Temptations, Discipleship, and Identity

Image Credit: Jesus is tempted (Jesus Mafa)

First Sunday in Lent,  Year C
9 March 2025

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

 

Jimmy Carter died on the 29^th of December of last year. In many ways he was the face of Evangelical Christianity.
Carter Biographer Randall Balmer writes that after his defeat the first time he ran for governor of the state of Georgia, Carter rededicated his life to Christ. Shortly thereafter, together with other Southern Baptist laymen, he knocked on doors and shared his faith. One time Carter was paired with a Puerto Rican minister. Carter, with only rudimentary command of Spanish, would read from the Bible in Spanish-speaking neighbourhoods, and the pastor, Eloy Cruz, would preach. At the end of their week together, Carter pressed Cruz about why he was so successful. Cruz demurred, thinking that Carter was superior to him. But Carter insisted.
“Señor Jimmy,” Cruz finally responded, “the secret to faith is to have two loves: one for God and the other for whoever happens to be standing in front of you at any given time.”¹

Whether Carter was a good president is not the question I want to ask. Carter is best remembered for the work he continued to do following his presidency. He remained an Evangelical Christian and he spoke of his faith publicly for his entire life. Yet following his death, he was denounced by many fellow Evangelicals which prompted Russel Moore, editor of Christianity Today to write, that the expressed doubts over whether Carter was a “real” Christian had to do not with faith but with belonging to the right political tribe and holding to the right political and social opinions. Moore concludes, “Therein lies the tragedy of 21st-century American Christianity.”²

What is interesting is that the same people who elected Carter are the people who abandoned him in 1980 to elect Ronald Reagan. This is interesting because Evangelicals had embraced him because of his faith but then turned to Ronald Reagan who in August 1980 famously said to an evangelical audience, “I know this group can’t endorse me,” adding after a pause, “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you’re doing.”³
The reason for this shift in political allegiance is often portrayed as centering on the issue of abortion. However, this forgets that as governor of California Reagan had signed the most liberal abortion bill in the country. Carter was more conservative on abortion than Reagan but believed that it should be permitted.
Rather than being motivated by the issue of abortion the shift had much more to do with the creation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority as a political movement. It was about the reach of social conservatives for power. And for this movement the primary issue was not abortion but were tax exemptions for conservative schools like Bob Jones University who continued to uphold racial segregation.⁴

The reason this is relevant today is that the aim of the so-called Moral Majority was to gain political power.
That is not to say that other parts of the church may not also seek political power, then or today.
Yet what we learn in the story of Jesus’ testing by the accuser, or by the devil, is that Jesus rejects power.
That Jesus rejects power stands in contradiction to our own desire and assumptions. It stands in contradiction because if offered power we would take it, for we have an idea of how the world should be, what our politics should be, or at least what they should not be.

The testing of Jesus is told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All three tests offer not something evidently evil but something that can be understood as something good. Not only would the creation of bread satisfy Jesus’s own hunger but potentially the hunger of the world. Yet part of the problem here is that the tempter wants Jesus to buy into the production consumption society. In today’s market economy everything revolves around our needs, whether they be real, imagined, or simply profit. The market economy places not the neighbour but the consumer at the centre (and only the consumer who can pay), so when Jesus answers that one does not live by bread alone (but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, quoting Deut 8:3), he places God to the centre. For Jesus all gifts come not from ourselves but from God which is why he instructs his disciples to pray for our daily bread. (11:3). Later Jesus will say that life is more than food (Luke 12:22-23), and before the cross he will take bread and say, This is my body. (chapter 22)

The economic temptation is followed by the political temptation. The tempter offers Jesus power over all kingdoms, provided Jesus no longer worships God. I know that what the tempter says is, “If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” It does not matter whether the devil is a person or not for there is no temptation that is not human. Power is indeed a great temptation and it has been argued that because the tempter offers all kingdoms and all power, that all kingdoms and all power belong to the tempter.⁵ Western civilization, in memory of the Christian story, recognizes this temptation by calling those who have been given authority ministers which means servants, hoping they will remember that their role is not to wield power but to serve.

In the final test the tempter takes Jesus to Jerusalem, places him on a pinnacle of the temple, and calls Jesus to throw himself down to be saved by God’s holy angels. Jesus again answers with a verse from Deuteronomy, namely not put the Lord your God to the test. (6:16)
But there is more going on. Jerusalem is the place where Jesus will die. The tempter promises him to be saved. And so what the tempter really invites Jesus to do is to abandon his mission. To embrace the market and make his own needs the centre of his life, to rule through power, and to stop right here, which means not to end up on the cross.

What we learn here is that the Kingdom of God has a different logic and the people of God have a different calling. Later in Luke’s Gospel, after the last supper and before Jesus’s arrest by the authorities, Jesus says to his disciples, “²⁵ (…) The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. ²⁶But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. ²⁷For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Power is a temptation not for Jesus alone but also for the Church. The history of the Church tells the story. The moral majority, or today Christian Nationalism, are deeply problematic, not only because God is the God not only of a nation but the God of all, but firstly because what drives these movements is that they seek to rule instead to serve. Yet power is diametrically opposed to the mission of Jesus. And by extension to the mission of the church.

That God became human in Jesus is an act of humility. Jesus descended from his heavenly throne. Thus, had Jesus given in to the temptation to power, Jesus would have voided the incarnation by dismissing the humility of being human. Jesus was raised and exalted by God not by himself.

Admittedly, this idea that we should follow Jesus and reject power, runs against the grain. We think of what we could do with power, how we could make the world a better place. But before we dismiss Jesus’s rejection of power we must hear again the hymn from Philippians 2, where Paul exhorts the congregation,

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
⁶who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
⁷but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Then we want to pay close attention to who it is who exhalts Jesus:

⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

If we come away wondering then what it is that we can and should do, we should know that foregoing power for serving others does not mean that we should not attempt to change the world. We must attempt to change the world. Our means, however, are service not domination.

And if that still is not enough, American Mennonite pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler writes about how on the first day of kindergarten she e-mails each of her children’s teachers to let them know that her children will not join their peers in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.⁶ In baptism we have already given our fealty and we cannot give it again. The radical reformers created alternative communities. Instead of obeying in advance, Anabaptists pray, discern, and listen. Florer-Bixler reminds us that by baptism we have been given a new identity as the people of God, a people who do not obey in advance. Perhaps we can learn from our Anabaptist brothers and sisters.

It is following his baptism by John that the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness.

Amen.