I can see your house from here

The new U2 album has been ringing through my head for the last two months and it's blowing me away. Have you heard their new single, Vertigo? If not, check it out at u2.com. Then read this.

Bono was asked, "Where is Vertigo?" He replied, "It's a dizzy feeling, a sick feeling, when you get up to the top of something and there's only one way to go. That's not a dictionary definition; that's mine. And in my head I created a club called Vertigo with all these people in it and the music is not the music you want to hear and the people are not the people you want to be with. And then you just see somebody and she's got a cross around her neck, and you focus on it -- because you can't focus on anything else. You find a little tiny fragment of salvation there."

Vertigo...a dizzying place where temptation is near. Sounds like Matthew 4. Verse 5 reads, "Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple." And later in verses 8 and 9, "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you...'"

The "highest point" of the temple is likely the southwest corner, the place where the shofar was blown. Archaeologists have found the engraved corner stone which served as a platform for the priest blowing the shofar. At the temple, the shofar was blown to call people to assembly and to announce the daily sacrifices. Here are a few photos of the southwest corner stone I took this summer in Israel.

So, imagine. Jesus is being tempted at the place where the shofar was blown. He is standing at the place where the shofar sounded for the ninth hour sacrifice (3pm). Did he flash forward to his ninth hour sacrifice (Matthew 27:46)? “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”

There is a verse in Vertigo that goes:

All this, all this can be yours
All of this, all of this can be yours
All this, all of this can be yours
Just give me what I want
And no one gets hurt.

Was Jesus dizzy? Did he lean over the parapet? Did he see a "girl with crimson nails" to remind him of the truth? Thank God something did.

May something always bring us back to our senses.

(Steve, the title is for you...)