A Political Reading of Luke 4.1-13
The truly political is, I believe, about the interaction of the social and the psychological; the inner and the outer aspects of life. This perception provides one way in which we might instructively come to understand the stories that are often called ‘the temptation narratives’ (Matt. 4.1-11; Mark 1.12-13; Luke 4.1-13) as some of the most keenly and influentially political texts in the New Testament.
The crucial context for understanding these stories comes in the verses that precede the narratives in the three accounts, namely the baptism of Jesus by John. Just after the symbolic washing act has taken place, we read that a voice from the skies declares “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3.22; Matt. 3.17). This moment marks the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry; the moment at which Luke gives away the ending to his readers, but invites them to read and be instructed by the way in which Jesus interprets and goes about fulfilling this calling.[1]
Full of the Holy Spirit, Luke tells us, Jesus returns from the Jordan and is then led, by the Spirit, into the wilderness. ‘Wilderness’, rather like ‘mountain’ etc., functions in the gospels, so the social-scientific critics have taught us, as a kind of socio-psychological space. Trips to these ‘spaces’ are less about physical movement, than about the narrative creation of ‘thinking room’, set apart from the main setting of the narrative – the equivalent of a swift sidestep into the inner world of a soliloquy in a Shakespeare performance. It is in this psychological wilderness that Jesus encounters the tempter.
We must not be distracted by the nature of the character of the Devil or Satan that has developed in Christian tradition since the first century. Although it finds some proto-support in the New Testament, the notion of Satan as the enemy of God, the fallen angel Lucifer, the evil seducer and so on, finds most of its origins in medieval writings. The character presented to the reader here is much more fruitfully thought of, I believe, as akin to hā satan, the member of the divine council sent to test the protagonist in the book of Job; or indeed the serpent of Genesis 3 – characters who are not primarily instantiations of evil, but questioners, agent provocateurs, suggesting, provoking, inquiring and testing; functioning as a kind of narrative mirror, they reveal the true nature of the characters with whom they interact.
The notion that Jesus has come aside in order to ponder the implications of the baptism event and the voice from the sky is reinforced by the chant of the tester; ‘If you are the Son of God…’ This title, ‘Son of God’, is not intended to place into the spotlight notions of Christ’s divine nature or participation in the Trinity, but, functions in a political sense.
The Greek υιٴòς του Θεου translates the Latin Divi filius, which is the title of the Roman Emperor, signifying each as the ‘Son’ of their dead and deified predecessor – hence ‘Son of a god’.[2] Further to this, the use in this context is connected to formulations of divine sonship in the Hebrew Bible used to refer to Kings or Judges, and, more specifically, to a tradition linked to King David. This tradition of Davidic sonship is most clearly presented in Psalm 2, a text that clearly lies behind the voice from heaven after Jesus’ baptism: “‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’ I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you. If ‘Son of God’ in this story primarily refers to anointed kings, then it should be no surprise that the options that the tester lays before Jesus are various ways of being king.
In Luke, the first question is one of economics. The image of turning boulders into bread may be often interpreted as a kind of naughty temptation, the impish Devil goading Jesus to do something a bit ill disciplined with his ‘magic’ powers, with his subsequent refusal playing as a kind of devotion to the magicians’ code. Yes, Jesus had been fasting and this bread temptation no doubt plays somewhat on that physical level, but I believe this is not primarily a physical temptation, but a metaphor for a pertinent wider social scenario.
The text underlying the real meaning here, I believe, is the speech delivered by Samuel in 1 Samuel 8.10-18. This famous “These will be the ways of the king…” passage is one of the clearest presentations of the prophetic critique of monarchy in the Hebrew Bible. For Samuel, what denotes the “ways of the king” is a commitment to a kind of economic collectivisation that drags in, centralises and exploits the resources of the whole community for the sole benefit of the royal court. Jesus is faced with the question of how he interprets notions of social provision, the logistics of sustenance, and denies the notion that good social structures are created by leaders who serve themselves and their own interests first. As Jesus emphasises in his retort, would be prophets or community organisers have more on their mind than just the gratification of their own desires.
Of course Jesus will address the issue of community organisation and food provision working with another set of loaves at a later point, and when he does, he will do so in a way that makes it clear that redistribution, rather than collectivisation, is the ideology he endorses – an ideology that has the concerns of the poor and marginalised at its centre.[3]
Next in Luke’s version of the narrative, the tempter ups the ante by reminding Jesus of the benefits afforded to those who are called as kings. Following on from the quotation of Ps. 2.7 by the voice from the skies, Ps. 2.8 is now added in for emphasis. “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” All that is required for Jesus to realise the promise of the glory of all the world’s kingdoms is for him to bow down to the one that has the power to grant it. As the history of Israel as told through the eyes of the prophetic tradition demonstrates, capitulating to the logic of resource collecting and glory grabbing erodes the ability to perceive the nature of idolatry. It is not Satan worship that is being conceived of here, but a representation of power, greed and nationalism as idols themselves, demanding of service and worship; corruptive thieves of what is rightfully God’s. Like Gideon, Jesus refuses to be king and rather reinforces YHWH as sovereign over the people.[4]
In his final test (as Luke presents it) the tempter takes Jesus to the towers on the temple and invites him to imagine the impact of a person throwing themselves off and yet coming to no harm. Again we see the clash of two ideologies, the nationalistic logic of the Psalmist (Ps. 91) as quoted by the tempter and the anti-idolatrous imperative of the Deuteronomist (Deut. 6.16, cf. Ex. 17. 1-7) as quoted by Jesus in response.
Certainly Jesus realises that performing a double-tuck somersault off the temple and landing gracefully in the courtyard would, should he achieve it, both convince all who saw it of his messianic credentials and immediately and uncontrollably put into motion, amongst the witnessing crowd, the armed rebellion that many would have understood as the purpose of the coming of the messiah. This, however, will not be Jesus’ way, he understands all too well that violence and greed breed only fear, selfishness and more violence. He is too inspired by the visions of Isaiah’s suffering servant, the one who breaks these cycles by laying down their own interests and not perpetuating the violence done to them.
It is interesting to note that some evidence from the Mishnah suggests that being thrown off the temple pinnacle to outside the city walls may have been the punishment for blasphemy. This potential identification of kingship and blasphemy is revealing, particularly if we want to read this text as the out playing of Jesus’ own psychological struggles. Perhaps also a subtle undertone here lies in the temptation for Jesus to avoid the rightful implication of the path he is setting out on, the path of the suffering servant; a path upon which taking up the calling of being the ‘Son of God’ will mean being a blasphemer in the eyes of both the Roman and Jewish authorities. This suffering-avoidance-temptation motif might be seen to recur throughout the gospel narrative: e.g. Jesus’ rebuking of Peter at Caesarea Philippi with the words “Get behind me satan!” (Matt. 16.22ff; Mark 8.31ff), the possibility of angelic deliverance or the passing of the cup at Gethsemane (Matt. 26.53)[5] and the mocking calls to ‘save yourself’ at Golgotha (Luke 23.35 and //).
It is surely significant that the details of this whole episode, from the fact that Jesus fasts for forty days and nights to the texts that he references and quotes in his rejoinders, continually evoke reminders of the story of the people of Israel following their exodus from Egypt. Like Moses, the great leader of the past, Jesus found sanctuary in Egypt when his infant life was threatened; like Moses he has been called to the service of YHWH and is uncertain of how to interpret what that means.
The people are once again in need of a great community organiser, someone commissioned by God to lead them to liberation from slavery, but Jesus has stepped out of the hustle in order to consider how the lessons and mistakes of the past can be made to work for the present and the future. In his psychological jousting with the tempter, Matthew and Luke provide us a window into the details of this inner struggle and into the ideologies that Jesus is inclined to draw on to face them.
In refusing to embrace his divine sonship in the way of a king, Jesus refuses to make Moses’ mistake in not trusting in God’s power to bring about that which is required by the people; unlike Moses he will not resort to violent coercion, but will strive to do what Moses could not, simply proclaim the victory of God.[6] Moses’ lack of faith meant that he would die before seeing God’s promised land; it is precisely Jesus’ faith, however, that will means he will die in order to accomplish the inbreaking of God’s reign.
These narratives show us Jesus’ intention to resist at every turn the temptation to interpret his calling as ‘Son of God’ in a traditionally monarchical way. Instead, throughout his ministry he will consistently endorse the prophetic tradition’s notion that YHWH is sovereign over his people and to have a king is to begin a process of distortion of YHWH’s demands of them to build a holy and just society; a society that reflects the God who creates his people by bringing them out of monarchical slavery. Jesus refuses to be a ‘Son of God’ in the royal, Davidic sense, and chooses instead to be guided by the notions of the prophetic messiah and the suffering servant, one who, rather than establishing his own kingdom by the sword, goes out in the power of the Spirit to proclaim the arrival of the paradoxical, subversive Kingdom of God.
Jon Morgan
Select Bibliography
Good places to start for thinking about political readings of scripture include:
- Anderson, B, (Ed) Creation in the Old Testament, (London: SPCK, 1984)
- Batto, B, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition, (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1992)
- Birch, B, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics & Christian Life, (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1991)
- Ceresko, A, Introduction to the Old Testament: A Liberation Perspective, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992)
- Elliott, N, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994)
- Hanson, P, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible, (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)
- Horsley, R, and Silberman, N, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World, (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1997)
- Kinsler, R, and Kinsler, G, The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life: An Invitation to Personal, Ecclesial, and Social Transformation, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999)
- Myers, C, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988)
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et al, Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003) - Rowland, C, Revelation, Epworth Commentaries, (London: Epworth Press, 1994)
- Yoder, J H, The Politics of Jesus: Behold the Man! Our Victorious Lamb, (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1972)
[1] NB in Matthew this declaration forms the first part of an inclusio with that of the centurion in Matt. 27.54 which functions in the same way as Mark’s ‘messianic inclusio’ – Mark 1.1 and Mark 15.39.
[2] NB ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of a god’ are the same as in Greek and Latin the indefinite article is always implied. Choosing between such alternatives is always a matter of interpretation on the part of the translator.
[3] see the feeding stories – Matt. 14.15-21; Mark 6.35-44; Mark 8.1-9; Luke 9.12-17; John 6.1-14.
[4] see Judges 8.22-23
[5] NB the insertion of a satanic ‘temptation’ sequence at this point of the narrative in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
[6] see Numbers 20.11
