“As dying, and behold, we live”
The Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 6 lays out in a powerful and compelling way the forms of our response to the grace of God now which is “the day of salvation.” Our text is simply one part of a wonderful series of dialectical and paradoxical relations which have to do with who we are and how we see ourselves in the sight of God “as the ministers of God.” It provides a way of thinking the question which Plotinus (3rd c. AD) will later articulate but which actually belongs to all philosophy and life. “But we … who are we?”
The preoccupation with ourselves is an ancient and modern question albeit in different registers of meaning. The story of Narcissus for the ancient Greeks is a cautionary tale which has a certain modern resonance. It is really about the forms of self-obsession perhaps best illustrated in the ‘selfie culture’ of our contemporary world, not to mention the self-absorbed features of social media in general. Just as Narcissus drowns in the image of himself in the pond so in our contemporary world we are obsessed with ourselves and drown in the image of ourselves. In both cases we lose sight of who we are in the greater canvass of reality and, more importantly, in the sight of God.
“Know thyself,” the great Greek maxim of the Delphic Oracle, has its perfect counterpart in the Hebrew idea that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9.10; Ps. 110.10; Job 28.28). This is, I think, completely different from our modern self-obsessions which are entirely solipsistic and entirely self-involved, as if reality is only what is in our minds rather than in our engagement with what is greater than ourselves. To “know thyself” means to know your place within the world as an ordered whole, the cosmos, hence reality. “The fear of the Lord” is the wisdom which knows God as the principle of all things.
Lent seeks to clarify who we are by placing us more clearly and more fully in the sight and life of God. Paul’s wonderful rhetorical flow in the Epistle confronts us with the necessary interchange and back-and-forth of opposites; in short, the dialectic of human life as informed and transformed, or at least in the process of such a transformation, by virtue of our response to the grace of God. Paul is calling attention to our attitude of mind towards everything which we confront and experience. It offers a kind of coincidence of opposites as well as a sense of inner resilience and strength over and against the ups and downs of the world. In that sense it is really about facing suffering and learning from it. Such is the meaning of the Exodus in its fullest sense.
“As dying, and behold, we live” is but one of a series of balancing contrasts which reveal emphatically that who we are belongs to our place in the mystery and wonder of God. It speaks to how we face the uncertainties and unrealities of the world. It counters completely the idea of being conformed to the world at the same time as it negates any kind of negation of the world. It is God’s creation. How we negotiate our way through the created world to God with God “as workers together with him” and by God is the critical question now and always.
Paul lays out the complexity that belongs to our response to the grace of God but what is the problem really that we face? This is what is addressed in the Gospel story from St. Matthew about the Temptations of Christ. What is that about? In a way, it illustrates the Ash Wednesday Gospel that “where your treasure is there will your heart be also”, which is again the question, “but we … who are we?”
The simple point about the Temptations of Christ is that they are our temptations as borne by him and overcome by him. Thus they speak to the pilgrimage theme of the spiritual traditions in the intersecting ideas of illumination, purgation, and perfection or union. The story recalls the temptations in the wilderness of the Hebrews which belong to the lessons of the Exodus that lead to the Law as what defines the freedom and dignity of the people of God. Those events are concentrated here for us in the greater Exodus of Christ, his going forth from the Father and into the world, and his leaving the world and returning to the Father, which is the deeper meaning of the pageant of Lent and Easter. Lent is about our going with him in the pageant of human redemption, our going into his passion and resurrection; in short, our dying and living.
The fullest account of the Temptations is given by Matthew and by Luke, though they order the temptations differently. Matthew’s second temptation is Luke’s third, for instance. But both see the temptations as questions about power: the delusions of our power over nature; the delusions of the sovereignty of the self and its pretensions, and the delusions of ourselves as God which deny the truth of God himself; in short, nature, self, and God. The Collect for Trinity 18 prays that we might withstand “the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil” (BCP, 247), thus referencing our baptismal renunciations.
We are tempted to change stones into bread. This speaks to our relation to the created order and to the question of whether we presume to manipulate the world for our own ends in defiance of the nature of creation itself or whether we learn to work with the order of creation with a profound respect for nature as God’s creation. This is one of the great questions that belongs to technocratic culture in our time. It is about the world and us as Jesus’ response suggests. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” He is quoting Moses in Deuteronomy (8.3). Again, who are we? We are more though not less than our bodies and their needs.
And this has ramifications for the sense of the self. Do we really think we can ignore and escape the limits of the natural order? To cast ourselves down from the heights with impunity, to fly rather than walk? To presume that “the angels will bear thee up?” That there are no consequences for ourselves in the fantasies of unlimited power? This is the kind of star trek fantasy that belongs to technocratic exuberance, a flight from nature that is a denial of ourselves as created beings. The contemporary issues about identity reveal a kind of bio libertarianism, the illusions of a flight from ourselves and our bodies. But that is to tempt God, to put God to the test in a reversal of reason. We are not the judge of God.
Again, Jesus quotes Moses in Deuteronomy (6.16) recalling the scene spoken about in Exodus and echoed in the Venite (Ps. 95) as “the day of temptation in the wilderness.” It was about putting God to the test about providing water which led to Moses striking the rock out of which flows water that the people may drink. It is really about God’s provisions for us, on the one hand, and our doubting of God’s care and providence for us, on the other hand, in the pretense of our own self-sufficiency and self-obsession. It speaks to the narcissism of our culture: ‘look at me looking at you looking at me’, the illusions and delusions of our self-reference. Again, who are? Are we simply what we presume to be?
These temptations about our power over nature and over ourselves assume something much deeper. It is the temptation to worship ourselves as God; in short, the devil, the tempter par excellence who embodies the self-contradiction of rational creatures in usurping the place of the Creator thus denying the principle of our own being and knowing. In both Matthew and Luke’s account, Jesus replies by quoting Moses in Deuteronomy (6.13) but with one significant change, the insertion of the little word, “only”. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”
The whole story of the Exodus is concentrated in the story of Christ. He is, as The Letter to the Hebrews famously puts the matter theologically, “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”(Heb. 4.15). Lent is about our journey with Christ who reveals to us the untruth of ourselves in our sinfulness in order to show us the truth of ourselves in him. Such is the way of sacrificial love, the love which illuminates, purifies, and perfects, the love in which we discover the truth of ourselves; learning to “know even as we are known.“ It speaks to the question: “But we … who are we?”
“As dying, and behold, we live”
Fr. David Curry
Lent 1, 2022