I love it when someone helps me see a different perspective.
Today’s Gospel is Luke 4:1-13, in which Jesus is tempted by the devil. You probably know it:
Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”
Then he led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and: ‘With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’” When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
In the sermon at Mass this morning, I heard something that gave me a different perspective: that the devil’s temptations were bound to fail because they were not relevant for Jesus. The devil was using temptations that he himself found tempting, but Jesus did not. The devil had recast Jesus in his own image, and understood nothing about the image of God.
I’m intrigued by this notion of how we all so often see things through the lens of our own selves and our own preoccupations. I know we do that, but so often forget it. It’s so difficult to lay aside the restrictions of our own personalities. Even the devil couldn’t do it, for all his wiliness.
And how do we know in whose likeness the images we create might be?
Image by Alex Proimos
Elsewhere:
In Trying to Breathe, Mary Beth has introduced me to a very interesting initiative, Women for Women International. It helps women survivors of war. Given that it’s International Women’s Day on March 8th, this might be something for us all to look into.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
very interesting perspective…food for thought…thanks for sharing!
Ah, Tess, what you heard this morning at mass is the kind of take I love because it propels me out of my rut
What I saw this morning is that Jesus was tempted on his last day, a sort of final exam. I always imagined him tempted every day. He might have been, but the biggy came at the end of the 40 days.
I read someone who suggested that the temptations were in fact the confirmation to Jesus of what he had heard on his baptism, i.e. that he was the Son of Godde.
As to your final question, your own thoughts, I find myself plodding through these self creations at the moment… And I have no answer…
A quote I read on anamchara implied that we become like the Godde we believe in…. Oooh… [but this is about something else really].
Thank you for energizing me on an otherwise very sleepy Sunday
I like this! It reminds me that my early response to this passage was always that these were pretty silly things to try to get Jesus to do. Like, did the devil really think the Christ would fall for THAT?
Have you been delving into the Byron Katie work? That’s what this post connects to for me. In the few days since I started working with it, I’ve become very conscious of how my negative thoughts toward others effectively block out a vision of their goodness.
It makes total sense that the devil couldn’t get past this kind of projection, since I’m increasingly seeing that this is perhaps the deepest source of human evil, which would make the devil its ambassador.
Stacy, thank you.
claire, I’m glad you added this, because that “final exam” thing was how I always saw it.
Polli, not yet, I’ve visited the Byron Katie (I keep wanting to call her Katie Byron!) site and bookmarked it, but am trying not to grab new ideas and scatter my energy so want to look at it in a leisurely way soon. Your talk of human evil make me think of Scott Peck’s book People of the Lie. It’s years since I read it (and maybe I have to get it out again now I’m thinking of it), but the title always seemed to me very apt. We lie to ourselves as much as to others, and perhaps that’s even more destructive.
Interesting thoughts. I immediately wondered, “What kinds of temptations would Jesus find tempting? Do such temptations exist?” And I didn’t have an immediate answer.
This morning, I found it interesting to remember that John reports Jesus’ first miracle to be along the lines of the temptation he had presumably just turned down: water to wine (c.f. stones to bread). It says something about the importance of motivation and circumstances, I guess.
Derek, welcome to my blog and thanks for your comment. Good parallel on the first miracle. And your first question is great. If Jesus was fully human and fully divine – well part of humanity is temptation, but somehow (because we know how the story turns out?) we sort of trust that he won’t be tempted by anything.
This evening at Mass, Fr. Frank, an African priest who preaches with great enthousiasm, said that Jesus did not go into the desert to find God, but to find himself. This is another way of saying what Claire wrote above, I think. After the incident at his baptism in the Jordan, it would make sense for him to ponder what all this meant and to confront the demons that might surround this task he had before him. I very much like the take your priest had on the temptation, that the devil’s propositions were irrelevant. Maybe the devil didn’t know who this person really was either and, as you point out, expected him to have similar values to his.
The priest concluded that we, too, in Lent, must go out into the desert to find ourselves as God’s beloved children.
“I’m intrigued by this notion of how we all so often see things through the lens of our own selves and our own preoccupations.”
I had to laugh at myself as I read this because I have been very aware of how other people see things through their own lenses (it is very obvious in children of a certain age, my kids’ age) but had completely forgotten about the fact that I do it too! I convince myself that I have perfectly clear vision. It reminds me of Jesus’ invitation to first remove the log from my own eye so that I might help another with the tiny speck in theirs. : )
I’ll be watching to see how my perspectives effect how I view others.
Love…