Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
~
The Old Testament reading for this week is Genesis 3 (the temptation and "fall" of Adam and Eve), and the Epistle reading is Romans 5:12-19, culminating in the following verses:
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19, NRSV Updated Edition)
The thread through the Matthew 4 passage of Jesus' temptation is clear: the 'failure' of Adam, the faithfulness of Jesus, and the consequence thereof.
~
"I would like to suggest that St. Paul’s typology of the first Adam and Second Adam is highly resonant with the evangelical anthropology around fallen desire, rather than some version of fallen human nature itself. Our desire is fallen because it takes the wrong model: each other. Desire isn’t bad in itself. It’s simply that the First Adam put us all on the road of desiring according to each other’s lesser desires.
"It takes the coming of the Second Adam to finally have a human being who fully lives God’s loving desire in this world. His perfectly loving desire can become, through the help of the Holy Spirit, the model for our [imitative] desire on its way to becoming more loving. Prior to this Second Adam we had no such model to imitate, short of learning to somehow model God’s love directly, so our redemption is impossible without the coming of the Second Adam. The way of the First Adam is one that leads to death; the way of the Second to life."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on Romans 5:12-19 on the Girardian Lectionary page for Lent 1A (link in comments below)
~
"[The imitative] nature of desire is illustrated graphically in the accounts of the devil’s temptations of Christ in Matthew and Luke. First the devil tries to undermine Jesus’ identity, “if you are the Son of God,” attempting to make him feel a lack, and so prove himself out of a feeling of lack of being. Jesus’ replies show that he receives his sense of being as Son from, and by a non-envious obedience towards, God. The final Matthaean temptation shows the devil explicitly as deviated transcendence: the devil offers to give Jesus power over everything if he will worship him. That is to say, distorted desire is the ruling principle of all the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus was being offered to incarnate that principle if only he would distort his desire from pacifically imitative of God, to conflictually acquisitive.
"The devil here is represented not only as obstacle, but as [...] distortion of desire, making gifts that should be received from God turn into obstacles that turn us away from God. The irony of this passage is that, by his obedience to God, his allowing God to constitute his consciousness pacifically and without obstacles, Jesus is in fact enabled, himself, to become the bread by which men can live because it is the same as the word which comes out of God’s mouth. He is able to become the Temple from which he refused to cast himself down. Finally he becomes, in his death, the king of all the kingdoms of the world. However, all this comes about as something he receives the hard way, through obedience to his Father, not something he grabs via a short cut, through allowing his desire to be distorted to an acquisitive [imitation]."
- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 158-59
~
"Now please notice what Jesus has done: he has rejected the three classic Messianic temptations: that of prophet, that of priest, and that of king. He is going to redefine hereafter what is meant by prophet, what is meant by priest, and what is meant by king: the principle of power, the principle of blessing, and the principle of speaking and living the truth. These three are going to be radically altered by what Jesus is going to live through hereafter.
"It says, “Then the devil left him and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” So it's interesting that the movement from the water of baptism, which in Luke he comes straight up, and the sense is that already his ordination has kicked in, and so now he is able to be within the Holy Place; the Holy Place has now become associated with him. Here it's interesting that the wilderness acts as a psychological step through into the Holy Place, so that the real Holy Place is not simply something that happens by an extrinsic act like baptism, but it's something that actually we grow through and into by our baptism, like by Jesus's baptism.
"As we become the priest, the prophet, and the king, so we are to learn to say no to the shortcuts, to agree to be held in being and allow ourselves to be given the capacity to be good to others, to be given the capacity to forgive and make forgiveness available for others, and to be given the capacity to exercise the kind of power that actually helps people live in truth. All of these are processes into which we are taken by baptism, and Jesus is showing us that this is the true path of Israel. The same elements will come up in different readings over the next weeks and I hope you will keep this in mind as we invite our Lord to help illuminate our Lenten Journey."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for First Sunday in Lent 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DLHErAUKYw)
[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 1A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent1a/]
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