©Suzanne Grimmett
All the Kingdoms of the World by Malcolm Guite
So here’s the deal and this is what you get:
The penthouse suite with world-commanding views,
The banker’s bonus and the private jet
Control and ownership of all the news
An ‘in’ to that exclusive one percent,
Who know the score, who really run the show
With interest on every penny lent
And sweeteners for cronies in the know.
A straight arrangement between me and you
No hell below or heaven high above
You just admit it, and give me my due
And wake up from this foolish dream of love…’
But Jesus laughed, ‘You are not what you seem.
Love is the waking life, you are the dream.’[1]
Malcolm Guite’s poem could not be more on point this year as we hear the news of the world tell of corruption and exploitation and observe leaders who seem driven by personal self-interest and the desire to maintain power or wealth or both.
The poem gives a sense of that same sickening we feel when temptations are embraced and evil reigns. ‘Wake up from this foolish dream of love’ says the tempter. ‘Give over to cynicism and nihilism because that is just being realistic.’
What we hear in the poem and know from our own behaviour and the behaviour of others is that the opposite of love is not hate- it’s apathy. To pursue self-advancement and self-interest at the expense of others does not need hatred of the other- it just needs a complete lack of concern for their suffering and the injustices our actions are producing. This is what we see playing out in those Guite suggests who control the news, maintain exclusive elites and ‘really run the show’ behind the scenes.
But here’s the thing. When we roll our eyes in cynicism, saying resignedly, “That’s just how the world is,” evil wins. It seems to me this is a question of faith. Do we ultimately believe that love is the greatest power on earth or do we think we need to side with the dominant, the violent and the powerful to survive? Where we place our trust determines everything. Do we have the power to choose?
We might wonder whether Jesus had difficult choices in his wilderness showdown with the devil. He is God incarnate after all- surely those temptations would not have been as hard for him? I think this is a flawed piece of thinking that wants to assume God really is a God of dominant might and power who sometimes plays at being a human before returning to his normal almighty and detached omniscience. I think we all who follow the crucified and risen one need to keep learning that God is not open and vulnerable some of the time and then the rest of the time an avenging, all powerful being smiting whomever he chooses. (I am deliberately using a male pronoun here because this God of conquering might is always envisaged as male.) The God of eternity is not just play-acting at being human but is always and forever, gentle and humble in heart and always and forever engaged with humanity. If this were not so, there would be no eternal place for us in the life of the relational, self-giving Trinity of love. [2]
As we hear this story of the wilderness temptations, we might allow ourselves to be shocked again at just how alone and vulnerable Jesus seems to be. He is sent out to the desert, and after 40 days without food, he would be famished. Take and eat, says the devil to a hungry, lonely man. Jesus does not appear to have that comfortingly ‘out loud’ voice of God that was heard at his baptism intervening here. The reality is, sometimes we are very alone in our temptations, and they appear when we are weakened for one reason or another. Jesus, it seems, would understand that experience. But Jesus makes a very clear choice. While he may not be hearing the voice of God in megaphone, he can remain centred in the presence of the one who named him beloved through recalling words of scripture.
To the devil’s taunt, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread’, Jesus recalls the trials and the liberation of the Exodus. It was through that 40-year journey where Moses led the people through the desert that they would discover what it meant to live in dependence on God. It says in Deuteronomy (8:3) that the people were led from slavery to freedom and God provided what was needed ‘in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[3] Jesus is the new Moses, and he makes a choice to trust, despite his empty belly.
The second temptation begins like the first with that same malicious phrase, “if you are the Son of God..” and invites Jesus to trust God to rescue him. “Throw yourself down!” We might recognise a similar note in the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden; “Are you sure that is what God was saying? Can you really trust that God has your best interests at heart? Why not go your own way and test it out?”
Anyone may relate to this temptation who has ever had doubts take them away from who they want to be and what they know to be true.
The temptation placed last in Matthew’s Gospel should remind us of the perennial nature of humankind to desire power and dominance. The devil leans into this one, revealing all the kingdoms of the world and offering them to Jesus. But the cost of all this? The devil is clear that there is always a price.
All this will be yours if you fall down and worship me.
We might think of the price paid eventually by all who lose their soul in the pursuit of power and ambition, money and influence. But we might also recognise in this insidious temptation the evil that is the commodification of everything. For a start it begins in a lie- the devil would say it all belongs to him, and he has the power to trade for it. As Jane Williams notes, if Jesus were to accept this bargain, he would be stepping into a world where everything has a price. But when Jesus looks at the world, he sees rather ‘a world where love is freely given and received, because God’s power is the power of merciful freedom from the Devil’s economy, and a liberation into an economy of gift.’[4]
Jesus, in trusting to God’s economy of grace, knows that to make of the earth and the earth’s peoples something that can be bought, sold or traded is a thing of great evil. Colonising powers still operate in this way. It may not be the Royal African Company or the East India Company anymore, but the reduction of peoples to a source of profit… and country to the resources that can be extracted from it …is the same beast in a different disguise. Increasingly social commentators are recognising the loss of freedom coming through digital platforms which harvest people for profitable information, modifying our desires and even our behaviour. I wonder if that same whispered promise, “All of this can be yours” has led us to blindly become the product for someone else’s profit, and we have fallen at the feet of Big Global Tech far too easily, giving away our sovereignty. Tripp Fuller suggests that ‘if our attention is being stolen, our desires manufactured and our very sense of self curated’ we are in a crisis of the soul.[5]
Jesus, in the face of temptation, chooses trust in God. Jesus in his intimate relationship with God as Father and indwelling Spirit remains faithful to the one who deals not in the exploitation of influence and money but in liberation and gift…a power based not in dominance and manipulation but in self-giving love and truth.
This Lent, may we be alert to the many guises of temptations that would colonise our soul and rob us of freedom in Christ. In all the daily choices of our lives, may we sense the gentle guiding of the Christ who reveals the eternal humility of God, helping us to trust in the power that is love.
+Amen
[1] https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/lent/
[2] Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God, Bloomsbury Continuum: 2018, p 21
[3] Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God, Bloomsbury Continuum: 2018, 16
[4] Jane Williams, The Merciful Humility of God, Bloomsbury Continuum: 2018, p17
[5] Tripp Fuller https://processthis.substack.com/p/the-cloud-and-the-kingdom