide just enough of who you are and what you believe, so you don’t give people more than they can handle.”
“If you want to take care of your kids, do what you can to make sure they’re able to compete with their peers.”
“If you want people to listen to you, make sure you dress and speak respectably.”
There’s no sin in being strategic, but these temptations become deep habits of thought, action, and feeling. We coach and encourage one another into compliance with Empire, offering it only the kinds of challenges it’s prepared to accommodate.
When Jesus encountered the devil, he surely wore the face of one of Jesus’s teachers, perhaps a familiar rabbi…one of the many kind adults who surely told him how to be a successful imperial subject. Today, the devil wears my face, and yours…the faces of all those who care about us and just want what’s best for us…but who let our care and concern be co-opted by the tempter.
We find ourselves wandering the wilderness, this space of testing and dependence on God, where the limits of human mastery are revealed. Even before this pandemic, and surely in its aftermath, we live lives in which our faith in God is tested daily. We are ever dependent on God for our survival when confronted with the powers of this world and the consequences of the damage we’ve done to creation. And only those deeply deceived by the devil could believe we are the masters of a world that draws nearer and nearer to cleansing itself of our poisonous presence.
But as we wander this wilderness, tempted by the devil that is always already speaking through our lips, making its imperial witness known in our lives, we are empowered by the Spirit to live otherwise.
Like Jesus in the water, the Spirit calls to us, reminding us that we are loved, enabling us to remember our baptism and draw strength from it, or helping us to remember those times we’ve been challenged to set aside what Empire has told us to show the world, in favor of the beautiful truths we hide and hold close.
Like Jesus as he returned to Galilee, we are offered the constant possibility of embracing the divine power found in community through mutual aid, organizing to build power, and seeking new ways to live faithfully together.
Lent is a season set aside for the contemplation of temptation, for a deeper awareness of our daily struggle with the devil—our daily struggle not to be the devil to one another. During this season of contemplation, ask yourself how imperial power is speaking through your lips, and seek out those who witness to the power of the Spirit, calling you a beloved child of God, calling you into beloved community.