David Bowie's Least Important Role.

This last few weeks the entertainment industry has seen the death of some of it's oldest and biggest icons: Glen Frey, Alan Rickman, and of course David Bowie. While looking back at their careers I stumbled across a very minor role I had forgotten Bowie had played (no, not the Goblin King from the movie "Labyrinth"... who could forget that). Bowie played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's 1988 controversial movie "Last Temptation of Christ".  Bowie was no stranger to controversy so this movie appearance fits logically with his overall resume.  

There was a lot in that movie to take issue with.  However, one of the problems people had with it I have always found to be its least controversial issue: the notion that Jesus could be tempted on the cross with something as minor as the offer of a mundane, ordinary human life.  In the movie Satan attempts to lure Jesus down from the cross with promises of a happy life with a loving wife and children.  Of all the things this movie could shock with (and there were certainly some of those) I find this concept the least shocking of all.  Why wouldn't Jesus have wanted those things.  He was fully human and all humans long for those things.  How would Jesus have faced that temptation?

In today's text Jesus is at home in Nazareth, at worship with his old friends and family members.  He has just read a text about how God is going to "set the captives free" and "proclaim the year of God's jubilee".  Jesus knows that he could turn the stone hearts of these folks if he just performed a miracle or two.  Surely all he would have to do to get them to all worship him would be to do some little trick. Even when they go to kill him he could have let them throw him off a cliff... and then the Father "will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."  That would have shown all those bully's from the Nazareth playground! 

Is any of this sounding familiar to anyone else?  I sure seem to have heard all of this somewhere before. In Matthew chapter four Jesus faces the devil and all his temptations.  "Turn these stones to bread" Satan says,  "Abandon the Father's plan and I will give you the loyalty of the nations" Satan says.  "Throw yourself down off the temple and show everyone who you really are as the Angels save you from the fall" Satan says... And Jesus denies all those temptations.  

Satan is far less creative than we give him credit for.  It is no surprise he throws the equivalent of "temptation-leftovers" at Jesus here.  Jesus has already faced these temptations and won.  He handles them easily.  

Think about this...The miracle that actually occurs in this text isn't that Jesus slips quietly away from the crowd that wanted to kick him off a cliff into a deep hole to die.  It is that he chose to not let them kick him off a cliff when doing so would have showed them all up when he survived the fall in the arms of the angels.  The miracle is that Jesus once again faced and conquered temptation.  This was not the "last temptation of Christ", there were oh so many more.  

Satan never stopped trying to get Jesus to give up on his mission and stop his ministry.  So, in that way I am sure Scorsese was right to suggest that Satan would, and did use any promise or lure to tempt Jesus

How did Jesus resist temptation?



I can tell you this...it was not about gritting his teeth and gutting it out on sheer will power.  We humans try to do that all the time. We think facing temptation is about overcoming the will of Satan with our own iron clad will.  But that is foolishness.  When Jesus was faced with the temptation to do something he knew he was not supposed to do (like wowing the home-crowd with a cool miracle or two) he always thought about what it was that the Father really wanted him to do, and why.  Every time Satan tempted Jesus with some worldly thing, Jesus countered with the heavenly thing that the Father had already promised.  Satan's temptations look a whole lot less tempting when we realize the truth to what it is he is offering verses what God is offering

           

It's like when you look at the difference between a fast food hamburger advertisement and a real one.  Suddenly the temptation isn't so tempting.  No matter what temptation Satan offers us, if we look at what God wants to give us we realize that it is actually so much more. Satan offered the worship of Jesus' home town...the Father offered the hope of gathering all nations into the church for all time...Satan offered Jesus the triumph over near-death to impress the neighbors... the Father offered Jesus triumph over the grave which would be extended to all humanity.  Satan is great at marketing,  but terrible at production. Satan's temptations are always the fast food burgers of the spiritual world.  Jesus just kept his eyes fixed on the promises of the Father and ...most of all...trusted that the Father would give exactly what he promised.

What do you focus most on when you are tempted?  Do you focus all your attention on exerting your will AGAINST the thing tempting you?  Guess what...that is what Satan wants you to do.  He takes all that force of will and turns it against you.  Instead focus all your attention on living FOR the thing the Father is offering you.  Every time Satan tempts you toward something minor it is because God is offering you something major that the devil does not want you to see.  You just have to look and trust... Then the devil's lousy soy-burger will look like the fast food mess it really is.