Wilderness

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

February 18, 2018

1 Lent B

When I was 11 years old, my family moved from a New Jersey suburb of New York City to Little Rock, Arkansas.  While I knew that life would be different in the south....less snow, for one thing...I was totally unprepared for importance of family ties in the south.  In the bedroom community where we had lived in New Jersey, pedigree did not matter.  No one cared who you were related to; no one would have known them anyway.  People moved in and people moved out.  If you didn’t get to know your neighbors quickly, you never would because one of you would move.   So, we were surprised when we moved to the south where the first question asked after being introduced to someone was a very patriarchal “who is your father?”  My father wasn’t anyone particularly important, but my grandmother had lived in and around Little Rock most of her life, knew lots of people, and in a pinch that would save me from being a total outsider in the 6th grade.  For better or worse, mostly the latter I imagine, pedigree told people who you were and something they thought important about you.

          Jesus’ pedigree seems to be of great importance to Mark’s gospel.  This is, after all, the third time in 2 months that we have heard the voice of God say to Jesus “You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  The first time was in January, January 7 to be exact, on the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.  We heard the same gospel reading that morning...the heavens were torn apart, the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, and the voice of God spoke.  Then, last Sunday, on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, we heard the voice of God speak from a cloud at Jesus’ transfiguration and say “This is my Son, my beloved, listen to him.”  And then today, we hear the story of the baptism of Jesus again, followed this time by Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  A third time, we hear the voice of God say “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  On three different Sundays in three different contexts, baptism, transfiguration, and temptation, we hear two stories where the voice of God says the exact same thing.  Clearly, Jesus’ pedigree, his identity as the Son of God, is important to Mark and tells us who Jesus is and something important about him.

The cynics say that the only reason that we hear the voice of God at Jesus’s baptism today, on the first Sunday of Lent, is because without the account of Jesus’ baptism, Mark’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is only two verses, hardly enough for a respectable gospel lesson.  Certainly, Mark gives us by far the briefest account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  Mark does not tell us how Satan tempted Jesus, as Matthew and Luke do.  But because Mark says so little, we are called to pay careful attention to every word he does give us. 

The story of Jesus’ baptism and the story of Jesus’ temptation are linked together because the first thing Mark tells us is that IMMEDIATELY after Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit DROVE him into the wilderness.   Jesus is not led by the Spirit, not filled with the Spirit, but driven by the Spirit.  Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, as Moses was on Mount Sinai with God for 40 days and 40 nights, as Elijah spent 40 days and 40 nights without food on the same mountain, as the Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness after their deliverance through the Red Sea.  And Jesus was not alone in the wilderness.  He was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. 

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness defines what it means to be the Son of God, which is why we hear the stories of Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ temptation together.  First, to be the Son of God is to trust the Spirit, the same Spirit that descended upon him as a dove, even when the Spirit of God takes him into the harsh barrenness of the wilderness.   Secondly, the Son of God is part of the continuing story of the relationship between God and God’s people, the same story in which Moses and Elijah had key roles.  Jesus will move the story further than either Moses or Elijah ever dreamed possible, but it is still the same story and the same God that Moses and Elijah encountered on the mountain and that led the Israelites through 40 years in the wilderness.  Thirdly, to be the Son of God is not to be exempt from suffering and struggle.  Quite the opposite.  To be the Son of God means engaging the suffering of the world and the struggle between good and evil.

On Ash Wednesday, we entered the Lenten wilderness.  The wilderness felt even more stark this year as we were reminded on Ash Wednesday of the darkness of violence and senseless death in the loss of 17 beloved children of God.  The Lenten wilderness is a place where we, like Jesus, wrestle with our identity as God’s beloved children.   How does our identity as God’s beloved children, and our understanding that all people are God’s beloved children, affect the way we live in a world where violence and suffering always seem to have the last word?  In this Lenten wilderness and through our Lenten disciplines, we learn to trust God where we have trusted our possessions, food, habits, or opinions for a feeling of security.    But our trust in God does not mean we just sit around and wait for God to act.  Through our study of scripture, we understand more deeply how we are part of the ongoing story of salvation, and how we are called to make this world more closely resemble the Kingdom of God.  And, like Jesus, we are reminded that being God’s beloved child does not mean that we are exempt suffering or the struggle between good and evil.  Instead, we will learn to find God in the midst of those struggles. 

The goal of Lent is not to simply survive in the wilderness until Easter.  The goal of the Lenten wilderness is to journey towards Easter in a way that deepens our understanding of who we are as God’s beloved children.  When we have a better understanding of who we are as God’s children, we will better know how we are to make this world more closely resemble the peaceable kingdom, where we can find God in the midst of the struggle between good and evil and how our lives can proclaim that the last word belongs to life.

                                                Amen.