Mark 1:9-15
The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you must.
- Fierce heat…jagged rocks…wild animals…blistered feet.
- Today we read about a long and treacherous stint in the wilderness.
- Unlike his counterparts…Matthew and Luke…Mark offers us no colorful details about Jesus’s experience in the wilderness.
- We do not learn what the specific temptations were…or how Jesus responded to them.
- Mark does not even assure us that Jesus passed his desert test.
- All he gives us are two hurried sentences:
- “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
- He was in the wilderness forty days…tempted by Satan…and he was with the wild beasts…and the angels waited on him.”
This abrupt version of events leaves me buzzing with questions…I wonder about details:
- How exactly did Jesus spend his time?
- Was he tempted 24/7?
- Did he walk for miles each day…or camp out in one spot?
- Where did he sleep?
- What was the silence like…hour after hour after hour?
- Did he break it up by humming…laughing…shouting?
- Did he star gaze?
- Play with birds? Chase lizards?
- As the days stretched on and on…did he fear for his life?
- Question his sanity? Wish to die?
Mark…given…as ever…to brevity…leaves all these questions unanswered.
- But he does give us substance to cling to as we face deserts in our own lives. Here are three:
- Jesus did not choose the wilderness.
- The struggle is long.
- There are angels in the desert.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
First…Jesus did not meander into the wilderness. He did not schedule a walk in the woods…like Bill Bryson …or plan a wilderness marathon to rack up Fitbit steps.
- The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.
- You only go there if you must.
- OK then…this detail is comforting. Why?
- Because it rings true.
- We do not choose to enter the wilderness.
- We do not volunteer…generally…for pain…loss…danger…or terror.
The wilderness just happens.
- Whether it comes to us as a hospital waiting room…a thorny relationship…a troubled child…a sudden death…or a family crisis.
- The wilderness appears…unbidden and unwelcome.
- And sometimes…can we bear to ponder this?
- It is God’s own Spirit who drives us into the parched landscape amidst the wild beasts.
- Does this mean that God wants us to suffer? That God is a sadistic? I do not think so.
- Does it mean that God can redeem even the most barren periods of our lives?
- That our deserts can become holy even as they remain dangerous? Yes. I believe so.
Sometimes our journeys with God include dark and desolate places.
- Not because God takes pleasure in our pain…
- But because we live in a fragile…broken world that includes deserts.
- And because God’s way is to take the things of death…and wring from them resurrection.
Second…our wilderness journeys sometimes last a long…long time.
- I have never spent forty days in solitude and silence and physical deprivation and danger.
- But I do not think Jesus’ time in the wilderness passed by quickly.
- The sense I get is that Jesus wrestled and exerted great effort against great difficulty.
- That he experienced each day as a battle of mind…spirit and body.
- The landscape itself mocked his weary senses…its fixed bleakness breaking his heart.
Because we live in quick-fix culture…this aspect of the wilderness is especially heavy.
- That is…we tire and despair easily.
- Why…we ask…is this pain not ending?
- Why are our prayers going unanswered? Where is God?
Well…we need to ask a harder question:
- Why did Jesus need the wilderness? Why do we?
- According to Mark…the heavens were torn open…and God announced Jesus’s identity loud and clear:
- “You are my Son…the Beloved…with you I am well pleased.”
- But what happened to that certain sense of identity and belonging?
I wonder…as Jesus’s wilderness wanderings stretched into week two…week three…week four?
- Did he begin to waver?
- Did the Son of God need to keep reminding himself of who he was?
- Did his Father need to nudge him each time he forgot?
- “Can you hear me now? Can you hear that you are precious and beloved now?
- Can your identity as my own hold in this oppressive silence…here…now?”
Today we think about Jesus’ humanity.
- That the Son of God wrestled with his identity? His vocation? His relationship to his Father?
- The greatest danger Jesus faced in the wilderness was not starvation.
- Oh no…the greatest danger Jesus faced in the wilderness was amnesia.
- That he forgot who and whose he was!
- That was just too much for him to carry.
At his baptism…Jesus heard the absolute truth about who he was.
- “You are my Son.”
- That was easy to hear.
- The much harder part came in the wilderness.
- When he had to face down every vicious assault on that truth.
- When the memory of his Father’s voice from heaven faded.
- And he had to learn how to be God’s beloved in a lonely wasteland.
We too…need long stints in the wilderness to learn what it really means to be God’s beloved.
- Because the truth is: we can be beloved and broken and at the same time.
- We can be cherished and unsafe at the same time.
- In the wilderness…the love that survives is flinty…not soft.
- Redeeming…not sentimental.
Third…there were angels in the wilderness. This is startling and comforting truth.
- A truth we recognize if we open our eyes and look around.
- Somehow…somewhere…help comes.
- And the huge stone is rolled away from the entrance of our tomb.
- Rest comes. Solace comes.
- OK…OK…our angels do not always appear in the forms we might prefer…but they come.
I wonder what Jesus’s angels looked like.
- Did they manifest as winged creatures from heaven?
- As comforting breezes across the sun-scorched hills?
- As a trickle of water for his parched throat?
- As a wild animal that surprised him with a tame and tender gaze?
- As moss and ferns to lay his head upon?
- As the swirl of constellations on a clear…cloudless night?
What do our angels look like?
- What have they looked like in the past?
- When they ministered to us…held us…embraced us…did we hear God’s voice anew…calling us his beloved?
- What would it be like to enter someone else’s barren desert now…and become an angel for their journey?
- The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you must.