Tempting God (Genesis 9:8-15 and Mark 1:12-15)

Today's Gospel is about the temptation of Jesus in the desert. 

But in a sense, the first reading which tells the story of Noah and his sons returning back to dry land also suggests that even in Old Testament times, God could be tempted. And that is why God felt that he had to create a rainbow. God says:  

When I bring clouds over the earth, 
and the bow appears in the clouds, 
I will recall the covenant I have made
between me and you and all living beings, 
so that the waters shall never again become a flood 
to destroy all mortal beings.

God could be tempted to virtually wipe out almost everything all over again. And he had to remind himself that even when he is tempted to do so, he shouldn't pull the trigger. 

And this is a very Old Testament way of looking at things. God virtually wipes out everything because his people broke his commandments. And he is capable of being so severely tempted to destroy everything that he has to create a reminder to himself not to do so. 

I wonder how things would have been like if the Messiah foretold by the Old Testament writers came down to earth and was actually an agent of the God as conceived by Old Testament writers. That Messiah might have been a Moses like person or someone like Joshua or David. An earthly prophet-leader who shows the awesome power of God and who will make the Romans quiver in their armor. 

Or maybe that Messiah would preach for repentance from the Israelites lest the Roman conquest become even more unbearable. 

And that might have been what Jesus was tempted to do. To threaten one people or another of worldly defeat or torment and become a Savior in the earthly sense. 

But instead of an all-powerful God who sent vengeful rain, what we got was a God who was stripped of worldly possessions in the desert and stripped of dignity on the cross. 

In so doing, God did not unleash a torrent of death but through the resurrection, put an end to the finality of death. God did not renew the earth by destroying people but renewed it by letting his only son be destroyed at the hands of man, and saving us once and for all by showing that love conquers all temptation.