Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV) The Temptation of Jesus (Mk 1.12—13; Lk ...

and he says to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” This couldbe the knockout. But Jesus calmly absorbs the thunderous punch and strikes back with a righthook of his own, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,‘Worship the Lord your God,and serve only him.’ Deuteronomy 6:13, and also 10:20.”The crowd cheered. The devil slunk away in defeat. And the angels came and tended thevictorious fighter, Jesus the Christ, heavyweight champion of heaven and hell. Whoa! What afight! What a contest! That proof-texting stuff can get pretty rough!It’s a great story. And, it’s got the ending we would hope for. Jesus claims his victoryover Satan. He has a parade through Boston on a duck boat. Bill Belichick hires him as his newdefensive coordinator.But this story raises at least two interesting complexities. First, the devil can quotescripture. That means that scripture isn’t quite as simple and transparent as it might seem, or aswe might like it. We have right in scripture itself a case where the devil quotes scripture, and thewhole point of the story is that the devil is wrong. One thing we cannot help but take away fromthis story is that quoting scripture is no guarantee of speaking the truth. In the story that isn’t toosignificant, because we know the characters. We know that Jesus is supposed to be right andthat the devil is supposed to be wrong. But what about here and now. When proof-textingbattles occur today, how are we to decide who is right and who is wrong? How are we to decidewho is Jesus and who is the devil? For Christians today these are important questions becausewe believe that the scripture has some form of authority, even though we may not all agree aboutthe details of that authority. And the questions are important because there are many importantdebates today in which the Bible is quoted by both sides. So, it’s important to know, if we can,how to understand the authority of the Bible and how to tell when a person quotes the Biblewhether that person is closer to Jesus or to the devil.The second interesting complexity is perhaps related to the first. If one were to takeJesus’ quotation of Deuteronomy about bread–One does not live by bread alone–as the last wordon his feelings about bread, one would judge that Jesus has a rather low opinion of it, or at leastthat it’s not all that important. That would prepare us poorly for the ways in which breadappears in the rest of the Gospel.Let’s stay with Matthew’s Gospel, since that’s the one from which we read thetemptation story this morning. In chapter 4 Jesus says that one does not live by bread alone andrefuses the devil’s challenge to change stones into bread.Yet, in Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches his disciples the prayer we say together everySunday. He says we should pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In Matthew 7:9, in a versethat echoes this mornings story, Jesus says to his listeners, “Is there anyone among you who, ifyour child asks for bread, will give a stone?” In Matthew 14 and 15 we have the story of feedingthe five thousand. When the hour became late, and crowds became hungry, Jesus did not say tothem, “Tighten your belt, friends. No one lives by bread alone.” Nor did he send them away toget their own bread. In one of the most important stories in the Gospels Jesus demonstratesGod’s promise of abundance. He multiplies five loaves and a few fish in order to feed the crowdof 5,000. And then, finally, in 26:26, at the last supper, when he is giving his disciples finalinstructions, he leaves them with the symbol second in importance only to the cross. Thepassage says, “While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke2