Jesus is Set Up
This is the sermon I preached Sunday, 3/1/20 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The gospel was Matthew 4:1-11. Do you remember the comedy of Flip Wilson? One of his frequent characters was Geraldine Jones. Her excuse for anything she shouldn’t have done was, “The devil made me do it.” The things the devil “made” Geraldine do were not inherently evil like buying a new dress. In today’s gospel, in Jesus’ encounter with Satan, the devil tempts him to do three different things, none of which are innately evil in and of themselves. As I said in my e-ministry reflection, this was a setup. Right on the heels of Jesus’ baptism, with the reassuring voice of his Father calling him the beloved Son. Then pow, God’s Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. Why would the Spirit do this? There are three temptations: the temptation to attempt the miraculous, the temptation to spectacle and the temptation to political power. The three temptations stand for pride, power ...