Jesus in the Wilderness

I cannot imagine the state of being 

Jesus is in 

during his time in the wilderness.

I myself know what it has been like during wilderness times in my own life

times of struggle, confusion, and tension.

The wilderness always involves emotional and spiritual tension.

Jesus goes from being a carpenter in a small town in Galilee,

working with his earthly father, Joseph

maybe with brothers

learning the trade of repair and creating out of wood

A good business

keeping him busy

And then he takes a small journey down to the Jordan River.

He meets his cousin John again and asks him to baptize him.

As he is coming up, he hears this voice

A voice different than any other voice

which speaks to him and names him and claims him

"You are my son."

Naturally, 

I always sort of picture this happening as it does in The Lion King...

the rolling thunder, the voice coming out of the cloud

Simba, you are my son.

His naming and claiming also comes with a price,

he has to go back to Pride Rock and be king,

despite not wanting to.

God names Jesus as, "the Beloved,"

his beloved

and then tells him what every child wants to hear at some point in their lives,

"with you I am well pleased."

In my more perverse human moments,

my jaded sense of worthlessness wonders

what did Jesus do that God is so pleased with him

up to this point, he hadn't started his ministry yet

he hasn't done anything yet.

However, I don't think God really works like that.

God loves Jesus

and will always love him.

Simple as that.

Of course, after telling Jesus how happy God is with him

and telling him how much love God has for him,

God immediately sends him out into the wilderness.

Now we tend to think of the wilderness

as a bad place.

A tough place to be.

A hard place to be.

Metaphorically, the wilderness is where you are

when you're unemployed

in the midst of divorce

grieving a family member

moving across the country

struggling with money or your spouse or your children or your career.

The wilderness is the hard, tense, stressful place to be.

You don't want to be there.

You don't want to go there.

Simple as that.

Yet, the first thing God does is send Jesus into the wilderness

after telling him that he is loved.

After him being baptized and taking on his ministry in the world.

The hot, dry, rocky, hilly, sandy, windy

wilderness.

Where rarely does anything grow.

Where life dies,

from lack of food and water.

Probably the bleakest part of the whole country of Israel.

And he is stuck there for FORTY days.

Not just a couple of hours.

Not just a whole day to get a full experience.

No, forty days.

Long enough to dry out all his skin.

Long enough to starve him to death.

Long enough for him to be railing mad and truly sick.

As if that wasn't enough

(which truly, that would be enough for me)

Jesus is found by Satan and tempted.

Would you like some food?

Would you like some power?

Would you like command?

Unlike Matthew and Luke, 

Mark doesn't go into the details of the temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness with Satan.

The adversary has tricks though

and we all know some of them.

If I had been in that situation

temptation would have been very easy

would you like some shade?

A nice glass of cool water?

How about some delicious hummus and pita?

I would have been a goner.

Luckily in the gospel of Mark, Jesus has some angels who wait on him.

That probably helped.

You may be thinking,

how could our God,

our good, loving, peaceful, God

torture his only son

by sending him out into the wilderness for so long.

Brutal!

Yes.

We have a tendency to believe that God is good

in our human understanding of good,

that God would never challenge or test us

because God is good to us all the time.

Yet, most of us would consider being sent out into the wilderness 

to fast for forty days and nights

something horrible.

However, like parents have to be with their children,

God does challenge and test us, 

God does lead us out into the wilderness

to help us grow and become better beings,

all the while, still being good.

In the narrative, this works in a literary form as well.

In ancient cultures, the story of Jesus,

is akin to a story about a hero-God,

like many other stories about hero-Gods from other ancient cultures,

and in such narratives,

the first test is only a sign of the greatness of the coming acts of the hero-God.

This remarkable feat of Jesus'

sets the stage for the even more remarkable things that Jesus is going to do

throughout the rest of the gospel story.

Can you imagine what Jesus must have looked like 

when he came back from forty days in the wilderness?

Dusty, dirty, hair all over the place,

thin, wrinkled, 

he probably started to look a lot like John the Baptist looked

wild hair, beard, ragged clothes, dusty, walking out of the wilderness

His family and former friends probably didn't recognize him at first

who is that?

But now he isn't Jesus the carpenter

he is Jesus, Son of God

Messiah, Christ

proclaiming repentance and good news!

What good news could he have found in the wilderness?

Ah, the greatest lessons we learn in life

come from the hardest times in our lives.

What did Jesus learn in the wilderness?

He learned to live into trust and love for God

He learned about the saving grace of God

and he learned his mission in the world.

Good news indeed.

Jesus walks out of the wilderness proclaiming his good news:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!"

How often do we want to hear that?

That what we have been working and waiting for,

the Jewish people had been waiting for the Messiah to come

for so long.

for centuries.

Generations of people.

It was finally here!

God came through on the promise

the Messiah is here!

"The Kingdom of God has come near"

All we have to do is repent and believe.

Very exciting news!

God does sometimes lead us into difficult situations.

The wilderness is not just a place for Satan.

The angels were there.

God is present there.

The Father created the wilderness.

Jesus was there.

The Holy Spirit moves there. 

Perhaps the best part about this journey into the wilderness

for Jesus 

and for us

is that it ends,

and it ends with Good News.

If you are stuck in the wilderness,

Like Jesus 

Like the ancient Israelites who wandered around for forty years,

there is a promised land for you.

Don't give up hope.

Walk through the wilderness.

Feel every dry dusty dirty part of it.

Learn from it.

Know that God is with you

and that the promised land is coming.

Amen.