Riffin’ on a Peacemeal Death ☠️

Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness

4 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted[a] by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’[b]”

5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’[c]”

9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you

    to guard you carefully;

11 

they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[d]”

12 Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[e]”

13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

It should be noted, what tempts Christ here is in no way, at its face, inherently unethical. To present a hungry person with a supernatural means by which to manifest nourishment may, to many, be construed as the ultimate act of salvation on behalf of universe. As a template, this situation is in the form of angelic, divine intervention…and the tempter here is a herald angel. It’s that what he speaks is temptation, as it is a departure, it can be construed as either general knowledge (which itself, as an idea, comments positively on the institution of teaching of the life of Christ, socially) or by Christ’s response to the temptations, from the will of God/Universe.

This is the beginning, in a figurative sense, perhaps in a literal, of the dying process…a fundamental shift at the level of universal mechanics regarding the life of the historical man, Jesus, whom became Christ…announced by one of God’s very own angels, who himself eventually discloses as a piece of critical information in the vicinity of a meaningful temptation that God has commanded his “angels” specifically regarding Jesus, so as to specifically “lift him up” “with their hands”. Jesus is realizing here in the desert, which itself is a suggested frame for material existence in general…that man does not live “on bread alone”…meaning that its by both bread and what substantiates it, “God” that people live bodily, but by God alone that they live…and life is eternal, whereas the body struggles to stay in effective congress with eternity (yet this struggle gives our life meaning/flows seamlessly into effective service with the rest of creation). Somehow, Christ has had a dawning realization, or perhaps is having one, as the herald angel himself dances around the real issue with falsehoods, that his death and persecution at the hands of the Romans is looming…

And that it can not be avoided. That, like all things in life, its in the service to life, to the development and effective substantiation of…him, as a historical man. That it’s merely another act of God, another act of righteousness which to resonate with personally, but one that brings both an acute burgeoning of total well-being, as well as its visceral antithesis, the passion/persecution he would face at the hands of his jailers. I think, like all things in the Christ story, it establishes a template every subject faces personally… that many of us, if not all, have a sense of our ends as they approach, and that many of us have to die actively, willfully, hopefully…gracefully. That doing as much is the only time, and that its usually short, in which to measure up and “tap in” to ethical imperatives or the universal stimulus doesn’t amount to an effective substantiation of the very life force we are tapping into, and it leeches us…it kills us, slowly, drawing us piece by piece in the things we choose to do, which define our value systems as people, into the next life…

It’s in Luke today that as much begins to happen for Jesus. First He is tempted with a supernatural means by which to provide a bodily necessity for himself, and He has to turn it down because to do as much would be in disservice to the institution of life, through an eternal lens. Duality/worldly ways of thinking, locked into a matrix of survival tendencies that themselves feed a matrix of interdependence all life-forms are webbed into…will not cut it here. It’s never ok for those people to die. But once they’re dying, it’s not ok for them to try to cling and stay…

By ineffective means. The actualization of the spiritual worldview is that you merge into total actualization/presence (moment in and out…finding the now…) and are theoretically ever-present, or at least as needed. It’s beyond comprehension but can be expected phenomenally. You cling to life by practicing. By giving yourself away. It feels good to do and there are many returns.

Next, Christ is tempted with the power of the world itself, which He essentially says is for/an expression of service to God above all else. He implies that things are already perfect as they are even if morally refining… that all of the power of the world already is his Father’s…and his Father is about to have him crucified.

Finally, Christ is “tempted” by the notion of testing the power the angels, but by this point in the conversation there is no effective temptation actually presented here. There is some sense that he is being lured by a cunning, yet compassionate tempter towards realizing that this is all towards aforementioned comprehensive glorification of life itself…every unfolding act of the will of the Father. This angel is here to notify you that you will die, yet is outright offering, as if kindly, nearly human, “Do you want me to try to go plead for your life myself with him?” He knows it will not work, as does Jesus, who scolds him, as the Lord, not to test the Lord.

This is the very Lucifer they call satan. Did he actually tempt here? Is this the behavior, psychologically, of someone trying to build an eternal empire against God? Hell isn’t validated in the Bible. Neither is the devil. It’s alluded to as an idea in practice already, spiritually, in the religious traditions of the day, but in the Bible that our culture got as a people, it’s not validated anywhere (Jesus doesn’t advocate teaching it). I’m thinking that whole thing is itself a response to how the religious tradition was doing interpreting passages such as this socially…we all know fundamentalism is but a starting point we must necessarily move beyond so as to try to stay whole as a tribe of people, so as to stay unto ourselves/all kinds effectively… and yet we circle back around and try to force it as the dominant modality of the only religion on the continent? Weak…

Notice this is a difficult exchange, dynamically. They’re not friends. They’re not hugging and glorifying truth. Far too often…this is where we are as a culture…when we are out in the day to day world, the secular world in which emotions are mysterious and cognition is inexplicable… speaking in indirects/falsehoods. They literally can’t be warm with one another, and this is almost the template, or at times, has been,

of problematic masculinity/male friendships.   

No matter what I feed you or how creepy-ritualistic our brood living situation gets, at this point, I’m going to need you guys to stick together….