Where is the Wilderness?

Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is “Immediately” driven into the wilderness.  Luke and Matthew’s version gives details.  Mark's does not.  While we might be tempted to fill in Mark’s version with details borrowed from Luke and Matthew, I’m going to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to do that.  Because, I think, Mark is actually trying to give us a gift by leaving out the details.  

When Jesus is “Immediately” transported into the wilderness we immediately picture a physical, geographical, place.  Rocks and sand and sun.  But Mark’s not the one who gives us those details, is he?  WE read the rocks, sand, and sun INTO what he wrote.  So, could it be that the wilderness to which Jesus was “Immediately” transported, at least in Mark’s understanding, was not necessarily a PHYSICAL place of rocks and sand and blistering sun, but perhaps a spiritual, emotional, or existential kind of wilderness instead?  

That wouldn’t make Jesus’ experience less REAL, but what it does for me, at least, is to allow this story to hit closer to home.  You see, I’ve never stood in a physical desert being tempted by Satan with red horns and pitchfork in hand.  But I’ve absolutely spent time in an emotional and spiritual wilderness.  When Mark chose to NOT have the specific temptations laid out for us, OR stage the scene for us with solid rocks, intrusive sand, and blistering sun, Mark is giving us a gift.  He's allowing us to imagine Jesus himself perhaps experiencing a type of wilderness that we ourselves inevitably experience in our own lives. 

So here in Mark’s version, Jesus is tempted for forty days by Satan… “forty days” is Bible shorthand for a very long time.  AND at the same time he was being tempted, he was also with the Wild Beasts…  AND at that same time, angels waited on him.  ALL of it seems to have been happening together, according to Mark, in a giant jumbled mess!  That experience of life as a jumbled mess feels more like what I’ve experienced in my life as well. 

My experiences with wilderness have been more with emotional and spiritual, than physical.  All in my head, yes, but still VERY painfully real!  Wilderness time filled with Wild Beasts.  Some helpful.  Some not. Beasts who held me, not trying to “fix” it with words but simply being present.  But also Beasts who fed on my pain.  And with both sorts of Beasts there have also been angels, not just after the fact, but all the way through.  Nearly always, I saw those angels only with hindsight, but they were there, bringing unexpected kindnesses and generosity, seemingly out of nowhere. 

And then, in Mark’s story, Jesus appears to simply leave the wilderness behind.  Off to Galilee.  Or do we read that part into the story too?  Because here in Mark’s Gospel, if Jesus’ wilderness is not a physical wilderness built only with rocks and sand and sun… then perhaps it was a wilderness that he brought with him, even as he moved on into Galilee.  THAT rings true for me as well.  A wilderness that comes with you.  Because none of us, not even Jesus, can un-experience the experiences of our past.  Our brains are wired so that we MUST take all of our experiences with us through the rest of our lives.  We carry it all.  Times of wilderness and times of wonder.  Times of pain and times of pleasure. Times we never want to forget and times we’d do almost ANYTHING to forget.  Regardless of the experience… regardless of whether we see them as “good” or “bad” we carry every single one of them through our entire lives.  

All our baggage.  Always with us.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  We don’t have a choice about that… and BELIEVE me, I would LOVE to have a choice about that!  But what Jesus shows us here, is that even though we carry it all, we can still also choose to move on.  If we wait for our baggage to disappear, we’ll stay stuck forever.  So we have to move on... yes, all of that baggage still in tow.  But... WE can decide HOW to carry it.  

Will we carry it like a cartoon bell boy, stacked so high we can’t see… no idea where we’re going… constantly dropping our baggage on the heads of the people around us?  Or will we carry it like Jesus carried his?  Gather it all up… the good the bad and the ugly… and bring the lot of it to the cross.  Not because the cross is just one last horrible experience to pile on our load, but because the cross is the ONE PLACE where all of our entire lifetime of experiences are transformed from darkness into light… from despair into hope… and from death into life.

  

Lent… this season of just forty days… is meant to be a time for us to practice, every year, dealing with our wilderness bags so that we might carry them more like Jesus carried his.  A time to practice techniques passed on through the ages that help us do that instead of lying crushed beneath it.  To practice what the Disciplines of Lent... Repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love.

It is those ancient practices that are meant to help choose to move on and show us how to move on.  To help us remember, that while all our experiences… the good, the bad, the ugly… the rocks, the sand, the sun… the joys, the triumphs and the pains… ALL come with us... 

As God's Beloved... WE, like Jesus, get to decide whether we will stay stuck, crushed under it's weight, or choose instead to take each bag, each wilderness experience, each encounter with devil, beast, and angel and let God transform each one into stepping stones to guide us in our following of Jesus toward a life transformed.  Amen.