The Passion According to St. Matthew Part VIII

First and Last Temptations

Read:  Matthew 27:27-44

When Jesus was crucified, he was mocked and derided by those who stood at the foot of the cross and those passed by. It might be said that the mocking and taunting of Christ was a form of temptation. Consider the three taunts that were hurled at him. Each of them were attempts to compel him to do something against his plan and to demonstrate for the sake of vanity, what he knew to be true.

The first was from those who passed by and shook their heads: "You who would destroy the Temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the son of God, come down from the cross!"  There are cadences of Psalm 22:7-8 here, "All who see me mock at me; they shake their head; Commit your case to the Lord; let him deliver -- let him rescue the one in whom he delights!" As always, Matthew's narrative strategy is to demonstrate how Jesus fulfils the scriptures.  The crucifixion as an enactment of Psalm 22 is one way of doing this. Psalm 22 will once again be invoked immediately before Jesus dies when Jesus cries out quoting the first words of the psalm "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  But beyond the evocation of Psalm 22, these temptations, and in particular this first temptation, have other echoes.  If we cast our minds back to chapter 4 of the gospel and Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, we hear Satan taunting Jesus with these words, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."  Unwittingly, the passerby make Satan's words their own "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross" - save your own life. Just as Jesus was tempted to save his own life in the desert, again he was tempted to do so in his final hours. Jesus held firm in the desert and he holds firm on the cross. 

The second and third taunts comes from the Scribes and the Elders, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him," and "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to, for he said 'I am God's Son!'" This second taunt or temptation underscores what was perceived to be the seditious nature of Jesus' ministry, his alleged claim of kingship (notice that he is crucified between two bandits. The Greek word 'lestai' might better be translated, 'revolutionaries').  Worse still than the charge of sedition is the taunt/temptation also voiced by the Scribes and Elders, which concerns the charge of blasphemy and the claim to be God's Son. This echoes Wisdom 2:17-18, "Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries." Note, however, while the actions of Jesus' ministry might have pointed to him as a revolutionary and as some kind of 'divine-man', Jesus never admits this during either of his trials. Words are put in his mouth in the same way Satan puts words in his mouth in Matthew 4, "If you are...then..." In Matthew 4, Satan tempts Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple so that the angels of God would save him, "if you are the Son of God". This earlier temptation is also about blasphemy.  He is calling upon Jesus to expose himself and seek his Father's deliverance. It is like he is saying to Jesus, "just utter the blasphemy. Say it! You are God's son!"  He tries to tempt Jesus into blasphemy for the purpose of saving his own life. Jesus holds firm for if he did not, the whole work of salvation would be lost. Likewise, Satan's third temptation is about kingship, offering him all the kingdoms and riches of the world, if only Jesus would fall down and worship him."  Jesus refused.  This was not his sort of kingship, and again, it was a temptation to forsake his divine call. 

So, like the first, these second and third taunts from the foot of the cross bear a resemblance to the temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness at the hands of Satan. I suggested in a previous post that Satan does not want Jesus on the cross, for the cross will be Satan's destruction.  Satan's motive from the beginning to the end of the gospel is to thwart the divine plan, which culminates in crucifixion, and ultimately resurrection. I have often wondered if Matthew's unique little story about the tombs opening up and the dead coming out at the moment of Jesus' death was an illustration, even proclamation, of the defeat of the powers of darkness as darkness itself fell over the earth. 

Once again, it is the faithfulness of Christ that moves the story forward. As we shall see tomorrow, Jesus sees it through to the end. The taunts and temptations do not overwhelm him.  They are part of his passion and part of the story of salvation.  The taunts are all about saving himself, but Jesus' mission (once again hearkening back to his naming "You will call him Jesus for he will save his people") is about saving others, not himself.  The taunt "he saved others, but he cannot save himself" is ironically an affirmation of the success of the divine plan.  If he had succumbed to temptation, the forces of darkness would have won. But thanks be to God, they did not.

This leads me to a concluding thought for the day, that we ought to test our assumptions about what we think God's plan might be. All who mocked him from the foot of the cross thought they knew how God worked, what God wanted, and how God ordered all things.  Clearly they did not.  I wonder how overconfident we can be about knowing the mind of God. I wonder if at times we tempt and taunt when we should be listening with awe and wonder, reverence and humility.