Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 1 March 2020.
First Sunday of Lent
Gospel: Matthew 4.1-11
Last week, we heard of Fr Lee’s moving visit to peak of the Mount of Transfiguration. The journey up, in the taxi, was difficult and dangerous, but the peace from the summit made up for all of that. In contrast, I have never been to the Mount of Transfiguration, but I have been to the Mount of Temptations. Make of that what you will (you will any way).
In any event, I can tell you this: the journey up to the Mount of Temptations is easy. It’s a steep old climb, but it is so steep that you go up in a cable car. It was comfortable. There was just the slightest sign that things had not always gone smoothly. On the door of the cable car pod was a sign (and this is a true story): “Do not open this door when the vehicle is moving.”
- The arduous journey to the Mount of Transfiguration, bringing life-giving light, over against
- the deceptively easy journey to the Mount of Temptations, bringing a need to do battle with the diabolical.
You may well think there is a sermon, right there, and I am done. But, if so, I must disappoint you. It doesn’t quite work after all – because after my comfortable journey to the Mount of Temptations, we visited a monastery, with beautiful icons, and (I’d say) a similar orientation to serenity as at the other summit.
So let us return to the gospel text, and Matthew’s story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Now, we are not told if Jesus’ own journey there was difficult or delightful. We are told it was direct: straight after his baptism and the hearing of the Voice from Heaven, Jesus “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” [Matt 4.1], into the wild places. He has no choice. There is no escape-door to open.
The dialogue that follows is probably known to us. Here’s a possible summary.
1. The devil says to the famished Jesus: Make bread by miracle. Jesus says: However hungry I am, food that goes against Gd’s word is wrong.
2. The devil says: Jump to your death so that Gd has to save your life. Jesus says: That’s not how to relate to Gd.
3. The devil says: I’ll give you all earthly power, just worship me. Jesus says: Only Gd is worthy of worship.
So Jesus is tempted with wrong, ungodly patterns of miracle, spectacle and power. He resists the temptations. His ministry (all his ways of being with and for people) will be different. It will involve some elements of spectacle, maybe power, and certainly miracle. And/but it will be always hand-in-hand with his Heavenly Father. This is all emphatically to our good; the story of our salvation can unfold.
Is that all that can be said? I will say: No.
Let me draw your attention one thing, seldom reflected on.
The devil quotes Scripture to Jesus. What does he quote from...? He quotes from the Psalms (Ps 19.11-12).
Jesus also quotes from the Scriptures. What does he quote from...?
- He quotes from the book of Deuteronomy.
- Three times he quotes from Deuteronomy.
- He quotes only from Deuteronomy.
- More remarkably still, all three quotations come from within three chapters of Deuteronomy, from early in the book of Deuteronomy. He quotes from chapter six twice, and chapter 8 once. (In Matthew’s order: 8.3; 6.16; 6.13).
So what? Is anything at stake? I will say: Yes.
I am going to suggest this story confirms the Jewishness of Jesus.
First, he knows the Jewish Scriptures. Second, he knows his own Bible well enough to quote it from memory. (In truth, that’s the same point: to know the Bible in Jesus’ oral culture would mean to have heard it and be able to recite it. This wasn’t a book-based society; no one had a Bible by their bed.) So, second, Jesus has had a good and thorough Jewish education. And third, as a good Jew, he knows how to order the books of the Jewish Bible.
What do I mean by this? I mean that when Jesus faces some existential threat to his own vocation, when he is famished and weak and vulnerable and desperate even, he does not just turn to the Scriptures. No, he turns specifically to the Books of Moses, to the first five books of the Bible, to the books which are sometimes called “Law” but which are better left untranslated as “Torah”. The whole of the Teaching that comes by tradition from Moses. Torah.
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: the Jewish way of ordering the books of the Hebrew Bible which we call the Old Testament is different from the Christian way. In the Christian way, there is something like an attempt to set out a history in linear from, from the making of the world to the final Hebrew prophetic text. In the Jewish way, there are rather three concentric circles:
- At the heart of things is Torah, which either is or contains direct revelation. Directly from Gd to the whole people, at Sinai, and then elaborated on.
- Around this centre are the Prophets, who bring revelation, but focused on particular people and places at particular times.
- And around the Prophets is a wider circle. This is everything else, called simply “the Writings”. It contains arguably more inspiration than revelation.
If time allowed (and I know that it doesn’t), I would show from other texts in the gospels that this is broadly a pattern that Jesus knew and accepted. The fullest or most direct revelation of Gd in the Scriptures is that of Torah, the books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and... our old friend, Deuteronomy.
I say again that Jesus is a Jew. Not just “ethnically” Jewish (whatever that means). But religiously Jewish. Here – when it really counts – he thinks, speaks and acts like a Jew. And not as it happens just a Jew of his own time, but as religious Jews today might also think, speak and act. He brings it back to Torah.1
So Jesus is tempted with wrong, ungodly patterns of miracle, spectacle and power. He resists the temptations.
- That he resists the temptations is remarkable, a miracle in its own right. And let us thank Gd for the angels who appeared and helped him.
- The way he resists the temptations is unremarkable. As a religiously educated Jew of his day, he goes straight to the heart of things, to the Torah of Moses, to his own people’s understanding of revelation.
I do not know, in any detail, what temptations you and we will face this Lent. But one temptation is perhaps constant.
The temptation to think we “know” Jesus.
That is to put things at their most provocative. So let me clarify. Of course, we do know Jesus, in that we are acquainted with him. He is with us, as he promised. This whole service (and all that we do) works from the basis that he is here. But we don’t readily “know” him, in the sense of always understanding him, knowing what “made him tick” in his earthly life.
So I am going to suggest that it can be no bad thing if we go into this Lent allowing ourselves to think of Jesus as we meet him in the gospels as not a church-person at all. Jesus as different. Jesus as strange, if you like – but strange as in intriguing, inviting us to wonder. And at least part of that invitation is to see Jesus as, well, yes, indeed, abidingly Jewish.
Amen.
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