A Fresh Perspective

This brief account of Jesus’ testing could leave the impression that his testing came and went quickly. To counter that Luke tells us that Jesus was in the desert forty days. Forty is a symbolic number. It’s the number of days it rained in the great flood and the number of years Israel wandered in the wilderness. The number simply represents a lengthy period of time. Temptation never really ends. We face new tests all through our life’s journey. For both Jesus and us, the Devil represents anything that presents a roadblock that would hinder us and prevent us from continuing on the spiritual path God has for us. We need not look outside ourselves for the Devil, for the greatest Devil we face is within us – our own ego. All three of the temptations Jesus confronts involves very subtle appeals to the ego. It would be convenient for us if the testing we face was something completely outside ourselves, for then we could excuse ourselves, like Flip Wilson used to say on “Laugh In”: Th...

I may have told you about the minister’s wife who was shopping one afternoon and a dress caught her eye. They were on a fairly tight budget and it was quite a bit more than she could afford, but she bought it anyway. She told her husband that she had no intention of buying it, but when she tried it on, it looked and felt so good that she could not resist the temptation. Her husband said, “Why didn’t you say, ‘Satan’ get behind me.” She said, “I did. And he said it looks even better from that angle.” Some of you may remember Flip Wilson of “Laugh in” fame popularizing the old saying, “The devil made me do it.” We poke fun at the Devil, but in scripture the Devil is the symbol for that which is deceptive and manipulative and adversarial to the kin-dom of God. Our text today says that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted or tested by the Devil. The “wilderness” is a common scriptural theme and reference to Jesus fasting forty days and forty nights recalls the story ...

The devil has been the subject of many jokes. For those of you my age or older who can forget Flip Wilson on “Laugh in” poking fun saying, “The Devil made me do it.” I heard about one lady who purchased a very expensive dress and when she got home her husband asked her why she bought it. He said, “You know, we can’t afford that.” She said, “Well, honey, the devil made me do it. I was trying it on in the store and he whispered, ‘I’ve never seen you look more gorgeous than you do in that dress.’ Her husband quipped, “Why didn’t you say, ‘Get behind me, Satan?’” She said, “I did” and the devil said, “It looks great from behind too.” I try to avoid two extremes in reading this story. There are those, on the one hand, who read this literally or factually. There are others, at the polar opposite who dismiss it as legend or fable. I don’t take it literally, but I take it very seriously. This is a story of the struggles that we all face in the quest to discern who we are and what we are a...

The biblical temptation stories are religious stories that teach spiritual truth, not historical reports or factual accounts. The serpent in Genesis and the Devil in the temptation of Jesus personify temptation. This subtle, evil force resides in each of us and in systemic form it exists in large organizations and social systems. I emphasize this because even if you happen to believe in a personal Devil, these stories employ the figure of the Devil as a way of talking about the universal phenomena of temptation. I make that point because of our tendency to project evil and create scapegoats. It can be quite convenient and opportunistic to find evil everywhere else but in our own lives. Many of you will remember Flip Wilson on the show “Laugh In” constantly echoing, “The Devil made me do it.” And of course there are endless stories aren’t there? I like the one where the woman brings home an expensive dress and her husband says, “Why did you buy that dress, dear? You know we can...

There is a great story in the book, Report to Greco , by Nikos Kazantzakis. When Nikos was young, his mother was very religious; she went to mass everyday. His father was anti-religious; sort of bitter toward religion, and Nikos was torn. When he was 19 years old he decided to spend the summer at a monastery located on one of the mountains in Greece . At this monastery there was a famous old monk called Father Makarios.  One day, Nikos asked Father Makarios, “Father Makarios, do you still wrestle with the Devil?” Father Makarios said, “No. I use to wrestle with the Devil all the time. But now I have grown old and tired, and the Devil has grown old and tired with me. So I leave him alone and he leaves me alone.” Nikos asked, “Then life is easy now?” Father Makarios responded, “Oh no. Life is much harder now. For now I wrestle with God.” Nikos exclaimed, “You wrestle with God and hope to win?” “No,” said Father Makarios, “I wrestle with God and hope to loose.”  These t...