Lent 1 2016-Lk,4:1-13 Dt.26
The journey of Jesus starts in the wilderness, just as it did for Israel over a thousand years prior. the road to salvation is open to all as well-better put as being put to the test, a time of testing, an initiation??
Success can become a trial. Dt. words of bounty and offering, land flowing with milk and honey, recitation of affirmation of faith- -We also remember that we often have Eden in our hands, or a land flowing with milk and honey and we cannot leave well enough alone and start to tinker or even despoil it..One tests metals to see if they are the genuine article. Archimedes used the notion of specific gravity to check for gold in a crown.
Notice that the word word tempt is the same as the word to try or test. Testing can become temptation.Lead us not into temptation is better put dave us from the time of trial. What would Jesus have become if he failed the testing in the wilderness?The tests do not sound like the typical temptations of sex, intoxicants, and greed of our time.Put differently, life itself beings trials, tests, and temptations depending on our angle of vision and capacity to see the world with different eyes.Living with blessings poses real spiriutal challenges as well as deprivations.For Jesus a sense of being tried and tested, or a sort of spiritual battle as a contest of the two great opposing forces in the world.the tempter/tester/adversary uses the conditional.Memory and Scripture are aids to Jesus in his trials. All of his answers come from a book designed to teach, to re-iterate the faith, the book of Deuteronomy (second law/instruction)Remember where you come from, remember origins, remember who and whose you are.Will his power be self-serving or to help others? Will God’s way be the center of his awareness?Will personal ease become a goal to displace others? Jesus is not only weakened physically from the fast, perhaps his spiritual resources are depleted as well.Ps. 91 was a chaplain favorite in the gulf war-danger is the time of trial and testing and temptation-we cry out for a shield of protection Satan quotes the Scripture in his battle of wits with Jesus.Scripture itself can be a trial or misuse and test even temptation toward certainty and coercion. Notice how the tempter/rester/trier uses even Scripture as a tool to derail Jesus from his understanding of his mission.
shiveley romans 10:8- demonstrate by means of the law/teaching itself that it had its goal in Christ all along. Jesus Christ is God’s redemptive work near and accessible to human beings Anticipates the day when the people and their descendants will return to God, to “love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live” (30:6) This language and order are dictated by the quotation of Deuteronomy 30:14 in Romans 10:8a: “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.
Robert Pirsig said,”trials never end of course.Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.” Lent reminds us that we continue to try to walk in a christian path. We need constant checking and consulting spiritual GPS.We walk it together. We walk those paths with Christ.
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