Bible Study Notes: St Luke’s Gospel
Session 14 : Chapter 4, 1-13
Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and
was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights
he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when
the time was up he was hungry.
The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test: "Since you're
God's Son, command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread." Jesus
answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to really
live."
For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the
earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, "They're yours in
all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I'm in charge of them all and
can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they're yours, the
whole works." Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy:
"Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve him
with absolute single-heartedness."
For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top
of the Temple. He said, "If you are God's Son, jump. It's written,
isn't it, that 'he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you;
they will catch you; you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone'?"
"Yes," said Jesus, "and it's also written, 'Don't you dare
tempt the Lord your God.'" That completed the testing. The Devil
retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity.
© The
Message
We are not really taking up where we left off we skipped just a little of the 3rd chapter, but as we dealt with the Baptism of Jesus on Sunday, I thought we might move on as Jesus emerges into his public ministry.
Someone, one of those rather silly people that the media fawns over and gets their kicks from 'phoning people and leaving messages once said, "The best way to cope with a temptation is to give into it".
Luke’s account of the first temptations of Christ seems to tell us that maybe the best way to treat them is to defeat them.
I remember from my Sunday School days singing a little Victorian ditty that went, "Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin", so there was school of thought that held that it was not the sin that was the problem but rather the giving in to the temptation, or, lack of faith.
The problem is that temptations lead us into self-destructive behaviour and it could be said that our most effective response is self-transformation. It is only a powerful self-change from within, sponsored by the Holy Spirit, that will enable us to withstand the seductive detraction of temptation.
In this narrative of the temptations St Luke sets out to show us the sources of spiritual energy that empowered Jesus to turn away from the temptations however alluring they may have seemed. These generated a positive spiritual environment whose gathering force overwhelmed the chaos of the temptation.
Now, as I have tried to show and explain to you in previous sessions, it is not the historical or literal accuracy that we are concerned with in these stories. It is about what this story has to say to us, what it can do to help us along our own spiritual journeys So we come across things that we will find perhaps confusing. Like for example Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness, that’s a long time!
Numbers in the Bible are often not meant to be taken literally, but serve a symbolic function. Our suspicions are aroused especially with a number that recurs so frequently as 40. What would be the symbolic meaning of the number 40? On one level, it represents a longer period of time, but there is more. The longer time has content: It is a time of need, of struggle, of testing. There is in fact extra-biblical evidence for this usage as well. But in the Bible, a third level of meaning appears. Forty denotes a period of preparation for some special action of the Lord.
So we know that this time is of great significance. The significance being that this is not something that is going to happen suddenly or magically. Luke is speaking of a forty-day process because the gathering of inner spiritual power takes time. We see Jesus going to the wilderness for this lengthy period of inner growth and development. In the wilderness Jesus will experience silence, solitude, fasting, prayer and creative presence of the Holy Spirit. So, given that these five elements served Jesus so well we need to look carefully at them to see how they can help us.
Though first I'd like us to take a brief look at the wilderness/desert and its significance for Jesus and for us.
Since the "time" of the wandering is more or less symbolic, what about the place? Israel certainly knew the real wilderness, since that would describe fairly well the regions to the south, southwest and east across the Jordan. The desert is a place of no water and no food since little vegetation can grow there. It is also the abode of dangerous animals. The desert is a place of extremes where choices are more clear-cut.
The wilderness also carries a symbolic meaning. The wilderness is a negative place where the power of Death holds sway, where basic questions have to be dealt with. In the Gospels, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness to be a different kind of Messiah; to take the path of spectacle and power rather than that of humble service, but this temptation would continue throughout his ministry up to his death itself when he is taunted to come down off the cross.
Many spiritual writers today speak of a "wilderness experience." This is a kind of retreat experience, time set apart to focus on, to ask, to consider, responding to basic questions of the spiritual life. It need not be, and often is not, a literal "desert place," though that is not impossible. Lent is the Church's annual "wilderness experience," its retreat to ask again the basic questions.
So let us for a moment or two return to the question of these five features and how they might form our inner lives so that we can resist the pressures of day-to-day life, the temptations that beset us.
1. Silence
Let’s take silence first. In the same way that the noise and bustle around us distract us, so external silence encourages us to pay attention to the inner noises we probably never notice. It invites us to consider noise abatement procedures! Outward silence is a step toward inner quiet. And not just quiet for it’s own sake, this is more than a stress reduction exercise. Inner calm’s ultimate goal puts us in touch with the divine energy that can only be experienced in the spiritual side of our lives.
A spiritual giver needs a spiritual receiver. Heart can only speak to heart. Once we tune in to the still small voice of peace, the healing voice of the Holy Spirit, we are invited to the inward centre of energy, which is so helpful for resisting temptation.
2. Solitude
An oft-overlooked requirement; let me first say that solitude differs from loneliness. A lonely person longs for company, a friendly word the simple pleasure of idly passing the time with someone. Solitude is that desire to be at peace with ones self and to learn through solitude to have a better relationship with God and one another. The long country walk or sitting on a cliff top, the moments in the quiet of a country church or in that special place that is ours and ours alone.
It’s about learning to like oneself enough to be able to take our minds off ourselves, and that which ails us, to make us attentive to the needs of others.
3. Fasting
This is probably the most neglected of disciplines. Religious fasting produces a ‘training effect’ similar to that that one might get physically with physical exercise. We receive within ourselves a discipline that enable us to draw divine energy from the Spirit, an energy that never seems more powerful than when it is used to resist temptations to self-destructive behaviour.
4. Prayer
The fourth discipline for inner renewal is prayer and meditation. The preceding three disciplines create an excellent preparation for prayerful attentiveness to God. People who pray and meditate might seem a little otherworldly to us, and this is so, for such people who practice this discipline sink into regions of their inner space that most of us never even realise exist.
The thing is that prayerfulness is not something reserved for the very holy and the pious. One does not have to belong to an elite corps of spiritual giants to drop into the endless regions or our own souls. Jesus sent His Holy Spirit as our guide on this journey and we walk with the Spirit with a pleasing sense of joy and discovery if we make the effort. Every baptised Christian has this gift of prayer and those who take this spiritual adventure (for an adventure it is) may look upon temptation in a different light, not in fear or timidly, but with energy, God’s energy.
Luke’s accounts of the temptations contain these five spiritual gifts, which allowed Jesus to overcome temptation. The cumulative impact of silence, solitude fasting, prayer and responsiveness to the Spirit occasioned Christ’s triumph over temptation.
The story shows that Jesus was human enough to be tempted. It also demonstrates that Jesus modelled for us a hero journey that is just as available to us as it was to Him. He felt the emotional pull to succumb to temptation; He encountered the tendency of His intellect to want to justify giving in. But by sticking faithfully to the five-step plan for gathering up all his inner resources, He witnessed for us what we ourselves can do just as well and effectively with the help of His Holy Spirit. Christ’s love is with us to overcome evil.
Jesus gave us a spiritual plan for a spiritual battle. We can be freed from self-destructive behaviour and from damaging of other people and freed to love self, others and God.
We have not looked at the temptations of Christ in detail, perhaps for your homework you might like to identify the three temptations with the five gifts?
© Fr Michael Fuller: January 2009