Time in the Wilderness

--> -->

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 22, 2015

First Sunday in Lent

Time in the Wilderness

Mark 1:9-12

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.

****

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness,

out into the wilds of the desert,

out among the snakes and scorpions,

out to a place with no water, no food.

The Spirit of God drove the Son of God

out into a land of desolation,

a place utterly hostile to human life.

Matthew and Luke tell us that

Jesus was “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness,

as though the Spirit said, “follow me”

and Jesus followed.

Mark, though, tells us that the Spirit “drove” Jesus

into the wilderness,

as though Jesus was pushed,

almost unwilling.

Here Jesus had just come up

out of the waters of baptism,

the sun shining on him,

the Spirit filling him,

and God himself saying to him,

“You are my Son, the Beloved,

with you I am well pleased.”

And then, Jesus is driven out into the desert,

the wilderness.

We tend to focus our attention

on what comes next in this story:

Temptation,

and how Jesus flicks away the pestiferous Satan,

like an annoying mosquito.

But we should stop and ponder the wilderness,

for what it is,

what it represents:

a place of desolation,

a place without hope,

a place without life.

The wilderness plays an important role in Scripture,

in both Old and New Testaments.

We know, don’t we, that the children of Israel

spent 40 years in the wilderness

following their release from slavery in Egypt

more than a thousand years

before the birth of our Lord.

It is in Exodus that that story begins,

but it’s actually the next book in the Old Testament,

the book we call Numbers,

where we find most of the story

of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness,

and fittingly, the title of that book

in the original Hebrew is “wilderness”.

God sent the children of Israel into the wilderness,

and kept them there for 40 years

as they followed Moses,

and as they complained daily:

“The whole congregation of the Israelites

set out from Elim;

and…came to the wilderness of Sin,

…on the fifteenth day of the second month

after they had departed from the land of Egypt.

The whole congregation of the Israelites

complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

The Israelites said to them,

“If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt,

when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread;

for you have brought us out into this wilderness

to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

(Exodus 16:2ff)

And that was only the second month;

There were still 478 months still to go.

But their time in the wilderness was formative;

the children of Israel were shaped in the wilderness;

they became a people in the wilderness;

they became a community in the wilderness.

They either learned,

or failed to learn,

to trust God,

to put their faith in God,

to submit to God.

We know, of course,

that God was with the children of Israel,

watching over them,

every step along the way,

providing them with water and food.

But how many of the Israelites learned that lesson,

the lesson that Moses reminded them of

at the end of their journey,

as they prepared to enter the Promised Land:

Surely the Lord your God

has blessed you in all your undertakings;

he knows your going through this great wilderness.

These forty years

the Lord your God has been with you;

you have lacked nothing.

(Deuteronomy 2:7)

None of us wants to go through the wilderness,

but yet the reality is that

we all spend time in the wilderness,

we all find ourselves in the wilderness - regularly

as we journey through life.

Adolesence is time in the wilderness, isn’t it –

a time of uncertainty,

of concern, of anxiety?

Leaving high school, family, and homes;

going off to college,

starting a new job,

these are all sojourns into the wilderness.

As we age, broken relationships;

job setbacks,

financial concerns,

illness,

the loss of a loved one -

all these things can leave us feeling alone,

overwhelmed,

lost –

in the wilderness.

        

But even in the wilderness,

God is there.

Lost deep in anxiety, worry, struggle,

God says to us,

“Talk to me.

[And] then be still and know that I am God.”

(Anne Marie Drew)

“Know that I am with you.

Have faith.

Trust me.”

The author Verlyn Klinkenborg has written,

what we learn in the wilderness is wisdom.

“…Wisdom comes from the bare places,” he writes,

“because they force humility upon us.

In these Lenten places,

where life thrives on almost nothing,

we can see [how we let life separate us from God.

But God is with us in the wilderness;

there to see us through,

eager to turn the aridness of the wilderness

back to the lushness of life in all its glory.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah,

God’s promise to us is this:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
…then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

(Isaiah 35)

I’ve found myself in the wilderness

many times over the decades.

And it has been in the wilderness

where my faith has deepened,

grown,

as I’ve looked to God,

trusted God,

put my faith in God,

submitted to God,

understood that for as smart

and capable as I think I might be,

I need God to guide me,

to lead me out of the wilderness,

back to life.

                                   

Now that doesn’t mean I was silent,

and completely accepting of my situation.

No, I’ve done my share of complaining,

like the children of Israel;

my share of Job-like challenging,

when I’ve found myself in a place

that I didn’t want to be,

didn’t think I deserved to be.

I’ve learned that God let’s us complain,

let’s us have our say,

and then says to us,

“Be still and know that I am.”

The words of the psalmist give us hope:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?...

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

(Psalm 27)

Lent is a time of waiting,

a time of preparation,

a time of introspection,

a time of reflection,

a time of patience,

a time of quiet learning.

Lent begins in the wilderness,

very appropriately,

a place where we can learn afresh,

without life’s distractions,

where we can learn to put our lives

completely in God’s hands,

where we can learn again

that we live by the grace of God.

And Verlyn Klinkenborg is right:

Lent helps us to learn humility as well,

something we need to re-learn,

for we Christians can be an arrogant people,

a little too sure ourselves.

Doesn’t God tell us through the prophet to walk humbly?

Didn’t Paul teach us, that our Lord himself,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:6ff)

The 40 days of Lent end in joy,

but we should start in the wilderness,

a place of quiet,

a place where we can each learn afresh

to submit,

to live obediently,

to trust,

to live in faith.

The wilderness can be a formative place,

a place where we can be still

and know that God is,

and that God is with us.

And it can be a place that reminds us

that we too are God’s beloved.

AMEN