Luke 4:1-13

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,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’”

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, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to protect you,’ and

‘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.

There are scores of stories about people being tempted into making a pact with the devil. From the story of a 6th century Orthodox monk named Theophilus who was said to have sold his soul to the devil for a higher ecclesiastical job to the story of Faust who makes a deal with the devil to exchange his soul for knowledge, to the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” in which a young woman goes to work for the head of New York’s premiere fashion magazine and nearly loses who she is, to an episode of The Simpsons on this topic—all these stories tell us something about the pitfalls and the pathos of being human.

My first encounter with such a story was in grade school when we read Stephen Vincent Benet’s story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Do you remember it? It’s the story of a poor, unlucky man named Jabez Stone. One day in frustration at his latest turn of bad luck he vows that for two cents he would sell his soul to the devil. The next day the devil shows up in the form of a “soft-spoken dark-dressed stranger” who has come to strike a bargain with him—Jabez Stone’s soul in exchange for a change in his luck. The poor man makes the bargain, and straight away he becomes more prosperous and more prominent. As time passes, however, he becomes more and more terrified of the day that the devil will come to collect his soul. He becomes so distressed, in fact, that he engages the great attorney and orator Daniel Webster to argue his case against the devil in front of jury who are straight from hell.

And this, of course, gets at the pattern in many of these stories. Someone is down on his or her luck or is anxious or has a desire, a drive for something that appears to be beyond his or her reach. This anxiety or desire becomes the devil’s opening. He appears and promises to do something that will take away the anxiety or satisfy the desire now, all in exchange for the person’s soul at a later date.

All of which is an interesting background to our gospel for today in which our very own Jesus is being tempted by the devil. While the characters in other stories have some internal anxiety which is the devil’s opening, in Luke, as in the other gospels, you might say that this internal anxiety is externalized in the wilderness location which provides the setting for the devil’s approach.

And what are temptations that the Devil approaches Jesus with? There are, of course, three, all of which, I believe, attempt to lure Jesus further and further away from his humanity with all its limitations and irresolvable yearnings, the very things that provide our openness to God. Listen..

First—The Devil dares the famished Jesus to turn the stones in the wilderness into bread. In this, the Devil is enticing him to do something that will sate his hunger right away, rather than live with the hunger that only God can satisfy.

Second—The Devil dares Jesus to worship him and to take authority over all the nations. In this, the Devil is enticing Jesus to have absolute power rather than living with our own limitations and within the shifting power dynamics of human life.

And finally—the Devil dares Jesus to cast himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem trusting that he will be saved by angels. In this, the Devil is enticing Jesus to become invulnerable to pain and injury rather than accepting the kind of vulnerability and mortality that we all live with.

In each of these temptations, then, Jesus is tempted, is dared, to leave behind what it means to be a human being who ultimately relies upon God and become a being with no hunger, no limits and no ability to be hurt or to die.

And so it is with our temptations. Our story is not, of course, the same as the one Luke tells of Jesus, but our temptations are like his.

Like Jesus, we’re tempted to sate our hungers immediately rather than live with our yearnings and bring those yearnings to God. And so we fall prey to addictions and compulsions, trying to fill the hungers that are simply part of what it means to be alive and are our point of contact with God.

Like Jesus, we are tempted about power—to grab power or flee from power rather than live prayerfully within the many tensions of human power. And so we go to domination or submission to solve our fundamental tension with having power or dealing with others’ power

Like Jesus, we are tempted about our vulnerability—we are tempted to harden ourselves or flee from pain rather than live with our own vulnerability and mortality. And so we go to self protection or withdrawal or even aggression towards others as a way to deal with our discomfort.

What are you being tempted to do? Are you being tempted to fill up an important hunger that you should just allow to be your path to a deeper life within yourself and with God? Are you being tempted to grab too much power or not claim the power that should belong to you? Or are you being tempted to deny your vulnerability and mortality.

By resisting the temptations he encounters in his wilderness, Jesus stays with living a human life that is hungry, limited and vulnerable. In resisting these temptations he defines who he will be as messiah, and he gives us a picture of what trusting in God looks like.

Trusting in God is not, of course, one of the themes of “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” the story I read long ago about a man who made a pact with the devil and found a way to get out of it. No, it had another themes, one of which is that our finite, earthy humanity, individually and collectively, with all of its imperfections has the power to rout every pact we make with our devils and to set things on a better, freer path. For me, this is always about the power of the Holy and Human One to find us no matter what temptations we have given into, to find us and to bring us back to ourselves and to God.

This passage, then, comes at the end of the story in which the great orator Daniel Webster is arguing Jabez Stone’s case to a judge and jury from Hell itself—he, of course, is arguing that though Jabez Stone did indeed make a pact with the devil, the man deserves to go free for no reason other than that he is human being, part of a larger collective story that though flawed, will in the end open to a better, freer path.

Daniel Webster’s words to the jury:

“And (Daniel Webster) began with the simple things that everybody’s known and felt—the freshness of a fine morning when you’re young, and the taste of food when you’re hungry, and the new day that’s every day when you’re a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man, But without freedom they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved and the sorrows of slavery his voice got big like a bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days, and he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvation that something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors).

Then he turned to Jabez Stone and showed him as he was—an ordinary man who’d had hard luck and wanted to change it….And (he spoke of the) good in Jabez Stone, and he showed that good. He was hard and mean in some ways but he was a (human being).. There was sadness in being a (human being) but it was a proud thing too. And he showed what the pride of it was till you couldn’t help feeling it. And (then) he wasn’t pleading for any one person any more, though his voice rang like an organ. He was telling the stories and the failures and the endless journeys of (human)kind. They got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey.

And (finally) his words came back to the one spot of land that each (person) loves and clings to. He painted a picture of that, and to each one of that jury he spoke of things long forgotten…to one, his voice was like the forest and its secrecy and to another like the sea and the storms of the sea, and one heard the cry of his lost nation in it and another saw a little harmless scene he hadn’t remembered for years. But each saw something. And when Daniel Webster finished he didn’t know whether or not he had saved Jabez Stone. But he knew that he’d done a miracle. For the (hellish) glitter had gone from the eyes of the judge and the jury and for a moment they were men again and knew they were men.”

This Lent, may we all rediscover that we are human beings, individually and collectively in need of our incarnate God: blessedly finite, forever yearning, holy in our vulnerability.

Works Cited or Consulted

Various Wikipedia articles on Faust, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” pacts with the devil

Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster". The full text is available online.

Back to Sermons