The Symphony of the Temptation

Traditionally, a symphony is written in four movements, each a distinct section in and of itself, but also part of a larger whole.  Beginning movements are great vehicles for development through the entire work of art.  Themes and variations, like carefully hung Christmas tree ornaments, can be heard throughout the full piece.  

So has been my journey with the story of The Temptation of Jesus.  A Masterful Composer has brought me back to this account many, many times. The key of the story has never changed, but He’s introduced contrasting styles, interlinking melodies, harmonies, dynamics and rhythm alterations.

Movement 1: Sola Scriptura

As a young believer, I was taught this account was all about scripture. In his temptation, Jesus answered with quotes from the scriptures and that was the point of the story.  It was about combating lies with truth.  It was about answers, fixing the problem, and Jesus being an example of how I was to live.  This movement of the symphony was very geometric, formulaic, and easy enough to understand.

Movement 2: A New Human

As years went on and my faith suitcase was shaken up a little, a new variation emerged from this supposed mathematical story.  In the temptation, Jesus, the Messiah, was being the Israel that Israel had failed to be.  The temptations of hunger, testing God, and who to worship were ones that Israel, as God’s chosen people, had failed in the desert.  Here, however, Jesus was, in one sense, re-writing the story.  He would be the truly human one - the one who really acted like God’s chosen.  He used scripture not just because it was a confrontation between truth and lies, but because he was pulling the ancient story of the Israelites in the desert into the present and saying, “This is how it was supposed to be done”.  His actions and response gave credibility to his call of “Follow Me”.

Movement 3: Solidarity

The symphony slows down at this point, almost to a funeral dirge.  The overtones turn dark and haunting as the Wilderness became my habitation, not just words I read on the pages of my Bible.  Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Spirit, his extreme hunger, his aloneness, were becoming my experience too.  I knew the picture of Jesus sitting alone on the dark, jagged rocks of the wilderness.  I knew weakness and a great weight bearing down on my shoulders that threatened to crush me.  My life became part of the symphony and I felt, perhaps for the first time, a wholly human Jesus.  He chose solidarity with humanity!  As my life and the story were woven together in the adagio (slow music), it became clear that Jesus was with me (and I with him) in the wilderness.  The oh-so-human experience of temptation was breached, not by an army but by a God who chose to experience it himself.

Briton Riviere, The Temptation in the Wilderness

Movement 4: The Way

Much to my embarrassment,  I think I’ve always been cynical of whether or not Jesus actually was tempted in all the ways I am...until the fourth movement of the symphony.  While the specifics of the tempting offers were important for the music of earlier movements, these now gave way to the greatest temptation in all of it.  When faced with the choice between wanting legitimate pleasures in life and intimacy with the Father, Jesus chooses the Father.  The crescendo of the symphony is Jesus singing (between the lines), “I’d rather have the Father and nothing else than everything without Him.” (quoting Larry Crabb).  That is the root of my temptation too.  Do I want the Father more than I want anything else I desire, and will I chose to stay close to Him?  Jesus not only sympathizes with my temptation because he’s experienced it, but he says to me that I can do what he did.  Because I follow him and his Spirit is alive in me, my greatest desire can be (is) the Father and I can choose Him even when hard pressed.

Photo by Jennifer Kitson

Thank you for the symphony, Lord!  One movement does not have to be thrown out or negated, but rather in the hands of a Master Composer, each piece takes its rightful place, adding to the beauty of the whole.  Though I am stubbornly impatient, I am so grateful for the years it took to fashion this beautiful symphony.  You were in each movement...and I am sure you will be in the ones I cannot yet foresee too!