On the last week in June, upon arriving in the Maine woods for eight glorious weeks of summer camp, all of us in varying degrees needed to relearn how to use an ax. Over the winter our hands had gotten soft, and we never used the combination of muscles to chop and split wood. So it took about the first two weeks of camp, for us to develop the right calluses on our hands and for our muscles to become strong and coordinated again. The forestry service produced some excellent safety posters and guidebooks on how to use an ax. Most were great, but a few we used as a stern warning to new campers. “See what that lumberman is doing”, we would point out to them. “You must never, ever do that”. “Why not?” they would ask. “Because,” we firmly replied, “they can do those things safely precisely because they are experts. You are never going to be an expert like them, and for you to try to use an ax like that without an expert’s coordination and control is very dangerous.” Like many other things, if you want to be a good camper, you must know and respect your limits. If you do not know and respect your limits you should never go out in the woods or on the water alone.
Humanity has its limits and it is only within limits, healthy growth, choice, and freedom flourish. That’s the main lesson of today’s passages about Adam and Eve and about Jesus’ temptation. Humanity has always had a universal problem with wanting to be omniscient, to become like God, to assume to be the absolute authority in all the universe. (That is entirely different than being stewards or guardians of all living things.) The Bible without benefit of modern science could still make the astute observation that wherever the desire for total control, domination and exploitation takes over, it will corrupt everything it infects.
In today’s Gospel, the tempter first says to Jesus, "since you are the Son of God, you can do whatever you want so, turn these stones into bread”. “Give us bread!” That was the just about the first thing the tribes of Israel demanded of Moses after they had gained their freedom. “Why did you bring us out here in the desert? In Egypt we had bread enough to eat”. It was as if they had forgotten that they had been slaves, and now were free. They forgot all the signs God had done—they forgot the Passover, the pillar of fire, and the opening of the Red Sea. Incredible!
Yet nearly every politician, every executive of a social service agency today can identify with poor Moses surrounded by anxious people grumbling, “Where’s the bread? What have you done for us lately?” Yes, it even happens in parishes, and in an age when dollars appear to be short, the fear of financial ruin threatens to overwhelm our concentration on the mission offered us, and builds a wall of amnesia between us and the long record of God’s grace. The first temptation is so paralyzing because we get caught up in wringing our hands, and we see only the swamp at our feet. Jesus reminds us that God gives us the vision of the promised land, and that vision helps show us the way out. We may have to work very hard and struggle, but people who live in faith will be given the food to engage in the journey and not only survive, but thrive.
The second temptation involves the misdirection and manipulation of power. The devil, in asking Jesus to throw Himself off the temple roof was, in effect, trying to manipulate God’s hand. After the Israelites had received the bread manna from heaven, they tried to force God’s hand by demanding, “before we are to worship the God who brought us out of Egypt, give us water.” God did give water, telling Moses to strike the rocks. Yet the incident became a reminder of Israel's lack of trust in God’s ability to keep promises.
Jesus did not mistrust God’s ability to provide the strength necessary to meet the challenges he would face. However, in turning down the devil, Jesus is also reminding us that faith involves an acknowledgement of the parameters of power. Jesus was not afraid to use power, but he always knew its boundaries and fromwhere the source of true power came.
The last temptation involves idolatry and following the false promises of easy shortcuts. The devil promises Jesus security. Something we all want. “Follow me, and you won’t have to worry about your safety. You won’t have to go through any suffering. Let me show you a convenient way to gain your objectives.” For Israel, a golden calf of their own making was sure a lot easier to deal with and a lot less formidable than a God who had thwarted pharaoh and who had gathered Israel to be a light to all nations. The desire to build fences of security around us is natural and not entirely bad. Yet so often as we begin to trust more and more in our own structures, we begin to make them into idols. We think we can’t live without them and we think we don’t need anything more. So God is put on the back shelf as irrelevant and replaceable.
Our world continually develops more and more instruments promising control and domination at an amazing rate. It loves to manipulate and to destroy trust in anything but itself, and it loves to promise a misplaced sense of security. I’m not so sure that the temptations of the devil have changed that much for people of faith. Yet Jesus left us with an example of one who did not claim, who did not attempt to grasp the attributes of control, absolute wisdom and ultimate power humanity ascribed to God. Jesus replies, "No thank you." Jesus was not a manipulator nor was he taken in by manipulation’s tricky disguises. Jesus says to the devil, “No, I will respect the boundaries and limits of the world. I will not be tempted to assume the prerogatives of God.” I also think Jesus would have been a good counselor at a summer camp to teach city youngsters how to safely use an ax.
