Temptations of Jesus

Howard Thurman

• Publisher: Friends United Press
• Year: 1978
• eBook ISBN: 9780944350980
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In Tempations of Jesus, Howard Thurman takes us to the wilderness. With Jesus, we face the Tempter's challenges. We rejoice in the choices Jesus makes, in his insistence on doing God's will, and we pray for his guidance as we face the dilemmas of our own lives.

Tempt God?

Meditation:

Our Father, we would bring before Thee, as we offer our prayer, the far-flung needs of Thy children everywhere. Some of the needs we recognize as part and parcel of the full or limited measure of our own responsibilities. Some of the needs seem far removed from where we are, and they but underscore the littleness and impotency of our own lives. We would share all of this, you see, our Father, but our minds and our hearts are caught and held by our own private predicament and our own great personal need. So wilt Thou understand us and deal gently with us as we speak to Thee about the concerns of our hearts out of the private life with which we are so utterly familiar.

We are mindful that we are sinners and when we say this, our Father, we are not thinking of ways by which we have not conformed to some great external law, or doctrine, or theology, but when we say that we are sinners, our Father, we are talking very personally to Thee about our own experiences of our own limitations—all the mean things to which we have yielded, either in moments of weakness or of pride; the bad thoughts that we have had even as our faces were smiling and our eyes were glowing; the things that we have refrained from doing when we felt the urge to do them, because they were right and decent; whole and clean. These are the things, our Father, that we mean as we talk to Thee about our sins. Wilt Thou forgive us that we may try again where we have failed before?

Our fears, our Father, are very present and we know that this is no place, before Thee in all the quietness, to talk of the tempest and the torture of our private fears, but they are a part of our lives: Fear of sickness and bodily failure, fear of desertion and loneliness, fear of our jobs, fear of the instability of our own economic lives, fear for our families and our children, fear of life itself. And it is so wonderful, our Father, that as we talk with Thee about this, the fears are not always present; there are moments when we are free. Our very spirits take wings and all the things that imprison and hold, like the fears and anxieties, are left behind and we look down upon them from afar and wonder why they could hold such sway over our lives. There are these moments that come to us, and we thank Thee for them. May we remember them when the fears close in upon us!

Our dreams are before us and before Thee, our Father; the dreams which we have forgotten until in the quietness, all the stillness before Thee brings them back with their living touch—there are things that we had planned for our lives at some earlier time, the way we thought the future would unfold for us, and somewhere along the way something happened to us and the dream faded—maybe a wrong turn in the road, we don’t know; but as we sit together in the quietness, fingering the dreams of our lives, our hearts yearn for a fulfillment which has never been ours.

O God, Keeper of the dreams of Thy children, leave us not alone. Leave us not alone, but be in us and about us even as Thy Spirit doth surround us, to the end that we may take courage, without which, our Father, our very spirits sicken and die.

O God who will not let us go, teach us how to hold fast to Thee, our Father.

“If Thou but suffer God to guide thee

And hope in Him thro’ all the ways,

He’ll give thee strength, whate’er betide thee,

And bear thee thro’ the evil days;

Who trusts in God’s unchanging love

Builds on the rock that naught can move.”

Temptations of Jesus

We are continuing our thinking together about certain of the dilemmas of Jesus, and today we consider another aspect of the dilemma in the wilderness. First, I want to read two things by the same British poet from whom I read last week.

THE RICH YOUNG RULER

‘What must I do, master, to gain

Eternal life?

From my youth I have kept the Commandments,

Honoured my parents;

Theft, murder, lying, adultery —

All these

By God’s mercy have passed me by.

What then must I do, master?

What more must I do?’

‘Sell all,’ he replied, ‘And follow me.’

An easy saying.

He, a carpenter, a carpenter’s son,

Sacrificed nothing.

And his man Peter—smirking, self-righteous—

What did he lose

But some worn nets, a boat-share,

And trade in the market?

It wasn’t myself I was thinking of —

Ease and possessions —

But the responsibility of wealth

Towards its dependents.

What of them, if I had obeyed him —

What of my servants?

That’s what I tell myself, now —

But do I believe it?

Then—silent—I walked away,

Watching my sandals,

While his voice, the voice of my heart,

Followed me homeward.

In misery, I stopped by the lake.

Hid by the crowd-wall,

I heard him speak of the Kingdom of God.

The camel, the needle.

MARTHA OF BETHANY

It’s all very well

Sitting in the shade of the courtyard

Talking about your souls.

Someone’s got to see to the cooking,

Standing at the oven all morning

With you two taking your ease.

It’s all very well

Saying he’d be content

With bread and honey.

Perhaps he would—but I wouldn’t,

Coming to our house like this,

Not giving him of our best.

Yes, it’s all very well

Him trying to excuse you,

Saying your recipe’s best,

Saying I worry too much,

That I’m always anxious.

Someone’s got to worry —

And double if the others don’t care.

For it’s all very well

Talking of faith and belief,

But what would you do

If everyone sat in the cool

Not getting their meals?

And he can’t go wandering and preaching

On an empty stomach —

He’d die in the first fortnight.

Then where would you be

With all your discussions and questions

And no one to answer them?

It’s all very well.

And then these few sentences by James Lane Allen The Choir Invisible:

“To see justice go down and not believe in the triumph of injustice; for every wrong that you weakly deal another or another deals you to love more and more the fairness and beauty of what is right; and so to turn with ever-increasing love from the imperfection that is in us all to the Perfection that is above us all—the perfection that is God.”

The Tempter took him to the pinnacle of the Temple and he said to him,

—If you are the Son of God, jump down from the pinnacle and it will be all right. Nothing will happen to you. Why? Because you are someone very special and God will give his angels charge concerning you, as the Psalmist says, and upon their wings they will bear your feet lest you hurt yourself in some way.

And the Master replied,

—Man must not tempt God, even a good man.

What is the essence of the dilemma? You have thought of it many times and it is all so familiar that anything I say to you this morning you may have heard before, but nevertheless I am going to say it.

The Tempter said to him that th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• I. Not By Bread—Alone
• II. Tempt God?
• III. The Kingdoms Of This World
• IV. At The Crossroad
• V. In The Garden