For Jesus and for us, the expedient move is not always the right move. Temptation is usually a whisper to take a shortcut- a shortcut to pleasure, a shortcut to wealth, a shortcut to prestige. And it is an invitation to think short-term, without considering the consequences of our actions, or the infinite possibilities of thinking and acting with a mindset toward the eternal.
So, who are the Cora Potes and St. Pauls in your life? The people who will call the bluff of the conventions and inhibitions that keep us from the truth about ourselves and our world. People who will call out anyone, even Moses, if that’s what it takes to name the veils the world gives us to walk around underneath.
Jesus’s world, like ours, was already quite nicely divided between the blessed and the cursed. But Jesus turned even these essential divisions around. And a new possibility for fellowship emerged.
“Isaiah understood his role was not only to proclaim the word of the Lord to the people. It was also to understand and to live the plight of the people – and to pray and even cry out to heaven on our behalf. The longing in Isaiah’s plea, ‘How long, O Lord’ is to bring a little touch of heaven to earth, especially in the midst of hard times.”
“What Jesus slips through is precisely what you and I get caught in, from the earliest moments of our lives. We accept the hometown terms for what matters. And we begin constructing selves we think will make the hometown people proud.”