March 1, 2026 – Second Sunday in Lent
Deuteronomy 8.1-3
Matthew 4.1-11
If? Since!
Second Sunday in Lent
“The devil took Jesus 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.’”
Remember when we were kids, and we wanted in the worst way to do something that all our friends were doing but our parents wouldn’t let us do it? Both the childhood complaint and the parental reply remain legendary. “But Mom, all the cool kids are doing it!” we would complain. And the reply? “If all the cool kids were jumping off the George Washington Bridge, would you want to do that too?” Am I right? By a similar token we might ask of this morning’s New Testament lesson, “If Jesus jumped off the top of the church steeple, would you want to do that too?” So let’s make it interesting this morning: what if I offered you a hundred dollars to jump off the steeple and land unharmed on the sidewalk – would you take me up on it? Even if all the cool kids are doing it? No? How about a thousand? Ten thousand? No? Then it is probably not because your Mom told you it is a stupid idea, although it is, but it is because what I am asking you to do is simply not humanly possible. It is not possible for anyone of us to jump off the church steeple and land unharmed on the sidewalk no matter how much of an incentive I dangle before you. Which means it is not really a temptation if you cannot do it, right? It is not a temptation if it cannot be done. Let’s tuck that thought away for a few moments.
The Rev. Mary Luti was for years professor of preaching at the UCC’s Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts and Senior Minister at First Church in Cambridge, a congregation, incidentally, first organized by The Rev. Thomas Hooker. Mary has since retired, but while she was still at First Church I had the opportunity to work alongside her on a handful of projects. Mary and I led some graduate seminars at Harvard Divinity School together, and we were also part of the founding cohort of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. I mention all this because I have a good deal of respect and admiration for her work, she is a pastor’s pastor and a scholar’s scholar, and just happens to be the author of last Sunday’s piece in our Lent devotions about the temptation of Jesus, which we’re going to look at this morning. But I also mention our relationship because I am going to be so bold as to correct something she wrote in that devotion, with an abundance of humility, admiration, and more than a little trepidation.
To my mind, the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is one of the most important moments in his three plus year career, coming very early in his ministry. The story appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but Matthew gives the most comprehensive telling of it. We heard it again this morning, and now that we have been reminded of it, we can probably tell the story in our own words. Jesus went into the wilderness to be tested by the devil, whom Matthew also calls “the tempter.” And the temptations were rooted in some very basic human needs and desires. The first appealed to his hunger – Jesus had been fasting for a long time – as the Bible puts it, “forty days and forty nights.” And yes, he was hungry. Changing the stones that dotted the wilderness to bread would provide more than enough to sate his hunger. The second temptation appealed to his safety, his physical well-being, when he was challenged to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. No, Jesus could not fly, but surely the angels of heaven could have caught him in time before he was hurt. And the third appealed to his self-esteem; he could have the all world at his feet – all he needed to do was acknowledge the tempter as a deity. And again, he demurred. If only some of our leaders showed the same restraint!
Hunger. Physical safety. Pride. Three entirely human experiences. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread… If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you…’ All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.”
I wrote in the church newsletter about a seminary professor of mine, Dr. Bruce Metzger. I won’t rehash what I wrote, except to say one of the places he really opened my eyes and my understanding of Jesus is right here in the story of his temptation in the wilderness. Dr. Metzger did not write any books on it, nor any journal articles that I could find; what I remember comes entirely from lectures and my class notes. But I do believe there is a book waiting to be written on this. We spoke a couple months ago about the divine and human nature of Jesus, and how the Council of Nicaea addressed it. The early church struggled mightily with this in its earliest days, and one of the reasons is because there is very little in the Bible that speaks clearly and succinctly to it. Scripture is much more roundabout on the topic, but to my mind, there is no clearer demonstration than our story in Matthew.
The way I read it, unless Jesus were both human and divine, the story simply does not work. “The tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” This was a two-pronged temptation, and it could only work with somebody like Jesus: it appealed to his divinity because turning stones into bread is not something an ordinary mortal would be able to do; and it appealed to the human part of him because he was hungry. Or to put the shoe on the other foot, something like this would not be a temptation to mortals like ourselves, because we could never turn stones into bread in the first place, no matter how hard we tried; nor would it tempt someone who was only divine, because hunger is a human trait. Remember how we started out this morning: even if I offered a million dollars to jump from the steeple to the sidewalk in a single leap, it is not a temptation if it cannot be done.. In Matthew chapter four, if the tempter’s bait were to work at all, it had to be because it was possible for Jesus to do on both counts; he had to be human and heavenly at the same time.
But Jesus refused to take the bait, and so the tempter played his next card: he “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, [God] will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Again, the tempter’s words appealed to Jesus’ divinity, because the angels would have come to rescue him, but we also know he is human because if the angels did not rescue him, his fall would have made an awful mess on the temple floor. This temptation can only work if Jesus were both human and divine.
But the third and last temptation was the most insidious of all, and it had to have been the most tempting to Jesus as well. “Again the tempter took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” And wasn’t this exactly what Jesus desired, that every people, every realm, every heart in the world, might turn toward him so that he could bring everyone, everywhere, to redemption and salvation; this is what the devil dangled in front of Jesus as the final and most forceful temptation of them all. But once again, Jesus resisted. “Jesus said, Away with you, Satan! for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.”
These were the temptations Jesus faced, and overcame, as he prepared for his earthly ministry. And these are the temptations which could only have been temptations if Jesus were both God and human at the same time.
I like what Mary Luti did with this story in last week’s devotion. She reminds us that even though we face a series of choices throughout our lives, opportunities to chose the good or the ill, what matters more is the big picture. How are we oriented? Do we stand in and with God and let this direct the way we live? If so, then the little choices will take care of themselves. We can say this with confidence. As Martin Luther once said, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” Mary alluded to this in her closing prayer, May my first and last stand be you, O God. May I have no others before you. But here is my quibble with Mary: she centers her piece around the tempter’s repeated use of the word if. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones o become loaves of bread… If you are the Son of God, since. throw yourself down.” “All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.” I think a much better understanding of what the tempter was saying is to translate that word, not as If, but instead as Since. If is conditional and implies maybe, as in maybe you are the Son of God and maybe you are not. No, the tempter knew his quarry well, and there is no maybe about it. I think the word Since carries the force of Matthew’s story much better. “Since you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread… Since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down…” And because Jesus is the Son of God, resisted and rejected every temptation. And it is from this encounter that Jesus, fully human and fully divine, set out on his ministry of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, empowering the poor and caring for the human soul.
Because that is what all the cool kids are doing,