God Came Near

Here we are again on the scene of Jesus’s baptism and temptation.

Perhaps you are familiar with the more detailed versions in the other gospel accounts where there is a conversation between the devil and Jesus over turning stones into bread, falling off a high pinnacle, and bowing down before him.

But for Mark, there is a whole lot packed into just a few short sentences. Jesus is baptized and the heavens are torn open. The Spirit drives him into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan, accompanied by wild beasts, and waited on by angels. Then after John is arrested, the one who just baptized him a little over a month ago, Jesus starts his ministry and gives his first sermon. Mark accomplishes all of these movements in just 7 verses.

Just this past week at book club we were discussing the end of the book and I was saying how I felt kinda like the author wrapped it up too quickly. I simply had too many questions. He had left far too much room for me to wonder what happened.

In one fell swoop, Mark covers Jesus’ baptism, temptation, and good news. While this pattern is similar to that of the exodus through the baptism through the Red Sea, the 40 years in the wilderness, and the good news of the promised land, we are still left with many questions.

Why is Mark in such a rush? He uses the word immediately twice: immediately the heavens tore open at Jesus’ baptism and immediately Jesus was driven into the wilderness.

Why was Jesus driven into the wilderness by the Spirit? Did he not willingly go? Was he still dripping water from his baptism? Did anyone else see the heavens tear open? Why doesn’t Mark mention anything about Jesus fasting here?

Why does Mark use the name Satan instead of the devil as Matthew and Luke do? What was their conversation like? Was Jesus wrestling with what it meant to truly be the Son of God? Malcom Guite says that whatever good thing the devil promises, in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons, are but cheap imitations of the real goodness that God offers that Jesus will later receive and share. That’s what temptation does: it convinces us a knockoff is better than the real thing.

What kind of wild beasts were there? Were they somehow nice to Jesus? Wild beasts makes me think more of those kinda creatures in Harry Potter that lurk in the Forbidden Forest. Something tells me it wasn’t a parade of Cocker Spaniels. How did Jesus respond to these animals? Did they try to attack him? Did he try to hide from them? And what were the angels doing? Did they bring him food? Did they tend to any wounds? Did they help protect him?

We just don’t know. In this account of the wilderness, our imaginations run wild, which is somehow almost scarier. David Jacobsen says “Jesus’ temptation is not some theological conversation with the devil. Instead, it is a forty-day, life-or-death, Spirit-authorized struggle in a place of vulnerability... The temptation in Mark is not words, but an apocalyptic struggle that Jesus survives.”

Being stuck in a place with no food or shelter with Satan and wild beasts is not a place I would want to be. It is not a place I would willingly choose to go, which is precisely why it is a wilderness.

Why is the wilderness important, and why do we reference it so much during Lent? Maybe you aren’t sitting in the Sahara right now, but I am willing to bet you know what a wilderness is.

Barbara Holmes says “Today’s wilderness can be found in bustling suburban and urban centers, on death row, in homeless shelters in the middle of the night, and in the eyes of a hospice patient.” A wilderness can be when you have lost your job, when you are in near constant pain but sick of talking about it, when someone you love has betrayed you, when you don’t fully know how you will pay for the amount of bills that surround you, or when you are longing to hear from God but feel like you keep coming up short.

Barbara Brown Taylor says “Wildernesses come in so many shapes and sizes that the only way you can really tell you are in one is to look around for what you normally count on to save your life and come up empty.  No food.  No earthly power.  No special protection--just a Bible-quoting devil and a whole bunch of sand.”

Barbara says “Whatever your own wilderness is like, I am betting that it has at least three things in common with all other wildernesses: You did not choose it. It is no place you would ever have gone on your own. You are not in control.”

Who wants to sign up for that for a whole 40 days? You didn’t choose it. It isn’t a place you would have gone by yourself. You aren’t in control. Maybe you are already smack in the middle of a wilderness season and would rather I hand you a “get our of Lent free card.” But in Matthew, Luke, and even Mark’s brief account, Jesus doesn’t preach the gospel without going through the wilderness. What would your view of God be if Jesus hadn’t sat in the wilderness, hadn’t been tempted and tried? While many of us in our lives try to avoid wilderness experiences at all cost, we all end up there someway, somehow. And though it seems that we may be there with the devil and the wild beasts, let us not forget the activity of the Spirit in and through it all.

The Spirit anointed Jesus, filled Jesus, led Jesus into the wilderness, sustained him, and then led him out of it and into his ministry. Jesus did not go into the wilderness empty-handed but was full of the Spirit and the words “this is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So whatever other conversation happened, this is what Jesus held to.

Lent is a season of preparation. The term “Lent” stems from the English word for lengthen and an Anglo-Saxon word for springtime. Did I just say spring? I thought we were talking about wilderness. When I set this altar for Lent, I was trying to create the imagery of a wilderness. The colors of a desert. Dry branches all twisted together. Rocks. Nothing is in bloom here.

Yet within Lent, there is something that says spring. As if in the middle of a wilderness just like beneath our ashes, we know that there is more to the story. Barbara Brown Taylor lovingly refers to this as “the greening of our soul.” The time in which our souls are preparing for Easter. The time in which we are pruned for something new.

In our wilderness, we wrestle and wonder “when will this ever end?” I don’t know what your temptations are, what wild beasts that you try to keep at bay. But I know the One who went through it all and who will not abandon you in your own. I know the One who came out of the wilderness with good news, with a message of the kingdom of God is now at hand. I know the One who refused to turn cheap stones into bread because He was the Bread of Life.

As Malcolm Guite says in his poem Stones Into Bread:

The Fountain thirsts, the Bread is hungry here

The Light is dark, the Word without a voice.

When darkness speaks it seems so light and clear.

Now He must dare, with us, to make a choice.

In a distended belly’s cruel curve

He feels the famine of the ones who lose

He starves for those whom we have forced to starve

He chooses now for those who cannot choose.

He is the staff and sustenance of life

He lives for all from one Sustaining Word

His love still breaks and pierces like a knife

The stony ground of hearts that never shared,

God gives through Him what Satan never could;

The broken bread that is our only food.”

Will you walk with the Bread of Life in the wilderness? Will you allow Him to lead you to the other side?