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Mark 1: 9–15
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always
acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.
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Nothing prepared me, when I visited the Holy Land several years ago, for
the sheer beauty of the Jordan River. Fed by snow melting from
the peak of Mount Hermon, the clear swift waters turn everything in
their path green and lush as they rush down the Great Rift
Valley. Farther to the south, as the river approaches the Dead
Sea, it slows down, fans out and becomes more shallow. But here
as well it turns the whole valley green between the rugged peaks of
the Judean wilderness on the east and the low brown hills of Moab to
the west. And on the narrow plain between river and mountains
it waters the tropical oasis of Jericho — the palm trees, the date
trees, the flowering oleander.
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So we would expect that after Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan
he might stay in the area for awhile, enjoying this tropical oasis and
thinking about his baptism. We would expect he’d want to
enjoy the companionship of all the others John was baptizing
there. We would expect he’d want to think for awhile about
the astonishing affirmation he had heard from his heavenly Father.
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But God the Holy Spirit had a different plan in mind. For Mark
tells us that immediately after Jesus emerged from the river the Spirit
drove him — not to a season of R & R in Jericho, nor to some
ministry in Galilee or Jerusalem — but into the Moabite desert to
figure out who he was and what he was to do. These were his
marching orders, and, evidently, he didn’t question them.
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For the next 40 days Mark tells us that Jesus was alone in that
wilderness, with only wild beasts and angels to keep him
company. Matthew and Luke, who tell essentially the same story,
say that Jesus fasted during that time and was tempted by
Satan. But Mark offers us none of those details. He just
leaves it to our imagination what those 40 days must have been like.
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This week, as I read Mark’s spare account over and over, I
wondered why he offered us so few details. But finally it dawned
on me. We have seen people, especially Biblical people, in the
desert before. And there every one of them came face to face with
God. There was Hagar, banished from Abraham and Sarah’s
presence, wandering alone in the wilderness with Ishmael, her
son. There she encountered God’s grace and mercy, there he
supplied her need. Later, the children of Israel have to spend a
long time in the wilderness before they learn their essential dependence
on God. But when they finally learn that lesson they are allowed
to go on to the Promised Land. Finally, in the New Testament, the
apostle Paul tells King Agrippa he spent three years in the Arabian
desert before he began his ministry. Only in that solitude,
evidently, could he learn what he was to be, what he had to share.
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But these are only the minor characters, compared to Moses, Elijah and
John the Baptist. And when I began to think of them, I began to
realize I was seeing a pattern. I began to realize it was the very
leanness of their wilderness experience that paved the way for the power
of their subsequent ministries. Think about it. Moses,
raised in the lap of luxury in Egypt by Pharaoh’s daughter, had
to flee to the Moabite desert after he killed a man in Egypt. And
there, we are told, he spent 40 years ‘on the backside of the
desert’ before he encountered Yahweh in the burning bush, and
learned he had gifts he was to share with his people, still enslaved
in Egypt. Maybe it was only there, as an outlaw, a refugee, that
he would learn the humility that allowed God to use him mightily as he
led the children of Israel to freedom in the Promised Land.
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Or we could remember Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet. He
too was forced to flee to the wilderness to escape a king’s
wrath. But God sustained him in that wilderness by the brook
Cherith, sending ravens to bring him food. It couldn’t have
been very tasty food – not something I would want to eat,
anyway. But it kept him alive. And just as Moses discovered
great power in his prayers after his own long desert sojourn, so
Elijah’s prayers after his time in the wilderness proved to be
powerful – powerful enough to bring the widow’s dead son
back to life.
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And finally, of course, in the New Testament, there’s John the
Baptist. I began to realize he didn’t eat locusts and wild
honey because he preferred that diet. He ate locusts and wild
honey because that’s what was available to him in the
desert. But look how powerful his subsequent ministry became!
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No one chooses the wilderness. No one wants to go there. But
in the wilderness we learn things we can learn nowhere
else — things we might have taken for granted in other times and
other places. Food, water, shelter — all these things we
once took for granted we now see as gift, we now see as
mercy. Wisdom, guidance, wise counsel – these, too, become
evidence of God’s grace and mercy. And finally, we learn
the value of community, especially the value of community with God and
with his people. And that might be the greatest gift of
all. Suddenly, we are willing to share everything we have with
that community — because we ourselves have been shown what our
lives might be like without community.
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We don't know — Mark doesn't tell us — which of these gifts
had the greatest impact on Jesus. The only thing we do know, the
only thing we are allowed to see, is the effect this desert experience
had on him. For from this time forward, Jesus knew his dependence
on God. He knew that every gift he received was a gift of mercy
and grace. Not his to keep, but his to pass on, his to
share. That is the lesson, that is the wisdom of
wilderness. And clearly, Jesus learned it well. So from this
time forward Jesus shared the gifts he'd been given — not
gifts of material wealth — because he didn’t have many of
these — but gifts of compassion, gifts of mercy, gifts of
healing. He gave them away – to anyone who asked for them,
to anyone who had need of them — just as Moses and Elijah and John
the Baptist shared what they had received from God.
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Every year at the beginning of Lent we read these stories of Jesus in
the wilderness. And with fasting, with prayer and almsgiving we
enter our own place of deprivation, our own wilderness. We can
leave this place whenever we choose, but believing we have something to
learn there most of us stay.
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If we learn something of our need for God — that is a great
gift. If we learn that He will guide us, He will give us wisdom
when we pray — this too becomes a delightful, unexpected stream
in our desert. But if we learn that we ourselves now have something
to share, that we ourselves now have something to give in mercy to
others — that's the greatest gift of all.
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Let me share with you the words of a great 5th century preacher, Peter
Chrysologus, who explains what we are to learn in our Lenten
deserts. He says:
Mercy is to fasting as rain is to the earth. However much you may
cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out your vices
and sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your
fasting will not bear fruit. When you fast, what you pour out in
mercy overflows into your barn. So do not lose by saving, but
rather gather in by scattering.
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Beloved, I wish us all this desert experience. I wish us all a
holy, fruitful Lent.
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Amen.
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