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A Sermon for DaySpring
By Eric Howell
“Out In the Wilderness”
Mark 1:9-12
First Sunday of Lent
February 22, 2015
The Christian faith is beautiful and life is too, full of wonder and grace. But
sometimes it is hard and Lent brings us face to face with life when it is not beautiful.
That may be why for some people Lent feels like the truest if all the seasons. Not
morose, but real. Not maudlin, but raw. And in that . . .true.
Any illusion that Lent is anything other is vanquished in the first Sunday as we are
immediately transported to the wilderness.
Whereas wilderness may be an alluring place for those seeking beauty and solitude,
in biblical terms wilderness is a scary place. God is always there, but so are
temptations and Satan and our true selves. We meet them face to face in the wild.
And the result isn't always pleasant. But at least it's true. Jesus’ venture into the
wilderness was no vacation. This was no suburban-packed trip to the closest
national park. There were no sidewalks, no guardrails, and certainly no park
rangers out there. He seems to have worn no backpack, brought no supplies, and
made no provision for physical sustenance. He just went alone into the uninhabited
place, solitary, lonely, desolate.
With all these people all around who need preaching to and serving, healing, and
saving . . .and this is the one shot for the Lord incarnate on earth, there he goes, off,
alone. There’s a lot of work to be done with people, societies, nations, systems of
injustice and abusive power. There are problems to be solved and souls to be saved.
But there he goes. Off the grid. Away from people. The single solitary Lord of all
creation out there where no one else wants to go.
What happens out there is something of a mystery. The other gospels fill in the gaps
in the story by telling of a dialogue with the tempter, three temptations echo the
three gifts of the wisemen at his birth, the three days between cross and empty
grave at his death, and the three persons of the Holy Trinity. There’s a rich tapestry
of meaning in those temptations and all the ways that Jesus was lured to use the
power and authority he had for good, or at least to save his own neck. That’s what
the other gospels give.
Mark’s description of the forty days in the wilderness is as barren as the wilderness.
It’s sparse, minimalistic, and simple. He was there forty days, tempted by Satan. He
was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
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That’s all. The wilderness is mostly characterized by deafening silence and
loneliness. Mark’s sparse storytelling tells us more by what it doesn’t tell us.
The other day a group of students were reading a poem called Fire by Judy Brown.
One of them astutely observed that the way the lines of the poem are laid out, if you
turn the page on its side, it looks like the fingers of flame. The poem Fire looks like a
fire. Mark’s wilderness story looks like the open, barren range of a deserted place.
There’s not much there besides a single person and wild animals that remind us that
wilderness is a place where the absence of things is the first, most noticeable thing.
When you have stuff and access to stuff and then you don’t, what you feel most
acutely is the desire to have the stuff you had and now don’t have as you adjust to
your new surroundings. When you go from eating whatever you want to whenever
you want to, eating far less or nothing at all, it’s normal to be consumed by thoughts
of what you would be eating if you could eat what you want. Dieters know this as
that which sabotages good intentions. People fasting know this too, as that which
sharpens the spiritual lessons in the fast. People who have descended into poverty
know this as well. When you now don’t have something you used to have, the gap
stings like a scorpion. Whether you’ve chosen this or whether it’s just happened to
you, it hurts, the distance between what was and now is.
As a spiritual discipline, this is a growing experience. As a harsh reality of life, it
may be a growing experience. It may also just be a really hard time. Wilderness
isn’t just a place on a map; it’s an interior space when all is stripped away. And
when you’re there, what you find you don’t have is what is hard.
Just as there is nothing in Jesus’ wilderness but a person and the wild animals,
there’s not much there between a person and the wild animals. Which reminds us
that the wilderness is a place of danger and vulnerability.
The vision of the kingdom of God may be that the lion lay down with the lamb, but
until that day comes, lions like to eat lambs. They are tasty. Out to the wilderness
goes the good shepherd whose only sheep at this moment was himself. He is
shepherd. He is lamb. He is Lord of all creation. What happened with him and the
wild animals out there?
Was it like Noah, who gathered them up and organized them into a floating zoo?
Was it like Daniel, whose prayer closed the lions’ mouths?
Was it like Adam, who lived among them in the garden and subdued them?
St. Francis is said to have had gentle relationships with wild animals. There are the
stories of him preaching to the birds, ‘my little sisters’. Then there ‘s the story of his
taming the wolf that had been terrorizing the town of Gubbio, eating their livestock
and sometimes their children.
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Francis walked right up to the wolf of Gubbio and told him to stop terrorizing the
townspeople. The wolf agreed to this and extended his paw in acceptance. From
then on, the wolf walked in and among the people of the town. They fed him and
when he died, they mourned his loss. A statue of Francis and the wolf was erected
in the town square of the city and stands today.
Did Jesus live in fear of the wild animals or did he tame them? The same question
may be asked of each of us . . . do we live in fear or do we tame the wild ones, if the
wild animals may be thought to be vices, with their own sharp teeth and claws,
stalking at night within us as their prey --- pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony,
lust. Can we tame these inner predators or must we cower in fear every day in our
own wilderness?
And if those weren’t enough, Satan is out there too. In the other gospels Satan’s
cunning is defeated by trust in God and reliance on scripture’s wisdom. In Mark, it’s
not so simple or straightforward and it’s not at all apparent that the temptation was
a one-time event, or one conversation.
Temptation is rarely a one-time thing. It’s a germ that grows, a hot wind that blows,
a path diverging into the darkness, and then another path, and then another, and
then another.
In one way it seems more true to human experience for ongoing temptation to be
encountered. Yet, to entertain temptation as a houseguest is not the way of
righteousness. Temptation is not a friend-you-love-to hate. It’s a path to
destruction. There’s a sad and strange story this past week about how a car honking
at another car led to road rage, led to threats, led to fear, led to the murder of a
mother of two. Surely somewhere at the root of that tragedy is pride, envy, wrath,
sloth, greed, gluttony, lust. It’s a headline worthy story of how entertaining the
temptations to vice can lead to destruction. A woman wasn’t murdered because
someone honked a car horn. That’s the headline. A woman was murdered because
the honk of a car horn wounded some pride, triggered anger, justified wrath, all of
which had surely been incubated in the muck of sloth . . .in someone who maybe has
spent his whole life out in his own lonely wilderness.
Satan, wild beasts, lonely silences . . .all of this is out there, in there in the
wilderness. It’s where we encounter deep helplessness in the face of our sin and
chaos of the world.
Jesus went there. But it’s not entirely clear that Jesus chose to go there. The Spirit
drove him there. The word is (ekballo) and it’s used again later in the chapter to
describe what Jesus does with the demon inside the man in the synagogue. Ekballo.
To cast out. Jesus is cast out into the wilderness like later he will cast out a demon.
To expel, send out, rid yourself of. The Spirit casts Jesus into the wilderness.
And so I suppose we can now say this with confidence:
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If you have ever been tempted, Jesus is there.
If you have ever wrestled with wild animals, Jesus is there.
If you have ever been cast out into the darkness of life . . .you’ve lost a job, you’ve
lost a marriage, you’ve lost a friendship, or your own sense of self, or vocation, or
faith.
If you’ve ever been the one who has found himself or herself outside, off the grid,
alone and vulnerable, wondering how exactly life will go on.
Jesus has been there. Luke goes to much detail to show how Jesus was born in a
stable so that we will know you can’t have a poorer or more powerless beginning
than he did. John goes to much detail to show how Jesus is of God to show you how
fully, deeply, and profoundly you are loved by God. Matthew goes to great detail
about Jesus’ lineage to show how you can trust in his identity as the fulfillment of
the promises to Israel.
Mark gives us none of this. No cosmic origin of the eternal second person of the
Trinity, as in John; no detailed lineage of the Son of David and Abraham, as in
Matthew, no Bethlehem birth in a poor stable with the animals, as in Luke.
But Mark gives us this instead as an introduction to our Savior: Jesus Christ, cast
outside, alone, and hungry, with no sound but the whispers of temptation, and no
food but the word of God. But there were angels there. And with their sustaining
help, he was drawn through death for the sake of life. And this is the Lenten
wilderness journey to the cross and the rhythm and hope of the gospel of Life for all
who know too well the wilderness.
Copyright 2015, by Eric Howell