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Al could devote time the following week to some sober second thoughts. His agreement to give an introduction to the next chapter of Matthew had been impulsive. It wasn’t that he shrank from the task, exactly, but rather that he wanted to avoid giving a lecture and then waiting for questions. There was also the little matter of being a complete newcomer to Bible reading! He remained uneasy and regretful about his impulsive action, hoping that his relationship with Melanie wouldn’t be soured by his suggestion.

He sighed as he sat at his desk in the bookstore. It was a familiar location where he was well able to keep an eye on comings and goings. There was George, one of the regulars, a collector of Victorian children’s books, browsing but rarely making a purchase. And Brian, shabby and sad, finding the bookstore a warm, dry place. He occasionally surprised Al by his knowledge of books but had never yet bought one.

He knew them well and left them alone.

He called up the first part of the text onto his screen and examined it closely.

At that time Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the desert in order to be tempted by the Devil. There he fasted for forty days and nights; and after that he suffered from hunger. So the Tempter came and said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to turn into loaves.”

“It is written,” replied Jesus, “It is not on bread alone that a man shall live, but on whatsoever God shall appoint.”

Then the Devil took him to the Holy City and caused him to stand on the roof of the Temple, and said, “If you are God’s Son, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘To His angels He will give orders concerning thee, and on their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any moment thou shouldst strike thy foot against a stone.’”

“Again it is written,” replied Jesus, ‘Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the proof.’”

Then the Devil took him to the top of an exceedingly lofty mountain, from which he caused him to see all the Kingdoms of the world and their splendour, and said to him, “All this I will give you, if you will kneel down and do me homage.”

“Begone, Satan!” Jesus replied; “for it is written, ‘To the Lord thy God thou shalt do homage, and to Him alone shalt thou render worship’.” Thereupon the Devil left him, and angels at once came and ministered to him.

Firstly, then, the Temptation story with Jesus off in the desert, the forty days and nights of fasting and the three-fold testing. He guessed that the Temptation narrative might provoke lots of discussion. He glanced at the other parts of the chapter. They seemed to be the account of picking up where John the Baptist left off, finding disciples and beginning an itinerant ministry in which proclamation was augmented by powerful deeds.

He checked out the Temptation story and became aware that it fell into a well-known category; he reread parts of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces” and recognized the temptation narrative as an account of a series of ordeals that Jesus had to face on his journey. The puzzle was making sense of the conversation; when the suggestion comes that he should make bread from stones, his reply seems a non-sequitur. No one is suggesting that men should live by bread alone but simply that he should satisfy his own hunger. Al thought about a reference to “fast food” as a kind of joke but thought better of it.

The temptation to create a sensational miracle is countered by the general notion that one should not put God to the test. The last of the three seemed simply bizarre at first glance: who in their right mind would entertain the notion of becoming a servant of Satan for the sake of political power? He paused a bit over that thought, reminding himself of those in the history of mankind who had seemingly done just that!

Was it possible, he wondered, that Jesus gave his followers a general description of his time in the desert and that later writers did the Midrash thing again, complete with citations from the Jewish scriptures? It would certainly explain the dialogue, which, he thought, was somewhat lame; surely Jesus and his opponent could debate more profoundly than the record seemed to indicate.

He wondered again if it was possible to penetrate the mind of Jesus. Could it have been the case that he was unaware of his destiny until he was baptized and experienced the events around his baptism, then needed to get away into the desert to try to sort it out? Could he have eventually shared with his disciples something of the struggles to answer the question, “If I am the Messiah, what should I do to fulfil that destiny?” The three temptations might conceal underlying options: to provide bread for the people as a benefactor, to make some spectacular manifestation of his Messianic powers, to find political action to inaugurate the Kingdom.

His mind drifted inevitably to his memory of “The Last Temptation of Christ,” both the book which he had read in his teenage years when he had first fallen in love with the writings of Nikos Kazantzakis, and the more recent movie. He wondered again if the “Last Temptation,” to avoid the messianic destiny and to live a “normal” life, might in fact be the “First Temptation”. He remembered the parable in “Report to Greco,” wondering if he could include it in his presentation. He was too lazy to look it up but recalled the story line: Mary and Joseph bring their son, Jesus, to a sage in Jerusalem. Mary cries out that her son needs healing. In private conversation, the sage asks the boy the source of his trouble. He confesses to great pain and restlessness; “I roam the streets, wrestling,” he says. To the question, “Wrestling with whom?” comes the reply, “With God, of course! Who else?” For a month, the boy receives treatment, herbs, quietness and reassurance. After that time, he is cured. He goes back to Galilee to become “the best carpenter in Nazareth.” The parable ends with the sage saying, “Do you understand? Jesus was cured. Instead of saving the world, he became the best carpenter in Nazareth!”

He thought about this story again, as he had over the years, unsure that it would fit into the discussion, but moved again by its power.

Regretfully, he recognized that he was wandering away from Matthew’s text.

He was interrupted for a while by the needs of business and thoughts of Melanie, as he hoped again that he hadn’t given the impression that he wished to take over leadership of the group. His initial ponderings on the temptation narrative made him realize what a difficult situation she had been inherited.

At that very time, Melanie was meeting with the Dean of the Cathedral, ostensibly on some legal business but she was glad of the opportunity that the meeting gave to discuss her “inheritance” from Matty. “Yes,” he agreed, “it came as a bit of a surprise when I heard about it. But I have confidence that you will find your way through it. Is it Matty’s last attempt to bring you into the fold?” He laughed and she couldn’t help lightening up a bit. “But,” she said, “there is another problem.” And she explained her exchange with Al and his agreement to make an introduction the following Tuesday. “He’s totally new to it all. It is possibly the first time he has read Matthew’s Gospel.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I know Al quite well from his bookstore and he is an interesting man. And think what a rare opportunity to get a take on a gospel chapter from an outsider perspective.”

Al had time later that day to return to the remainder of the text; it seemed less problematic.

Now when Jesus heard that John was thrown into prison, he withdrew into Galilee, and, leaving Nazareth, he went and settled at Capernaum, a town by the Lake on the frontiers of Zebulun and Naphtali, in order that these words, spoken through the Prophet Isaiah, might be fulfilled,

“Zebulun’s land and Naphtali’s land; the road by the Lake; the country beyond the Jordan; Galilee of the Nations!

The people who were dwelling in darkness have seen a brilliant light; and on those who were dwelling in the region of the shadow of death, on them light has dawned.”

It made sense that when John the Baptist was no longer able to continue, that Jesus would take over, with identically the same description of his preaching, Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is now close at hand.

The circumstances of John’s imprisonment were easily tracked down in Matthew 14, with the gruesome account of his beheading to satisfy the malice of Herodias. He remembered being present for a production of Strauss’s opera at the Sydney Opera House, unprepared for the shocking ending when Salome herself is beheaded at Herod’s command. His mind had wandered away again from the text and he knew that Strauss was too far removed from Matthew’s Gospel to be of significance to the task in hand.

But a question which came naturally: if Jesus inherits John’s proclamation, did he also continue the baptisms? A quick web check made it clear that this was a debating point: John’s Gospel goes to some trouble to say that “. . . in fact it was not Jesus who baptized but his disciples” (John 4.2). Yet earlier (John 3.22) it is stated that “. . . Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judaean countryside where he spent some time with them and baptized.” Al wondered if that meant that Jesus baptized his disciples and then turned baptizing over to them?

The calling of the first four disciples seemed straightforward.

From that time Jesus began to preach. “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of Heaven is now close at hand.”

And walking along the shore of the Lake of Galilee he saw two brothers—Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew—throwing a dragnet into the Lake; for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” So they immediately left their nets and followed him. As he went further on, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee mending their nets; and he called them. And they at once left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Had they been disciples of John the Baptist, he wondered. If so, it would make sense that they might give allegiance to the one who had received the accolade, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I.” He felt that he was generally in touch with the chapter but remained apprehensive about guiding the discussion.

Tuesday came quickly enough and Al sat uneasily in his accustomed chair, waiting for Melanie to call upon him. He felt a little like a schoolboy waiting for the teacher to call him up for an oral presentation.

Things began well enough as Melanie obligingly put up the Temptation narrative on the screen.

He began: “This week, I read Matthew Chapter 4 for the very first time! I tried to put myself in the place of one of the early listeners, maybe in the first century, who was in an equivalent situation.” He looked around, relieved that they seemed to be paying close attention. “All of you, I guess, have heard many sermons on the Temptation in the Wilderness. But I am starting from scratch. It was Andrew who introduced me to the idea of Midrash last week and that got me thinking. Maybe Jesus shared with his disciples the general outlines of his experiences in the desert and then a later generation filled in the details, using texts from the Jewish scriptures.”

“Does it make sense,” he wondered, “to see the baptism and the temptation as a continuous narrative? Jesus experiences something special at his baptism, becomes aware of the possibility that he is The One and goes off into solitude to try to sort it out. The three ‘temptations’ might represent options in the fulfillment of his destiny.”

He left it to the general discussion that followed to sort out meanings for the temptations, especially with reference to modern life. Martha Henson, in particular, saw possible parallels in the life of the Church. She spoke at some length. “I wonder if the turning stones into bread might represent social action, good in itself but scarcely ‘every word from the mouth of God’ as my translation puts it. And maybe the Temple temptation is parallel to the need for extravagant display.” She paused, seeming to lose confidence. “And the temptation to find an alliance with secular power is only too well a part of the church’s history.”

She conceded that she had heard a sermon along these lines and there was some discussion with the consensus, tactfully expressed within the group, that it was all a bit far fetched. Al was impressed with the way that Melanie tried to build on Martha’s idea. “What if Jesus, at that stage, saw himself simply as the new leader of John the Baptist’s disciples? Then maybe the temptations might relate to perils of leadership. I haven’t thought out the details but I think it can work.” Martha became quite animated. “Yes,” she replied. “It is a better fit. Any leader might indeed be tempted to look after his own needs, to draw too much attention to himself or to form an alliance with the ‘Dark Side’!”

Al decided to move the discussion along, giving his own thoughts about the temptations as possible approaches to the fulfillment of the messianic destiny; Jesus, hungry and exhausted in the desert, thinking, “If I am the Messiah, how do I now proceed?” This was a cue that they, at least, needed to proceed!

Al wondered about the imprisonment of John the Baptist. “It’s mentioned here but then introduced much later in the Gospel as a new event. I know we shouldn’t look forward into later chapters but Matthew 14 gives the whole story. Why John was imprisoned and the horrors of his death. It’s as though Matthew needed a good editor.”

He would have passed over the reference to Jesus moving his place of residence from Nazareth to Capernaum. But Webster’s intervened: “Here’s where the Gospel Parallels are useful. If I look across to Luke’s account of this event, I see that it is the result of a dramatic episode. Jesus preaches in his hometown synagogue and infuriates his people by reference to stories in which Gentiles, the widow from Sidon and the foreign general Naaman from Syria, received the benefits of miraculous intervention.” He went on to read the text from Luke 4:

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built that they might throw him down headlong. But passing through their midst, he went away, down to the city of Capernaum.”

“A simple statement of fact in Matthew conceals a great deal,” he concluded.

Al was rather taken by surprise. “I see what you meant when you spoke last week about Gospel Parallels. Matthew says he moved house in order to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah but one could argue from Luke’s Gospel that he went away because Nazareth was too hot to hold him!” And, to clinch the point, Webster reported that he had made a check of references to Nazareth and found that nothing is said about Jesus ever visiting it again.

So to the next section: Al began by observing that it would be natural for Jesus to continue John’s preaching. “I spent a bit of time on the question of whether Jesus baptized anyone.” He outlined his findings and was disappointed that no one responded. And indeed he realized that he had strayed away from the text. He was now feeling that things hadn’t gone well and he looked over to Melanie, who had been silent for most of the evening, for rescue.

She was ready to take over the reins. “Thanks, Al. You’ve given us plenty to think about. But the big question remains: what did Jesus mean by the Kingdom of Heaven?” She paused to let that sink in. Then she continued. “In the package which I received from Aunt Matty, there was a copy of a book by the American biblical scholar, Norman Perrin. It’s called ‘The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus’ and it tells me more than I want to know on the subject.” She paused and tried to relax. “Perrin’s book shows that the scholars agree that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ in Matthew’s Gospel and ‘The Kingdom of God’ in Mark and Luke can be regarded as meaning exactly the same thing and that the term ‘Kingdom’ means the ‘reign of God’ rather than a physical area. It would seem, however, that everything else is disputed. One of the main issues is whether the Kingdom is present in the new community being formed around Jesus or whether it is something yet to come, and to come with an overthrow of the world’s powers by God’s intervention. Or somehow, that both can be true!”

She paused again, realizing that she had little more to contribute. “Let’s put such questions to one side and check them out as we continue though Matthew. Right now, I am looking at the clock and thinking about next week.”

Al said, “I want to thank Melanie for her graciousness. I made a foolish offer last week and have had the whole week to regret it. I’m not eager to do it again.” No one else showed any keenness to substitute as leader and Melanie said, “Just when I was thinking I was off the hook . . . But get ready to roll up your sleeves. The next three weeks will be devoted to the Sermon on the Mount. Lots to talk about.”

They went off, continuing the discussion in the parking lot. And she went off, feeling pleased that calm had been restored.