Wilderness Pilgrimage

As we begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, we also begin our journey into the wilderness. Today and each Wednesday in Lent we will journey further into the wilderness and explore Biblical themes associated with the wilderness and all the things we can learn from it. My prayer for this season of Lent is that not only do we learn, but we grow in our faith so that we can trust in God and our faith community as we spend times journeying through the wilderness.

So what do I mean by the wilderness? As we see in Jesus’ wilderness time as well as the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness we can see that it is a time of testing and discerning. We’ll explore the more closely the Israelites in the wilderness in future weeks, so today we see Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is presented with three temptations or tests: stone to bread, forcing God to save Jesus from death, and worship of something other than God in order to rule over the kingdoms of the world. Let’s look at them a little more closely and link them together to an overall understanding of what is behind them.

While we know that it’s the devil and in reading this it seems so obvious and simple to tell the tester “no” we need to look at these tests. What we see is that each of them isn’t really wrong. In the first temptation Jesus is invited to turn stone to bread. He’s hungry and he has the power to do it, so solve your hunger with making food appear. After all we see in several ways that Jesus feeds those who are physically hungry as well as spends a good part of his ministry in table fellowship with people. Food is essential to life in general and to Jesus ministry.

Next we see that he is invited to just fall and see how God will rescue him. The tester even uses scripture to reinforce his point. He’s right for two points that I can think of: 1. God would rescue God’s own son especially before his work is done, and in fact we do see how the angels even show up after the tempter is done with his tests. 2. God does desire the wellbeing of all people so how much more might God seek that for God’s own son. We would all agree that God would rescue him.

Finally we see the tester try to convince Jesus to bypass all the difficult work that is ahead of him and simply rule the world. In a way that is what we all want. We want God to rule the world and what better way could it happen then to have Jesus at the head, leading the way from an earthly throne?

The problem with this wilderness time, this time of temptation for Jesus is that all of these things are not what God wants for Jesus and this world. This time of testing for Jesus is to trust in God and God’s will for both Jesus and this world. To trust that God’s plan is the one that is the one that really will bring this world and everyone in it into right relationship with God.

And that would be what we are going to learn this Lent. We are going to work through other stories from the Bible to help us grow in our faith so that when we, like Jesus, go through times of wilderness journeys, times of trial and hardship, we will focus in on God and what God wants, knowing that on the other side of the wilderness is that place of wellbeing that God wants for all people. So join me as we enter the wilderness of Lent trusting in the word of God, the love of Jesus and the company of the Spirit to bring us to the other side, no matter how tempting it is to go another route, and that on the other side is life from God our creator. Amen.