The New Ekklesia and Our Commitment to Do God’s Will
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” [i]
Among many others, John Dominic Crossan asks readers of the
Bible to challenge many, if not most, of our assumptions about Jesus and the
texts themselves. This story in Matthew 4: 1-11 is a primary case in point. Our
lack of understanding the roots of the Greek text and the culture of Judaism in
which Jesus lived and moved and had his being has long called this episode, The
Temptation of Christ.
Jesus is proclaimed at his baptism by the voice from above
as “God’s Son.” This let’s us and everyone know that this Jesus is a person of
impressive stature. Throughout Matthew, Jesus is styled as “a prophet like
Moses” to form a new ekklesia, a new assembly, a new community of people
committed to do God’s will. It is an alternative community defined “not by
blood ties, tribe, nationality or political loyalty (whether to Rome or to
another empire, then or now) but by a commitment to do God’s will. The new
community is endlessly inclusive; anyone who does the work of the creator is a
member.” [ii]
After forty days and forty nights of fasting in the
wilderness, narrator Matthew tells us Jesus is famished. He is hungry! Enter a
new character, ha-satan. This ha-satan in the text is not an evil
power engaged in eternal conflict with God, nor anything at all like the figure
we associate with the Christian image of SATAN. I say Christian because the
kind of full-blown cosmic battle between SATAN and God, good and evil, comes
more from medieval Christendom than any understanding of ha-satan that
may have existed in first-century Jewish monotheism. [iii]
This ha-satan proceeds to what the text calls peirazō, which
although it can mean to tempt, more often means to test or examine, and even to
examine oneself.
Rather than a temptation scene, what we have is an appointed
agent sent to test Jesus’s integrity as the Son of God who is sent to gather a
new, inclusive community of people willing to commit to doing the work God
calls us to do. Note, this is no ambush. Jesus was led into the wilderness by
the spirit-breath of God for this test of his integrity and ability to be the
new Moses in the midst of the ongoing crisis: being under the yoke of yet
another empire: Rome. First there was Egypt; then Babylon; now Rome.
Immediately taking advantage of forty days of hunger, Jesus
is challenged to turn stones into bread to eat. But he answers, “It is
written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from
the mouth of God.’” This happens to be from Moses’s farewell speech in
Deuteronomy 8:3. The full text ought to interest us: “He humbled you by
letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor
your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does
not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the
LORD.” We know that manna was a kind of bread that was given daily.
Matthew’s Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches his new community to pray,
‘give us this day our daily bread.’ To give us our daily manna. And on the
night before he is to be crucified by Rome, he tells his new ekklesia
that he is the manna and that the bread of the last supper is his body., We are
to remember this every time we partake in the Lord’s Supper.
Next, the examiner tells Jesus to step off the highest place
on the Temple and let gravity do its work? Here the tester examines Jesus to
see if he is inclined to do stupid things on the basis of a trust in God. This
time Jesus answers from Deuteronomy 6:16: “Do not put the Lord your God to
the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Next up, Jesus is offered dominion
and glory to rule all the peoples of the earth if only he will worship the ha-satan.
He responds once more from guess where? Deuteronomy 6:13: “The Lord your God
you shall fear, him you shall serve.” Evidently, he passes the test: “Then
the ha-satan left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”
Finally, after forty days, and who knows how long this examination lasted, we
can trust that the angels, those messengers of God, put together an appropriate
feast for concluding his fast.
Given the ambiguities of the biblical Greek, it is
reasonable to imagine this to be some sort of vision. Or, even a kind of
dream-like self-examination. Imagine you are Jesus. You are familiar with how
the ha-satan was involved in the story of Job. You seek out John’s
baptism. Unexpectedly, a voice declares that you are God’s Son, the Beloved,
with whom God is well pleased. Just what does that mean, you ask yourself? But before you can even think that
through, God’s spirit-breath whisks you away to a lonely place by yourself
where there is to be no eating for forty days and forty nights. That is the
biblical metaphor for a long time – longer, at least, than a lunar cycle. The
nights in particular can be harsh and cold throughout the year in the
wilderness areas of Israel. Perhaps you seek shelter in a cave. When all of a
sudden you begin to have doubts about what happened back in the River Jordan.
And even more for what lies ahead.
Am I really cut out for this work of being God’s Son? Can I
persuade people to take God’s commandments, the way of the Lord, seriously? How
can I possibly bring his law to life? Will people really follow me to bring
healing to those who suffer in body and mind? To be generous rather than
stingy; to be grateful rather than resentful? To be poor in spirit and so
recognize the gap between what you have and what others need; between the way
things are and the way things should be? To be meek and don’t lord it over
others? To hunger and thirst for righteousness and feed the hungry? To be a
peacemaker? To be salt that makes life taste good for everyone? To be a light
for others? To be reconciled to each other? To love enemies as God’s own
children? To trust God to provide? Paul states, “…love does no wrong to a
neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law?” [iv]
When we fulfill Torah, then we will be fulfilled. [v]
One day, not too long after this testing period, Jesus is in
his hometown synagogue where he reads a vision from Isaiah of what God’s
community is to be like, and then says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in
your hearing!” Evidently, he passed the test, because here we are: God’s new
inclusive ekklesia of people committed to fulfilling the Word of God!
May God’s Son, God’s Spirit-Breath, and Almighty God himself, find us engaged
with the life Jesus calls us to embrace and make real, not only for ourselves,
but for others – all others. Amen.
[i] John
Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical
Jesus
[ii]
Levine, Amy Jill, Toward the Kingdom of Heaven, (Abingdon Press, Nashville:
2020) p.14
[iii]
For more about ha-satan and this text, see Richard W. Swanson, Provoking the
Gospel of Matthew (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2007) p.106-112
[iv] Romans
13:10
[v]
Levine, p.9
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