Texts: Genesis 2: 15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4: 1-12

In his woodcut, “Adam and Eve in Paradise,” the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder pictures the three figures central to this ancient fable stand in a garden where the lion lies sleeping, deer and other animals graze peacefully about, and Eve is offering Adam an apple as the serpent looks on with a smile of delight. Cranach, a friend of Martin Luther, like many artists of his day, gave expression to the stories from Scripture as a sign of his faith. The images of Eve taking the fruit vary from the stark third century fresco in the Catacomb of St. Pietro and St. Marcellino in Rome to the sophisticated images of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In some of the images the serpent has a child’s face and hand as the fruit is handed to the unwitting woman. It’s a subject that has captivated artists throughout the centuries; there must be literally hundreds of these images all the way down to the various creation museums that have been established with clothed figures of Adam and Eve so the children will not ask embarrassing questions.

Just as we blame others for our temptations and succumbing to them, the ancients were no different. Ancient mythology is replete with such myths from Pandora opening her proverbial box to a goddess destroying an entire culture as in Homer’s Iliad. Our American folk phrase, “The Devil made me do it” is just another aspect of the same temptation to blame others. And in this morning’s Gospel, Matthew’s Jesus confronts his own inner temptations through the personage of another. This passage presents us with several conflicting messages. First, it is the Spirit who leads Jesus into the wilderness. The Lucan version uses the same verb but Mark states that Jesus was driven by the Spirit.

The Greek word translated as “devil” in our text is diabolos, the same word that was used in the Septuagint for the Hebrew word satan, the same word that is used for the one, an adversary, who comes to the Lord God to confront and tempt him (and in this Scripture, the One who is tempted by the satan is male) regarding Job. Originally, there was no evil personage in Hebrew thought. The Lord was seen as the creator of all things, good and evil. For example in Isaiah, even as late as the Second Isaiah in chapters 44 and 45, the Lord says: “I am the Lord who made all things. I form light and I create darkness. I make weal and I create woe.” In some translations, that comes out as “I make wholeness and I create evil.” The idea that God creates two divine spirits of good and evil is a post-Exilic way of thinking that developed over centuries. By the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, contemporary with Jesus, God had gained a divine enemy in the Devil, a creature with superhuman powers and able to tempt people but ultimately under the thumb of the Lord, so to speak. It is not the Devil or Satan who tempts Eve but a serpent.

Back to Jesus. I think the way to look at this passage is for us to see that Jesus had to confront his own inner temptations before he could begin his ministry on earth. The Gospel writers realized this; Jesus is led, or in Mark, the earliest Gospel, is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. In a sense, he is searching for the vision that will enable him to begin his ministry. As Christians, followers of the One who became the Christ for us, we also search for our own vision of living in this world in order to be faithful to Jesus and his vision for our present and out future.

In the wilderness Jesus stands in the mythic moment of the origins of our faith. Just as the people came out of slavery, out of a hard and terrible, yet secure, life, and went into the wilderness to realize the vision of what they were to become, we, too, must enter the wilderness of our minds, of our souls, in order to discover how we are to live, what we are to become. In the story Jesus is given three temptations: bread, power, and self idolatry. We face the same temptations in our daily lives.

The point of the first temptation is not to tell us that bread is irrelevant; it is to tell us that wealth is not the ultimate goal of life. As Jesus constantly reiterates, we cannot serve God and money; the accumulation of riches corrupts our souls; and we will be held accountable for our economic policies that widens the gulf between rich and poor. We will reap the whirlwind unless we take practical steps to create economic justice.

The second temptation is that of power. How often do we hear that the United States is the most powerful country in the world? It seems to be a point of honor in order to hold this position. Our history has been replete with empire worship, manifest destiny, and the destruction of any group that stands in our way. All those Anglos in Arizona and Texas and other parts of the Southwest seem to have forgotten that the Hispanic and Indian populations were there first. There was no Louisiana purchase; the United States took the Southwest by force of arms and moved across the West because we believed in a “Manifest Destiny,” another word for empire building.

The third temptation is that of self-idolatry, or believing that God is behind all of our actions. This past week in Congress, Rep. Peter King spouted some of this as he began his hearings on Islamic radicalism. We saw it in Bush’s justification for Iraq, and we see it in our continuing justification for our military projects. During the 1950s and 1960s it had its face in anti-Communism, a vindication of “our American way of life.” And what does that mean? It sure should mean more than buying junk from China with our disposable income. It sure should mean that we stand for our principles instead of our possessions.

The temptations that Jesus faced are the very same ones we face in our daily lives. However, rather than blaming outside forces, such as a Satan or other countries, we need to really examine our inner demons that separate us from God and each other. During this period of Lent, let us consider our economic policies, our reliance on military might that saps our society, and our desire to ascribe God’s will to our actions; let us really make changes in our lives that will bring about economic justice, a more peaceful world, and an acceptance of our limits. We don’t need a devil to explain temptation and evil; we only need to look at ourselves.

Let us pray: You, O Creating and Redeeming God, who made all things in your image, bring us closer to you and to our neighbors. May we remember that you alone are God and may we live our lives accordingly. Amen.
.