The publication of "The Last Temptation of Christ" and the more recent appearance of the movie of the same name both provoked heated controversy and vehement outrage at a depiction of Christ's life and motives that violated widely accepted notions of what is proper and sacred. Whatever the merits or blasphemies of the book

or the movie (which took even greater, and less artistically justifiable, liberties with the Biblical narrative), it seems to me that there is a far deeper and completely scriptural concern about the temptations of Jesus that, despite the furor, never got around to being discussed in print or pulpit.

The synoptic Gospels all record Jesus's temptation in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke detail that Jesus was tempted in three ways: 1) to relieve the hunger of his fast by miraculously changing stones into bread, 2) to accept the glory of kingship over all the nations of the earth, 3) to prove his godliness by publicly leaping from the temple in Jerusalem and being rescued by God.

These temptations were all righteously rejected by Jesus in the wilderness, but during his subsequent ministry, it would appear that Jesus on several occasions gave in to something very much like the first temptation (when he miraculously changed water to wine or when he multiplied the loaves and fishes). Although manifest in the life of Jesus only by implication, the church, which calls itself the body of Christ, seems to assume that Jesus had something like the second temptation in mind when disciples were sent into the world so that Christ will have completed His mission only when all nations worship at the cross.

But the subject of the cross brings us to the third and most serious "capitulation" to the devil's temptations which involved a miraculous nullification of death. Apparently after all, God had to prove to us that Jesus was divine and to do so he used the greatest miracle of all time, the resurrection.

Now the concern in all of this is not that Satan was right and Jesus was wrong or even that Jesus may have erred in being some kind of impractical idealist prior to his actual ministry. The concern is not with Jesus at all but with ourselves. We are the ones who require miracles. The Gospel writers all included the feeding of the multitudes in their narratives about Jesus because miracles are supposed to validate the divinity of Jesus and, no matter how noble his teachings or how admirable his life, we, in effect, refuse to place our faith in human agencies; we must be awed by a magician. And this weakness of faith applies to a far greater degree when it comes to the resurrection. Had Jesus's followers not been convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead, it is almost certain there would be no Christian church and the name of Jesus would be forgotten in history. If most Christians today were not convinced that Jesus rose from the dead, a cornerstone of their faith would be missing and they might well abandon religious belief entirely.

Jesus's life, his teachings, his ministry, his good news about the love of God, his healings, his suffering, his voluntary and willing sacrifice were all insufficient to convince his disciples of the divine potential in being a perfect human. Actually, none of

these qualities or accomplishments require validation of their God-centeredness, but stiff-necked hypocrites would not, 2000 years ago, and will not, today, accept Jesus as God's

living word without believing that God did indeed uniquely rescue Jesus from the dead.

Satan, it appears, was actually more aware of the weaknesses of our human natures than Jesus, who apparently hoped that his hearers didn't need a magic show to believe in him. We made Jesus's death and resurrection necessary because we were not, and seemingly are not yet, spiritually advanced enough to accept his example for what it could be: as evidence that God made us in his image, that God lives and works in and through his creation and that to be truly and fully human is to be divine.