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| Tissot |
3rd, 4th February Trinity (also children)
(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)
Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert to experience the tempting power of the adversary.
After fasting forty days and nights, He felt for the first time hunger for earthly nourishment. Then the tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, let these stones become bread through the power of your word.”
Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘The human being shall not live on bread alone; he lives by the creative power of every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and
had him stand on the parapet of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Again a third time, the devil took him to a very elevated place and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give to you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me as your Lord. “
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan!
For it is written, ‘You shall worship [pray to] God your Lord who guides you and serve him only.’”
Then the adversary left him, and he beheld again the angels as they came to bring him nourishment.
3rd Feb Trinity
February 18, 2018
Matthew 4:1-11
The story of Christ’s temptation is the archetype of the three areas in which all of us human beings are tempted, simply by virtue of living in a body.
The devil tries to tempt Christ into magick-ing stones into bread. The first temptation is to concentrate on the material aspects of life. Christ’s answer points to the fact that the magic is already there, in the food; it is God’s creative power that bids what we eat, and thus we ourselves, to live. It is the divine life in the food that nourishes us, not the mineral.
The second temptation is to imagine that we can do anything we want and that God will save us. Christ’s answer: No arrogance: God’s love is unconditional; nevertheless, we human beings will ourselves have to bear the consequences of our own deeds.
The third temptation is to misunderstand where true power comes from. True power comes from freely and voluntarily letting ourselves be guided by the divine. Divine guidance will ultimately lead us toward the kind of sacrificing of personal power out of love of others. This is something that the devil, the prince of this world, cannot comprehend—the power of sacrifice.
Christ’s answers to these three temptations are all linked by one theme: to remember the divine world from which we come; to volunteer in humility to take the creative guidance and sacrificial power of God’s realm into our thinking. This has become all the more urgent in our time, since we Westerners have essentially been nourishing ourselves on the stones of usury, worshipping our own prowess and testing the limits for far too long.
The poet David Whyte says:
(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)
Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert to experience the tempting power of the adversary.
After fasting forty days and nights, He felt for the first time hunger for earthly nourishment. Then the tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, let these stones become bread through the power of your word.”
Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘The human being shall not live on bread alone; he lives by the creative power of every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and
 |
| Tissot |
Jesus answered him, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Again a third time, the devil took him to a very elevated place and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give to you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me as your Lord. “
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan!
 |
| Tissot |
Then the adversary left him, and he beheld again the angels as they came to bring him nourishment.
3rd Feb Trinity
February 18, 2018
Matthew 4:1-11
The story of Christ’s temptation is the archetype of the three areas in which all of us human beings are tempted, simply by virtue of living in a body.
The devil tries to tempt Christ into magick-ing stones into bread. The first temptation is to concentrate on the material aspects of life. Christ’s answer points to the fact that the magic is already there, in the food; it is God’s creative power that bids what we eat, and thus we ourselves, to live. It is the divine life in the food that nourishes us, not the mineral.
The second temptation is to imagine that we can do anything we want and that God will save us. Christ’s answer: No arrogance: God’s love is unconditional; nevertheless, we human beings will ourselves have to bear the consequences of our own deeds.
The third temptation is to misunderstand where true power comes from. True power comes from freely and voluntarily letting ourselves be guided by the divine. Divine guidance will ultimately lead us toward the kind of sacrificing of personal power out of love of others. This is something that the devil, the prince of this world, cannot comprehend—the power of sacrifice.
Christ’s answers to these three temptations are all linked by one theme: to remember the divine world from which we come; to volunteer in humility to take the creative guidance and sacrificial power of God’s realm into our thinking. This has become all the more urgent in our time, since we Westerners have essentially been nourishing ourselves on the stones of usury, worshipping our own prowess and testing the limits for far too long.
The poet David Whyte says:
We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
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| Blake |
work[ing] together
in common cause,
to produce
the miraculous….
So may we, in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and look for the true
shape of our own self
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us. *
* David Whyte, “Working Together”, in House of Belonging
