Lent 1 C George Yandell
Did you hear the parallels? One trek in the wilderness is ending, another just beginning. In Deuteronomy, the Hebrew people are concluding their 40 years in the wilds, and Jesus is just beginning his wilderness sojourn. Moses is giving his final instructions to the people of God before they enter the promised land. They have finally reached their destination. Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil. He was just beginning his ministry.
In his book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 1998), Belden Laneoffers an understanding of wilderness I never heard before. He says, “Yahweh is a God who repeatedly leads the children of Israel into the desert, toward the mountain…. The God of Sinai is one who thrives on fierce landscapes, seemingly forcing God’s people into wild [places] where trust must be absolute.” (p. 43)
Instead of leading the people of Israel out of Egypt along the easier, more direct coastal route to the land of the Philistines, they had been pointed toward a longer route, more deeply into the desert, toward Mt. Sinai. God intentionally opted for the more difficult landscape, as if this was God’s usual preference. God’s people were deliberately forced into the desert, taking the harder, more hazardous route as an exercise in radical faith. (ibid, adapted, p. 44) “Perhaps others can go around the desert on the simpler route toward home, but the way of God’s people is always through it.” (ibid)
Luke’s gospel tells of Jesus “being led” into the wilderness by God’s Spirit. Luke bases his account on Mark’s gospel. Mark uses a tougher descriptor- it tells of Jesus being “driven” into the desert, a harsher word. It has the sense of Jesus being roughly thrown or violently propelled. Jesus, like all of Israel before him, is forced to take the hard way, going directly from his baptism into the wilderness of temptation… The Son of God, still wet from the waters of the Jordan, impelled into the wilds, is [already] going to his death, headed already toward the cross. Yet Jesus finds renewal and comfort in subsequent ventures into the mountains and desert places. It leads to miraculous nourishment and hope. (ibid)
Jesus resists all the devil’s temptations- Luke’s passage ends with the words, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.”
After those 40 days, Jesus continued to seek the wilderness throughout his ministry. As often as he retreated to the desert, seeking some quiet away from the crowds, people followed him. They were curious, captivated, drawn to the edge of their experience. It is in desert places that thousands were fed, and new community took form. In the presence of Jesus, the desert created a sharing and openness that would be repudiated by the authorities. They shunned the openness of contact and fellowship that characterized the Jesus movement. The place of scarcity, even death, Jesus revealed as a place of hope and new life. (ibid, adapted pp. 44-45) The desert bloomed with Jesus.
I suspect you know where I’m going with this. Lent beckons us to explore the wilderness of the soul. It’s a time when we can confront what tempts us away from being centered in Christ. We are offered a renewed sense of orientation. It’s like finding true north after being disoriented. Where better to encounter Jesus than in the challenging landscape of doubt, uncertainty, temptations. He has been there before us.
Walking through those tough passages opens us to mystical encounters with the cosmic Christ. He is in the still and the quiet, waiting to nourish us. He is with us in our hardships and frustrations. The tough landscapes of our past and future open us to honest, challenging relationships with God and one another. Jesus has bonded us as body of fellows. He keeps company with all who undertake his desert path. His trust in us is absolute. He invites us in turn trust him absolutely. That trust yields transformed people, transformed fellowship of sharing and openness. Transformed more and more into the beings God created us to be.
As Paul puts it in the epistle to the Romans, there are no distinctions in the company of Jesus. “Jesus is Lord of all and is generous to those who call on him.”