For the Father Seeketh Such

“And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him” (Mark 1:13, KJV).  That is the short version.  Luke’s ends with: “And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season” (4:13)—surely that is just Luke’s attempt to smooth the narrative, unless Jesus as a fully human person was at times unaccountably insulated from our kind’s constant bedevilment.  However, between the bare account of the temptation and the crafted narrative, there lies in the three temptation episodes a triad of closely-related insights about Jesus’ teachings on salvation. 

Notably, Satan is really an unnecessary character in the Jesus-Tempted-in-the-Desert-by-Satan narrative (though perhaps therein lies an element of his elusive genius.)  Jesus after forty days needs no prompting to wish that a stone might be a loaf; he scarcely needs reminding, especially in his depleted state, that he fears dangers such as precipitous falls; and he would be expected in his extremity to wish that the world that torments him would be instead in his control.  So much for hunger or other bodily requirements; for fear of harm; for desire for dominion rather than subjugation—these three are among the common lot of humanity.

 (Of course, the temptation narratives in Matthew and Luke include the taunts directed at Jesus by Satan—“If thou be the Son of God”—but their contest on that score would be fundamentally distinct from any in which mere mortals might participate.)

The all-important relevance of the temptation narratives in the Synoptic tradition is made clear by its comparison to John’s story (4:1-42) of the Woman at the Well.  The Samaritan woman dares not ask if she might provide—contrary to convention—for the wearied Jewish traveler in the heat of the day.  (“Cast thyself down,” said Satan, taunting Jesus about an unnecessary plunge; the Samaritan woman’s prospective plunge is not so unnecessary.)  And she forfeits thereby a chance to drink of the living water of which Jesus speaks: not the endlessly-discussed “living water” of the theologians, but the vital and accessible “living water” of a dusty teacher of harsh truths in a land of scarcity—the “living water” figuratively drunk by one who sacrifices a precious cupful to another.

 The water at the bottom of the Samaritan woman’s well is the analog of the desired loaf of Jesus’ temptation by Satan.  Jesus dared forego a chance to satisfy his hunger (and we would do violence to the story to assume that Jesus’ experience of hunger was just a momentary annoyance while he endured the devil’s prating, expecting any moment a feast borne by angels.)  Jesus was expected to refuse the bread, as was his duty.  The Samaritan woman is expected (by God) to defy convention and dare to see to another’s needs before her own—all the more her duty in the face of the perverse earthly “duty” to ignore a Jew, or to expect him to ignore her.  This would be to her “living water.”

 Do we need more proof that the Samaritan woman’s cupful—her duty to do the will of God—is to bring to mind the prospective stone-turned-loaf that Jesus desired to eat?  The disciples are off buying food while Jesus talks to the woman.  When they return they bid him to eat, but he refuses: “I have meat to eat that ye know not of . . . . My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.”

 We have dealt so far mostly with Jesus’ temptations by Satan over stones and loaves, on the one hand, and over Jesus throwing himself off the temple, on the other.  We have not touched so much on Satan’s offer to Jesus of the kingdoms of the earth—though the devilish offer is best seen in light of Jesus’ promise (while yet Satan claims a tenuous dominion) that Jesus’ followers “shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:30).  Apparently the believer who can drink of the water she gives away, and eat of the bread she denies herself, and find safety in daring the dangerous, can count herself lord of the earth—useful only as the setting to do God’s will—Satan or no Satan.

 Unfortunately the story of the woman at the well has been weighted down with theologians’ fascinations with her amorous life—three verses out of forty-two—which Jesus speaks of without condemnation, and which speaking establishes him as a prophet.  All that attention wasted on speculation—and worse—about marriage and cohabitation, such small parts of a story about ancestry, inheritance, tradition, dominion, localism, sectarianism, labor, wages—a cauldron of issues about the rancor of possessions that Satan would love to perpetuate.  And what does Jesus—the Jesus who declined the rule of the earth for the greater good of the worship and service of God—say to the Samaritan woman?  “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father” and “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”