Sermon for March 22nd, 2015
Contents
Mark 1:12-13, NRSV
12And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Job 1:6-12, INL
6And so it happened one day that the sons of God came to stand before YHWH, and the prosecutor also came in their midst. 7YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Where did you come from?” The prosecutor answered YHWH and said, “From roaming the earth, and walking around on it.” 8And YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth—a perfect and upright man who fears God and rejects evil.” 9Then the prosecutor answered YHWH and said, “Why wouldn't he? 10You have shielded him and his house, and everything he has on all sides! You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have spread out over the land. 11But send forth your hand, please, and touch everything he has, and he will 'bless' you to your face.” 12YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Fine! Everything he has is in your hand; only do not send your hand against him.” So the prosecutor went out from the presence of YHWH.
Job 2:1-7, INL
2And so it happened one day that the sons of God came to stand before YHWH, and the prosecutor also came in their midst to stand before YHWH. 2YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Where did you come from?” The prosecutor answered YHWH and said, “From roaming the earth, and walking around on it.” 3YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth—a perfect and upright man who fears God and rejects evil. He still holds onto his integrity, and so you persuaded me to ruin him without cause.” 4Then the prosecutor answered YHWH and said, “One skin for another! The man will give anything for his life. 5But send forth your hand, please, and touch his bones and his flesh, and he will 'bless' you to your face.” 6YHWH said to the prosecutor, “Fine! He is in your hand; just preserve his life.” 7So the prosecutor went out from the presence of YHWH, and attacked Job with horrible disease, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
Book of Job: The Monsters and the Critics - Satan
Little Johnny was fond of playing in the neighbor's yard, even though his mother had forbid it. When she asked him why he would always disobey her, Johnny fell back on that time-honored excuse, "The Devil made me do it." Johnny's mother was familiar with scripture and told him that the next time he felt tempted to play into the neighbor's yard, he should just say, "Get behind me, Satan!" And then she had a fence built around the yard.
A few days later, she looked out into the yard only to see a hole in the fence, and little Johnny playing in the neighbor's yard again. When she confronted him about it, he said, "But Mom, I did exactly what you told me to do!" His mother asked him what he meant. Little Johnny said, "Well, I felt tempted to play in the neighbor's yard, so I said 'Get behind me Satan.' And that's when Satan got behind me and pushed me through the hole I made in the fence."
The Devil made me do it. Today we come to our final sermon in our series on the monsters in the Book of Job, and to our final monster, Satan. In the actual text of the book of Job, Satan occupies far less space than Behemoth or Leviathan, but in our cultural imagination, and in the history of Christianity, he is the greatest monster of all, the great archenemy of God, the supernatural embodiment of all evil, the fallen angel who rebelled against God and was cast down to earth, the ruler of Hell and all its demons.
Only, for thousands of years in ancient Israel and throughout the Hebrew scriptures (our Old Testament) he was none of these things. In fact, he wasn't even a thing at all. So where did he come from? And why does he have such a big role in modern Christianity and in the popular imagination? To answer that question, we're going to take a trip through the Old Testament looking at several passages that eventually came to be associated with Satan, or the devil. I should note at the outset that I owe much of what I say today to an excellent book by Princeton University professor Elaine Pagels called "The Origin of Satan." It's a well-researched and well-written book that goes into far more detail than I can manage in a 20 minute sermon, and I thoroughly recommend it.
The Devil as Serpent
We'll start in Genesis 3. Most of you are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, where Eve is tempted by the serpent, which is often assumed to be Satan. Only nowhere in Genesis do the scriptures actually say this. Genesis 3:1 simply says "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made." And in fact, God himself confirms that the serpent is just an animal at the end of the chapter when he says "cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures." The curse is also an example of what's called an "etiological" story in the Bible -- a story whose purpose is to explain something in the present day...like why snakes have no legs and why they don't get along with women. But nowhere in the Bible is the serpent identified with any supernatural or angelic being. Sometimes a snake is just a snake.
The Devil as Lucifer/Fallen Angel
In Isaiah 14:12, the King James translation reads "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" So who is this Lucifer person? As a proper name, Lucifer appears only once in the entire Bible, and only in older translations like the King James. The NIV says "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn. You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"
The name Lucifer doesn't actually show up until several centuries after the time of Christ, when the Bible was translated into Latin. Lucifer is actually Latin for "light bringer" (a nickname for the morning star, הֵילֵל in the Hebrew text).
But still, even if Lucifer isn't really a name, it seems like this passage is talking about someone falling from Heaven, right? It can't be God, and who else is in Heaven besides the angels? So it must be an angel. The problem is that this only works if you ignore the surrounding verses, which clearly state that the entire message of Isaiah 14 is addressed as a prophecy against the king of Babylon. The phrase translated as "from Heaven" is מִשָּׁמַ֖יִם (mishamayim) which can also simply mean "from up high". Isaiah is making a prophecy that the King of Babylon, who at the time of Isaiah's writing is about as high up as anyone can be, will be "cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations (specifically the nation of Israel).
The name "morning star" also shows up in the New Testament, in Revelation 22:16. "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, morning star." Only here we don't translate it as Lucifer, because calling Jesus Lucifer would be a little bit problematic.
The Devil as Satan
The very first place where the word "satan" appears in the Bible is in the book of Numbers, in the story of Balaam and his donkey. Balaam is a prophet who is hired by the enemies of Israel to curse Israel. He is on his way to do exactly that when we read (in Numbers 22:22) that "God’s anger was kindled because he was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were with him." You probably know the rest of the story--Balaam's donkey is smart enough to see the angel and stop, saving Balaam's life. But in the verse "the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary" the word adversary is the Hebrew word שָּׂטָן (satan). In this case it is quite correctly translated as an angelic function or role and not as a personal name. The angel is doing God's bidding, being an "adversary" of Balaam, not of God. This is actually a good thing for Balaam. It is sometimes better for us to be blocked in our own plans when those plans are not God's plans.
In Psalm 109, the psalmist asks for an accuser to be appointed to stand next to his enemy, so that his enemy might be found guilty. The word for accuser is (you guessed it) satan.
- 2nd Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1. Evolution of Ha Satan (from God's wrath to personification of God's wrath).
- Psalm 109: An accuser appointed to stand next to someone in court. MO = "Trust but verify"
- Job
Sometimes the "monster" at the end of the story turns out to be us. Sometimes the "monster" is God, acting in ways we cannot understand, or do not agree with. Sometimes there is no monster...and so we invent one.
These things were inventions of a much later time, influenced primarily by Greek and Roman culture, which featured Hades as god of the underworld. Some 1st century Jews were eager to identify themselves (and their faith) with the more fashionable and elite Greek culture. They found ways to connect some unrelated dots in their sacred scriptures and weave together a Hades-like character they called Satan or the Devil. This view was a minority view in Judaism, and never became mainstream, like it did in Christianity.
- Only two main characters in the book of job: God and Job. All the others (incuding Satan) are minor. Same is true for us. We can use "the devil" to demonize others or to explain away things we don't like/understand, or even our own shortcomings (devil made me do it) but at the end of the day we stand before God (and humanity), accountable for our own actions, thoughts, life.
- Flannery O'Connor - Good Man is Hard to Find quote:
"She would have been a good woman if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life."
“We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally - granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data - to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands?” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
From Shamash: The Jewish Online Network: The word satan means "challenger", "difficulty", or "distraction" (note that it is not a proper name). With the leading ha- to make haSatan, it refers to /the/ challenger. This describes Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. HaSatan works for G-d. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it can be a meaningful choice. In other words, haSatan is an angel whose mission it is to add difficulty, challenges, and growth experiences to life. Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered overly polytheistic—you are setting up the devil to be a god or demigod.
The notion of an angel having free will is alien to Judaism. Free will requires the tension created by being a soul dwelling in a body. People can have free will, angels can't. There is a debate over whether they lack the potential for free will, or whether they simply percieve reality to clearly to have any choices to make. But in any case, without the fence-straddling of the human condition, there is no free will. HaSatan acts as a servant of God, not as an opponent or even disobediant child. Angels cannot sin, they cannot fall.
