2nd February Trinity 2016, Embracing Suffering

3rd, 4th February Trinity (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.

Jean-Marie St. Eve, Wikicommons

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, 4th February Trinity

Blake

February 14, 2016

Matthew 4:1-11

Christ was the God who had never before lived in an earthly body. Forty days after his entry at the Baptism into the body of Jesus, he feels for the first time the hunger for earthly nourishment. The body shows him the overwhelming nature of the thirst for existence. This is the thirst for existence that Buddha had warned that humanity needed to be overcome in order to avoid suffering.

And it is this thirst for existence that gives the adversary access to Christ Jesus. Yet Christ manages to maintain his equilibrium between heaven and earth. For he came, not to avoid suffering, but to embrace it.

He refuses to magick up bread for himself. Instead, angels nourish him in the sphere of life. He refuses to succumb to pride in his own uniqueness as Son of God. He sees through the delusion that the Prince of this world could give him earthly power and glory.

Instead, he is faithful to His Father and to his own mission. He does not flee the hunger and hardship that being in a body entails. He chooses, and will continue to choose to embrace suffering, the suffering of all humankind, because he loves us. He chooses the hard road.

In so doing, Christ laid the seed of possibility within each of us. We can see through the delusions of the adversary. We can overcome pride and maintain our trust and connection with our heavenly Father, who holds our unique destiny and purpose in his hands. We can embrace our own suffering as a necessary step along our own path. And we can embrace others in their suffering through Christ’s love. 

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3rd February Trinity 2015, The Quiet Mystery

Blake

3^rd, 4^th February Trinity

(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."

Botticelli

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.

3^rd February Trinity

(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)

Matthew 4: 1-11

Monreale

We are spiritual beings living in earthly human bodies. Over the course of the ages, these bodies have become ‘infected. ’ To use a computer analogy, it is as though adversarial beings have inserted various viruses into our human constitution. They have so-to-speak’ corrupted our files’. They are attempting to commandeer them in order to make us do things not originally intended by the Maker. Jesus is our security adviser. He helps us figure out how to work around the problems.

First we are not to pay attention solely to the earthly side of things. We are to recognize that we are nourished not only by bread, but also by all that we take in of the earthly. But most importantly we are nourished and sustained by the intangible creative Power behind all that is, the very Source of our existence.

By contrast we are also not to rely solely or foolishly on the heavenly either. We are to use our earthly judgment and sense of responsibility, our capacity of clear thinking. If we keep visiting those internal sites of infection, if we listen to the illusions of pride, we will fall. We are not to put the heavenly world to the test.

And furthermore, we are to recognize and distinguish clearly between God and the adversary’s infections. We are guard against illusion and delusion. We are to serve and follow the Original Source.

The poet Denise Levertov describes our human condition, our position between heaven and earth:

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng's clamor

recedes: the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed One, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.[1]

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[1] Denise Levertov,  “Primary Wonder” in Selected Poems 

4th February Trinity 2007, Loneliness

3^rd, 4^th February Trinity

(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)

Blake

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. 

4^th February Trinity

Blake

February 25, 2007

Matthew 4: 1-11

 In the desert, the cactuses don’t crowd together in groups. Each one has its own space; it stands out as a separate, individual entity.

In these times, human beings can feel a bit like being in a desert – alone, separated from others. This separation enhances our sense of ourselves as individuals – not a bad thing. But the shadow side of experiencing our uniqueness is loneliness.

As a human being, Christ Jesus experienced the loneliness of being an individual. Interestingly we are told that He was sent into this condition by the Spirit. To wrestle with the adversary in loneliness is a divinely intended experience. The adversary’s intention was to cut Him off from both from His divinity and from His humanity.

The temptation to work magic with stones would certainly have given a few hungry people bread in abundance, for a couple of years at least. But would Christ then have been able to offer to all of humanity the eternal bread of His divinely penetrated body?

Blake

In throwing himself down from the parapet, succumbing to egotistical pride in being God’s Son, Christ would simply have ended His human life prematurely. And of course, worshipping the adversary as the giver of the world’s kingdoms would have cut Him off from His Father. Through overcoming the temptations in loneliness, Christ Jesus establishes for all of humanity the middle way – of being a unique individual human being, who at the same time remains openly connected to the Father’s Spirit.

Christ’s experience in the loneliness of the desert gives us a key to the meaning of our own experiences of loneliness. Loneliness gives us the opportunity to meet our spiritual adversaries in full clarity. Loneliness provides us with the opportunity to become aware of our greater God-given task in life; it gives us the opportunity to cleanse ourselves of egotism and pride; to maintain and strengthen our connection with the Spirit of our heavenly Father. Overcoming the temptations in the desert is possible for us now through Christ, and prepares us, too,  for angelic nourishment.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

4th February Trinity 2009, The True Shape

3^rd, 4^th February Trinity

(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.’”

  

Carl Bloch

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. 

4^th February Trinity

March 1, 2009

Matthew 4:1-11

The story of Christ’s temptation is the archetype of the three areas in which all human beings are tempted.

The first temptation is to concentrate on the material aspects of life. The devil tries to tempt Christ into magic-ing stones into bread. 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 that nourishes us, not the mineral.

Vasily Surikov

The second temptation is to believe 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 you 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

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.[1]

 www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] David Whyte, “Working Together”, in House of Belonging

4th February Trinity 2012, Passing the Test

3^rd, 4^th February Trinity

Ilya Repin

(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.’”

Ilya Repin

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.

4^th February Trinity

Ilya Repin

February 26, 2012

Matthew 4:1-11

The gospel reading opens with Jesus being led by the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert to experience the tempting power of the adversary. In a way, this is a description of a human life in general. We are led into the loneliness of earth existence. And we are all exposed to the tests of temptation that the Spirit allows the adversary to visit upon us.

The Spirit that leads Him, that leads us, is the spirit of God’s love; God’s love wants to incarnate, to become active within human beings. But we must pass three basic tests, overcome three basic hurdles.

The first is the temptation to regard our life, our work, our sustenance as self-produced. The spirit of God’s love reminds us that what truly sustains us is God’s creative power.

The second temptation goes almost in the opposite direction. We may consider ourselves so important in the grand scheme of things that we expect God’s love to protect us from all harm. But in fact avoiding harm isn’t the highest goal. Harm, even torture and death, can stimulate the greatest forces of love in us.

Our third temptation is to misplace the source of spiritual power; to place it in the world outside ourselves, to worship the illusion that someone else is ruling us, instead of connecting with the divine love and guidance placed within us.

Passing these three tests opens us, brings us into contact with the angels, those divine spiritual beings who, with God, nourish and sustain our souls and spirits. 

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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3rd February Trinity 2013, Creative Power

3^rd, 4^th February Trinity

(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.

Blake

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.”

Blake

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.

3^rd February Trinity

February 17, 2013

Matthew 4: 1-11

To live as a human being on earth is to attract the Tempter. And Christ Jesus was no exception. He too faced humanity’s adversary; but the adversary failed to ensnare Him. This was because Jesus had been taught by scripture, by God’s word itself; and Christ was able to access this and to remember three things at the right moment.

When tempted to supply his own food, He remembered that the human being remains alive by the creative power of God’s eternal speaking, His power streaming through the universe. Even today there are people who do not require food in order to stay alive and healthy.[1]

Blake

He also remembered that human beings are not to challenge the divinely ordained order out of a sense of their own self-importance and pride.

And He remembered that guidance and wisdom come from God, not from the supposed splendor of the prince of the fallen world.

It was Christ’s three recognitions: God’s creative power streaming through the atmosphere, God’s divine ordering, and His wise divine guidance that kept Christ protected from the universal human temptations. He shows us what to remember in times of temptation. He shows us the way to keep our integrity and to remain connected with our own divine origins. For by resisting the temptations of the adversary, Christ has restored humanity’s lost connection with the Kingdom of God in human hearts.[2]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] One example is Therese Neumann

[2] Pictures by William Blake, Satan tempting Christ to turn stones into bread, to cast himself down, and to worship Satan.