By chhotebhai

Kanpur: It’s that time of year when we are never endingly reminded about temptations – Jesus’, not ours! After all, we are goody-goody church goers. We haven’t defrauded a bank, murdered somebody in a communal riot, and haven’t had the guts to covet the neighbour’s spouse! So why bother about temptations?

After all, Lent is about eating fish on Fridays, and having 1½ meals on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Obligations fulfilled. We are good Christians.

After three temptations in the desert Jesus was also over and done with them, and now free to preach the Good News. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let us first examine the three temptations. Of the Synoptic writers, Mark dismisses it in two lines. Mathew has a different sequence to Luke. The latter’s version is quoted more often, and makes more sense to me. So I will stick to the Lukan version found in Chapter 4.

The three temptations are (i) If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into a loaf of bread (v 4); (ii) I will give you all this power and splendour, if you do homage to me (v 6) and (iii) If you are Son of God throw yourself down, for Scripture says that angels will protect you (v11). These are the temptations. How did Jesus handle them?

Primarily, by having recourse to Sacred Scripture, the Word of God. Jesus had been fasting in the desert for forty days (no 1½ meals a day). Obviously he would have been famished. As the old saying goes, “for a hungry man, God comes in the form of bread”. So the Tempter was just following the laws of nature, telling Jesus to fill his stomach. But we are missing the caveat – “If you are the Son of God”. So the aim was to derail Jesus, to pre-empt his public life by an early manifestation (epiphany) of who he was. Had that happened Jesus would probably have been described as some kind of magician or miracle worker, an image that he assiduously avoided throughout his public life.

How does Jesus combat the two pronged temptation – to succumb to physical desires, and thereby derail his mission? By quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, that man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mat 4:4). The Tempter doesn’t give up easily. He next takes him to the top of a high mountain and shows him a vast expanse of civilization; telling him that he would get all power and splendour if only …” (ibid).

The temptation has now gone from the merely physical to the ever enticing thirst for power and pelf. Leaders aspire to be powerful, so the Tempter was exploiting the next human aspiration – the pride that comes with unbridled power. Once again Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy to say that homage is paid to God alone (cf Deut 6:13). On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1980 I did go up to the Mount of Temptation. It is so high that one can see eagles flying way below! Yes, one can indeed see a panorama from there.

The Tempter now switches to Jesus’ tactic. He too quotes Scripture, this time from Psalm 91:11-12, that the angels will protect you when you jump. Had Jesus jumped he would, in all probability, have died. Even if he had survived or was resurrected, it would have been a premature act, lacking credibility. For the third time Jesus uses Scripture to counter the Tempter, again quoting Deuteronomy to say, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deut 6:16).

What Lenten lessons can we learn from this? Firstly, that the Tempter is cunning, not showing his true colours, or even misquoting Scripture to suit his purpose. We find that Jesus himself is fully conversant with Scripture, and quotes it correctly to ward off temptation. A careful study of the mission of Jesus shows that he was very conversant with Scripture; from the first proclamation in the Synagogue in Nazareth (cf Lk 4: 16-22), to his final cry of agony on the cross. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”, a quote from Psalm 22:1.

Our first lesson this Lent should not be about what to eat or abstain from, but to understand the power of the Word of God. Describing the Armour of God Paul tells the Ephesians that the Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit, to quench the burning arrows of the Evil One (cf Eph 6:16-17).

If we still think that Jesus was done with temptation we are sadly mistaken. In fact the narrative ends by saying that the Tempter, having exhausted every way of putting him to the test, left him until the opportune moment (Lk 4:13). A careful study of Jesus’ public ministry shows that the Tempter in fact was always hovering around looking for a chink in Jesus’ armour.

A favourite tactic was when Jesus performed a miracle and told the beneficiary to not tell anyone about it (I am not a magician), he would loudly proclaim that Jesus was the Son of God; a title that Jesus himself abjured; repeatedly calling himself the son of man instead (the aam aadmi), “bar nasa” in his native Aramaic, a term he used 82 times in the New Testament.

When Peter in mistaken ardour wanted to proclaim Jesus as the messiah, he was rebuked, “Get behind me Satan” (Mat 16:23). Jesus was tempted throughout his life, but I will now limit myself to what I would call his last two temptations. The first is the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (this together with the Mount of Temptation were the two places where I had the most profound experiences, far more than Calvary or the Holy Sepulchre).

Jesus knew how excruciating and shameful a crucifixion was. It was usually reserved for defenceless slaves or foreigners. They were stripped naked. They died of gradual asphyxiation, their eyes plucked out by birds of prey, and their genitals torn off by wild beasts. The torment usually lasted three days. So Jesus could have chosen an escape route (why seek confrontation or martyrdom)? The Tempter was telling him not to drink the cup. This again would have derailed Jesus’ salvific mission, which is just what the plan was from the very beginning.

The conflict or temptation in Jesus was not easily resolved. That is why Jesus tells his dumb disciples to “pray and not be put to the test” (Lk 22:40). Luke the physician now describes Jesus as sweating blood (v 44). The Greek word used is thrombos (clot in English). Dr Pierre Barbet M.D., Head of the Department of Surgery, St Joseph’s Hospital, Paris, has described Jesus’ passion in clinical terms in his book “The Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ”.

He says “This phenomenon, which is known to the profession as haematidrosis consists of an intense vasodilatation of the subcutaneous capillaries. They become extremely distended, and burst when they come in contact with the millions of sweat glands which are distributed all over the skin. The blood mingles with the sweat”. If the physical agony was so intense, imagine the temptation that he was warding off.

Now to the Last Temptation. Sorry Dan Brown, Knights Templar and Freemasons, but this is nothing to do with having sex with Mary Magdalene! Anybody with an elementary experience of mysticism will know that physical temptations like hunger and sex would be nothing compared what was now at stake. Remember that even an ordinary soldier like Uriah the Hittite refused to have sex with his wife Bathsheba, despite the desperate attempts of King David to get him drunk, so as to cover up his own act of rape (cf 2 Sam 11;10-13). Surely Jesus had far more spiritual stamina than Uriah!

What then was the Last Temptation? It was a last ditch effort to prevent Jesus from dying on the cross. The temptation came through the Roman soldiers, “If you are the Christ of God come down” (Lk 23:35) and one of the fellow convicts, “Are you not the Christ, save yourself and us as well” (v 39). In this last temptation also Jesus has recourse to Scripture, crying out “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”, followed by “It is accomplished” (Jn 19:30) and “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).

In the Letter to the Hebrews we are told that “the high priest we have is not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us, but has been put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin” (Heb 4:15). Some translations say “but did not sin”. Amazingly, Nikos Kazantzakis, the much maligned Greek author of “The Last Temptation” first published in 1952, is closer to understanding Jesus than many “holy men”. He “seeks to portray Jesus as human and experiencing all human emotions”. It says that “had Jesus succumbed to any such temptation, especially the opportunity to save himself from the cross, his life would have held no more significance than that of any other philosopher”. Words of wisdom from a novelist, not a theologian.

This shows that Jesus, as a human being, was repeatedly tested, but DID NOT sin. Had he been a super human he COULD NOT have sinned, thereby placing him in a class apart, out of our reach. He would then be worthy of our adulation, not our emulation.

Rather we should see temptation as having positive value. St Paul is usually portrayed as a strong man. But this is what he says of himself, “So that I should not get above myself, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan, to bother me and prevent me from getting above myself” (2 Cor 12:7). Most married persons would unhesitatingly endorse Paul’s views! The Catechism of the Catholic Church beautifully sums it up, “Trials are necessary for the growth of the inner man … We must discern between being tempted and consenting (succumbing) to temptation … There is a certain usefulness to temptation” (CCC 2847).

There we are. Never mind the fasting and abstinence. During this Lent, whenever we are battered by doubt and temptations let us emerge as better human beings. Temptations will never end. But with the Word of God “We shall overcome” and emerge victorious.

(The writer has authored books on the Trinity and Christology, though he has no formal training in theology or spirituality.)