Mark 1.9-15
Of Jesus, today’s gospel says, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days.” Now this wilderness is not, as you heard, the wilderness of a Minnesota north woods vacation where a website for lake cabins offers you a “private escape to wilderness comfort, luxury, and beauty.” For Jesus, there is no comfort, luxury, and beauty; just the opposite. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan.”
From the time of the scriptures on, ‘wilderness’ has been an image for the dark side of spiritual life and struggle in faith. And it is the Holy Spirit who drives Jesus from his baptism to that struggle. “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. Actually, you could say the Spirit threw Jesus into the wilderness. The biblical word behind ‘drove’ in the gospel is the same word behind our military term ‘ballistic.’ It’s as though Jesus is being launched into a cosmic battle. I’ve never seen a lot of baptisms at the church but never one like this: from the font, to family pictures after the service, then out to the wilderness of the parking lot for cosmic struggle, testing, and temptation.
There are, however, people who know that a life of faith means more temptation not less. This is what happens in the gospel. Jesus hears the voice from heaven declare delight in him, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Immediately, Jesus faces hostility from the Adversary. If Jesus is not exempt, we won’t be either. “When you face temptation,” the New Testament letter of James says. “When you face temptation.” Not if, but when. Temptation is a part of a life of faith, not because you lack faith but because you have faith, odd as that may sound. In fact, living as a person of faith may make temptation worse, lead to struggles we would never have confronted if we weren’t living a life of faith.
Who knew, for example, that eyeing other people’s stuff with envy, greed, and jealousy would be a problem if we hadn’t been given the commandment against coveting? Who knew that eyeing other people was a problem if it weren’t for Jesus saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that anyone who looks at another with lust has already committed adultery.” Who would’ve known that nursing bitterness and anger toward someone who has hurt us is a problem unless faith formed us in a different way. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger…and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Who knew that a life of faith would mean more struggles in faith, more temptations, not fewer? Yet from the wisdom writers of the Old Testament on, the scriptures know this is true. The book of Sirach says, “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing.”
But we do not face those temptations alone.
When Jesus announces that the kingdom of God has come near, as he does in today’s gospel, he isn’t simply preaching a message about God’s gift of life awaiting on the other side of death. That’s true, of course, and wonderfully so; the scriptures have the sure and certain trust that God will raise us to new life. But the phrase “kingdom of God” also sums up all the hopes that one day God’s reign will be everywhere present, not only death but all of life. For Jesus, this kingdom is not merely off in the future. God’s world has entered our world in Jesus now. In Jesus, the kingdom of God has come near and the world has turned a corner from darkness to light. So, in the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray for God’s kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for this kingdom of justice, peace, and joy to come to us now, to be seen here among us now, to guide every aspect of our life. And the presence of the kingdom of God in Jesus has the power to strengthen us in our own wilderness moments—our difficulties, trials, and temptations.
The Gospel of Mark tells the account of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness with remarkable brevity: two verses. Unlike the account of Jesus’ temptation in Luke and Matthew, Mark doesn’t mention the temptation to turn stones to bread or to gain the kingdoms of the world by making a deal with the devil. No, the Gospel of Mark has condensed to this event to its essentials: an encounter with the Adversary while fasting forty days in the wilderness. Yet there is one detail that Mark adds that the other gospels do not have: Jesus “was with the wild beasts.” Now with all the other familiar details about Jesus’ temptation pared back to the minimum, that detail, unique to Mark and added by him, stands out. Jesus “was with the wild beasts.”
Is this detail of wild beasts an image of a hostile world transformed into a peaceable kingdom, the vision of the prophet Isaiah? “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” Surely, in the kingdom of God and the presence of Jesus, threats give way to peace. Or maybe the reference to wild beasts is the Gospel of Mark’s way of speaking directly to the people he first wrote his gospel to, a point of contact for the early Christians in Rome? The world as they knew it was terribly violent—violence directed especially against people faith. An historian at the time that Mark wrote his gospel, a man named Tacitus, tells about the Emperor Nero’s violence against Christians. “They were covered with the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs.” It’s not difficult to imagine how one of the temptations they faced, living in a brutal time, was to doubt the truth of their new-found faith, to give up on it. If God is good, why is life so bad? Who hasn’t asked that question, faced the temptation to lose hope in a hard time when life isn’t comfort, luxury, and beauty but powerlessness, fear, and uncertainty. For the Gospel of Mark to tell of Jesus with the wild beasts is to tell of Jesus with us in all our trials. The same Jesus who later will still the storm is with us to strengthen us and give us peace and hope in temptations, trials, and adversities of our own.
Like the cosmic battle that Jesus is launched toward when he is tempted, a life of faith can mean more temptations and struggles, not fewer. And even though there are people who say that you know when God is speaking to you because you feel comfortable and are at peace, Jesus, led by the Spirit to testing shows something different. Right after God speaks to him, he is thrown into temptation. And this temptation is not from a lapse of faith or failure on his part. And for us? The fact that Jesus gave words in the Lord’s Prayer that include the petition, “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” shows us temptation will be a part of our life and faith, that there really are things worth resisting, things worth turning from, that we will live through adversities that would have us doubt our faith and the presence of God with us.
But we do not face our temptations alone.
Jesus survived forty days in the wilderness because he knew the One on whom he could rely in weakness and need. Jesus found strength through prayer and scripture, in the presence of God through angels serving him, and that is how he endured. For you, too. Jesus’ faithfulness through temptation is now God’s gift to you. This New Testament promises this very thing to people of faith facing temptation. “God is faithful, and will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” We can endure because Jesus endured and is with us for our sake. And when we fail to resist temptation, as we inevitably will, when adversities like wild beasts threaten to get the better of us, when faith seems distant in the wilderness of our lives, in Jesus there is courage to change, strength to endure, and—most of all—assurance and hope.
Jesus, in his flesh and blood, was made like us in every respect, says the letter Hebrews. “Because Jesus himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.” You are among those very people Christ is able to help. What was it that Sirach said? “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing.” Yet you never face those temptations alone.
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