Tempted, Tried, and Sometimes Failing
Lent 2003

Week of March 10, 2003

Lectionary Texts
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Peter 3: 18-22
Mark 1:9-15

In the film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), directed by Martin Scorsese and based upon the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, we encounter a very human Jesus. He confesses his sins, he is driven almost to insanity, he wonders if he is no more than a man, and with each healing he anguishes over those whom he has not healed. In his final temptation, during his execution Jesus has a hallucination sent to him by satan in which he imagines what his life might have been like as an ordinary man. He pictures himself marrying Mary Magdalene, growing old and having kids. But then in this same hallucination, Jesus pictures the disciples reproaching him for abandoning his special mission, and through this reproach he returns to consciousness to accomplish his final suffering death, and resurrection.

Many Christians were outraged by the film and considered it blasphemous, which it was if you judge it by the standards of Christian orthodoxy. Blockbuster refused to carry it. But what clearly outraged and threatened many Christians was the notion of a fully human Jesus who experienced bitter trials and temptations just like you and I do---torment, doubt, loneliness, nagging questions, fantasies, confusion, despair, and even sexual struggles. In a brief scene in his last temptation, Jesus imagines himself making love to Mary Magdalene. For many believers that sort of temptation was, well, way too tempting, which is to say, way too human.

In the Gospel reading from Mark this week we read that Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and then that He was tempted or tried: “At once the Spirit sent him into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him” (Mark 1:12-13, NIV). The Spirit of God descended upon Jesus in baptism, and then the Spirit of God cast him into the desert for trial and temptation.

Trying to decipher the psychology of Jesus is risky business, but we should not miss the point of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus was tempted and tried by satan. In the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke the writers specify three temptations: turning stones to bread, throwing himself down from the temple, and accepting the glories of earthly kingdoms. Interpreters have variously categorized these three temptations such as materialism, spiritualizing, and the temptation of power. But maybe interpreting those three temptations just so does not matter so much because we know these were not Jesus’s only temptations. Luke writes that at the end of the forty day trial satan left Jesus only “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). He came back, again and again, those next three years. Jesus’s ultimate temptation, and the ultimate despair anyone can experience, was the sense of feeling forsaken by God in Gethsemane.

We can safely say that Jesus was tempted not only in the desert but throughout his entire earthly life. The writer to the Hebrews says as much:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16, NIV).

I find it difficult to imagine that Jesus was truly tempted and tried like I am, which is an indication of how little I believe in his full humanity. But this is what the writer to the Hebrews tells us; Jesus was tried “in every way,” it says, “just as we are.”

What this means is that the God who loves us is fully aware of and empathetic with all the ambiguities, complexities, trials and temptations of our lives. He is not a distant and capricious deity. Quite the opposite. If you have felt weak, then remember that Jesus is not condemning you but sympathizing with you. If you experience trials and temptations, then do not forget that he has too, perhaps far more than we ever will. When you feel forgotten and forsaken by God, recall that Jesus knew what that was like. If your trials tempt you to despair and turn away from God, Jesus encourages us to do the opposite, “take confidence, come to me for grace and help because I have experienced what you are enduring.”

Having been tempted and tried himself, Jesus is the friend of sinners, not their enemy. One of the more remarkable characterizations of Jesus in the Gospels is that he was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). We read that social and moral outcasts flocked around Jesus, much to the chagrin of the religiously righteous. They clearly felt safe with Jesus, accepted, embraced, and welcomed by Him. Based upon this Gospel text, the Presbyterian pastor J. Wilbur Chapman (1859-1910) wrote the well known hymn, Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners! (1910). The second verse is my favorite:

Jesus! What a strength in weakness!
Let me hide myself in him.
Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing,
He, my strength, my victory wins.

As the friend of sinners who suffered trials and temptations, “he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). He is for us, not against us.

The ashes that many Christians daub on the forehead on Ash Wednesday are a Lenten reminder of our mortality, and also of the “dustiness” of our souls. In the words of the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) we know that we are “guiltie of dust and sinne,” and knowing this quite naturally causes our soul to “draw back,” as he puts it. But this is not the purpose of such ashes, nor should it be the response to the knowledge of our trials, temptations and failures. We should not despair or give in to dejection. Such is why the three synoptic writers include the temptation of Jesus. They remind us of his full embrace of our humanity and consequent sympathy for all the diverse trials we experience.

The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2003 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.