Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Noon Eucharist with Soup Lunch following

6:00 pm Soup supper: 7:00 pm Evening Prayer

Reading: Matthew 4:1-11

“Then the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down…'" Matt.4:5-6a

Jesus fasted for forty days, and the tempter tried to entice him to turn stones into bread.  Then the tempter tried to entice Jesus to throw himself down from a height of fourteen stories and defy gravity and death. Jesus wandered humbly without possessions, and the tempter tried to entice him with great wealth and power. All of these temptations were attempts to lure Jesus away from his true identity: that of embodied compassion. For compassion suffers with (“cum” – “patior”). If Jesus were truly to live as humans live, he would at some time suffer hunger, thirst, alienation, disappointment, pain, loneliness, death. To opt out of any of these experiences would lessen his capacity to be the Compassionate One. Compassion suffers with. It is experienced from a state of equality, not from a superior position of pity, but from a position of equals. Christ suffered, died, and rose anew, his brokenness left behind, and with compassion in his eyes, he reaches to us and bids us rise to the compassionate life he lived.

As you sent the Christ, O God, to show your compassion for all creation, may our lives be transformed into his image. Amen

·       Identify something that lures you away from your true identity as a baptized person. Pray about it.