In Memoriam: John A. Gettier Th.D.
John Gettier, a Baltimore native and graduate of the Gilman School in Roland Park, and my instructor in Old and New Testament at Trinity College, also taught me biblical Hebrew, and was my life-long mento and friend. I received notice the other day that John had died at the age of 90 last week. In class he would always say, “All scripture is a combination of history, literature, and theology.” Which is to say, that every passage in the Bible, both the Hebrew and the Greek scriptures, has a context. Often it takes time and imaginative sleuthing to suss out all three dimensions in any given passage, but it is time well spent.
Take our episode in Luke 4:1-13 that is often called The Temptations of Christ. First, there is the so-called tempter. Diabolos, and later, when the opportune time arrives in chapter 22, he is identified as Satan. Whatever Luke chooses to call this character, he is not the little guy with a pitchfork and long tail running around in red long-johns! We are to think of him, as those first listening to Luke and Jesus himself would understand, as something like a prosecutor, or someone who tests you to find out if you are qualified to be who you say you are. Or, in this case who God has said you are: The Beloved, the Son of God. For it is after Jesus’s baptism by John that we read that Jesus is both full of the Holy Spirit and led by the same Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tested to find out just what this all means. Let the testing begin.
Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days, which means a long time, not necessarily 40 calendar days. And surely is meant to bring to mind the archetypal 40 years of testing in the wilderness by those who had been liberated by the God of that wandering Aramean, Abraham. Abraham who had also been led by God and God’s Spirit to leave his home in Southern Mesopotamia and head off to a new homeland. Luke is recalling this history for who are reading or listening to put Jesus into this context. Like Abraham, and like those who escaped slavery in Egypt, Jesus is about to begin his new life as God’s Beloved Son of God. And after pondering all this for forty days of fasting, Jesus very well may be hungry.
Perhaps that is why Satan begins the final exam with a softball question: Surely you are hungry by now, there are a lot of stones here, after all this is rocky soil. Another clue that this is a test, not a temptation, Satan begins, “If you are the Son of God, why not turn these stones into bread?” Now this very well could be a useful kind of thing to do if you are about to dedicate the next few years of your life among people who are poor and tired and hungry. But Jesus went to Saturday School growing up and quotes the ultimate, final, and summary book of Torah, Deuteronomy For it is there that when the folks were pestering Moses in the wilderness for more imaginative food than manna, Moses says, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" [Deut 8:3] Good answer. So far, Jesus is batting a thousand!
Next up, Satan shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says, "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 answers, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" [Deut 6:13] Wow! Still batting a thousand! He turns down the offer despite the historical fact of living in the harsh occupation of Caesar’s Empire of Brutality in which people had hoped someone like the Son of God or a messiah would put an end to all that. The tradition is equally harsh to insist that political compromise is linked to betrayal of the first commandment to worship only God. Not Satan. Not Rome. These are God’s kingdoms, not Satan's. One can almost hear Jesus’s grandmother saying, “That’s our boy! He knows the tradition and what side our bread is buttered on!”
The final test: If you are the Son of God, jump off the top of the Temple pinnacle, for after all Psalm 91 says, “'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.'" It turns out the chief messiah inspector general is up on his scriptures as well. Jesus is not fooled. "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" [Deut 6:16] I have to say, says the Satan, you are very sharp and well prepared to be the Son of God. That’s all for now, but I will be back to be sure. And we know that is when Satan enters into Judas Iscariot later in Luke 22 verse 3.
That’s a lot of history and biblical literature wrapped up in just a few verses. And Luke expects the reader to notice a pattern here. For even though he has been fasting in the wilderness a long time, Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God, the Beloved, knows the tradition inside out and answers each question on the test from Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy, and no surprise here, Deuteronomy! And why is that, we might ask ourselves?
And oh, how I wish Dr. John were here to witness this final move, for this is where the theology comes in. Which theology is derived from the history and literature of the Deuteronomist him or herself. For the Deuteronomist not only gives us the summary book of Torah, but also wrote the history after the wilderness sojourn of the people living in the Land of Promise in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and First and Second Kings. It just happens that the core theology of all the Deuteronomist’s history is: a) "Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH is one" [Deut 6:4]; b) You shall teach this to your children, and post it at your doorways; and c) we are “strangers in a land not our own,” descendants of the wandering Aramean, and the way we tell our history serves as the basis for a higher ethic, as it says throughout the Torah: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. It is precisely the consciousness of being alien, with its concomitant sensitivity to the other, that ironically grants the right to dwell in the land. [i]
When asked what is the greatest commandment of all, Jesus again replies from Deuteronomy chapter 6, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And the second is just like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Because we were once all strangers in a strange land. We were all resident aliens at one time or another. And our God, YHWH, who is one God and One God Only, heard our cry, led us through the wilderness for forty years, and has been present to us and to all people everywhere ever since. So it is that we are to care for the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien in our midst as if she or he is one of us. We are to love them as our God has loved us all these centuries, at home, in exile, and in diaspora throughout the world.
Jesus of Nazareth lives out of the core values of the
Deuteronomist in all that he says and all that he does. He is not here to do
magic. He is not here to dominate the kingdoms of the world. He is not here to
test our God. He is here to love God and to love all people all the time. No
exceptions. Lent means to ask us, can we do the same? Amen.
That's history, literature, and theology. Thank you, Dr. John Gettier!
[i] “My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…”: The Ethical Legacy
of Our Origins in Exile
By Rav Rachel Adelman Aug 28, 2018
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