Today is a look at the third temptation and how it is another way to show how Jesus, like Israel, is called into a contrary witness and life. From The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas.
Finally, Jesus is tempted to act as the priest of priests, to force God's hand by being the sacrifice that God cannot refuse. In short, Jesus is tempted to play the hero, to take his life in his hands, to be in control of his destiny, and thus to force God's kingdom to be present because of his sacrifice. But such a heroic role contrasts starkly with the man who died on the cross, subject to others' wills. For by being so subject we see that finally it is not his will but God's that is worked out through his life and death. The resurrection, therefore, is not an extra-ordinary event added to this man's life, but a confirmation by God that the character of Jesus' life prior to the resurrection is perfectly faithful to his vocation to proclaim and make present God's kingdom. Without the resurrection our concentration on Jesus would be idolatry, but without Jesus' life we would not know what kind of God it is who has raised him from the dead.
It is so important to remember that Jesus is not the sacrifice that moves God's hand. Rather, the whole life of Jesus is the vocation of the Reign of God. This is how life in the Reign of God is. This is the life of the Son of God. This is, you could say, the life of faithful Israel. There is a day in that day out way of being known to the world. In the resurrection God says "Yes" to this life that has been Jesus...a life that breaks the bounds of death so that all of us can walk in that way. The God of Israel is not a "gotcha" God. That is how the idols of the world work. Our God is one whose compassion and love is embodies on behalf of others because that is the life of God's beloved in the Reign of God. There is no religious game playing - there is only a radical life that gives a face to God's in breaking Reign.
Connection: There is a life that God marks as the life within God's Reign. We are urged to look to that life that is affirmed in the Resurrection - the life of Jesus. It is, in some ways, a reminder of the life that is handed to us a followers of Jesus within this ordinary kind of Friday.
We are brought into the day, O God, with the vital and strong voice of the resurrection saying "Yes" to the life of Jesus and the life of freedom and hopefulness that is ours even as we face the powers of fear and brutality and anxiety within this day. Keep us mindful of this gracious "yes" that sustains and encourages. Amen.
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