The Symphony of the Temptation

Traditionally, a symphony is written in four movements, each a distinct section in and of itself, but also part of a larger whole.  Beginning movements are great vehicles for development through the entire work of art.  Themes and variations, like carefully hung Christmas tree ornaments, can be heard throughout the full piece.  

So has been my journey with the story of The Temptation of Jesus.  A Masterful Composer has brought me back to this account many, many times. The key of the story has never changed, but He’s introduced contrasting styles, interlinking melodies, harmonies, dynamics and rhythm alterations.

Movement 1: Sola Scriptura

As a young believer, I was taught this account was all about scripture. In his temptation, Jesus answered with quotes from the scriptures and that was the point of the story.  It was about combating lies with truth.  It was about answers, fixing the problem, and Jesus being an example of how I was to live.  This movement of the symphony was very geometric, formulaic, and easy enough to understand.

Movement 2: A New Human

As years went on and my faith suitcase was shaken up a little, a new variation emerged from this supposed mathematical story.  In the temptation, Jesus, the Messiah, was being the Israel that Israel had failed to be.  The temptations of hunger, testing God, and who to worship were ones that Israel, as God’s chosen people, had failed in the desert.  Here, however, Jesus was, in one sense, re-writing the story.  He would be the truly human one - the one who really acted like God’s chosen.  He used scripture not just because it was a confrontation between truth and lies, but because he was pulling the ancient story of the Israelites in the desert into the present and saying, “This is how it was supposed to be done”.  His actions and response gave credibility to his call of “Follow Me”.

Movement 3: Solidarity

The symphony slows down at this point, almost to a funeral dirge.  The overtones turn dark and haunting as the Wilderness became my habitation, not just words I read on the pages of my Bible.  Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Spirit, his extreme hunger, his aloneness, were becoming my experience too.  I knew the picture of Jesus sitting alone on the dark, jagged rocks of the wilderness.  I knew weakness and a great weight bearing down on my shoulders that threatened to crush me.  My life became part of the symphony and I felt, perhaps for the first time, a wholly human Jesus.  He chose solidarity with humanity!  As my life and the story were woven together in the adagio (slow music), it became clear that Jesus was with me (and I with him) in the wilderness.  The oh-so-human experience of temptation was breached, not by an army but by a God who chose to experience it himself.

Briton Riviere, The Temptation in the Wilderness

Movement 4: The Way

Much to my embarrassment,  I think I’ve always been cynical of whether or not Jesus actually was tempted in all the ways I am...until the fourth movement of the symphony.  While the specifics of the tempting offers were important for the music of earlier movements, these now gave way to the greatest temptation in all of it.  When faced with the choice between wanting legitimate pleasures in life and intimacy with the Father, Jesus chooses the Father.  The crescendo of the symphony is Jesus singing (between the lines), “I’d rather have the Father and nothing else than everything without Him.” (quoting Larry Crabb).  That is the root of my temptation too.  Do I want the Father more than I want anything else I desire, and will I chose to stay close to Him?  Jesus not only sympathizes with my temptation because he’s experienced it, but he says to me that I can do what he did.  Because I follow him and his Spirit is alive in me, my greatest desire can be (is) the Father and I can choose Him even when hard pressed.

Photo by Jennifer Kitson

Thank you for the symphony, Lord!  One movement does not have to be thrown out or negated, but rather in the hands of a Master Composer, each piece takes its rightful place, adding to the beauty of the whole.  Though I am stubbornly impatient, I am so grateful for the years it took to fashion this beautiful symphony.  You were in each movement...and I am sure you will be in the ones I cannot yet foresee too!

On the Edge of Ashes

Last year's Hosanna's have gone.  Palm branches have been burned and what is left resides in a small container no larger than my hand.  The ashes, the dark, smudgy ashes are ready for marking.  But what do they mark, really?  What do they remind us of?  Why do so many in the world chose to have this mark imposed on them?

DIRT

These sooty ashes are applied with the words "You are dust and to dust you will return", and so they remind us of our earthiness.  They speak of our mortality, for we shall return to dust, but they also remind us of our humanity.  They whisper the ancient story of a God who fashions creatures out of soil.  These ashes remind us of our beginnings and endings, ans so teach us to number well our days.

LIVE

Yes, they may remind us that someday we may die, but they shout at us to live!  To live, not in sin, but in new life.  To not get stuck but to walk toward something (or Someone) with new practices.  These ashes beg us to live by letting go...or taking up some new action.  They cheer us on to life - not half-lived in mediocrity, but toward rigor, challenge, and a robust faith.

REPENTANCE

Ashes have long been a symbol for sorrow and grief.  These ashes remind us to take inventory of our lives, and in the ensuing sorrow, lead us to repentance.  The cross of ashes whispers what many in our world do not know:  there is freedom in serving only one Master.  Repentance becomes the door to transformation.

TRANSFORMATION

The ashes declare that transformation is possible, and we do not go it alone.  Through the renewing of our minds, through allowing God to change our psyche, a new person can emerge.  We are not left to ourselves in a fatalistic universe.  God has intervened and we can become new creatures!

PRAYER

The ashes also offer us an invitation to come and follow Jesus into the wilderness.  They invite us to fast and pray for 40 days.  Jesus, the Master, dis it and we are to follow Him.  These cinders invite us into a new kind of humanity that we find in Jesus.  A humanity who chooses the Father and His will over and above the screeching temptations of "take care of yourself", "prove yourself", and "indulge yourself with power".

Coming to the edge of ashes takes courage.  Will we allow them not to just mark our foreheads but our whole being as well?  Will we let them do their full 40-day work, even long after we've rubbed off their smudges?

"Oh God, let something essential happen to me, something more than interesting or entertaining or thoughtful.
Oh God let something essential happen to me, something awesome, something real.  Speak to my condition, Lord, and change me somewhere inside where it matters.
Let something happen which is my real self, Oh God."     (Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace)

The Prodigal

I wrote a piece for a Lenten meditation about Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, and thought I'd post it here.  (And I added some extra images of a Prodigal Son statue that I am so intrigued with.)

Scripture:

  Then Jeus said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Perhaps the most well known of all parables, the Story of the Prodigal Son, is really misnamed. The story Jesus told had two sons in it – both prodigals in their own way – but they are not even the central characters in the narrative. The father is. This father who gives when disgraced, who runs, who embraces, who showers with generosity, who throws a party, and who goes out to both sons is the central focus in the picture Jesus painted. The same is true of Rembrandt's painting. Jesus' story and Rembrandt's picture are both about two prodigal sons. Both of these boys traveled “to a far distant country” - one physically, one on the interior. Both needed to return home. Perhaps, a more fitting name for the account would be Returning to the Embrace of the Father.

Focal Points:

Looking for light: Rembrandt's use of light in this painting tells us where he wants us to look. Three people are illumined in a golden light – the father, the younger son and the older son standing on the right. In addtion, the light falls mostly on the hands of the father, the back of the younger son, and on the hands and face of the older son.

Father and Younger Son:

Clothing: The father is dressed in fine clothes of rich, regal red. Though elderly, he has a fullness to his stature. He is substantive and has a presence that takes up most of the left side of the painting. His red robe is in an arch shape, like an open door welcoming in those in need of shelter. The kneeling son, on the other hand is dressed in rags the color of dirt. He is emaciated and is dwarved in comparison to the more substantial frame of his father. The sandals on his feet are worn out – perhaps depicting his long journey home or that he has come to the end of his own resources (or both!)

The father's hands: Two hands embrace the younger son's back, but on closer examination, they are very different from one another. The father's left hand is strong, muscular and quite masculine. The fingers are spread out and active. There is a certain pressure about this hand, as though it is not just touching the son, but holding him with a gentle strength. The father's right hand is refined, soft, tender, looking almost feminine. It does not hold or grasp, but just touches with an elegant quality to it. Its feminity offers comfort, consolation and a tender caress.

Interestingly, this caressing hand is right above the bare, wounded foot of the kneeling son, while the masculine hand parallels the foot dressed in the sandal. “Is it too much to think that one hand protects the vulnerable side of the son, while the other hand reinforces the son's strength and desire to get on with his life?” (Henri Nouwen)

Older Son: The man standing to the right in the painting is thought to be the older son. He wears the red robes of his father, showing he belongs to the household. However, his illumined hands show a marked difference from that of his father's. His hands are clasped, closed and held close to his body. While his eyes are totally focused on the interaction before him, his face is stern looking with no smile or emotion. There is a good distance between him and what is going on before him. (This could depict physical distance, as in the story Jesus told, the older brother was not there when his younger brother actually returned, or perhaps it represents the distance his heart had traveled from his “home” in the father.)

Looking for darkness: “The return”, though central to the scripture in Luke 15, is not centered in Rembrandt's picture. All the action between the father and younger brother is positioned on the left side while the older brother is on the right. In the Luke account, both boys have a choice to make. Will they leave their darkness and move into the light. We know the younger son makes his journey through darkness back to the father, but what of the older son? We are left wondering. Jesus tells us he is invited in by the father to join the celebration but we do not know what he eventually chooses. In Rembrandt's picture, his face is illumined, but he seems so be unmoved by the father's joy. Right in the center of this picture is a large, dark, open space, perhaps creating the tension of the question, “Who will truly come home?”

Reflection:

Spend a few moments looking at the picture, allowing your eyes to rest on places that pique your curiosity. As you settle into gazing, move your eyes back to one area of the picture that intrigues, evokes emotion or disturbs you. Ask the Father why He has brought your attention to this place at this time. What is it He wants to say to you? Don't be afraid of whatever comes forth, remembering that the embrace of the Father is generous enough to hold it all.

Perhaps you see yourself in the face of one of the main subjects of the painting. Which person do you most identify with? Are you one of the people sitting in the darkness, just watching and inquiring about this Father's great love? Are you the younger son who believes he is “no longer worthy to be called a son”?(Luke 15) or are you the returned younger son who lays his head on the Father's chest and senses His embrace? Are you the older son who “has been working hard on the father's farm, but has never fully tasted the joy of being at home?” (Nouwen) Whoever you identify with, can you hear the Father who reminds all sons (and daughters) of who they are? “You are extravagantly loved. Come home to Me.”