Title: A Desert Encounter
Text: Matthew 4: 1-11
Date: February 13, 2005
By: Kendall H. Brown Kendall's Notebook page 41
The traditional reading for the first Sunday in Lent is the story of Jesus in the Wilderness. A traditional way to present this story is to interpret it as a morality play. It is all about being good and resisting evil. It is all about resisting temptation and we are given a look at the greatest expert of all time in morality, Jesus, on the job and in the field. Having seen him at work, we are encouraged to follow his example. Jesus expertly handled temptations with which we are all familiar – the temptation to instantly gratify our needs and desire, the temptation to expect miracles because of our relationship with God as good Christians and the temptation to grab power when given the opportunity. So the story goes as a morality play and I think that most of us who have been in the church for most of our lives have heard this story in this way time and time again.
My approach to the story this morning is to set aside the morality play reading and come at the story from a different angle. The story speaks more dearly to me and more nearly to my life when I read it and understand it as a spiritual drama – that is something quite different from a morality play.
I also believe it more rightful to read the story as spiritual drama instead of as moral instruction because of its placement in the Gospels. It is the prelude to Jesus ministry. Moral instruction was not what Jesus needed. Moral instruction would not have equipped him for the challenges and trials that were to come. The story is about something that happened in Jesus’ spiritual life that gave him strength, wholeness, and healing for the work ahead. That’s not morality. That is spirituality.
So let us re-hear the story as a spiritual drama.
The story opens with Jesus being driven into the wilderness immediately after his baptism in the River Jordan by his cousin, John the Baptist. There, according to all the reports, he came face to face with the devil. That meeting has the makings of an awesome encounter. Two rulers of the universe, if you will, the Prince of Peace and the Prince of Darkness come eyeball to eyeball. I believe that the universe can only stand a limited number of these encounters. In terms of what this story offers our own spiritual lives, this wilderness encounter shakes the earth under our feet as much as any meeting of two continental plates. I don’t know about you, but with these two universal giants and foes on the same playing field, I’d expect some sparks to fly. But read or remember closely the accounts in Matthew and Luke.
The sparks did not fly! Yes, indeed, the devil was most hostile towards Jesus. You may not have thought of it before in this way, but those temptations were acts of hostility as dangerous and damaging as setting of a broadside of cannons at or laying a minefield in front of one’s enemy. They were intended to destroy the enemy. That sounds pretty hostile to me. And the devil was a master at using some of the world’s most common forms of hostility: So common that we use them all the time in our relationships with each other. And this is where the story draws near to our stories without turning the story into a morality play.
So what was the devil trying to do and what were the forms of hostility employed in this story? Here they are. The devil tried to use Jesus, to manipulate Jesus, and to get Jesus under his control. You see, the devil is not all that different from all of us. Not a day goes by that humans are not trying to use, manipulate and control others – the three most common forms of hostility. In the using, manipulating and controlling efforts, the devil, like all hostile people, refused to affirm or recognize anybody else’s boundaries. He figured that everyone, even Jesus, fell inside his boundaries and being in his territory are under his control and dominance. You have to give the devil credit where credit is due. He had an ego so big that it obviously came from Hell.
In response to this attack from his archenemy, Jesus did not offer hostility for hostility. It is a safe bet that we would have. Jesus did not respond by telling the devil off, yelling at him, hitting him or striking him in the nose. Jesus also, very interestingly, did not respond to the devil by going on the defensive, which is returning hostility for hostility. Read the story again and notice the lack of defensiveness in Jesus response. There is too much strength, inner peace, and self assuredness in Jesus’ response to leave any room for defensiveness. Nevertheless, when the day was done, Jesus own turf was securely defended.
Jesus did not argue with the devil in an argumentative effort to establish who was right and who was wrong. Jesus did not try to win the devil over to his own side nor did he make any attempt to control the devil’s will or actions. All of this would have been hostile in nature. Jesus did none of these, neither did he lie down and let the devil use him for a doormat.
If Jesus did none of the above, what did he do? What recourse could be left? Those questions are best answered in terms of who Jesus was, not in terms of what he did. Here is where we run into the big difference cause by this story’s being a spiritual drama instead of a morality play. Read the temptation accounts again. This time think about the person in the story, not so much about what he is doing. As you look closely at Jesus in the wilderness, you will find a person at peace with himself and with his God, even in the presence of the devil. Out of that deep inner peace, Jesus responded to the Devil not with hostility, but with hospitality. Yes, hospitality.
We think of hospitality as a set of outer actions such as telling folks to have a nice day, asking someone to come in out the rain, making a place for someone at our table, or making a space for someone in our church and lives. The Biblical understanding of hospitality runs much deeper and is demonstrated in the temptation story. Jesus was hospitable. He reached into the deep hospitable peace of his soul and relationship with God. From that center of inner peace, he was able to offer the devil a hospitality that did not attempt to use, manipulate or control the devil. Those things are the plays and moves in the Devil’s game and in many of our games –but not in Jesus game. It was a hospitality that allowed the devil to be the devil. Even in the face of all the devil’s deviltry, Jesus was neither threatened nor moved. At the heart of hospitality is that allowance which offers and provides a space for the other to be him or her self, no matter who the other might be, even the devil, himself, in this case, No manipulating. No using. No controlling. No desire to change the other to fit my image of what I think the other should be. That is hospitality.
Jesus clearly saw that the devil had his boundaries and that Jesus also had his own. Hostility is an attack on boundaries. Hospitality is a recognition and affirmation of boundaries. Recognizing his and the devil’s boundaries, Jesus in his responses to the temptations simply and clearly stated, “I know who I am. I know who you are. I know what is mine and what God has given to me. And I know what I cannot give up to you.” The response to the devil carried the strength of a man at peace with himself and was extremely hospitable. That response had no place in it for the hostility of going on the defensive nor the hostility of going on the attack. Jesus needed to neither defend nor attack. If Jesus had done either of these two things, he would have been playing right into the devil’s hand, by playing the devil’s own game. By playing his own game, the game of peaceful hospitality rooted in the deep inner peace of one who knew himself, Jesus stopped the devil in his tracks and turned him his tail.
Lent is a time for us to look at ourselves in a mirror. The story Jesus and the devil in the wilderness reminds us to look at ourselves and to ask are we hostile, do we use, manipulate and control others, and where are the places in our lives where we do that? Or, are we hospitable and do we seek the inner peace that strengthens us to be hospitable and without which we have little hospitality to offer? In our hospitality do we make a place and a space for the other who may be completely different from us, even hostile to us?