Prior to Jesus’ public ministry, he is tempted three times
in the desert by Satan (Luke 4). Each temptation representing a much more
convenient way to power than the divine path set out before him. Despite the
heat, his solitude and overwhelming hunger and thirst, Jesus prevailed.
But this is not the only time he faced these three
temptations.
As the tempter suggested, Jesus once could have taken over
rule by acclamation after the feedings
of the multitude (Luke 9:11-17). His second chance came after his triumphal entry
into Jerusalem, with the jubilant crowds at his back and the temple police & Roman guards thrown off by the
noise (Luke 19:36-46). Both times Jesus turned away from the challenge to take
over.
His last opportunity would come in the garden of Gethsemane.
Alone once again, Jesus prays, “Let this cup pass from me” (Luke 22:42). It is
interesting to consider what was the option with which he was struggling? Was
it that he might be able to slip away to a safe place in the mountains until
the storm was over? Or could he have reconciled himself to the authorities by
retracting some of his more extreme statements?
In his classic work, The Politics of Jesus, John Howard
Yoder argues that the only imaginable real option is that in this very last
moment of temptation, Jesus is drawn to think of a violent takeover. Now is the time for holy war.
Even in the moment of his arrest, when Peter draws his
sword, Jesus’ rebuke uses the very language of his prayer: “Shall I not drink
the cup which the Father has given me?” (John 18:11).
Matthew spells out in even greater length what Jesus might
have done. “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at
my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the
Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew
26:53,54).
A Roman legion is said to have been 6,000 soldiers. Yoder
suggests that it is just possible to imagine that in this final encounter with
Judas and the Jewish and perhaps Roman police would have been just the point at
which God would unleash the apocalyptic holy war, where the miraculous power of
the angelic hosts, Jesus’ disciples as shock troops, and the crowds in
Jerusalem with their long-brewing resentment would rise up in one mighty surge
of sacred violence and would finally drive the heathen from the land (p. 47).
Here is the last opportunity. Just as Satan had come three
times in the desert, so the real option of a violent political takeover comes a
third time in the public ministry. Once more the option of the crusade beckons.
Once more Jesus sees this option as a real temptation. Once more he rejects it.