If You Are the Son of God

The Suffering and Temptations of Jesus

Jacques Ellul, Anne Marie Andreasson-Hogg

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630871864
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

This significant book, written a few years before his death, presents Ellul's fullest understanding of the meaning of Jesus' life. One finds all of the major themes of Ellul's writings. The first half of this book deals with Jesus' sufferings, which are by no means limited to Good Friday. Through Jesus' identification with "the whole human condition, " we are offered the possibility of both enduring and overcoming suffering.Similarly, the temptations are understood beyond the wilderness temptation narrative since Jesus experiences them throughout his ministry. Ellul believes temptations are ultimately human avenues for tempting God, and so focuses on the discussion power and "non-power, " be it on personal or political levels. Appropriately, Ellul enters into the passion narrative not simply in the context of suffering but in the context of temptation, where Jesus could have easily "proved his divinity, " but chose instead to reveal both the character and way of God.

Part One

The Suffering Servant

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Isa 53:4). In other words, no human suffering was unknown to him. We should not neglect the simplest and most humble of these sufferings even as the texts invite us and allow us to see the more profound and essential suffering. Let us be clear: when we say that he carried our suffering, this does not mean that he put an end to our suffering by taking it all on himself. He does not substitute himself for us in our diseases, torments, and griefs. He does not leave us impassive and unscathed. Suffering always remains horrible, for it is an insult to the order of creation (but not of “nature”).

To Be Accompanied

What is changed is changed in two ways. First of all, there is a change in suffering in that, if we believe, we should know and even feel that we are no longer alone in this suffering. Someone else is suffering along with me, like me, next to me. How often we say that “one always dies alone”; in the same way, so many of us have experienced that suffering separates us from others. Even those who love us are strangers to our suffering. This psychological experience worsens our ordeal. Through faith, we are joined in our most profound suffering and distress by “the one who carried,” and I should know that it is precisely my suffering that he bears as I am bearing it. I have a true companion in suffering, a companion who bears and shares this horror, this pain, this grief, this desertion. All I need to do is turn to him and find once again my communion with him; the opening occurs; and I then am accompanied in truth. Thus, I suffer less because I am not alone. So many of us have experienced this ourselves and seen it in others. When you are with a dying person, the simple act of holding his hand makes the agony less tormenting. To have a simple human friend is already an incomparable hope, so imagine, the Son of God . . . But you must believe with all your heart.

Liberated

There is a second modification in regard to our suffering. Whether we are conscious of it or not, suffering is always more or less experienced as a punishment. In everyday speech we often say, “What have I done to God to make him send me this misfortune?” All those who suffer have the same anxiety in one way or another. One person will connect the suffering to a youthful mistake; another will see it as a terrible injustice to which he has fallen victim; another will understand it as a condemnation of his whole life . . . This way of thinking is never completely absent from our suffering. Now, in God’s revelation, we learn—and in faith we are called to live out—the truth that anything having to do with condemnation is taken out of our misfortune because another has taken the whole condemnation and all our condemnations upon himself. As far as condemnation linked to suffering is concerned, he did indeed substitute himself for us. Suffering remains naked.

Of course, suffering will persist as long as the world is the world and as long as men have not been “renewed”—but from now on, it is “naked,” that is, it has no ultimate “cause.” There is no reason for it, and I am not spiritually responsible for it. God does not intervene in my suffering to cause it or to punish me and neither does he use it to purify me! Jesus took care of all this for me. So suffering is purely the playing out of material forces; it comes from germs or enemies, from accidents or mistakes. In other words, it has no meaning; it is absurd. Because anything that was part of the “non-absurdity” of this suffering, its deep meaning, was borne by Jesus and Jesus alone. So I need to live this first of all as a fact. It should never be experienced as condemnation.

Yet, as a man, I cannot help thinking about this suffering and cannot help questioning it. Perhaps I will be able to find some meaning, to give it some positive value, or to receive it as a challenge to be overcome . . . In that case, I am doing something good. That is normal. In other words, I need to transform into a positive condition that which diminishes me or reduces me. This, of course, is not against God’s will! What we must exclude, though, is the dread of punishment, of remorse, of judgment, and of wrongdoing: we need to know that we have been liberated from those things. However, we should welcome all the rest—the attempt to integrate suffering and misfortune into the totality of my life and turn it into an active and invigorating component of my being! It is a good thing not to seek to live outside or against our limits and our pain. We should certainly do it without any illusions as to the frailty of the human condition. Yet, we must always remember that henceforth the human condition has been liberated, so people can bear suffering with greatness and with humility. He can do it so much more truly when he knows that God himself bore evil in himself.

The Various Sufferings of Jesus: Hunger

I have said that we need to take into consideration the most humble suffering of Jesus. The Gospels often speak of it. For example, Jesus was hungry. We are told this explicitly after Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days (Matt 4:2). In another text, when Jesus is confronted with so many requests (and especially requests for healing), hunger is alluded to: “Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat” (Mark 6:31). On another occasion, when Jesus arrived at Bethany for his final journey to Jerusalem, Mark tells us that he was hungry (11:12). Of course, in each of these instances, the purpose of the text is not primarily to inform us that he was hungry. However, we should not neglect this detail, nor should we dismiss his cry of “I am thirsty” during the crucifixion (John 19:28). John tells us that these words were spoken so that all Scripture might be fulfilled. Granted, but let us not forget that at that very moment, like any crucified person, he was actually thirsty. So of course, he experienced this human weakness—to be hungry and to be thirsty—and genuinely did so. Let us now pause and consider the first thought.

After forty days in the desert without eating, Jesus was hungry. We know from the experience of people who have gone on hunger strikes that forty days of fasting is the limit of what a person can bear. Of course, some will say (and as I myself have written on several occasions) that the number forty is symbolic. Yet, for the remainder of the passage to make sense, there must have been some concrete reality making Jesus very hungry. It is indeed immediately after this that the devil appears to him and tempts him by suggesting that he transform stones into bread. Obviously, the Jesus whom the Gospels describe could have worked that miracle and thus could have had plenty of bread. It is important for the Gospel writer to remind us that Jesus was really very hungry. Otherwise there would have been no temptation. Jesus was really tempted on this most humble physical level. He was hungry. This reminds us that Jesus experienced all the temptations arising from physical needs, just as any person does. We shall return to this later.

Jesus refuses to perform this miracle. It is his first refusal to perform a miracle. Why does he refuse? Was it because the suggestion came from the devil? As I have stated before, the devil is not a person in my understanding. Rather, the temptation comes from the fact that Jesus is experiencing an urgent need to eat and that he commands power that would enable him to satisfy his hunger. In fact, Jesus sees in this temptation to perform a miracle an action of the “dia-bolos,” the one who separates, the one who would have separated him from God. Why? This is because if he had performed the miracle, it would first of all have been a miracle performed in his own interest. Jesus never performed miracles for himself because he came to bear witness to a love for which he will sacrifice himself.

He will never use his power for himself; quite the contrary, where he is concerned, he offers himself up in non-power. Furthermore, this miracle consisting of turning stones into bread would have been a typical example of the marvelous. We see many times that Jesus never gave in to the “pleasure” of doing marvelous things. The miracles of Jesus have nothing to do with the works of magicians, sorcerers, and so on . . . They all come from his love of others and of the Father. To turn stones into bread, to turn lead into gold, to make clay birds and blow on them to give them life (as in the Infancy Gospels), to make a table laden with delicious foods come down from heaven (as in the Koran)—these are miracles that Jesus always refused to perform. His miracles are the miracles of love, never the miracles of power, of show, of publicity, and so on.1

Not by Bread Alone

So Jesus is hungry and he refuses to satisfy this hunger through a miracle. He does not, however, refuse to satisfy the hunger of others by performing a miracle in the feeding of the multitude. The answer he gives to his own hunger—perfectly physiological hunger—is that people shall not live by bread alone but by the Word of God.

He does not deny that people need bread when faced with hunger, but he affirms that this nourishment is not sufficient (even while indispensable), and that to satisfy the totality of human hunger, the Word of God is necessary. So he will wait for the Word to feed him. The text ends by reporting that “the angels ministered to him.” This is obviously a reference to Elijah, yet Elijah was served by angels before his forty-day journey in the desert. If God feeds people in their complete being (which we often translate as “soul”), we can be assured that when they are fed by the Word they will also be satisfied in their material hunger. This first example clearly shows the relationship between suffering and temptation and also the truly human character of Jesus, who shared everything human in suffering, both great and small.

Fatigue

Similarly, we often encounter Jesus being tired. Here again, we should not imagine a “super nature” that would make him a tireless walker! At the time of the violent storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was sleeping. For him to be asleep during that storm, he had to have been tired. He also reminds people that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Clearly, he is referring to his controversial situation but also inseparably to his exhausting wanderings. John explicitly tells us that Jesus, as he was returning to Galilee and crossing Samaria, sat down because he was tired.

Torture and Crucifixion

Of course, as we consider the physical humanity of Christ, with its limitations and suffering, we must not neglect what is always emphasized: the arrest, the blows, the crown of thorns, and the crucifixion. So much has been said about them that I will only mention them here. While we will not consider them on their own, we must nevertheless take them very seriously in this meditation on the humanity of Jesus in sharing our weaknesses and our suffering.

Moral Suffering

We will now enter into new areas of suffering. To those who have never thought of suffering beyond the cross, this might appear risky or even slightly blasphemous because we will consider psychological or moral suffering. Nevertheless, as a doctor specializing in pain has said, “Suffering is a total suffering that not only includes physical pain but also psychological, social, and spiritual factors. Dividing up a whole and distressing experience into pieces is a little artificial, but it has nonetheless helped me to understand . . . the patients.”2

Rupture

First of all, we see the rupture with his “environment,” the breaking of family ties. His relatives consider him insane. “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” (Mark 3:7). For “even his own brothers did not believe in him” (John 7:5) and asked him to go away! He felt this rejection deeply and uttered these words, which are actually very bitter: “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” I have often heard this phrase quoted lightly! Yet for him, whose mother knew the miracle of his birth and of his childhood, what suffering it must have been to be part of a “house” that despised him. In Luke, the phrase is slightly softened: “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” Mathew, on the contrary, adds that “He did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” Later, he will meet those who have hardened hearts.

We are now entering a very delicate sphere: Jesus perceives that he is rejected by his family members, who do not believe his words and do not believe in his vocation, that is, his very being. Although we cannot imagine that there is any resentment or desire for vengeance in the words, this situation leads him to utter the famous phrase, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” His mother and his brothers then arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him” (perhaps this is the same situation as above . . . they came to take away this insane and sacrilegious person). “They told him: ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:31–35). This passage is always interpreted to show the importance that Jesus gives to faith, which can create bonds as strong as those within a family. Is it not also possible to understand it as his break with his family because that family had rejected him? How could we believe that this break did not cause dreadful suffering to the one who was the incarnation of love? His family did not accept him. The breach was a fact. He does not oppose any of it because what is important is to do the will of his father in heaven.3 When one thinks about th...