Portrait of the Savior

The Rev. Joseph Winston

February 10, 2008

Sermon

Grace and peace are gifts for you from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.1
Jay Leno, the late night talk show host on NBC, has a regular routine named
“Jay Walking.” In this segment of the show, Mr. Leno goes out among the regular
people of this country and then asks them simple questions you would expect
almost everyone to know.
The questions that he asks might be political in nature. Can a former first
lady run for president? (She may run as long as she meets the other requirements
for president.) How many senators are in the US Senate? (Two per state or one
hundred senators.) How many terms may a president serve? (Two consecutive
terms of four years are all that a president may serve.) The inquiries could involve
everyday objects. How many pints are in a gallon? (Eight.) What temperature
1
Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians
1:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:2, Philemon 1:3

1
does water boil? (Two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit.) What is heavier,
a pound of lead or a pound of feathers? (They both have the same weight.)
The ridiculous answers to the questions are what make the skit humorous.
Some representative, although completely fictional answers could be: Term limits
keep spouses from running. The temperature that water boils depends on how you
cook it. Don’t you agree? It has to be true. I can boil water quickly in a microwave
and on a stove it takes so long. Lead is heavier because when I drop my pillow on
my toes it doesn’t hurt me.
The three tests, trials, or temptations given to Jesus by the devil in today’s
Gospel lesson all ask us the same style of question that Jay does in “Jay Walking.”
What does a savior save us from?
After not eating or drinking for forty days and forty nights, Jesus is obviously
hungry and thirsty (Matthew 4:2). To Him comes this individual that we know by
many different names: devil (Matthew 4:1), tempter or tester (Matthew 4:2; 4:7),
or Satan (Matthew 4:10).
Each of these identifiers tells us a bit about who is there with Jesus. Devil
comes to us from the Old English word dēofol through the Latin word diabolo,
which is pronounced in Greek diabìloc. This word in its original language liter-
ally means to “to throw across” and it contains the idea of trying to trip someone
up. Today we might say the word slander. The devil is trying to ruin Christ’s rep-
utation. Or to say the same thing another way, the devil wants to tell Jesus what a
savior really does.
The next name of Christ’s opponent that we hear in today’s lesson is tempter.

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The idea behind this word is to change a person’s mind. The devil wants to change
the definition of savior. A second way to translate this idea from Greek into En-
glish is to use the word tester.2 The devil is trying to determine what a savior
is.
The final name used in the Gospel lesson for the devil is satan. This Hebrew
word indicates an opponent. Satan disagrees with Christ’s definition of savior.
Satan also means adversary and it best can be explained using the language of
a courtroom. This is the person who is bringing charges against you. Satan is
attempting to tell Jesus that He does not know what a savior is.
The first concept about savior that is up for discussion revolves around food.
Instead of asking Jesus to turn a single stone into one loaf of bread, the tester tells
Jesus to convert all the stones into many loves of bread (Matthew 4:4). And the
way that the opponent does this is very clever. The phrase “If you are the Son of
God” can also be expressed in English as, “Since you are the Son of God.”3 The
one who confuses states, “The reason you are the Son of God is that you feed the
world.”
On face value, this is true. God does give us all food. And think about what
2
This way of reading the text makes it much easier to see the association between what is
happening to Jesus in the wilderness and what occurred to the people of Israel during the exodus.
It also recalls the testing of Abraham (Genesis 22:1) and the command to only take enough for
the day in the giving of manna to the Israelites (Exodus 16:4). The general idea is that God may
test the people however the people may never test God (God testing: Deuteronomy 8:2; 8:5; 8:16;
13:3b; Not able to test God: Deuteronomy 6:16). S.J. Daniel J. Harrington; Idem, editor, The
Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1, Sacra Pagina Series, (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press,
1991), p. 66. Brian P. Stoffregen, Matthew 4.1-11 1st Sunday in Lent - Year A, http://www.
crossmarks.com/brian/matt4x1.htm.
3
This seems a reasonable assumption to make because we have already been told by God’s
voice at Christ’s baptism that Jesus is God’s Son (Matthew 3:17).

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kind of world it would be if Jesus does exactly what Satan suggests. All that we
would have to do get all the bread that we would ever need is to be in the right
place when the stones are changed. Nothing else would be required of us. All that
we would have to do is come and eat. What could be a better savior than that?
Christ’s response to satan, “’One does not live by bread alone, but by every
word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). tells us something more
is at stake. When we come to the table just because there is food on it, we become
nothing more than mindless animals moving to the feed trough after the farmer
has filled it with slop. This is not what we were created for nor is it our job in life
to be mindless zombies that only want to fill our hungry stomachs. God made you
and I to love God and our neighbor. That is why you are here.
The second test given to Jesus by the tempter paints a fantasy world where
there are no accidents, no injuries, and no pain. Anytime that this might happen to
you, God’s angels would swoop right on in and keep you safe from any harm. In
order to bring this new order into the world, all that Jesus needs to do is to jump
(Matthew 4:6).
Once again, the offer before Jesus sounds like our ideal dream. The devil wants
a world without any of the bumps, scrapes, and scars. We no longer would have
to take care of our neighbors because they never would be sick, lonely, or in need.
We would be death defying humans. What could be a better savior than that?
Jesus tells all of us that would like a world without suffering, “Do not put the
Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7). The world that Jesus loves requires His
followers to do the same thing that He does. We must pick up our cross and to

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follow Him (Matthew 16:24).
This way of life that Christ tells us to live is very impractical because people
will take advantage of you up to the point of your death.4 In fact, Jesus emphasizes
that this way of giving may bring out the worst in people.5 Then why does Jesus
tell us to follow Him to the death? Because this is exactly what God does for you
and for I.6 God dies so that you may live. The devil wants God to live so that you
will die.
The final attempt at redefining savior happens in the last test. The devil offers
Jesus the entire universe if and only if Jesus falls down on His face and worships
satan (Matthew 4:10).7
This carefully architected arrangement proposed by the tester would move
God off into the dustbin of has-beens and place Jesus as the ruler of this world.
Once all computation for our attention has been removed, we would not need to
make any choice in the matter of whom we worship. Our allegiance would be
crystal clear. What could be a better savior than that?
The plan presented by the tempter has a nice ring to it. No longer would we
have to ignore the devil’s messages. All that we would hear is his propaganda.
There is one small downside to satan’s suggestion. In loosing the conflicting mes-
sage that fight for our attention, we have lost our savior.
4
Arthur C. McGill; Lindell Sawyers and Ray T. Woods, editors, Suffering: A Test of Theologi-
cal Method, (Philadelphia, PA: The Geneva Press, 1968), p. 49.
5
Ibid., p. 50.
6
Ibid.
7
Never accuse satan of not having large dreams. In Matthew 4:8, the tester says “πάσας τὰς
βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου” (all the kingdoms of the cosmos.

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 Jesus simply responds with, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him”
(Matthew 4:10). And the devil left Him.
One of the most deeply ingrained problems that all humans face is that we do
not want to do what we are created for.8 We do not want to serve our neighbor.
This then means that we will not follow Christ’s command to suffer, much less
die, for other. Capping this off is our displeasure of having to worship and serve
God.
What satan presents Jesus with is a plan to give us exactly what we want: free
food, no suffering, and no God.
Fortunately for us, Jesus did not redefine what it means to be savior. He did
not come to make us full of food. He did not live with us to that we would not
suffer pain. He did not remove all the choices in our life.
What Jesus did for you and for me is something completely different. He was
a savior that did God’s work so that you can be human. Put another way, Jesus is
a savior that saves us from our wrong ideas about how we are to live. This effort
of freeing us from our preconceived notions of what we are supposed to do can be
seen during His life, suffering, death, and resurrection. This effort cost Him His
life and it gave back to us the true work of humanity, which is serving God and
our fellow humans.
Jay Leno receives many funny answers to the questions that he gives to com-
8
Even though it is never found in Luther’s writings, the maxim “Let God be God” with its
corollary “So that humans can be human” is an accurate summary of Luther’s writings in The
Bondage Of The Will. Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, And Wittenberg Theological Method:
From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord, (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 32

6
mon people. He might ask, “How many eggs are in a gross?” (Twelve dozen or one
hundred and forty four eggs is the correct answer.) And be told that, “Oh, that’s a
dozen broken eggs.” These unexpected answers are what make “Jay Walking” so
fun to watch.
When people are asked what Christ save us from, we also hear all sorts of
surprising answers. For example, John the Baptizer could not believe what he was
hearing in prison about Jesus, so he sent his disciples to ask Jesus for the real
answer. Jesus said, “Go and tell John what you see” people are being given back
their humanity (Matthew 11:1-6).
When someone on the street asks you what Jesus came to save us from, shock
them by telling them the correct answer. He saves us from being inhuman.
“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds through Christ Jesus.”9

References

Daniel J. Harrington, S.J.; Idem, editor, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1, Sacra
Pagina Series, (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1991).

Kolb, Robert, Bound Choice, Election, And Wittenberg Theological Method: From
Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord, (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005).

McGill, Arthur C.; Sawyers, Lindell and Woods, Ray T., editors, Suffering: A Test
of Theological Method, (Philadelphia, PA: The Geneva Press, 1968).
9
Philippians 4:7.

7
Stoffregen, Brian P., Matthew 4.1-11 1st Sunday in Lent - Year A, http://www.
crossmarks.com/brian/matt4x1.htm, Last checked on February
8, 2008.