Wilderness Testing

Every year at the beginning of Lent, we are invited to journey with Jesus into the wilderness. The Gospel we have just read is sometimes called the temptation in the wilderness or the desert. This is an appropriate name for the similar story that is told within the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. But here in the Gospel of Mark, the emphasis is really not on the temptation at all. The wilderness itself is the centre of the action and the attention. Like the great figures that had journeyed into the wilderness before them, Israel had often been invited to be tested in the wilderness, especially during the years of desert wandering. Here the Spirit after his baptism in the wilderness drives him out – like Jesus will so often drive out demons in this gospel.

All that Mark tells us of this encounter is that he was there in the wilderness for forty days and the wild animals were with him. It is not immediately obvious if that is a good thing (like a re-imagining of the Garden of Eden, or of the Messianic images of lion and lamb lying down together, as in Isaiah 11) of introduced as an object of realistic fear. The animals that did then exist were indeed fearsome. Thankfully this is paired with the more comforting truth of the angels ministering to him.

Through all of this we are invited into our own wilderness adventure where we can let go of all of those things that may otherwise get in the way of our relationship with God.

• Lent Sunday 1, Year B. Mark 1:12-15.
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(00:00:00) – Every year on this first Sunday of Lent, we’re invited to journey with Jesus into the wilderness. And Mark’s Gospel is very strong in the the sense of what that wilderness might mean for us. This is not so much the gospel of the temptation in the Gospel of Matthew, in the Gospel of Luke. They’re very clear descriptions about what kinds of things that Satan or the the accuser did to try and tempt Jesus, but Mark doesn’t seem to have any interest in that at all. Instead, it’s very clear that it’s the Holy Spirit that is the driving force here. It’s the Holy Spirit immediately after the baptism of Jesus, immediately after that incredible event when the voice of the father was heard over the waters of the Jordan River, inviting Jesus into that fullness, inviting us into that same realization that this is my son, with whom I am well pleased. And the spirit then Jesus is already in the wilderness, but he takes Jesus to an even more wilderness kind of place in order to be there, like Israel had been in the wilderness for the 40 years, like Moses had been up on the mountain for the 40 days, like Elijah had to make his way from the very north of Israel, down towards Egypt and to Mount Sinai and his 40 day adventure.

(00:01:45) – The wilderness is a fascinating place. Having spent a week or so in the Judean and the Negev deserts a few years ago. You know, I got a very strong sense of of just the barrenness of this place. How absolutely desolate it is. Almost no vegetation at all. Just rocks and gravel and dirt and dust. It’s not a very welcoming kind of place, a place that I would naturally choose to, to go into, to spend a lot of time. You know, the oppressive sun. We don’t know what time of the year this is happening or could be, you know, the incredible cold that is also possible in Israel, as we’ve seen this week with photos of Jerusalem covered in snow for the first time in a few years. But the wilderness is also not owned by anybody. It’s in that definition of no man’s land. It’s not the possession of any nation. No one really wants it. Of course, people will still fight battles over it and and all of that. But the wilderness is a place of encounter precisely because there’s nothing there.

(00:02:56) – We’re stripped away all of the things that define us to shape us, to characterize us. All of that has to be kind of checked at the the door as it will. We’re invited into that experience of nakedness. It’s a liminal place. It’s a place of in-between. It’s not a place where you can just live forever. Even the Bedouin tribes and things would have to to move around and to find enough sustenance to be able to live. So the wilderness is this place where we challenged Mark in these two lines. Doesn’t give us a lot of detail about what happened, but it’s actually the first active description about Jesus. And he was there with the wild beasts. We don’t know whether that’s meant to be a scary thing. I mean, we know at the time that there were certainly some scary animals that were in the wild in that Judean or the Negev desert and the wilderness areas, or if it’s meant to be a reminder of the Garden of Eden, when the wild animals were with the first man and the first woman, and there was a sense of peace, all those great prophetic utterances like Isaiah chapter 11, where there is that declaration of what it will be like when the Messiah returns with the Messiah comes, and the lamb and the lion will at last lay down together, and the child will be able to put their hand into the viper’s nest and be unharmed.

(00:04:32) – We’re not really sure. It seems that it’s more likely that we’re just that the sense of this is a scary place. This is not a place of welcome, a place of joy, a place of delight. This is a place where Jesus has to be driven, cast out almost by the Holy Spirit in order to go into this place, to encounter the Lord and to be tested just as Israel, just as so many others, just as we ourselves. I’ve experienced those periods of testing in our lives. So says Abraham, as we hear about next week in the gospel. In the first reading from the book of Genesis was tested there in the wilderness. So also we’re constantly being invited to purify our faith, to recognize what are the things that have got in the way. What are those images of God that are no longer serving as well? What are those things, those rules, those regulations that constrict us and hold us back and prevent us from being that free people who, in the Spirit of God, worship the Lord and are able to fulfill that first teaching and preaching of Jesus, to return on home, to come on home, to find that restoration, to find that life once again in the Kingdom of God.(00:05:50) – Repentance means that turning away the change of mind, that recognition that the way that I’ve been going hasn’t provided me with life, hasn’t given me the fruit that I need. I need to let go. I need to surrender. I need to stop letting Richard be the one in charge. And let God be the one who’s doing this work is restoring his people, who’s loving us back into that new creation. Jesus in the wilderness provides an example for us there. With the wild animals ministered to by the angel, he’s able to find his sustenance, and his life invites us to do the same. He invites us, during these 40 days of this season of lent, to recognize all the different ways that we’ve put God aside, all the different ways that we haven’t been faithful to God, all the ways that we’ve allowed strange images of God to get in the way of God, and sometimes of God’s people. Lent is that invitation to return that invitation to choose life once again, to find our life, to find our identity in God, in his love, his goodness, and his mercy.

(00:07:11) – That’s indeed allow that wilderness to be for us a source of life. Calling us once again to find our purpose, to find our joy. To find our delight in God, to receive his mercy, to receive his forgiveness, and freed of all things that have held us back there in the wilderness simply to be with our father.