WRESTLING IN THE WILDERNESS.
Cooke’s-Portsmouth Church
February 22, 2015
Mark 1: 9-15.
The gospel lesson for the first Sunday Lent is always about the temptation of Jesus. Matthew and
Luke have far more in depth accounts of the taunting that Jesus was subjected to by Satan in the wilderness. Mark’s account is far more concise and perfunctory. In seven verses Jesus is baptized, glimpses heaven, sees the descending spirit in the form of a dove, hears the voice of
God and is then immediately spirited away into the wilderness where he is threatened by wild beasts and tempted by Satan while being ministered to by angels. Forty days later he emerges from the wilderness and begins his ministry of proclamation.
Mark uses one verse to describe the whole temptation. Matthew takes 11 verses and Luke needs
12. Matthew and Luke go into detail about the conversation between the two adversaries and the reader glimpses the intense struggle as the tester tries to take advantage of Jesus who has gone without food for forty days. For Matthew and Luke temptation comes when Jesus is vulnerable.
As I read the text, Mark has Jesus enter the wilderness on a spiritual high following his vision of heaven, the descent of the Spirit and hearing the affirming voice of God.
I daresay that Jesus became more vulnerable as the forty days and nights dragged on, but in the power of his vision and affirmation he is equipped to challenge wild beasts and Satan. As I read the other synoptic writers, Matthew and Luke, I get a sense of just how wily the tester is: using spiritual empowerment and vulnerability as stepping stones.
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In Matthew and Luke Satan patiently waits and watches as days morph into weeks and Jesus is alone in the wilderness without food and shelter. He is vulnerable to attack from wild animals as much as his imaginings. Satan waits, and when the forty days are nearing an end he pounces when Jesus is seemingly ripe for seduction.
The tempter is a wily nemesis and can use both vulnerability and spiritual strength as allies.
Following a spiritual high we may feel so secure in the faith that we imagine that there is nothing that could cause us to doubt, fail or fall. As we were reminded last week on Transfiguration
Sunday Peter, James and John saw Jesus changed before their very eyes; saw him speak with
Moses and Elijah; heard the very voice of God; but this did not keep Peter from denying even knowing Jesus after his arrest. And, if we are honest, when we tired, unwell and vulnerable, we are more inclined to be defeatist. The tempter is wily and cunning and able to use all avenues to turn hearts: spiritual high and vulnerability. Jesus was able to resist both. You and I are a different story.
For our purposes this morning I am going to suggest that we ponder how easy it is for us to be tempted to sin. We may not break the law or do those things that may land us in court or jail; but we are tempted, and we often succumb to temptation. We may try to convince ourselves that our sins are small, but as my mother was fond of reminding me in my youth and to my chagrin, in the eyes of God there are no big sins or little sins: there is just sin. And since all us of are imperfect human beings we have all chosen unwisely from time to time.
We may have cheated on our taxes by not always declaring income. We have gossiped about others and held some grudges. When we have been wronged we have sometimes silently burned and hoped for retaliation. We have remained silent when we ought to have spoken up and spoken when we out to have kept silent. We have sacrificed others for our own safety and withheld
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forgiveness. Through our fingers have slipped opportunities not taken, days not celebrated, love not shared. We have been jealous, and envious, boastful and proud. We have been judgemental, perhaps dismissing another before we have all of the facts. In the great scheme of things, these little infractions may not be as bad as compared to acts of terrorism, grand theft, assault and murder. But that is not the point. The point is that we are still tempted both brazenly- like with our taxes, attitudes and position- and in vulnerability succumbing when we are weak; making poor choices and blaming others.
Many years ago I took a course taught by Rabbi Dow Marmur. As with much of my education I remember very little but I do remember one thing that he taught, probably because I had never considered it before. He said that Jewish people had an advantage over Christians in one way because the Hebrew Bible is filled with stories of family dysfunction. Contrast this with the Holy
Family and a baby who never cries. He did not offer this as an excuse for attitude and behaviour, but it did help me to look at the heroes and heroines through more human eyes.
Abraham is revered as a man of great faith-willing to leave everything to go to a place that God would reveal in God’s good time. In the wanderings he fathered a child with his wife’s maidservant-at the suggestion of his wife- and then abandoned the child, Ishmael, and his mother, Hagar, in the desert to die-again at the behest of his wife. Abraham’s son Jacob, stole his twin’s birthright and blessing; preferred his second wife to his first; stole from his father in law and loved two of his twelve sons more than his other ten. Joseph ascended in Egypt but bartered so much of his people’s possessions away for food that they became indebted to Pharaoh and were forced into slavery. Moses, who ascended as leader was a murdered who had to run away and hide. And when God offered him the opportunity to free the slaves he argued with God to choose a better candidate. David, the golden haired boy that has offered royal lineage to Jesus
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had an affair with his neighbour, Bathsheba, while her husband, Uriah, was fighting as a soldier in David’s army.
When Bathsheba revealed that she was carrying David’s illegitimate child, the king summons
Uriah home for a break from fighting, in hope that he would sleep with his wife and consider the baby a child of wedlock. But Uriah refused to cross the threshold of his home while his fellow soldiers slept in tents, ate army rations and were denied access to their homes. David then sent
Uriah back to fight.
But first he wrote a note that instructed Uriah’s commanding officer to place Uriah in the front lines where he would surely be killed. And he had Uriah carry his own death notice in his hand and proffer the order to his commander. If we take this one story from the life of King David and ponder it in light of the commandments he broke six through ten: murder, adultery, theft, false witness and covetousness.
These and other stories remind just how difficult it is to live exemplary lives; how challenging it has always been for people of faith to take the moral high road in strength and vulnerability.
Jacob’s arrogance, the nagging self- doubt of Moses; the pushiness of Sarah, the weakness of
Abraham, the lust of David are all parts of our Judaic Christian story. Arrogance, cheating, selfdoubt, pushiness, weakness, and vulnerability continue to tempt and lure as we live the faith.
And then there is the story of Jesus being tempted to succumb to all manner of forces-unnamed by Mark- but tempted for forty days and forty nights in empowerment and vulnerability. And, because of who he is, was able to not succumb.
The account of Jesus’ temptation follows his baptism and is at the start of his public ministry.
We revisit this story on the first Sunday of Lent as we prepare to journey to Calvary. We do it in
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the fullness of our humanity, recognizing that we are tempted in power and tempted in vulnerability. Because of our humanity we can never be perfect; we will choose poorly and hurt self and others. Our hope is that the complete humanity of Jesus will empower us to live more divine lives. In the agony and in the ecstasy may we reflect the light of grace.. Amen.
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