Lent 1: The Wilderness Is Real

Welcome to Lent!  This Sunday, we heard the story of the temptation of Jesus through the Godly Play, as we do each year on this day. You remember the story: after 40 days (in Bible speak, 40=a really long time when bad stuff happens) wandering in the wilderness, Jesus–exhausted, hungry, and thirsty–gets grilled by the devil three times. 

It’s important to remember that these 40 days in the desert  begin with Jesus’s baptism, with the Spirit of God descending from the heavens, surrounding Jesus with the blessing, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased.”  Last week, we heard those words one more time on a mountaintop, just before Jesus starts his final walk to Jerusalem.  Both times, God is blessing and holding Jesus close right before Jesus heads off into danger.  A related blessing and holding is there for us all in Psalm 91, where God promises to be there in our trouble, to bear it with us and deliver us out of it–but not to keep us out of it.

That’s tricky, right?  The Spirit fills Jesus with blessing, naming him God’s beloved, and then that same Spirit sends him out to starve and thirst the wilderness.  There, the devil tempts Jesus to do something to prove the Spirit is really with him, quoting some of the best-loved words in Psalm 91: “[God] will command his angels concerning you, to protect you… On their hands, they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”  

In Matthew and Mark, the temptation story ends with the devil departing and those angels, sure enough, waiting on Jesus, but Luke doesn’t give us that satisfaction. Because the angels aren’t the point; as Jesus says, the wilderness isn’t a test to prove God is real.  The wilderness is where God gets real. And it’s where Jesus, filled this time with the power of the Spirit, is sent out again: ready now to preach, teach and heal and, ultimately, to die on a cross.

I’m not sure why I find all of this comforting, but I do.  Because you know what? Life is hard. Bad stuff happens–sometimes awful, painful, 400-days-in-a-desert level stuff that sears the soul. And while we might sometimes wish for a God that created a world where nothing that bad ever happens or where God would just yank us out of danger like a protective parent, that’s not how things work.  

Instead, we live in a world where, when we hurt as we all will, one day or another, God is always there with us–blessing us, covering us with love, rescuing us, healing our wounds–and then, also, delivering us, driving us out to tend to the woundedness of the world around us.  Because in this world, God makes us, like Jesus, part of the rescue plan.