At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
(Mark 1:9-15)
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The wilderness. The very word has an edge to it, doesn’t it. It captures our attention. It excites us, but at the same time it also frightens us. The wilderness. There’s a sense of being lost; there’s also a sense of searching for something. There’s hope involved with the wilderness, but maybe there’s also a bit of fear. It all depends on how you approach the wilderness and the image. However you choose to approach it, it’s a familiar biblical image almost from the very beginning of the story - from Abraham trudging through the wilderness on his way to he knew not where, to Moses leading the people in the wilderness for 40 years, to Jesus driven into the wilderness apparently as a preparation for the beginning of his public ministry as the Messiah. Those are probably the three best known wilderness experiences that we find in the Scriptures and if you think about all of them - the biblical wilderness experiences fall on the side of hope and promise. Abraham got to the land God had promised him; Moses led the Hebrews out of slavery and back into that land; and Jesus came out of the wilderness and changed the world and the lives of untold millions of people in it. These were all positive wilderness experiences - that, yes, had twists and turns along the way. Abraham feared for his life as Pharaoh decided that he wanted Sarah for himself, Moses feared for his life as the people turned against him because of their hardships, and Jesus had to deal with satanic temptation during his sojourn in the wilderness. Wilderness experiences can be grand things full of promise, but they can also contain a lot of hardship. Maybe that’s what makes them so special - and so especially meaningful as an image for the faith journey.
Who among us hasn’t endured a trip through the spiritual wilderness every now and then? A time when our faith in God was tested; a time when in spite of our best efforts to be faithful everything seemed to go wrong; a time when we became literally lost, not sure which way to turn as we desperately sought out God only to find that God seemed strangely absent? Is there anyone who’s never experienced some time in the spiritual wilderness? I’m not sure that faith was ever really meant to be lived in cultured and pampered and civilized places. Cities are, in some ways, wonderful things with a lot of conveniences, but I’m not sure that a city would work for me as an image for faith. The wilderness seems much more appropriate as a motif for the type of journey that we’re on. We’re not marching up Yonge Street in downtown Toronto with a Starbucks or a Tim Hortons at every corner just in case we need a little pick me up. No - the spiritual life, I think, is meant to be lived in the wilderness; an environment where sometimes we wonder if there’s hope (because doubt is surely a part of faith) and a place where, rather than the hardship of having to figure out just which coffee shop we’ll stop at for a latté, we instead have to scan the distant horizon, just in the hope that we might catch a glimpse of an oasis.
Once again we’ve entered Lent. As far as the Christian faith and the liturgical year go, Lent is perhaps the closest thing to a wilderness experience that we have. For many it’s a time of sacrifice or repentance, or both. Some people give up eating chocolate for Lent - which I don’t think is exactly a way of reflecting the suffering of Jesus; others take it too far in the other direction, and there is a group of Christians in the Philippines who, every year as Lent draws to a close, submit themselves to being crucified as a way of being in solidarity with Christ - although I don’t think that’s exactly what Paul meant when he said that “I have been crucified with Christ.” Both are ways, though, of using this time of year as a way of modelling the wilderness journey of Jesus - which extended far beyond the temptation story, because in many ways, from a spiritual perspective, Jesus’ entire ministry was spent in the wilderness - wandering and wondering, comforted by some, threatened by others, knowing that at the end of the journey stood both horrendous hardship but also wondrous promise. That’s a spiritual wilderness. A cacophony of competing voices and noises and experiences, while we try to drown them all out and somehow find God in the midst of it all. In a sense, that’s also Lent. In a way - it’s just life. For ourselves and for the church, it’s just life.
But being in the wilderness can be a positive experience or a negative experience. Let’s think about it from the perspective of the church for a moment? Are we in a sort of wilderness? I think it’s fair to say that we are. A lot of what was familiar is gone. Packed pews, bulging Sunday Schools, reserves of cash, power and influence - all gone. This is our new paradigm; our new reality. So many people look for the quick fix. There must be some program, some worship style that can make things be the way they used to be - thinking about the image of Moses leading the people of God in the wilderness, people want to go back to Egypt because in Egypt they might have been slaves but at least they had onions! The image of the church striding like a colossus over society is still in the living memory of a lot of people. And it meant no worries about tomorrow. The church didn’t have to even consider the fact that God held tomorrow - because the church had money! Whether it was spiritually healthy or not is another question. Whether it was blinded by the money and the power and the packed pews is a valid question to consider. But there were no worries about survival. All that’s gone. We look at the state of the church today and it’s a little bit barren; the future’s a little bit scary; the bank balance is downright terrifying! At the end of June, three more United Churches in Niagara Presbytery will close. Everything we had seems gone. Well, except for God. God is still there. And I wonder how it seemed for Jesus - sent out into the wilderness, the comfort of home and family suddenly absent, and a future that held out a lot of unpleasantness. And, of course, for Jesus, and in spite of all that, the wilderness turned out to be a very positive experience.
For Jesus, while the wilderness was a place of temptation, it was also a place of opportunity. Temptation is always opportunity; trials are always the chance to discover the God-given strength we all have; confronting the future is encouragement for us to do something about the present. And, of course, we have to note that Jesus was sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ church today may feel like it’s in the wilderness. We, as a part of that church, may feel a bit like we’re in the wilderness. We can be frightened or overwhelmed by the experience - or we can consider the possibility that for all its challenges, this wilderness experience is exactly where we’ve been led by the Holy Spirit. Maybe it will help to make us better stewards and more faithful disciples. Maybe it will bring us closer to God. Maybe some time in the wilderness is just what we need to really become the church as the church was meant to be - dependent on God and faithful to God in all circumstances.
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