Marilu Thomas, “Missiles and Fish”
Jesus and the Temptations in the Wilderness. We often use this story about Jesus refusing to be tempted to say that we should also refuse to be tempted, which is impossible because we are not Jesus. And because that makes this story about us and not about Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus makes very clear in this story that human power is ineffectual because it is based on self and strength, but the power of God, embodied in Jesus Christ, is power made perfect in weakness.
Because this event is in all four gospels, we know it is significant to our understanding of who Jesus is and how his power is diametrically opposed to what we see and feel in the world as power. The devil says, “If you are the Son of God,” linking the three temptations to Jesus’ trust in the power and love of God. We’ve heard this before from the devil—in the Garden of Eden and in Job’s story. The devil is known as the Accuser and his tests are for Jesus. They are the human ways of gaining power over other humans. The devil offers Jesus the power of self-sufficiency, to never have to trust God for daily bread and Jesus turns him down. Jesus is then offered power over other humans by bowing down to the Liar, and Jesus quotes Moses from the first the Law. The last temptation is from Psalm 91 and would be giving a command to God, which would be playing God, which we are wont to do.
Theologian Matt Fitzgerald tells us that, “By refusing to practice human power, Jesus made himself vulnerable to human power…[which] suggests that the form of strength God chooses to practice is quite different from all our human understandings of strength and is therefore subject to them. This suggests that such power contradicts the love that God is revealing through him. To reveal that love at the end of Lent [on the cross], Jesus must practice it at the season’s onset.”
Therefore, these temptations are human ways to gain power to be self-sufficient, self-aggrandizing, and little gods ourselves. These ways of power also leave us lonely, disconnected, and unhappy. As humans, we idolize strength in all its forms. We believe the calculus of might makes right will make us happy and indestructible. But life shows us that using force to change someone, including ourselves, has the opposite effect. In theological terms, this is called Right-Handed power, which is strong armed power versus the Left-handed power of grace to meet you where you are with love.
These two types of power were very evident this week in the Ukraine. We were watching missiles hit houses and schools, seeing fathers pass their babies onto full trains, grandmothers weeping together in subway stations, and hearing the rumble of forty miles of tanks. This was coupled with the real time interviewing of marketing executives, teachers, dentists, software engineers and other average people who are fighting over the barriers made from the rubble of their lives. The stories of grace began to surface alongside the fighting: the Ukrainian woman who served a young Russian soldier a cup of tea and dialed up his mother on Facetime, the piles of bread, clothes, and beds welcoming fleeing families into Poland, the appeal of the director of an NGO in the Ukraine for the world’s children to send Tik Tok videos so that the children of the Ukraine will know they are not suffering alone. These are examples of what looks like weakness being more powerful than the raw power of bombs or missiles.
Some of called our moment in history “The Warring 20s.”Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert calls this time in history as a “deeply strange and very exhausting era.” She wrote this while recommending shows which might help resurrect parts of our hearts atrophied by the pandemic. One of these shows was Derry Girls, one of my favorites. The Girls, which includes a boy cousin, spend their days in Catholic school against the backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s. IRA bombs keep them from going to school and bullhorns blast political doctrine, but they still having crushes, share clothes, and have their own troubles. The lock-down of the British army does not change their political views, but the love and laughter of friends and family heal their hearts and minds. Theologically, this is what Jesus is telling the devil in the desert, your kind of power has no purchase when it comes to healing the human heart.
I would like to end with a story New York Times #1 best-selling author Jason Reynolds told on Brené Brown’s podcast this week. It has stayed with me—maybe because of the resonance with the stark reality that we are living in now but also maybe because this is what I have experienced as the grace of God. It is a story about his Global Studies teacher, Mr. Williams, from his senior year in high school. In Jason’s own words:
“He came into class one day and says, “Look, I bought a very expensive tropical fish, and this is the class pet, you guys have to name the pet and I need you to feed the pet when you come to class, whatever you do, just don’t touch the pet. If you touch the fish for any reason, if you touch this fish, I know how you all are with your hands, you play around trying to be funny, you touch the fish, I’m going to suspend you, no questions asked.” And everyone’s like, “okay, no big deal.” Weeks go by, we come to class every day, we feed the fish, everyone’s looking at it, and now we’re attached to the fish, we love the fish, and then he comes to class one day and he takes a little net, and he digs the fish out and he sits it on the floor. The fish starts flapping around. We’re all mortified, we stand-up, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ We’re mortified, true story, and two young ladies run over, they scoop the fish up, it’s flapping and they throw the fish back in the tank and the fish survives, and we’re like, “wooh.” And he says, “young ladies get your bags and go down to the principal’s office, you’re suspended, the rules are the rules.” And they’re like, “what do you mean, what do you mean?” And he’s like, “the rules are the rules,” and they’re like, “What are you talking about? What are you talking about?” And he’s like, “The rules are the rules, I said, don’t put your fingers on the fish, don’t touch the fish by any means, you cannot touch this fish and you touched the fish, so you are suspended. I’ll see you all on Monday, don’t bother yelling or screaming, just get out of my class.” They leave the class, and he pokes his head out the door and he says, “But hold your heads up, because you did the right thing, but sometimes doing the right thing has consequences,” and the rest of us had to sit in that class and deal with the fact that we were cowards.
What does this fish story have to do with you?
In terms of having any power to overcome temptation, you are the fish, out of your depth and floundering whether you know it or not. Jesus has done for you what you cannot do for yourself by taking on the devil and turning him down on your behalf. Saving you had consequences that Jesus took on himself—starting in the wilderness by refusing to use every kind of human power of strength or force, but rather taking the path of human weakness to offer himself as a willing sacrifice for you. The way of the cross is upside down to the power that you want or think you need, but it is the power that saved your soul once and for all. Amen
