The Wilderness

The Temptations of Jesus - Luke 4:1-13

Alone in the wilderness. Photo compliments of Matt Noble.

The frozen battlefield we could not escape

Seeing my father at seventeen in a Marine uniform was both uplifting and unnerving.

A genealogist friend of mine recommended that I write the National Archives in St. Louis to request my father’s military file. Because 17 million military files burned during an enormous fire that engulfed the facility in July 1973, the Archive’s director phoned to inform me that my dad’s file may have been destroyed. I explained to him that my father disappeared from my life when I turned thirteen, at which point he promised to undertake the search himself. Two weeks later a walnut brown envelope arrived in the mail. I tore open the envelope to reveal my seventeen year-old dad peering back at me.

He was clad in his taupe Class A uniform. His hair, though clipped short on the sides, crowned his head in auburn waves. Dad was so thin that his green eyes appeared twice the size I remember. (Although the photo was black and white, I could easily imagine the colors.) He was 6’4” but could not have weighed more than 160 pounds. Throughout the thirteen years that I knew him, my father was at least ninety pounds heavier.

The photo was taken only weeks before he was shipped across the Pacific to Wonsan, a port on the east coast of North Korea. General McArthur sent Dad, along with 30,000 other Marines, sailors, and soldiers to reinforce a United Nation contingency. The U.N. forces had been positioned at Lake Changjin, a manmade lake in the northeast region of the Korean Peninsula, popularly known as the Chosin Reservoir. Their mission was to cut the Chinese supply line that was supporting the North Korean military.

My father was on the line of that frozen wilderness in November 1950 when Mao Tse-Tung ordered 120,000 Chinese regulars to attack the combined U.N. and American forces. In the thirty-day assault, the allies suffered 17,000 casualties, of which 2,500 were killed in action, another 2,500 froze to death, 5,000 were wounded, and 8,000 succumbed to frostbite. In an epic withdrawal comparable to Dunkirk ten years earlier, 193 ships were mustered to evacuate the U.N. and American troops.

My father never escaped the physical complications of his frostbite incurred during the interminable days of -36°. Nor did he escape the terror of the close-quarters combat that broke out in hand-to-hand fighting all along the line. The frozen wilderness followed my dad home. He could not escape it no matter how hard he tried to anesthetize the pain with whiskey. Because of his efforts to deaden his memories, every morning at our house was the same: As soon as Dad awoke, he vomited up the alcohol consumed the night before. The bathroom would seem to quake as he puked into the commode in successive thunderclaps. No sooner did he finish emptying his stomach than he hastened to the kitchen, filled a “jelly glass” with red Kool Aid and filled another halfway with bourbon, drank the latter, and immediately chased it with the Kool Aid. And so the mad daily cycle began again.

When dad or mom is an alcoholic, the whole house is thrust into a wilderness. Everyone gets sick. You endlessly cover and make excuses for the person. Spouses and children learn to be invisible to escape the brutal eruptions. Kids act out in unseemly ways at school and amongst their friends. Addictive behaviors emerge in other members of the household. Two of my four siblings perished at a young age because of their addictions — Gene at thirty-eight from alcohol and Julia at fifty-four from prescription drugs.

Although, Julia’s twin, Johnny died at twenty-two in an auto accident while reporting to a late night rescue mission in the Coast Guard, he and I both were able to escape to a church boarding school for our teenage years. The strict regimen of our days there proved to be an antidote to the pain our household continued to harbor. My mother was sacrificial, if not saintly, in her love for us, yet our family, even detached from Dad, could not outrun the frozen wilderness where he continued his fight — even against those he loved.

I continue to tread on my corner of Chosin. The violent terror my father brought home to our family and the valiant rescue of us that my mother carried out in return continue to tramp through my head. I cannot escape my childhood, nor do I even want to, because so much of me was formed on that icy wilderness in which we lived.

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Photo compliments of the Military Health System.

Jesus’ wilderness

Jesus, too, is formed in the wilderness. Who he would be and what he would do is resolved while he was alone in the Judean desert. Most of us surmise that Jesus’ character and direction were fully formed the moment he plopped out of Mary’s womb in that Bethlehem stable. If that were so, why would Jesus have told others about his solitary battles with the devil waged upon that barren treeless landscape? He must have rehearsed the story with his followers more than once for them to eventually understand the surprising direction of his ministry. At the same time, sharing his experience in the wilderness reinforced the fact that Jesus was fully human, not a pretend one. The devil’s temptations were as alluring to him as they would be to any flesh and blood human being. And, of course, because the direction of the Son of Man’s life is forged in the wilderness, the disciples lives will be fashioned in their own wildernesses when the time comes.

“Not much happens in the comfort zone,” I quip quite often. The words dance off my tongue with ease, but the truth they carry are hard to stomach. Our lives are sculpted in the wilderness, not on easy street. No doubt that is why Jesus discloses to his followers that immediately after his baptism, where he was filled with the Holy Spirit and hears the voice of the Father, he is led by the Spirit into wilderness, where for forty days he is tempted by the devil’ (3:22b & 4:1). The fact that the Spirit pilots Jesus into the wilderness is evidence that his trials are divinely orchestrated. At the same time, his forty days spent there reveals his solidarity with Israel and us.

Jesus shares the story of his combat with the devil in the Judean wilderness for several reasons. The first is to demonstrate Jesus’ identification with Israel. Recall that 1,500 years earlier Israel is no sooner set free from Egypt than it becomes painfully clear that they do not know how to live as free women and men. Their forty years in the wilderness reads like an extended adolescence. As Israel comes to the end of their own trials in the wilderness, Moses reminds them why God kept them there for an entire generation: ‘Remember the long way that the LORD God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep God’s commandments’ (Deuteronomy 8:2).

The thousands of Israelites who spend forty years in the Sinai wilderness mostly fail their tests there. Jesus undergoes those same tests in rapid succession in a diminished physical state, and yet redeems their failures. In each head-to-head encounter with the devil, Jesus combats the temptations with Scripture. He keeps God’s commandments as Moses so long before urged the Israelites to do. Jesus demonstrates that to defeat the wiles of the devil, we must rely on God’s authority, His voice, and not our own.

Second, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the wilderness spells the ending of the devil’s power over us. When Jesus journeys into the wilderness after being anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism, he strides out as God’s warrior. He overcomes the devil’s enticements for him to submit to physical pleasure, temporal power, and shortcuts to glory. In doing so, Jesus portends the defeat of the devil’s reign on earth. Sometime later after Jesus casts out a demon and restores a person’s hearing, he is accused of being in league with the devil. Jesus finds the accusation hilarious, and responds in words that Lincoln will borrow, ‘A house divided against itself will fall. So if Satan is divided against himself how will his kingdom stand… But if it is by this finger I cast out demons, the kingdom of God has come upon you (11:17-18).

Third, Jesus’ ministry was prophesied centuries before in the Old Testament Scriptures. He is the One for whom Israel has long been waiting. Again during the grueling tests with the devil, Jesus demonstrates his connection with the Old Testament, especially its most authoritative portion, the Torah. Three years later, after Jesus is crucified and is raised, he approaches two of his forlorn followers, although they do not recognize him. When they confess to Jesus their devastation over the crucifixion, he reproves them: ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory’ (24:25-26)? It is likely that on this occasion Jesus had Isaiah in mind, as the great prophet is referred to twenty-one times in the Gospels:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:4-6

Fourth, Jesus’ contest in the wilderness against the devil is a model for all believers. In the devil’s last gasp for supremacy, he will assail Jesus’ followers through any means necessary. To this we do not just throw up our hands, shake our heads, and concede, “Nobody is perfect.” Heavens no! When we succumb to temptation and sin, it is not just us, the perpetrators, who suffer. Others are always affected. Jesus says as much as when he and the disciples come closer to Jerusalem where Jesus will be betrayed, suffer, and be crucified:

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones (new disciples) to stumble.’ Luke 17:1-2

American Christians need Jesus’ example more than ever. Many of us are at a crossroads where we are tempted to fulfill our physical desires, grapple for power, and take shortcuts rather than intractably follow our Lord. In conceding to these other things, people, or movements, we fall headlong into idolatry, the most insidious sin of all. We make gods out of things that aren’t. As Jesus succinctly said at the Sermon on the Mount, ‘"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other’ (Matthew 6:24).

Life is more than stuff

The devil is a clever opportunist, if nothing else. Knowing that Jesus has fasted for the previous forty days, the devil approaches him and taking one of the large smooth stones scattered about the desert floor requests, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ To which Jesus immediately replies, ‘People do not live by bread alone’ (4:3-4). In Luke’s rendition of the temptations, Jesus omits the second clause, ‘but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father’ (Matthew 4:4). The message, nevertheless, is clear. Human beings are more than what we consume — far more.

Jesus’ words are particularly poignant today when suddenly the stock market has lost 20% of its value, wiping away 11 trillion dollars of companies’ financial assets (that’s trillion with a “T”). While it is true that 10% of investors own 88% of the stock market’s value, the rest of us do have 401Ks and nest eggs we are depending upon. All at once, our retirement investments look as if we did not show up for work for the last five years. As a seventy year-old, the news is sobering, if not sickening. I was not reassured by the president’s text as stocks were careening on Friday morning, April 4:

“TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”

Once the president began announcing tariffs, he has regularly embroidered their use by promising riches to the American people. Most Americans just want enough to live. Being rich never crosses our minds. As a Christian, I need savings and security as much as the next guy, yet I realize the good life is not measured by the wealth I accumulate but by the love I give away. The devil, and I am afraid our president, is operating under a mistaken presumption.

I am reminded of a story shared by a funeral director friend of mine. A wealthy lady noted in her will that she be buried in her yellow Cadillac convertible with her embalmed black Pekinese seated beside her. Both the money and the cemetery lots had been set aside for the operation. Thus, on the day of her burial, hundreds were on had to witness the front end loader dump yards of brown dirt atop the car, the dog, and the woman. Everyone present knew that in no time at all the car would oxidize and the lady and the dog would decay, giving a graphic reminder of Jesus’ words of warning:

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Matthew 6:19-21

How much is enough? Photo compliments of Alexander Grey.

You become what you worship

Seeing that Jesus was not moved by physical need, the devil attempts another angle: power. He gives Jesus a panoramic view of all the kingdoms of the world. ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory…if you will worship me.’ Jesus responds with some of Moses’ words from his second speech in Deuteronomy, ‘It is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve’ (4:5-8; Deuteronomy 6:13). The devil’s temptation is not so much about acquiring naked, unabashed power as it is about how Jesus will use his power and under whose authority he will operate. The Gospel story is replete with how Jesus elects to use his power — to teach, heal, cast out demons, and forgive sins. Dominating others is nowhere on Jesus’ agenda.

The more pressing question posed by the devil’s second temptation is under whose authority will Jesus operate. Jesus refuses free-agency. He will remain obedient to the Father. Why? Because the Father created human beings to flourish. Therefore, Jesus, the Son, will act as God’s shepherd, gathering people into the Father’s fold of love. ‘The thief, the devil, comes to to kill and destroy, but I have come so that you may have life and have life in abundance’ (John 10:10). Jesus is not spinning esoteric gibberish here. Jesus realizes that his Father provides more than enough for all of us.

On that subject, I have been drawn to Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s long awaited book, Abundance. Klein, a New YorkTimes columnist, and Thompson, a staff writer for The Atlantic, persuasively argue against both the conservatives’ and progressives’ drumbeat of scarcity in our country. Conservatives weave fear amongst their adherents — immigrants are taking our jobs, our houses, and our healthcare. They say that even as they realize we need at least 1 million new immigrants each year to maintain a healthy economy. 12.8 immigrants hold Green Cards and productively add to our workforce and pay taxes. Progressives play a different tune but with similar results. Klein and Thompson classify them as NIMBYs — “Not in my backyard.” At every turn, progressives have blocked essential housing, industry, even alternative, non-carbon-based power development with strangling regulation and red tape. How telling it is that major Democratic cities in the U.S., San Francisco, New York, Boston, and others boast some of the highest housing costs in the nation but report the fewest affordable housing starts. Christians on both sides of the aisle need to rebuke the status quo.

Worse still, we become what we worship. If we worship material possessions, we will throw over our friends and certainly the stranger in our pursuit of things and physical pleasure. Our stuff will buffer us from meaningful engagement with others. If we worship power, we will vie to control people, especially the ones we love, instead of loving them as beautiful, unique creations of God. Power prizes domination and despises empathy. Without the latter, we can never emulate our Savior.

Recently, I have seen how much more powerful empathy is than domination. At this writing, Kay’s and my daughter has been in the hospital with a crushed vertebra for three weeks. She has undergone two surgeries and is awaiting another. Her pain has been nearly unbearable. Kay and I have, at several pivotal junctures, been unable to reach her. However, a childhood friend, who has been suffering with a virulent cancer and the toxic chemotherapy used for its cure, has broken through to her. Even in her weakened state, she has made the five-hour trip twice to come sit with our daughter for hours on end. The friend has the authority to speak into our daughter’s life. Empathy is powerful medicine — not only for the receiver but for the giver. At the same time, the friend is being transformed into the image of the One she worships. Paul, who was once drawn to the false glamour of temporal power, wrote these lines after he had submitted to God and the power of His love:

‘Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.’ Ephesians 4:22-24

No shortcuts

The devil demonstrates his agility with the third temptation. Since Jesus fended off his earlier two offers with Scripture, the devil rolls out a line from the Good Book, too. ‘Throw yourself off the roof of the temple, after all the Bible guarantees that “angels will catch you before you go splat!”’ To this, Jesus curtly retorts, ‘We’re not supposed to put God under a magnifying glass’ (4:9-12; Psalm 91:11-12; Deuteronomy 6:16).

The devil tempts Jesus to take a shortcut to glory. Well aware that Jesus has a mission to complete, the devil offers him a smooth, quick, and painless avenue to glorified celebrity status right then and there on the bright temple courtyard. If Jesus takes up the offer, he will be able to scrap the protracted, torturous path awaiting him in the original plan that culminates at the dank city dump at Calvary. The devil lobbies Jesus to forego God’s plan for his streamlined, painless one. To do so would diminish Jesus’ every word, every encounter, even his hostile engagements during those the three years leading up to his crucifixion. His followers will look back on all those words, encounters, and engagements, especially his passion, and come to understand that Jesus is God’s Son.

To that end, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on the last week of his three-year ministry, he surprises the disciples Andrew and Philip with his announcement, ‘The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.’ Jesus continues speaking but with increasing agony, ‘Now is my soul troubled. And what should I say, “Father save me from this hour?” No for this purpose I have come to this hour.’ And what is the purpose of his coming harrowing crucible, ‘Now the ruler of this world will be cast out; and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to me’ (John 12:23, 27b, 31b-32). Of course the devil wants Jesus to abbreviate his mission. The devil knows that if Jesus maintains his painstaking walk to glory, his stifling hold over human beings will end. N.T. Wright explains Jesus’ rejection of the devil’s third temptation this way:

‘Ironically, Jesus would eventually face death in Jerusalem (but not as a dramatic sign to wow the people) and when he did he would choose not his own deliverance but faithfulness to his Father’s will (22:42). Jesus would fulfill his divine Sonship not by escaping death but by accepting death and defeating it. Unlike Israel of old, Jesus refused to put God to the test. (Wright, Interpreter’s, 100)

We are fond of saying, “The devil is in the details.” Not hardly. The painful, messy details are essential to the disclosure of Jesus as the Son of God and the revelation of God’s ultimate plan for the salvation of the world. In much the same way, our Christian witness is not found in the broad sweep of our lives but in our day-to-day messy, sometimes painful, duties and relationships.

The correct diagnosis

Fault Donald Trump for his catalog of leadership failures, uncharitable pronouncements, and immoral misdeeds, but he has few equals as a diagnostician. What he has pointed out for thirty years is that since 1992, when the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated tariffs between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and when China in 2001 joined the World Trade Organization, giving them 166 favorable trading partners across the globe, middle class standards of living in America have actually fallen. While incomes have increased, unemployment has decreased, and the U.S.’s overall GDP has soared, significant deficits have emerged for middle America: 1. Two incomes, not one, are necessary to adequately support a family. 2. Home ownership, healthcare, and public university education is out of reach from many families. 3. With the exporting of American industry overseas, entire towns and cities have significantly declined, e.g., Flint, MI; Johnstown, PA; Buffalo, New York; Youngstown, OH, among others. 4. Wealth moved disproportionately to the top 1% of Americans, those who earn a minimum of $819,000 per year. In fact, one-third of America’s wealth is now concentrated in that top tier. Donald Trump accurately and effectively diagnosed these inequalities, which is a major reason, even amidst his plethora or liabilities, that he was elected for a second term.

Trucks crossing from Canada to U.S. Photo compliments of The Wall Street Journal.

Bad medicine

On the other hand, the president’s need for constant adulation and his penchant for the quick fix may have severely harmed the very people he set out to save. His hastily conceived table of international tariffs are estimated to decrease middle class incomes by approximately $4,000 per year. That’s three house payments, four monthly health insurance premiums, one month’s tuition and fees at the University of Texas, or ten monthly contributions to a 401K. If the administration successfully eliminates The Affordable Care Act and Pell Grants, the outlook for the middle class will be markedly worse.

Although, yesterday, the president suddenly paused his across the board tariffs for ninety days, his Liberation Day announcement may have inflicted a long term wound to our economic future and international alliances. Rather than achieving more equity in our trade relations, the United States has emerged as a cold and cruel bully. Small trading partners like Lesotho in Southern Africa, whom the president insulted in his speech to congress as “the country no one has heard of” is reeling after the announcement of 50% tariffs on its goods. The verbal slight is nothing compared to the looming disaster the tariffs portend. In a country where one-third of the population lives on $2 per day, the U.S. levies will obliterate the textile industry where Gap clothes and Levis are made. That, on top of the USAID cuts to the country, led one economist to abruptly conclude, “Lesotho will be dead.” Global Post - Lesotho

This is what happens when shortcuts are taken, relationships are forsaken, the weak forgotten, and the toll on human life is ignored. This is what happens when a nation leads with might instead of heart. I can’t help but wonder if we American Christians, like Israel before us, are headed to a long season in the wilderness, where we will recollect our complicity in our nation’s sins and our indifference to the suffering we have visited on other nations and on our own citizens. If we are headed to the wilderness, I pray that while there, we will be changed as God assured Israel through the prophet Ezekiel: ‘A new heart will I give you, a new spirit will I put within you; and I will remove the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh’ (Ezekiel 36:26).

Questions to Ponder

1. Can you recall a time you were thrust into the wilderness? What precipitated your stay there? How did your time in the wilderness change your life?

2. Two books illustrate a disturbing new movement in American Christianity that opposes the exercise of empathy of all things: Right-wing podcaster, Allie Beth Stuckey, published a best-selling book called Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. Subsequently, right-wing theologian, Joe Rigney, is publishing a book called ‘The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.’ Can Christians oppose empathy for political leverage and still comprehend, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…’ (John 3:16)?

3. Why do shortcuts, even in pursuit of the most worthy goals, rarely work out for Christians?

Sources

Global Post, April 10, 2025, https://globalpost.com/stories/when-the-sky-falls-lesotho-says-us-tariffs-will-kill-the-country/

Wright, N.T., The New Interpreter’s Bible: The Gospel of Luke. Nashville: Abingdon, 1995.