Get Away Satan

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command  his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God,  to the test.”

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him. (Matthew 4:1-11)

The devil figures prominently in this back-and-forth discussion with Jesus.  As Father Flor  McCarthy  said, “Temptation is not necessarily a bad thing.  By forcing us to choose good over evil it makes us strong.  Every time one is tempted to do evil but makes a decision to do good, that makes one stronger.  Suffering and struggle make us stronger.”  That’s quite true of course.

We use Jesus as our model for facing down the devils within us.  One prominent devil is the emotion we call envy.  Another is greed.  Perhaps the devil within is simply that part of our human brain involved with primitive drives related to thirst, hunger, sexuality, and territoriality, as well as habits and procedural memory.  It’s called the reptilian brain.

Some have said that the reptilian brain and addiction to power go hand-in-hand.  According to one description, “They are personalities ruled by emotions that are primitive, very aggressive, and have a lack of empathy, The only thing that exists is the pleasure of domination and concern for self.  In their minds self-control does not exist, much less concern for anyone else.”  That’s quite a characterization!  And likely true.

Speaking of reptiles, we have our first reading about the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”

But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. (Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7)

Having knowledge of good and evil, we can choose one or the other.   Temptation draws us to evil in its many forms.  The serpent in Genesis can be seen as the serpent or reptile in all of us urging us to choose evil.   We all hope we will respond, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”  That is, we must realize our nakedness and then serve the good.

Deacon David Pierce