Jesus;  on the rampart, tempted by the Serpent, talking to himself:

No, this was never about anything but me being myself.   "Jesus, the carpenter, the carpenter's son," is what I'm known as, in society, locally, maybe even regionally.  But it's more than that.  And anyway, the carpenter part is metaphorical.  First, because we can dismiss just about anyone by the claim to "know what they do for a living."  Oh, he's a cop.  He's a publican.  He's a Galilean.   He won't amount to much in this world as, say, the high learned priest, nor has been incarnated as a Roman Centurion in all his powers.

But me, he's a...  well, he's... that guy...

And the rest of the metaphor...   as wood comes from trees, we are given words.  Words can be placed together, fashioned just so, so that they fit together.  Words help us figure things out.  Words put well together are as a house built upon a solid foundation rather than shifting sands.


They can revile you, they can beat the shit out of you, they can fire you, but they can never take away your words, your own drawing in the dust.

They can never deny you, nor your access to the wisdom of the Father as one can know it in his own heart.

That is why I say to you, oh cunning serpent who knoweth the weaknesses of man, get thee hence away.  All you say, such things are nothing.  They are not the words we live by.  The words that have life unto themselves, such that they might heal the sick, raise the dead, put a man who casts nets to a higher purpose...  save one from the greatest humiliating fears...  No one has any use for you, but by distraction.  Get thee behind me...

The words, like I, are friend to all.  "No matter what path a man take, I am there to meet him."  Whether I am here or not, they will always come around, sooner or later, for I am the Truth, the Word, the Logos.




And Jesus felt rather guilty, in a way, for the kind of professional work he'd come to and lived with.  There were voices inside his head, should haves and could haves.  "You're a smart guy..."  But he knew his father's work, that work which his father did which was, truly an echo, earthly, of a Father in Heaven, if there was one, a teacher, a kind and graceful man, who didn't say much that wasn't of meaning and deeper meaning.

In the same, as son as father, on the one hand, "who would believe you..."  And on the other, well, of course, "the perceptive, those who have eyes, can see..."

Indeed, behind the scenes, his father's "tenure" had been called into question.  "We'll give a you a yearly contract, but...  It could have been disrespectful, humiliating, but that somehow this is the reaction of people who see themselves with powers to wield treat their fellow being, self-justified in their ways for feeling the power to lower some and to elevate others, to make another's life subtly miserable at work, particularly in contrast with those who "toe the party line."  (We all know the dynamic, the types...)   And a teacher, a true one, as his father was, will always be a distant thing, too much truth, in excess...

The most respectable man in the world, his father, and yet they add a misery to his life and to his family.   ( And all of this world pre-dispose, as if he needed it, Jesus to side with the people, as they were.  People in need of a teacher, and these people, fortunately, or unfortunately, are everywhere...  And if he were ever to get depressed, soon, or eventually, he would come across another human being, and just by a simple exchange, he knew his work again.

Indeed, Jesus had been ready a few times, to say, "screw this," about this job.  (Until he finally, gracefully found a kind of exit...)