Superstar

Superstar
#2 in Images of Jesus
Dr. D. William McIvor
February 29, 2004 — First Sunday in Lent

On this First Sunday in Lent we take up a text that could properly occupy us for many Sundays, namely the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. For many of us it may seem like a very strange idea that Jesus was truly tempted by the devil and that the temptations were real and dangerous. We who worship him as Lord, who sing hymns and songs of praise about him, who pray to him and trust our eternal destiny to him may have a hard time thinking that Jesus could really be tempted.

But the early Christians had no such problem.[1] Jesus’ temptations or testing are mentioned explicitly in the book of Hebrews. While Mark’s Gospel describes the temptation in just two terse verses and John’s Gospel sprinkles references to testing throughout, Matthew and Luke elaborate the temptation story in great detail.[2] It is Luke’s version to which we’ll turn in just a moment.

The season of Lent — the 40 days before Easter not counting Sundays — is traditionally a season of penitence and self-examination. During Lent Christians are to examine who we are before God. That’s why the lectionary assigns the temptation story to the first Sunday in Lent. Jesus’ temptations by the devil are about who he is before God. Luke emphasizes this by placing the temptation story right after Jesus’ baptism and genealogy — who is Jesus? — and just before he begins his ministry by preaching in his home town of Nazareth — what is Jesus here to do? Two key questions: (1) Who is Jesus?, and (2) What is Jesus here to do? The answers are: (1) He is God’s Son, and (2) He is here to proclaim good news. The temptation story is where Jesus’ identity and purpose are tested. By looking at this story we can learn more about our own identity and purpose. Let’s read it in Luke 4.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant 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.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, it is written,

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

We’ve been reminded recently that it’s been 40 years since John, Paul, George, and Ringo invaded American popular music and American popular culture. Shortly before Easter 1966, just three years after the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, John Lennon proclaimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Those of you who remember that time will recall how outraged many Christians were. Even the loving and much-loved pastor of my home church took offense and gently suggested that it was near blasphemy for a rock band to compare its popularity with that of our Lord and Savior.

Of course, in the 1960s there were many movements, gurus, and followers. It wasn’t just rock musicians like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Jimi Hendrix that had big followings. To name just a couple of others, Timothy Leary with his famous incantation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” was popular with many as was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation.

But not to be outdone, at the same time there were many who turned to Jesus and took him as their guru. In response to other mantras there was even a “Jesus cheer,” first said by Ted Wise who in 1967 with his wife Elizabeth started a Christian coffeehouse in San Francisco’s infamous Haight-Ashbury district. The Jesus Cheer went:

The Jesus People, or “Jesus Freaks” as they were sometimes called then, clearly believed that Jesus was more popular and more important than any rock star or any other kind of star. Even though the plays and movies of the early 1970s — “Godspell” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” — were not written or produced from within Christian orthodoxy, they were nevertheless embraced as proof that Jesus was the star, indeed the superstar beyond all possible stars. And there are a lot of Christians who still think in those terms even 30 and 40 years later.

In this Lenten sermon series, I’m looking at images of Jesus, both ancient and modern. I began on Ash Wednesday when I said that our images of Jesus or our images of God matter because we tend to live according to the images we have. So let’s reflect in light of our text on the image of Jesus as superstar.

We have time today for just one brief question and that is, what does it mean to be tempted? It may seem silly to even ask such a question because temptation seems so obvious. Whether we’re tempted to eat too much, to cheat on our taxes, to do what’s easy instead of what’s right, humans would seem to know all about temptation. What’s to understand? Why even ask about it?

But we need to inquire seriously about temptation because we have mostly trivialized it. And as for the devil, well, “the devil made me do it” became a comedy routine by Flip Wilson, for those of you old enough to remember him. And for those who don’t remember that, the notion of the devil tempting us just seems a quaint idea from a bygone era.

Yet real temptation is serious business. For the temptation story shows that, by whatever name we call it, there is something or someone that is against us. There is not a level playing field in this world. Evil exists. We can be right thinking, non-manipulative, and emotionally stable and sane. But evil still exists. The boogie man may not be under our beds or in our closets. Maybe we’ve learned to deal with or ignore other fears that scared us when we were kids. But the fear behind the fears we outgrow is a reality and this evil is not something we instinctively avoid like a hot stove. This evil can dangerously tempt every one of us. So if we do not think seriously about temptation, we will probably not understand its subtlety or danger.

For the danger of temptation is that it sneaks up on is and most often tempts us to the good or what we perceive as good. Temptation rarely expresses itself as something obviously evil. If someone came to us saying, “Wouldn’t you like to make a wreck of your life and bring shame to all who know you by stealing, committing adultery, or destroying your health with drugs?” we would probably say, “No thanks, I’m not interested.” But temptation usually cloaks itself in something seemingly harmless, even virtuous, leaving the destructive consequences in the small print that few of us bother to read.

As I was preparing this sermon I read a series of online comments from other ministers about this text. One anonymous clergyman wrote, “I have never committed adultery and have only once been seriously tempted. The relationship in which the temptation occurred had none of the stereotypes we might associate with adultery – striking physical beauty, powerful sensuality, alluring sexual charms. It was a relationship with a deeply spiritual person, one with whom I shared great rapport and intimacy, who affirmed my spiritual gifts, who shared my vision of ministry. In that relationship I was tempted to forget my marriage vows, my responsibilities, my boundaries, and my own well-being. I am grateful that the other person and I were able to pull back from the brink, but I am sobered by how close to disaster I came.”[4]

You see, the temptation for this person was not to commit adultery. He was tempted to be closer to a person with whom he was already close. There is nothing wrong with human closeness. In fact, we need it. But if we go after it in the wrong way, we’re in trouble. Temptation is always trying for good things in the wrong way.

That’s why the writer Philip Yancey, in his book The Jesus I Never Knew, specifically wonders about Jesus’ temptations. What seems so evil about them? Yancey wonders.[5] Was not Jesus tempted to do what it would be natural to expect a Messiah to do? He was tempted to produce bread for himself. Far more impressively he went on to multiply bread for 5,000 and give his body as bread to feed uncountable millions. He was tempted to rule the kingdoms of this world. But far more impressively he went on to conquer death and rise again to become King of kings. And he was tempted to test his relationship with God and is that not the essence of faith? But far more impressively he went on to say to God, “Not my will but thine.” What was so bad about the temptations? Jesus went on to do everything that he was tempted to do and more. And being the Son of God, knowing that he would go on to do even greater things, why would Jesus not just destroy the Tempter and save human history from his evil plague?

But to think of temptations this way completely misses their subtlety. For the seductive power of temptation is not its “end” — just like Jesus, we are mostly tempted towards good ends — but its “means” — for the end does not justify the means. You see, the devil was tempting Jesus to do good things, to act like the Son of God. Yancey paraphrases the temptations this way. The devil says to Jesus, “If you are God, then dazzle me. Act like God should act.”[6]

Jesus was tempted to good ends without worrying about bad means: to savor the taste of bread without worry for the fixed rules of hunger and agriculture; to confront risk with no real danger; to enjoy fame and power without the prospect of painful rejection. In other words, Jesus was tempted to wear a crown but not a cross.[7]

You would think a superstar would go that way. In fact, many days I want Jesus to go that way. Maybe you want that too. Many Christians want that.

• “Oh, yes, and give us some of that power too so we can at least beat back our cancers if not our Osamas.”

Those all seem like good things. We want God to win and we want to win with him. But maybe we’re being tempted to go the wrong way. Maybe Jesus as superstar is our way and not God’s way. For the way of Jesus seems to have little to do with power and much to do with the cross. And for all who would go Jesus’ way, he tells us the means: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14.27) If we want to be Christ’s disciples who do God’s will, we must be crossbearers. Our temptation, like Jesus’ temptation, is to always go an easier way.

But if we go any way other than the crucified way, we are probably following the Tempter and not Jesus. We want God’s power and God’s power to win. Of course, with power there’s always fear — fear that we don’t have enough power or that it will be used against us. But God’s way seems different, marked not with power and fear but only with suffering love. In Paradise Regained, the great poet John Milton wrote that Jesus …

[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series 3 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991) 75.

[2] Hebrews 2.14-18, 4.15, Mark 1.12-13, John 6.14-15. 7.1-9, 12.27-28. “Matthew and Luke take the elaboration of this tradition in Q, and following Mark’s narrative placement, use the vivid account of Jesus’ scriptural debate with the devil as a means of revealing the inner character of Jesus’ sonship as one of simple obedience.” Johnson, 75.

[3] Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) 125-126.

[4] Aha!, online, http://www.joinhands.com/aha_online/, Internet, 29 Feb. 2004.

[5] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995) 70-71.

[6] Yancey, 71. The same point is made in a more scholarly way by Douglas John Hall who says that the temptation was for Jesus to confirm his divine status. Hall notes that the wilderness temptation is continued and intensified in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Here too the Tempter addresses himself to that aspect of human consciousness which the whole tradition regards as decisive: the will. Here too the insinuation of the Tempter is that the human being has the potentiality, if one determines to use it, to achieve a status above creaturehood, above mere stewardship of the other creatures, above dependency upon ‘daily bread.’ Jesus is tempted to use his powers to achieve a status of power.
“Clearly this is not an easy temptation for our representative to resist. It is said that Satan left Jesus ‘for a season’ after the wilderness experience, but one is made to realize, reading these accounts, that temptation is the psychic background of Jesus’ whole subsequent life and ministry. Thus his miracles, which in other respects convey a quite different message, may also be seen as containing the hint of capitulation to this temptation. Certainly his simple followers understood them in precisely that way, and wished him always to make greater use of these impressive displays of extraordinary power — and, of course, to bestow similar powers upon themselves.” Douglas John Hall, Professing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) 245-246.

[7] Yancey, 72.

[8] John Milton, The Complete Poems of John Milton (New York: Washington Square Press, 1964) 368.