Vojtěch Kodet, O.Carm. (*1956)
In one of the biblical commentaries, I read that the church faces the same temptations as the Lord Jesus did when He fasted in the wilderness. This inspired me to think about the temptations of the church in today's world.
The Gospel speaks of Jesus' temptation from two perspectives. The Lord Jesus was tempted primarily in the area of His identity as the Son of God, responding to the attacks of Satan, who offered Him a manner of sonship different from the Father's will. Thus, He also rejected the forms of false messiahship for this world. Specifically, He battled Satan in the area of threefold desire. However, these temptations have one thing in common: the devil tries to steal God's word in order to destroy obedience to the Father.
When we understand Jesus' struggle more deeply, we can more easily realize what is also a temptation for the church. Just as Jesus fought His battle with Satan first in the wilderness, He had to face his attacks for the rest of His earthly life. The enemy of God attacked Him through other people, even through confused disciples, and mainly at the end of His earthly life. Similarly, the church must face the attacks of Satan throughout its entire existence, whether this attack comes directly from him or indirectly through other people, even from people within the church itself.
Through His voluntary and complete dependence on the Father, Jesus returned to humanity the possibility of living the true identity of sonship, in which one accepts everything as a gift from God, without wanting to seize it like Adam did. In the three temptations, this struggle for the true form of sonship took specific expression. And Jesus proved Himself in it by not performing miracles for His own benefit. Instead of bread just for Himself, Jesus allowed the Father to multiply bread for the countless crowd. But even that was only a foreshadowing of the fruit of Christ's obedience. He Himself became the bread of life for all people of all times. In the second temptation, He was not led astray by cheap sensationalism and the influence of the crowd through a miracle that would astonish people and win them to His side. He neither jumped from the temple's pinnacle nor descended from the cross. Instead, the Father raised Him from the dead to free everyone from death and give them eternal life. In His third temptation, He did not yield to the temptation to gain power and dominion over the world through a way without the cross, but chose the path of the suffering servant. In doing so, He established a way of exercising authority that had never been seen before. Instead of the offer of power over others, He chose the path of brotherhood, friendship, and partnership.
What does this mean for the church? The first is that the church should not relinquish its foundational identity as the bride of Christ, which lives entirely in dependence on Him. It is tempted to live its mission in this world according to human ideas, from its own strength, and for its own glory, independently of Christ and in the delusion of its own self-sufficiency. But the church itself has nothing that is not a gift from God. God Himself prepared it as a beautiful and unblemished bride (see Eph 5:27). To substitute the gifts of the Spirit for the possession of things or the control of others inevitably leads to its barrenness. All its beauty is a reflection of the beauty of the Bridegroom, its strength is His strength, and its wealth is He Himself. And all the church's fruitfulness lies in becoming as much like Christ as possible.
In every age, the church is threatened by the idols of wealth, outward appearances, and power, with only the situations and shades of these temptations changing. The church succumbs to the first temptation when it chooses economics as the organizational principle of its existence and when it places the possession of property as a condition for fulfilling its mission. If God ceases to be its greatest treasure, it loses the ability to bestow true life on others. God is not a competitor to bread; He is its source and gives it to anyone who asks for it. The desire to possess material things is linked to the desire to possess God and man. It thus stands directly against the freedom of God's children, goes against trust, introduces spiritual blindness, and hinders true love.
The temptation that Satan sought to lead Jesus to jump from the temple's pinnacle is perhaps the greatest temptation for Jesus' bride. It is the temptation of the church's outward and hidden triumphalism, where the church serves God in such a way that it uses Him for its own interests and its own glory, thus acting with God as with an idol. Externally, it behaves as if it has a right to God and attempts to possess Him, manipulating God for its success and thereby placing itself in God's place. It is a temptation that reverses the relationship between God and man, Jesus and His bride, the church. Instead of obedience to His word, the church succumbs to the temptation to dictate to God what He should do. Instead of conforming to the one Master and Lord, it is tempted to conform God to itself. Instead of believing in Jesus' promises and relying on them, it demands God's intervention according to its own ideas, and when it does not receive it, it takes everything into its own hands on God's behalf. It saves God's honor with its own wisdom and strength, replacing God's works with human inventions and grace with its efforts.
The last temptation is the temptation of power, the urge to do good from one's own strength, from a position of power, and according to one's own ideas. This is associated with a fascination with power and the temptation to dominate, authoritarianism, and controlling others in the name of service in the church. It manifests itself at the moment when the church's authority finds itself in a position of social dominance, it begins to be tempted to use human power to serve itself and what it deems right and important. By its position, it elevates itself above others and places them in a position of servitude. In this attitude, it does not hesitate to call its actions merciful service. In reality, instead of serving, it seeks to dominate others, manipulates them, and humiliates them. The desire for power is entirely incompatible with the acknowledgment of God's reign over us, which alone leads to freedom. In God, there is no other power than the power of love, which the Lord manifested most profoundly when He died for us on the cross. It is a temptation that utterly destroys human relationships. Against Jesus' path of brotherhood, friendship, and solidarity with others, the church is tempted to go the way of "perfect" social organization through the control of others. It thus replaces service to life with dominion.
The church must always be vigilant not to succumb to the mindset of this world, which hides the enemy of God. A lack of discernment is its fundamental pitfall. It pains us and we care because the church often succumbs to these temptations. If we have influence in shaping ecclesial structures and mentality within the church, it is our duty to guard the Spirit of Christ in the church. But we cannot change the church otherwise than by defending ourselves against these temptations, for the church is us. If it holds that the church faces the same temptations as the Lord Jesus, it also holds that these are temptations for all of us. The problem is that we find the failures of others more easily than our own, and thus we easily criticize the church of which we are a part.
(Excerpted from www.vojtechkodet.cz)
