The Cost and Rewards of Freedom

The Cost and Rewards of Freedom

Maybe this was already clear, or not. But these are Jesus’s temptations, not ours. We have no power to change chemicals with a word. No one has died and made us king of the world. And we are all reasonably convinced that gravity is still a thing. Maybe other times we need to identify with Jesus as in the acronym WWJD. But none of us could do what Jesus could have done in those three temptations. But, we do need to distinguish between what Jesus was tempted to do and the all-too human temptations that the accusing angel, called Satan or the devil, was throwing at Jesus’s face, daring him to chose the easy path to compel our obedience.

When it comes to personifying evil, even when using explicit satanic images and characters, Hollywood has clearly not read the Bible. God is not the protagonist, nor is Satan the antagonist, and between them the dramatic suspense of not knowing who’s going to win. But throughout the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, it has been revealed to us that all God’s creatures are at risk of not trusting their Creator, and thus rebelling against them, even those more spiritual creatures that we call angels. At least one appears to have questioned the wisdom of creating beings who would know that they were material while their Creator was not, and that this made it more likely that they would fall into mistrust and rebellion. That angel is called Satan or the Devil. But in both cases, their name means — Accuser. And we are the ones they accuse, and demand that God hand over custody to. If you want to know where to find the “demonic” in this world, look for the signs of accusation, in others perhaps or perhaps within ourselves.

So, when we hear the Accuser’s specific temptations of Jesus this morning, it might help to understand them more generically, and then to understand the human temptations to which Jesus would have to respond. In the temptation to turn stones into bread, the devil is suggesting that Jesus offer the immediate relief of physical need in a way that only he can, and thus keep us always coming back to be fed. In the temptation to control all the kingdoms of this world, Jesus is tempted to accept the devil’s accusation of human injustice, and to crush that injustice by the destructive force of his divine power. In the third temptation, the devil dares Jesus to keep himself safe as only he can, and then to sell illusions of safety and invulnerability that human beings too often fall for, pun intended.

But two millennia later, I wonder if the accuser’s ultimate goal is not to expose the Son of God’s temptations but ours. In the parlor game of asking which post New Testament Christian writing might be inspired enough to include in an updated New Testament, my pick would be Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man. It’s a chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, in which one of those brothers, a staunch atheist, Ivan, tells his believing brother, Alyosha, a fable about Jesus returning, to Spain at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, upon which the Grand Inquisitor has him arrested. That night the Inquisitor comes to Jesus’s cell, and says that he and others in the Church have “corrected thy work.” He then takes Jesus through these same three temptations that we’ve heard today, and tells Jesus he gave the wrong answers to all three. And basically, the Inquisitor charges Jesus with placing upon our shoulders the intolerable burden of freedom:

Didst Thou not often say then, "I will make you free"? … For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good … Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? … In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." … They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems … Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!"

Perhaps it has taken this long for us, whom Jesus came to set free from sin, from mistrust and rebellion, to more fully understand the implications of that freedom, and ask ourselves if we really want that freedom, or if we prefer relief from immediate need, forced unity, and the safety of easy answers to the insoluble problems of this life and world. WDJD? What did Jesus do?

I — Ivan — meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come no more … The Prisoner went away — And the old man? — Alyosha asked — The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.*

There is more freedom in a kiss than a fist.

* Translated from the Russian by Constance Garrett

1st Sunday In Lent

The Rev. David Kendrick

March 9, 2025