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Those We Meet in Unexpected Places: the Wilderness
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Carolyn L Roberts When Luke tells us that after Jesus’ baptism and his return from the Jordan, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, I have no trouble picturing the area around Capernaum in northern Palestine, by the Sea of Galilee. Last summer, John and I visited Capernaum, with the ruins of its black basalt foundations carefully excavated and walled off from nearby traffic. Inside those walls, visitors can see the remains of a community that was home to Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the tax collector, Matthew. Capernaum, nestled at the foot of rolling hills, rocky, rocky soil, and countless miles of trails etched into those hills, trails criss-crossing each other in intricate patterns woven by sheep and goats over millennia of grazing. Capernaum, with its big skies. On the hills behind its ruins, horizons take in the Golan Heights. And Jordan. And on a clear day, Lebanon. Capernaum, with the rocky shores of the Sea of Galilee in front of it, and rocky, rolling hills behind. The land around Capernaum can support life, especially compared to the arid valley of the Dead Sea, and especially with irrigation and modern agricultural techniques. Even now, life in that land is a challenge. It exacts a toll. It demands attention to survival. From Capernaum, the wilderness is close at hand. But none of us needs to be in Capernaum to know life in the wilderness. Life in the wilderness is life in survival mode, and it isn’t limited to Galilee or Jesus. Life in the wilderness is life that sees us functioning with the bare essentials. Our wilderness may be physical, mental, spiritual–or some combination of the three. We may enter the wilderness on a quest, as Jesus does; we may wander into the wilderness because we have lost our way; or the wilderness may suddenly appear out of nowhere as it did most recently for the people of Haiti. Regardless of how we come to the wilderness, our scripture today reminds us that shear survival is not our only challenge. Sometimes, just when we think that things can’t possibly get any more difficult, we find ourselves tested, tempted. Not that temptation is limited to the wilderness—Adam and Eve are tempted in the Garden of Eden. David is tempted when he’s king and presumably has anything his heart desires—including Bathsheba. Or more currently, the temptations of Bernie Madoff or Tiger Woods have been the stuff of headlines and heartache. But for today, especially as we begin our Lenten journey, our scriptures remind us that temptation is an equal opportunity seducer: we are tested and tempted in the best of times and in the worst of times. From the heady relief and spontaneous joy of their freedom from slavery in Egypt, the Hebrew people face temptation in the wilderness when Moses, their leader, is on Mt. Sinai. In their fear, they melt down their jewelry and build a golden calf. Jesus is filled with the Spirit at his baptism. He knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is God’s beloved one. Yet this same Spirit leads Jesus to the wilderness, where he is tempted. I want to take a moment here. We read this story about Jesus and the devil, and are led to a temptation of our own: to imagine a cunning trickster wearing red pajamas, sporting pointy horns, a trident, and a long tail. That may work as the American icon for deviled ham, but it has no basis in scripture. Neither Luke nor Jesus would have imagined an evil force of equal or superior power opposed to God. Why? Because that thinking is based on the idea that there are two gods: one good, one evil. And nothing can be further from the most basic tenet of Christian and Jewish and Muslim theology. So first and foremost, don’t let cartoons or icons or pop theology lead you astray. There is one God, not two. Evil is real, and often has a powerful voice. But God, and God alone, is God..[1,114] And the devil that our scripture refers to? That tempter’s voice is closer to the satan (small ‘s’) – in the book of Job. This satan is part of the heavenly council, and has the role of prosecutor. It’s satan’s job to test Job, to see that Job is the real McCoy, that Job is truly as faithful and righteous as God believes him to be. It’s a serious test. No true-false, no multiple choice. That’s what satan is about in the story of Jesus facing temptation in the wilderness. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. Think about it. We don’t want a “Sully” Sullenberger to have trained only on video simulators when he hits that flock of geese while he’s piloting a planeload of hundreds of passengers. We don’t want a surgeon to perform open-heart surgery because she watches House and Grey’s Anatomy. We want our pilots and surgeons and teachers and plumbers and pastors to be tested. Incidentally, this coming Saturday, there will be a joint Ecclesiastical Council as part of that testing for candidates entering the ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ. And we want these candidates to be as well prepared as possible for the services they render. This past week has shown tests of another sort. Hannah Teter once again medaled on the snowboard half pipe, this time taking silver instead of gold. She could give lessons in sportsmanship and in compassion to Yevgeny Plushenko. Teter’s character shines through in the work she supports in Kenya, in bringing potable water and education to a village through the sale of her family’s Vermont maple syrup. Evan Lysacek’s character also shines in his gracious response to Plushenko’s attacks. The wilderness finds us – and we find the wilderness – in every walk of life. And the wilderness is a time of testing. If Jesus is God’s anointed one, if Jesus is worthy of a following, he needs to be tested. Jesus is taking his pilot’s exam. But he is not alone. Not only is he in the presence of the satan, he is in the presence of all those people of faith who have shared with him their own faithfulness–and their faithlessness–in person and in scripture. And of course, he is in the presence of God. What a profound reminder as we begin this season of Lent: God is with us in the midst of our success, our fear, our struggle. We are not alone. In closing, I share a story told by Larry Dossey, an M.D. who has done “a number of scientific studies on prayer. One of his patients was dying from lung cancer. The day before his death, Dossey went to visit him....Even though [the man] wasn’t a religious person, he told Dossey that in recent weeks he had begun to pray frequently. Since this [obviously] was important to him, Dossey asked...what he was praying for. The man responded, “I don’t pray for anything. How would I know what to pray for?” [Surprised, Dossey asked,] “If prayer is not for asking, what is it for?” The dying man responded, “It isn’t for anything. It mainly reminds me I am not alone.”[2] Wherever you find yourself in the wilderness, remember that you are not alone. It may be that even in that unexpected place, you will experience the presence of God, and just possibly, the ministries of angels. *** [1] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Luke, The Pilgrim Press, © 2006. |