READINGS

Luke 4:1-13 Dt 6:16, Dt 8,2-3

HOMILY

Today we traditionally have the readings of the temptations of Jesus in the desert so this is Luke's version.

After Luke has Jesus baptized by John, there's immediately a long pause and then the whole of Jesus's genealogy is given, and it's after that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the spirit in the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing at all during those days and, when they were over, He was famished.

Now Luke had given comparatively little details about what was going on in the baptism other than that this was Jesus receiving the Spirit of Sonship.

It was being shown to everybody that He was the Son and here He has been reenacting the 40 days of Moses in the desert.

Here we have the devil who makes very few appearances in Luke's Gospel.

We'll see that there's a subtle reference to the devil at the very end, but it's only here that we get him and what the devil does in the form of his temptation is the little word if.

He tries to get Jesus to doubt that He really is the Son of God and therefore to attempt to prove it by himself.

By reacting to the temptation, Jesus would be doing something to show that He is something, and, if you do something to show that you are something, it means you don't really believe you are. That's the temptation.

So the devil says to Him: if you are the son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread.

Now remember: here Jesus has been in the desert 40 days. He's been reenacting the people of Israel going through the desert.

This is the son who was re-enacting what Moses was doing, who had famously given the people bread from Heaven.

So here Jesus is being tempted to show Himself to be a greater prophet than Moses.

If you are a Son of God, you'll be able to do this, and Jesus responds by quoting from Deuteronomy 8: one does not live by bread alone.

It's not a quote that simply says that the quote comes from this passage.

In the book of Deuteronomy, the long way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness in order to humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with Manna with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So the quotation one doesn't live by bread alone comes exactly from the passage where it's talking about the giving of hunger serves to learn through the experience of the manner that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Jesus is replying to the "if" in exactly the context that the question raises.

Three moments (centers) of Israel's history

THE PROPHETIC (THE EXODUS)

if you're the son of God reenact it somehow now fast.

The devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

In an instant: The Greek word is stigmae, which is the same word you have with stigma, stigmata: a hole in the hand was the word used for tattooing a little puncture in the skin, little puncture, an instant puncture of time.

He showed Him all the Kingdoms of the World, and the Devil said to Him: to you I will give their Glory and all this authority, for it has been given over to me and I give it to anyone I please. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours.

THE ROYAL

Now here we have if you like the temptation of kingship.

As the Devil says, He has been given all this power, but the Devil's understanding of it is very superficial.

He's got all the apparent glory, all the mock glory, all the fake news is the devil's tunes.

So anybody who looks at the state of our world in the state of Kingship's in it and we speak as bombs rain down on Kiev and Kharkiv thinks "oh well, yes he really does have the power, this is the one who is all-powerful and perhaps it would be best to dance to his tune in order to sort things out.

And Jesus again answers this time from the compilation of texts in Deuteronomy. It is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

Please notice: it's this question of time the way in which a moment of time is shown to Jesus.

What Jesus is doing is slowly enacting the response to worshiping the Lord your God and serve only him over time, because in just the same way as Jesus is not going to produce miraculous bread à la Moses, He is in fact going to become the Bread.

So here he's not going to quickly sing the Devil's tune better than the devil.

He's going to worship the Lord your God and undo the whole of the power of the Devil over time, but it's going to be not in a puncture mark of time.

This is the only thing the Devil has got: clever ideas, puncture marks in time.

It's the lived life over time which is going to undo the whole mechanism by which the Devil keeps us in fear.

THE PRIESTLY

Then the Devil took him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple.

So after the prophetic and the royal now we have the priestly pinnacle of the temple saying to him if you're the son of God throw yourself down from here.

Apparently there was a story of a priest who had thrown himself down trying to anticipate the the great atonement.

That's the temptation here: He will command his angels concerning you to protect you and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not bash your foot against a stone.

So the devil knows that Jesus is the Son and is the great high priest who is going to perform the great atonement and that the Psalm does refer to Him.

But what the Devil wants to get him to do is to anticipate it see if he can get him to do the atonement too quickly, because then it will simply be something which He's done to show who He is and not the real thing.

The Devil will always want the fake, the cheap, the anticipated.

Jesus answered him: it said do not put the Lord your God to the test. Here He's quoting directly Deuteronomy 6:16.

Jesus is not saying "do not put the Lord your word to the test" to the Devil, but He's saying it to himself.

I am not going to put the Lord your God to my Lord my God to the test, which would be performing something that obliges God to do something.

He's saying: no, He will perform the atonement, He will become and show himself as the Priest just as the King and as the Prophet in due time, when He has lived through everything and it is the right moment.

It's a very subtle little reminder that this whole thing is about time.

In Luke, it's all about the difference between Satanic time and the time of the one who comes in to give Himself Holy and fully and without protesting under obedience who will then eventually live out the atonement.

It's the if again that's the giveaway.

That kind of knee-jerk response by which we are triggered to try and demonstrate something.

The trigger to demonstrate is the sign of the belief that we aren't the real thing, but the sign of our imposter syndrome

Jesus resisting having to demonstrate what He is, because He knows that His being given Sonship and His being the Son is the same thing, but it happens over time and it doesn't allow him to be bounced into doing spectacular tricks to demonstrate for His own self-satisfaction who He is.

The only reason for doing these things is for other people and that does not mean showing off for your own purposes.

There is something about the weakness and the historical journey that is not accidental to, but absolutely essential to what He's about to do.

Going that richly and in our midst, and overcoming our fears and our shame and our feeling of inadequacy that we too are able not to fear that sonship is something we have to grasp onto desperately trying to prove it to others, but to allow ourselves to be loved into being, starting from where we are so that we may give ourselves starting from where we are and actually show what sonship looks like over time.