Sermon: 1st Sunday in Lent, 2/18/2024

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In today’s Gospel text we are sent back again to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel into Jesus’ baptism, now with the addition of Jesus’ temptation in the Wilderness. So immediately after the Son is declared Beloved, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” This signifies that the Way Jesus walks, the Way we walk with Him, is marked by struggle. I don’t have to tell you that we all struggle with something. Some more than others, but we all share a sense of being actively challenged by something or someone. So the fact that we are Beloved by God, does not make us exempt from life’s problems. On the contrary, we are, as Jesus is, driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit. When we walk in the way that the Spirit leads, we will encounter the struggles that distinguish a life that is Spirit-full. When we are baptized and rise with the power of Christ’s own life, don’t be surprised by the reality that we are also confronted by the problems Jesus suffered. In this sense, as we go through Lent, journeying with Jesus towards the Cross, we share in his sufferings, we share in the situations provoked by a Christ-like way of life. When you begin to live in the footsteps of Jesus, the enemy will make known his opposition and try to divert us from the path, he will try to make us get lost in the wilderness, to lose our spiritual composure in the midst of the trials of life.

So, is it a bad thing that the Spirit drives Jesus, and by extension, us into the wilderness? Why would the Spirit drive Jesus into the place where the wild beasts roam, and Satan is out there prowling like a hungry lion?

The text actually implies an answer to this question. But we must first understand more deeply what this wilderness is. In the Bible, the wilderness is a space of many meanings. The wilderness can mean a place of refuge, it is like the alone place that Jesus went into to pray in. It was the place where God led the Hebrew people to find liberation from slavery in Egypt. In Early Christianity, the first Christian monastics went into the desert, or the wilderness, to purify themselves, to declutter themselves from a sinful life and live fully the Way of Jesus with no social pressures or restraints. So the wilderness can have many positive connotations, we need the wilderness as a place where God can be the sole focus of our attention. We can even speak in these terms as having an inner wilderness we can arrive towards and remain as we weather through the struggles of life. But wilderness can also mean trial and temptation. It is the place of vulnerability, where we are facing the elements and fighting for our very lives. It is the place where we can succumb to sin and death, it is where we put our principles to the test. Ancient Israel wandered through the wilderness for 40 years, struggling with being on the God-given path, and it was many a days when many desired to return to slavery for the meager comforts of Egypt, a breaking with the trust in God taking them into liberation and freedom. So the wilderness is this contested space that humanity inhabits in its daily life. It shows that humanity is an existence of both struggle and joy, it is living with the problems of being human and cultivating peace within the assurance of problems to come.

So, if we are to receive God in the Flesh as a gift that saves and redeems human beings, then the humanity of God cannot but partake in the struggle of being human and insert Himself fully in the drama of humanity. This human drama is the fact that we are constantly tempted and tried, we are vulnerable creatures that often submit to the powers of sin and death. Human life is often a great wilderness. The great Jewish theologian and philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once remarked in an interview the insight that it is inevitable that human beings encounter problems, its integral to the human experience. He states: “a man has problems. And the more complicated, the richer he is, the deeper are his problems. This is our distinction, to have problems, to face problems. Life is a challenge, not just a satisfaction…If I look in the Bible, God is full of problems. He made and created man. He created man with his own will, with his own freedom. And man is a problem to Him. Look at the Bible. God is always wrestling with the problem of man. Even God has problems.” And so, the way that our Christian faith has seen God deal with the problem of sin and death was to intimate Himself totally with human existence, especially that contentious wilderness that distinguishes human life. This is a God that did not say no to the problems of humanity, and instead said yes to taking the path of the wilderness and opened an avenue of reconciliation, a way of uplifting humanity from being swamped by the problems and linking them forever to the life of the Spirit and Resurrection. So is it bad that the Spirit draws us into the wilderness? Living through the problems can feel bad, but the good news of this reality is that we are not denying human life its truth, and by living in the truth we are therefore being set free. In the wilderness alongside Christ, we are living in the truth of being human and at the same time the truth of Christ’s reconciliating power, His act of making things right in Creation and creating a way out of no way into resurrection life.

There is also a beautiful treasure in this short text, and it has to do with how the author of Mark’s Gospel weaves this event in Jesus life to the wider story of Israel. In a way, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, not only echoing the wandering of the people Israel in the desert for 40 years, but also His assumed victory over Satan is a reversal of what happened in Genesis. Adam was tempted in the garden, but fell to sin, Jesus was tempted, but did not fall, but rather came out victorious proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. In this text we have those wild beasts prowling the wilderness, but Jesus’ being with these wild beasts seems to imply a correction of wrongs, He is restoring the relationship that existed in Eden, where the wild beasts were thought of as tame. So Jesus’ survival of the struggle in the wilderness is the first sign that the Kingdom of God is restoring the initial goodness of Creation, restoring its harmony and the dream of communion. It is then a promise to us, that God in Jesus Christ is restoring us to wholeness. It is an indication to us, that the Spirit driving us out into the wilderness is actually to live out the conclusion that in Christ all things are made new and reconciled, that you and I will encounter the struggles that naturally accompany the way of Jesus, but that we should not despair in the struggle, for Christ has gained us a powerful victory over the tribulations. As we walk through the wilderness, as we go through worldly temptation, we have an anchor to cling to, a great refuge in the midst of our trials. Good news comes out of this experience of wilderness, it is the transformation of our struggle into hope and joy in God’s Love and Mercy.

I don’t know what problems you are going through right now, but I want to let you know You have Jesus Christ walking with you. Like that soulful song: We are walking with our Jesus every day, so walk on, and sing with Your Jesus, walk on. What a gift! What a life it is to live out the problems with this love by your side! Walking with Jesus means that when Satan comes up and whispers the seeds of hate, envy or power, you can answer back, I’m walking with Jesus. When Satan comes up and says to you that you are not loved, that you have too many problems in your life, you can answer back, I’m walking with Jesus. When Satan comes and disturbs you, you can say I’m walking with Jesus. There is this great merengue song from the Dominican song writer Juan Luis Guerra, called “Las Avispas”, The Wasps. The refrain in Spanish says:

Jesús me dijo, que me riera,
si el enemigo me tienta en la carrera,
y también me dijo, no te mortifiques,
que yo le envío mis avispas pa’ que lo piquen!

And the English translation unfortunately takes off some of the magic, but it says something like this:

Jesus told me, to laugh
If the enemy tempts me in the race
And He also said, “Do not torment yourself,
for I’ll send my wasps to sting him!

This is what Jesus does for us in a way! So next time, declare confidently who you are walking with in the wilderness, for His Way has opened up the way to new life rooted in the Love and Mercy of God. May we remember that we are walking with Jesus this Lenten season!

Let us pray,

Lord God, you drive us out into the wilderness of our lives, you beckon us to live out the problems that make life the struggle and the joy that it is. But we give you thanks, because we have received the Gift of Your Presence in the struggle. We rejoice in the struggle of living out the Gospel in this world, for it is worth it to live with this love manifest in the world. Thank You, Lord, In your name we pray, Amen.