LENTEN SUNDAY of March 6, 2022
Reflection on the Word: You shall be perfect in the Lord
Gospel of Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,
where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'". …………………………………………………………………...…………
This story belongs to the wisdom literature. The Gospel of Mark hardly touches it at all, by mentioning it in a single verse in its very first chapter, that Jesus “was there in the wilderness forty days tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals. The Angels administered to him. ” That is it, nothing more. By its limited content, the Gospel of Mark seems to be the earliest Greek speaking Gospel, and was written in order to support the gentile church in Antiochia and elsewhere, under the supervision of the circle of the Apostle Peter.
More than likely, even before there had been different sources compiled in the commonly spoken Aramaic language, like the speeches of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus and so on. There might have been also a proto-Gospel called the Gospel of the Hebrews, written in Aramaic as well, which had been lost since the first centuries, though some church fathers had quoted its text frequently. It might have been the core text, which was translated and expanded into the Gospel of Matthew.
We do not know the full extent of the earliest oral traditions either. Still it looks like that the temptation story evolved bit by bit, from the sources to Mark, from Mark through Matthew as it reached Luke, as well.
As Matthew was written first and Luke later, it seems to be that Luke took this story from Matthew, which has way more details than Mark, and it looks embellished in a hagiographic way, politely saying that it reached the legendary level. The Gospel of Matthew is caught many times, attempting to tell the audience, that in Jesus, a new Moses arrived.
Nonetheless, we have to see that in the extended temptation story, when Jesus was approached by the metaphorical snake three times, every time Jesus staved off the evil inclination by quoting the Bible.
We can notice, that at this particular time the New Testament had simply not existed yet, so Jesus must have quoted the Torah in all instances by saying first, that “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.”
It is from the Fifth Book of Moses, called Deuteronomy, chapter eight. Then secondly, “You shall not test the Lord, your God.” It is from the Deuteronomy again, chapter six.
Then thirdly, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’
It is not only also from the Deuteronomy, but from the same chapter six. Chapter six, if it is possible, it is the ground zero in the Jewish faith, because it contains the so called Shema prayer, about which Jesus said to the inquiring scribe that the greatest commandment in the Law of Moses is in the Shema prayer that “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
The Gospel of Matthew draw many parallel lines between Moses and Jesus, that people look someone is here about whom Moses wrote, where else than in the Book of Deuteronomy, that “ the Lord your God will raise up to you a prophet from the midst of you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him.”
The forty days and forty nights Jesus spent in the desert is hardly a coincidence, though we do not know chronologically how much time he really spent in the desert. As the Baptist movement, led by John the Baptist and later by his cousin Jesus, was an offshoot of the so called Essenes, described by Josephus, and the Essenes were prominently a desert dwelling religious group, it is very likely that Jesus spent some time in the desert with his his preparatory prayers.
Thus, the Gospel story is authentic, despite that the 40 is symbolic number in the Bible, as Moses spent 40 years as a Prince of Egypt, then spent forty years in exile among the Midianites in order to meet the Lord in the burning bush, and spent forty years wandering in the desert, meanwhile also spent forty days and forty nights with God on the Mountain of the Revelation.
Actually, Moses spent his time of 40 days two times in order to receive the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments two times, because he broke the first set of the tablets into pieces in his anger against the idol of the Golden Bull, made by the Israelites meanwhile Moses was on the Mountain. At the end of his second sojourning on the mountain, it is written in the Book of Exodus, that the Lord said to Moses, that “ ‘Write these words; for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.’ He was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”
Thus, it is clear that the Gospel story of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert with fasting and praying, was formulated parallel according to the Exodus story of what happened to Moses, in order to intentionally articulate that somebody is here in Jesus, somebody similar to Moses, having authority to speak to the whole nation in the name of God.
In the case of Moses, the laws of God was given to the people, in the case of Jesus, not a brand new Law, but the new interpretation of the Law of Moses was given to the people. As Jesus told them in the Sermon of the Mount that “For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. If the story would end here, it would be incomplete, Gospel-wise at least. However, Jesus told the disciples “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill."
And it is a huge difference.
Whatever happened before Jesus, it was a precursor for him to come to undertake his mission to unite the nations against all evil, leading the nations to God, ushering the good tidings of the Spirit, where the personal and communal aim can be no lesser than to imitate God by following Jesus, as he said that “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
Especially, when it comes to that, that according to the Gospel, our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, otherwise there is no way we will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And it is about our deeds, especially when the speech is cheap.
The best way to confess our faith is by our visible and invisible good deeds, done not for any earthly reward, but for the sake of the Love of God only, by the Grace of the Lord, being empowered by the Holy Spirit, now and always,
AMEN.
