Joe James says:

Thanks for your reply. I knew that the answer I was looking for would be in how Jesus himself responded. I just wasn’t sure of the implications of that response in Yoder’s theology. It makes so much more sense to me to read this narrative as Satan tempting Jesus with 3 different ways of being King. And Matthew’s placement of the temptation scene (just prior to Jesus’ call to the kingdom and the Sermon on the Mount) makes all the more sense. It’s as if the announcement of the kingdom’s presence and the Sermon are the final response to Satan’s offers of “ways to be King”. The answer is “No! This is the way I will be King, and this is the Kingdom I am announcing!”

I also find this text gives me the best biblical grounds to talk about the link between “ends and means” with folks that haven’t thought that way yet. It’s like a titanic ethical dilemma, and the final response of Jesus is that “I don’t have to do business with the world on the worlds terms.”

I fell in love with this text when I first read Henri Nouwen’s “The Way of the Heart” But Yoder’s reading, I think, is even more beautiful, and illuminating!

Rob Sparks says:

I am glad to find discussions like this one, although a little sad I found it on a Monday. I spoke on the temptations of Jesus yesterday. I must admit I have been greatly influenced by Yoder’s view on the subject. It seems to make a great deal more sense than many of the answers I have been given growing up.

It seems Jesus did not want to win loyalties by filling bellies. He did feed people, but rejected their notion to make him king (John 6). Rather, he wanted people to come into his kingdom for the right reasons – not because he was a genie in a bottle, providing for their every need – but because of the cross and what it represented. I would think loyalties based on a meal are too shallow for what Christ is calling us to.

Thanks for this. I am excited to have found it.