Because Love

This past Sunday was the first Sunday of Lent, and the Gospel was about the temptation of Christ. (Matthew 4:1-11)

I noticed something that I’d noticed before, but this time it really hit home. One of the temptations that Old Scratch dangled in front of the hungry Jesus came right out of Scripture:

Psalm 91:11–12:

¹¹for he will order his angels to care for you
and guard you wherever you go.
¹² They will carry you in their hands,
so that you won’t trip on a stone.

So, here we have the Adversary, the old Tempter himself, trying to use Holy Scripture to trip Jesus up. This is no literal story of a conversation in the desert. It’s not about stones and bread, it’s not about angels catching us when we fall, and it’s absolutely not about obeying the laws of God in order to keep us safe.

All of Jesus’ quotes in answer to the devil come from Deuteronomy; from the chapter giving us the story of the founding of mitzvot (divine precepts). Those were the guidelines given to a newly freed people to keep them together and give them a purpose.

The story in the Gospel isn’t about that either, though. In the text, there are nifty associations between bread and stones; slippery segues in which Jesus shows that he can dance through the minefields of scripture with the best of them, but the story isn’t really about how to pit one scripture quotation against another. I thought it was, at first, and that’s what I started to write about, because I was reminded of the way we still argue exactly like that. We use the authority of scripture against itself, without ever noticing the deep pit of cognitive dissonance we fall into every time we do that. I mean, in the end, who decides which quotation from Holy Writ negates another? Even Jesus, throwing counter-quotations back at his competition, seems to be wryly amused in spite of how hungry he is.

So, I was forced to conclude that this Sunday reading isn’t really about temptation at all. I decided to mine the reading itself for what lies under the surface. Every time Jesus quotes the Tanakh back at Old Scratch, the words he chooses come from Deuteronomy, particularly Chapter 6, which is where the great cry of the Sh’ma is heard for the first time: “Hear, Isra’el! Adonai our God, Adonai is one!” along with the commandment:  “you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources.”

So, it’s not about temptation at all! It’s about Love!

The homilist on Sunday drew the same conclusion: It’s not about fasting and repentance; it’s not about sin and punishment; it’s not about arguing with our inner demons. It’s about Love.

So, what does Zen have to do with all this? Well, I can make a case that Zen is also all about Love. If it isn’t, why do all the old masters keep on insisting that sitting zazen is the path to compassion?

Why would the bodhisattva vows be all about freeing all beings from suffering?

It’s right there in Matthew: all the “temptations” come dressed for the party in the costume of desire: Old Scratch is the very personification of samsara!

“Samsara” means “wandering,” and in spite of the common misconception that ‘samsara’ is the cycle of rebirth or reincarnation, it isn’t, really.

No, in truth, “samsara” is the term for the vicious, repetitive loops that we get trapped in so easily— cyclic, circuitous patterns of repetitive self-deception that seem impossible for us to break out of.



What Jesus is telling us is that it’s love that breaks the feedback loop of desires and frees us from the endless circle of frustration, impatience, and heartbreak— just plain old love. Nothing special.

The preacher on Sunday simply said, “Because— Love.”

I don’t think it can be said any better than that.