Luke 41:13 Wrote:Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted[a] by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you
to guard you carefully;
11 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

It’s the first Sunday of Lent and, I hope, the first of my reflections coming back as a regular thing - at least for Lent and Easter. Whilst Christmas certainly hogs the limelight in terms of Christian festivals - mainly for its secular aspects - Easter is, in fact, the more important of the two in the Christian calendar, but even Christians can find that hard to remember when there’s so much razzmatazz at the end of the year. It’s because of this that I try - and I must emphasise that it’s ‘try’ not ‘succeed’ - to do something special in Lent and this year I hope to follow that through further than usual, especially since I’m also still exploring the idea of becoming ordained as a priest in the Church of England and trying out different styles of service across the church in the town where I live. As an example of this, I recently went to my first ever Ash Wednesday service and walked home with a cross of ashes on my forehead, which was a novel experience, but the reflective aspect of such a service and such a ritual was beneficial, I think. Anyway, all this is preamble and not much to do with the passage above, so, on with the reflection!

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the scriptural basis for the period known as Lent, is a pretty well-known passage and I don’t expect to say anything astonishing or new about. Rather, I would focus on what this story tells us about reading and interpreting scripture, which is all contained in the third and final temptation. Obviously, the easy lesson from this is the famous adage, ‘even the Devil quotes scripture’, but in practical terms that’s not always all that helpful. Instead, it’s perhaps best to see how Satan’s use of scripture to qualify his own ends actually comes across as quite reasonable, if we eradicate Jesus’ response and ignore the context of the passage he quotes.

Satan’s two verses, which come from Psalm 91, appear to tell us that God is a protecting, even an intervening God, so why shouldn’t Jesus demonstrate his own divinity by putting it to the test? But, of course, those two verses exist in a context and the immediate context is that they are bracketed by the following verses:

Psalm 91: 9-10, 13 Wrote:9 If you say, ‘The Lord is my refuge,’
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
...
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

For a start, this section begins with ‘if’, which means that all that follows the opening clauses is conditional upon saying’ The Lord is my refuge’ and making the Most High your dwelling - that is, putting your trust in Him and by extension, particularly from what we know of our relationship to God from the rest of scripture, being obedient to him. Putting God to the test in this fashion for His enemy is clearly not a trusting nor obedient thing to do.

Secondly, we see that part of the promised protection is against ‘the lion and cobra’ and ‘the great lion and the serpent’. In the ancient Near-East, these were all real, physical threats, but they are also all images used to tell us of Satan himself. The very verses that Satan used to tempt contain an implicit warning against him!

But what does all this mean for us? We’re unlikely to find ourselves facing the kind of temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness and neither are we likely to have Satan quoting scripture at us directly, but this passage does serve as an example of how easy it can be to misread scripture. Not only must we be aware of a passage’s immediate context and how it fits into the revealed will of God throughout scripture, but we also have to take care in how we then interpret that passage in the context in which we live currently. Much of the tension which exists in modern Christianity, particularly over issues like homosexuality and abortion, depends very much on the issue of interpretation - interpreting God’s word, interpreting God’s world and interpreting the culture we find ourselves in. For some Christians, the issue seems clear cut, one way or another. For others, and I myself am often in this category, it never is and so we must wrestle with scripture and pray for wisdom and discernment, whilst all the while remembering that we are called to be loving as well as light.

I guess that what I’m trying to say is, that interpreting God’s word and his will in this world isn’t always easy and we shouldn’t be too convinced that we’ve got it right. We do have help, however. Jesus taught us that the Holy Spirit would ‘guide [us] into all the truth’ (from John 16:12) and we can pray that God will reveal Himself and His will in the Bible when we read it. We won’t always get it right, but thankfully God is forgiving and merciful!