Hebrews 4:15
Matthew 4: 1-11
Wilderness
Have you ever felt lost in the wilderness? Stuck in the dry, barren places of life – searing heat or biting cold – the howling wind surrounding you – or maybe just the lonely emptiness of silence blanketing your soul like a shroud? Have you ever felt driven by God to a place deep within yourself that causes you to wonder about God's purpose for you – the reason for your existence? Have you struggled to understand who and what God has called you to be? If so – if in even the slightest way these thoughts seem familiar to you – I think you've caught a glimpse of Jesus.
We used to do a lot of camping when our kids were young. We started with a tent, and spent a lot of nights with that tent, and lots of campfires. There were also a good many nights of rain in our tent. Camping gave us a chance to really explore new places. We used our camping trips to travel all over. It also gave us many close times as a family, to learn about each other. We had a little taste of primitive living, a little wilderness experience. Our kids learned that there often could be fun even in the adversity of rain and cold.
Nowadays campers often have motor homes. A motor home allows campers to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, a sewer line and electricity. Most motor homes even have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. People buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world. Yet they deck it out with the same furnishings as in their living room back home. They may drive to a new place, set themselves in a new surrounding, but the most meaningful depth of the newness goes unnoticed, and unfelt, because they carry along their old setting. Nothing really changes. No more wilderness experience.
If we embrace the Lenten season, we can change. If we fully accept the love God offers us, we will change.
Jesus entered the wilderness to begin his ministry. It was a time of preparation. He began a journey to discover what God was calling him to do with the rest of his life. During the 40 days, this otherwise seemingly common mature man of perhaps 30 years of age with a trade as a carpenter grew into his God’s call, but not without pain, not without great introspection, not without great temptation. Jesus was fully human. He lived with family and friends around him, in a community that accepted him as he was, just ase we do. We have to remember that. He was not a puppet on strings. He had free will, just as you and I do.
This was not a motor home vacation—it was a time for him to exercise his human free will to chose between his former life and what God had for him, a time to strip away any barrier between him and God. It was a time for him to intentionally become vulnerable to the temptations of the world, and overcome them through faith. He left his past life behind, and surrendered to his mission fully.
There is more to the wilderness experience than temptation or testing. The wilderness is a place of transformation as well. What good does testing do for us if it doesn't lead to transformation? Somehow Jesus had to face all the plausible alternatives to God's call before he could truly give himself over to that call. Jesus had to wrestle with his fears, explore the short cuts, and ponder the all the possibilities – had to settle his own heart and soul – before he could ask others to follow. In that time apart, Jesus realized that Wilderness Time is about “becoming the change we want to see in the world and in others. And he realized that he had to be the first to change.
During the 40 days of his fast, his life was changed—it was transformed. But if you read the scripture carefully, the real test came at the end of the 40 days, when he was the most vulnerable. He was exhausted, thirsty, hungry beyond anything any of us may have ever experienced. It was then, at his weakest, he met the challenges. We read in Hebrews that he was tempted in every way we are. It was when he was weakest that he was able to become strongest. It was in facing his temptations with faith in God, not faith in himself, it was in committing himself fully to God’s will, that gave him that strength.
Jesus’ time of trial and transformation landed him smack-dab in the middle of God's hope for humanity – in the middle of God's dream for a renewed humanity, and it put him right in the middle of the pathway to Jerusalem and the cross.
Lent is a time set aside for our introspection, and preparation. When we begin the Lenten season we are called upon to enter our own wilderness, and take a journey to learn what God wants us to do with the rest of our lives. We are called upon to become vulnerable, to see ourselves as the weak individuals we are. We can choose to accept the temptations of our everyday lives and continue as we have, or choose instead to become totally dependent upon God and follow the mission he has set for each of us.
Too many of us have a motor home approach to faith as we journey through the Lenten season. We want to venture into faith, but with all the security we think we have in our current lives. We do not want to leave our conveniences behind, so we proceed with all our baggage. The last thing we want is to become vulnerable to God, to run the risk of having our comfortable lives whisked away and instead face an unknown mission.
If we take Lent seriously, and are willing to become vulnerable to God, our Lenten journey will likely land us smack-dab in the middle of God's hope for humanity along with Jesus – in the middle of God's dream for a renewed humanity. But it could also put us right in the middle of our own pathway to a cross. Do we have that kind of faith? Are we willing to pick up that cross to follow Jesus?
Our faith needs not only to read and hear about Jesus. We need to experience him as a real presence in our lives. Our minds want to—need to—know for real the person about whom we are thinking or talking.
Jesus had to confront the challenge of powerful temptations. If Jesus is to be anything more than just another name, another historical mythic figure for us; if he is to become in any sense "Christ," "Savior," "Lord"; if his name and his story are to arouse in us anything like "faith," then we have to encounter him and not merely some ideas about him. Before there were ideas about Jesus there was Jesus. Before the gospels were written with their selected passages of his teachings, and before Paul’s letters to churches interpreting the meaning of those gospels and expressing his own ideas about Jesus, there was the person of Jesus who lived, and taught for 3 years before the Crucifixion. Before the Gospels were written there was the Jesus who was experienced as a real person by those to whom he preached, those he healed, those with whom he lived, and those whom he angered.
God is calling us to become the change we want to see in the world so that the world might become the place of promise God dreams for all of us to know. God calls us into the experience of Wilderness Time – that our hearts and souls – our minds and our spirits – might be tested and transformed. God calls us into the experience of Wilderness Times that we might search for our true selves – that we might begin to understand who and what God has created us to be – and that we might be more fully transformed into that life-changing reality. This Lent we must ask ourselves, how and where is God pushing us into the wilderness? How are we being tested and what is tempting us away from the compassion and grace of God? What is God calling us to become that will help the world become what God dreams it can be?
Through our encounter with the living Jesus, we become God’s hands and mouths in the world to bring God’s creative changes. Jesus is the Christ who transforms us. Jesus loves us, this we know. Jesus accepts us. But if we accept and love Jesus he will transform us, so that through us God’s love can work to transform the world. Amen
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