Guess i haven't had much motivation to write lately, but a funny thought hit me on my way to work yesterday, and i want to try to flesh it out. Whilst dodging covered wagons and potholes on the interstate, i spaced out and gave myself over to a Large Vision. i was considering the economy, the physics of humanity; the very many injustices and horrors in the world, and the possibility of living with those in the light of the seeming infinitude of possibilities for even greater injustice, greater horror that blessedly fail to materialize instead; the dread-- even anger-- it evokes in me that so very many of the things i am most thankful for are things that didn't happen, and that so many of the things i'm most hopeful for are things i pray won't happen; that people generally tend to falter in the absence of the antagonist, or without, at the very least, the
threat of the antagonist; that wars, battles, feuds, and billions upon billions of fractures in relationships have been leant a kind of demonic life by the unwillingness in each of us to wage the same on our own pride for the sake of understanding the other; that we employ ourselves with little games, little doctrines, little problems, little thoughts, little fears, little relationships, little gods, little hopes in order not to feel obliged to try to spread our terribly finite minds out to net the Infinite; that in spite of how terrifyingly predictable, selfish, fragile a herd of sheep we are, we're still cathected with a value by God.
Somehow that led me to think of the temptation of Jesus.
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.'"
Unless you dwell on that a while, and are given to flights of creative extrapolation (filling in the dramatic swell of orchestral to a cymbal wash as Jesus musters the wherewithal to rebuke, etc.), it's hard to build up a sense of the painful internal equivocation He must have felt if this was actually a temptation for Him-- the sort of temptation we mortals can relate to. There's hardly time to get that gripped feeling of blood-in-the-tears anguish; or the exquisite, focussed passion; or the prayerful, mortifying struggle against His own humanity and the tempter to suppress His own will. To begin, there's Jesus starving in the desert (to the point that he was tempted to do something culinarily with a rock) for the sake of being tempted-- tried-- and then we have a skeletal paragraph, a couple of sentences in which to rally to His cause and cheer for Him before He's dimissed it all. It almost seems like the writer was a little nervous about Jesus being tempted, about what that would need to mean. we can have Jesus being intellectually baited. He can be smacked around, taunted, lashed, hurt, saddened, betrayed. But if the 'temptation' actually tugs on His heart strings, takes hold of His viscera, evokes some hormone production, shakes His soul, spins His head, causes His mouth to water, drags Him to His spiritual knees, then maybe He's edging a little too close to the fire; how could we be sure He didn't sin in His heart? Focussing on the pain and the passion of the temptation tends to feather that line between the external temptation and the internal sin simply by way of making it the object of attention, and in that sense glorifying it and vitalizing it for the observer.
On the other hand, skimming over the pain of the temptation leaves the impression that it wasn't
really a temptation at all. Satan cast a barbed line at Jesus, and Jesus deflected it without bothering His central nervous system to process it first. There's no reason to believe that that's true. Jesus was tempted. (That is, after all, the gist of the story; not to mention the chapter heading.) But what about it, i wonder, was tempting for Him? For it to have been a temptation, it would have had to make sense in some wise that He
could have all the kingdoms of the world if He bowed to Satan. There had to be some grain of truth in the proposition, and Jesus had to be aware of that grain, or it wouldn't have been tempting. And that's fascinating.
i wonder what Jesus saw when He stood on that mountain. i wonder what He saw that He wanted, and i wonder what He saw that He understood was Satan's to give (or lose). i wonder in what sense He could have gained the kingdoms of the world if He
had bowed down. Did He somehow see the soul of each person beneath Him? It says He saw all the kingdoms from atop a mountain, but the earth is round. Barring a Dr. Seuss/Tim Burton-esque mountain, it makes sense that it was more of a psychedelic tour from a symbolic mountain, but even the staunchest literalist would have to agree that the locale and chemistry of the mountain isn't nearly as important to the text as is the existence of the mountain qua aerie for Jesus' point of view. In a moment He saw from a high place something very large and very dear to Him. i wonder if He saw each of our faces in that moment, or if He saw all those "kingdoms" as sets or categories or limiters serving more as a reminder to Him of His difference from and distance to us at that moment than as endearing names for us. i wonder what the process was, the movement from seeing all the kingdoms and being offered them to understanding that He had to say, "Away from me, Satan!"
If it was any kind of actual temptation for Him, it must have been clear to both Satan and Him that He had come for the world. If it was any kind of temptation, it must have been clear that Satan was entitled to the world according to the rules. If it was any kind of temptation, it must have been clear to Him that He actually could in some sense gain the world by pledging fealty to Satan. If it was any kind of temptation, it must not have been perfectly clear in that first moment that the only sense in which He could be given the world would be twisted, hollow, incomplete.
i've stood on mountains and felt the people beneath me. i've hurt for millions and millions of lost and blind and mute and damaged. i've felt the dynamic electrical energy between people; i've felt sometimes that i could understand it and even own it. i've seen how very easy it is, for a small price, a small compromise, to manipulate and rule the masses. But i don't have the wisdom or the oratory skills to keep a houseful of friends from falling asleep, let alone to cause them to invite everyone they know to follow me around begging for more. i don't have enough charisma to cause anyone with any sense to seek out my opinion on things that matter, let alone to cause thousands and thousands to try to force me to be their king. i hardly speak with enough authority to get my kids to mind me, let alone to induce people i don't even know to leave their livelihoods in order not to miss a word emanating from me. (Words, in fact, don't emanate from me at all; they just leave.) It may be that i've been tempted to own the world, or at least the parts of it that matter to me; but for whatever vantage i've ever been given, for whatever compromise i've had to wrestle with to overcome, i'm certain that i haven't begun to imagine the power or the vision or the glory that Jesus found the strength to relinquish on that mountain. i'm certain i haven't begun to appreciate the temptation of the Christ.
