Readings: Job 1:6-12, and Matthew 4:1-11.
Recently I was asked to do a school assembly – I started with a question ‘is it beautiful?’ and then displayed a variety of images from the natural world – from lions to spiders, hummingbirds to toads. They had to give a thumbs up or down. The spider and toad were the least liked, but the point made was that the decision was a judgement – an opinion that wasn’t necessarily the truth. What if, I asked, God created all things to be beautiful and we were never meant to think we could judge it? For ‘God saw all that He had made, and it was very good (Genesis 2:31).
Our seeing is influenced by so many factors within our experience – and those experiences become imprinted in our memories. Memory is embedded in our bodies and minds – so that feelings or bodily sensations can trigger a thought and vice versa. Therefore, for too long people have thought the passions to be sinful in themselves – but God wants us to have fervent hearts for charity, and for justice wrapped up in a passionate desire for Him. He created us for this – and it is we who have corrupted the image in which we were made.
It is the learning and memory in our minds that determine the meaning we give to things. As such we judge not only by our own thinking, but so often by the thinking of others that we have subscribed to. Therefore, St Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians to keep our attention, that is our thoughts, fixed on whatever is true, honest, pure, lovely, and so on (see Philippians 4:8).
God tells the prophet Samuel that His seeing is beyond our own, that we look on the outward appearance and He looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
In our first reading, Satan, the accuser, comes to God among the angels – he is a fallen angel, and if we had been a fly on the wall of heaven, I wonder if to us they would have all looked the same? But God sees him, God sees the heart. In the English translations from Hebrew scripture a word meaning ‘heart of you’ has been left out – God says to Satan ‘has your heart considered my servant Job’. Perhaps it was a disturbing thought for the translators to even consider that Satan has a heart. But the heart is the key – Jesus says, it is ‘the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them,’ (Matthew 5:18). And Proverbs (4:23) tells us to guard our hearts, for everything we do flows from it.’
So how do our hearts incline to evil? Evil is the absence of love, the absence of what is good – therefore God cannot be evil, because He is Love, and He is good, and cannot be absent to Himself. But God has created a space for absence, so that we have the freedom to choose – and without this freedom, love cannot be true.
So, we have a choice – that is to orient the eyes of our hearts towards God and His transcendent love, or towards a love solely for ourselves and the material world. But within this simple statement lies a spiritual battle. A war that has raged since the fall of Adam and Eve, for God asks Satan, ‘where have you been?’ And his reply was ‘from roaming throughout the earth,’ – that is to roam in the dark places, the unseen places such as our interior self.
Our eyes (mind) and our hearts (body) connect – Jesus tells us that if our eyes are healthy our whole body will be full of light (Matthew 6:22). Our attention, our words and deeds inhabit either darkness or light.
From the scriptures we see that Wisdom came out of God, like Eve came out of Adam – and for this, Adam was put into a deep sleep – so just as we do not know from where God’s Wisdom comes, neither do we know from where human reason comes. And this becomes the battlefield between us and the accuser. The enmity between the serpent and the woman (Genesis 3:15). That is the opposition between reason and the emptiness of no reason which causes us to always seek for reason in itself, that is to search for meaning.
Satan who tempts us to turn our attention away from God to our own reasoning, to our own sight, to our own understanding, is the temptation in the garden to make ourselves in the image of God, that is to become the judge of ourselves ‘knowing good and evil’ (Genesis 3:5). He tempts the eyes by what is visible – but all that glitters is not gold.
Adam was created in the image of God, but after the fall, that image of God became darkness – and God instructed His people not to create an image for themselves. Jesus, the new Adam, comes to us as the light, as the image of God, and we who were once in darkness, now having seen this great light – are on a pilgrimage, a journey of purification with the Holy Spirit as our guide – to gather the spiritual treasures of heaven on the road that transcends what we see.
As the Spirit led Moses through the waters into the wilderness, so we see Jesus after His baptism being led by the Spirit into the dry empty place where the evil one roams. Satan charges God with protecting Job with blessings and material wealth. Jesus having fasted for forty days, and forty nights is in material need, He’s hungry, He’s thirsty – He’s in the empty place alone.
In the wilderness, Jesus is tempted as Eve was, to greed, power, and material desire. But keeping His eyes fixed on the Father and His word – He conquers the temptation to look away, He resists the devil, and the devil flees (James 4:7).
Satan tempts Him using extracts of Scripture for the purpose of self-justification, he does not participate in the reasoning of God, but in his own selfish desires. God gives us life by relationship, but selfish desire is empty of life, driving us to destruction and death. This prompts us to ask how often do we rely on our own understanding and not God’s? How often do we need to be right for our own sake and self-satisfaction? At times we are asked to accept the mysteries and uncertainties of life. It is more important for us to be able to hang our lives on the framework of love, to be honest and open hearted – that means to admit sometimes we don’t know, and that’s ok, for then we are trusting in God and not ourselves.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘by judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.’
The journey is difficult, and the devil is cunning – so how do we resist? We must first recognise and become aware of the works of Satan. He tempts us like Job’s wife to ‘curse God and die,’ to become accusers in blaming God for works that are not His, to speak words without knowledge, to be like his friends who do not speak the truth. Satan causes suffering without reason, he encourages us to doubt, to possess, to dehumanise, to lift ourselves up, to go beyond the limits God has set for us – he tempts us to excess, that is to want more than we need.
Through the lament of his circumstances, Job remains honest before God, he is mistakenly sure that God is the cause of his suffering, but still praises him in his distress and keeps his eyes fixed on Him – and in the end he receives abundant blessings.
But how can a person believing in God’s abounding love and goodness, accuse Him of the works of Satan? Perhaps he forgets about the serpent and perhaps remembers the consequences of the fall given to Adam and Eve – the painful labour and toil of the land. But this suffering was not given for our punishment, but for our solidarity in a fallen world. Suffering is not necessary in God’s Kingdom of heaven, for there it is love alone that binds us together as one.
Jesus after He leaves the wilderness goes out to conquer evil in the world. He heals the sick, raises the dead, sets the oppressed free – He brings a taste of the Kingdom of heaven to come to the present moment, He brings the Kingdom of heaven to earth. He takes on our fallenness, He takes on our suffering, and in His suffering, we are reconciled to become one body, to be united.
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Oscar Wilde made the observation that ‘those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.’
We see the surface of things, and what is inside, or symbolic, goes beyond or exceeds available evidence, and we do not ‘gain’ from what is outside, but instead we ‘give’ what is on the inside of us to our outward perceptions.
We can only truly know what is outside of us and within otherness, by being with and participating – by conversation, by agreeing to walk together in relationship, not by standing far off at a distance. Sin deceives us into believing we are not interdependent, or connected, that we are not one but many.
Jesus tells us that before we offer a gift at the altar of God, if a brother or sister has something against us, we must first be reconciled, then come back to God and offer our gift (Matthew 5:23-24). Why? Because what we carry in our hearts cannot be divided – what we take into one relationship we also take to God. So, as God is one, so are we to be one.
What can we do? Repent! Be honest, be humble before God. Love God, love our neighbour, love ourselves, love justice, love mercy. Love what is good.
Amen.