Sermon: Into the Wilderness

Delivered at McBee Chapel United Methodist Church in Conestee, South Carolina on February 18, 2018, the first Sunday in Lent

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Into the Wilderness

Audio Version

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.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice

From “The Journey” by Mary Oliver

Have you ever felt that you were meant for more than the life you were living?  Have you ever felt that your nine-to-five job was not your calling, that what you did to pay the bills was not what you were put on this planet to do?  Have you ever sensed a purpose that was too far away to see clearly that still somehow tugged at your heart from a distance?  If you have ever felt that way, you are not alone.  I suspect that most, if not all, of us have longed to live for a higher purpose at some point in our lives.  Lately I've wondered if maybe Jesus felt this way in the first thirty years of His life, before He began His ministry.  I've wondered if He always knew who He was and what He was born to do or if maybe He had to discover these things, like the rest of us.

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Biblical scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest of the four Gospels, written sometime between AD 60 and AD 70, and that it served as the main source of material for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  Church tradition tells us that St. Mark, the author, was someone close to St. Peter, perhaps an interpreter.¹  Mark's Gospel is the shortest of the four.  It does not contain the lengthy discourses we read in Matthew's Gospel or the fleshed-out narratives we read in Luke's Gospel.  There is a recurring theme of secrecy throughout Mark's Gospel: Jesus constantly tells people not to tell anyone what He did for them or who they believe He is.  The Gospel of Mark is probably the most fast-paced of the four Gospels.  The word immediately occurs twenty-seven times in the New Revised Standard Version, and Jesus always seems to be on the move.  Consider how much action is packed into the passage we just heard, which consists of a mere seven verses.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, we read about a prophet named John.  He was a rather eccentric man, to say the least: he lived in the Judean wilderness, away from civilization, foraging for food and making his own clothes.²  He challenged the people of Judea to repent of their sins and offered them the ritual of baptism as a means of expressing their repentance.  The people flocked to John in the wilderness to listen to his message, to confess their sins, and to be baptized by him in the Jordan River.  Mark describes John, using the words of an ancient prophet, as a messenger, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'”  John spoke of someone who would come after him, someone greater and more powerful, whose sandals he was not worthy to untie, someone who would baptize the people not with water but with the Holy Spirit.³

Meanwhile, Jesus had been working as a carpenter in the town of Nazareth.⁴  Justin Martyr, an early church historian, reported that Jesus constructed farm equipment like plows and yokes.⁵  Jesus realized that what He had been doing to make a living was not what He was born to do: He knew that He was meant for something more in life than building farm equipment.  Scholar William Barclay suggests that the emergence of John the Baptist and the Godward movement he represented was perhaps a signal to Jesus that the time had come for Him to do what He had been put on the earth to do.  It was the kind of movement with which He wanted to identify Himself.⁶

Jesus traveled from His hometown of Nazareth to the Judean wilderness to be baptized by John.  He had no sins of which He needed to repent, but His baptism was still for Him a turning point and a symbol of a new beginning.⁷  As Jesus descended into the water, His life as a carpenter came to an end, and, as He ascended from the water, His new life with His new calling began.

So what exactly was Jesus being called to do?

As Jesus ascended from the waters of baptism, He looked up and saw the heavens ripped open.  He saw the Spirit of God descend upon Him in the form of a dove.  What Jesus was being called to do would require power from Heaven.  Up to this point in the Biblical narrative, the Spirit of God was endowed to the leaders and prophets who had been entrusted by God with a special task.  The Spirit's descending upon Jesus meant that He was being equipped by God to do what He was called to do.⁸

Jesus then heard a Voice from Heaven call out to Him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  On the surface, the message from Heaven contained three affirmations that every child needs to hear from her parents.  Every child need to know that she is claimed by her parents, that her parents love her dearly, and that her parents are proud of her.  Jesus heard these three affirmations directly from God, but, as someone who was familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, He would also have heard a couple of additional revelations.

The first part of the message from Heaven - “You are my Son, the Beloved” - calls to mind the second Psalm, in which God's anointed one hears from God, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.”⁹  This Psalm was thought to point to the Messiah, the long-awaited leader who would deliver the Jewish people from oppression and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.  The second part of the message - “With you I am well pleased” - calls to mind particular sections of the Book of Isaiah which describe a certain servant of God.¹⁰  The first of these “Servant Songs” begins, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”  This servant of God would be empowered by the Spirit to “bring forth justice to the nations” and to show mercy to the weak and the broken.¹¹  A subsequent Servant Song tells us that this servant of God will suffer greatly on behalf of his people.¹²

In short, Jesus was told by God that He was the Son of God, the Messiah, and the Suffering Servant.

Having received both the power of the Spirit and the approval of the Father,¹³ Jesus was immediately driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, where He remained for forty days.  Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark leaves almost everything about Jesus' journey through the wilderness to the reader's imagination.  Given that Jesus had just heard that He was the beloved Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, and the Suffering Servant of God, I think it is safe to say that He had a lot to process and ponder during those forty days.

The author does offer us a few details about Jesus' wilderness experience.  He writes that, in the wilderness, Jesus was “tempted by Satan.”  John Wesley writes in his notes on the Gospel of Mark that “in all the children of God, extraordinary manifestations of his favour are wont to be followed by extraordinary temptations.”¹⁴  The author does not tell us the specific nature of the temptations Jesus faced, but we can logically assume that they somehow concerned how He would carry out His mission as the Messiah and how He would use the power and authority He was given.  I suspect that remembering the voice of the Father helped Jesus to withstand the voices of temptation.

The wilderness, figuratively speaking, is a dry, desolate, difficult, lonely place in life, far from anything familiar.  We rarely go into the wilderness willingly; rather, we are driven into it, as Jesus was driven.¹⁵  The wilderness experience teaches us who we really are, for it strips us of everything we are not.  It is quite often where were are unknowingly prepared for whatever comes next in our lives.  The author tells us that, in the wilderness, Jesus “was with the wild beasts” and that “the angels waited on him” there.  The wilderness is a place of peril, symbolized by the wild beasts, but it is also a place of Providence, symbolized by the angels.  Jesus was never alone in the wilderness, for the same Spirit who drove Him into the wilderness remained with Him as He journeyed through it.¹⁶

By the time Jesus returned to civilization, John had caught the attention of the wrong people and had been arrested and thrown into prison.  It was now up to Jesus to come after John and to take up the task of calling people to repentance, or else the movement John represented would begin to lose momentum.  Unlike John, who taught the people who came to him in the wilderness, Jesus took His message directly to the people.¹⁷  He traveled throughout the region of Galilee, proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  It was this very message and the urgency it warranted that kept Jesus constantly on the move throughout His ministry.

The word Jesus used to describe His message, which is translated into English as either “good news” or “gospel,” is the Greek word euangelion, from which we get the word evangelical.  The word was originally used to describe a proclamation from the Jewish people's Roman oppressors, perhaps news of some imperial victory.¹⁸  Jesus' royal proclamation was that God was doing something new in the world.  In the eloquent words of scholar N.T. Wright,
This was what all Israel had been waiting for.  It wasn't a new piece of good advice.  It wasn't a new political agenda.  It wasn't a new type of spirituality.  It might eventually lead to advice, agendas and certainly to prayer, but it was itself something more than all of these.  It was the good (and extremely dangerous) news that the living God was on the move, was indeed now coming into his kingdom.¹⁹

The Kingdom of God is what God had in mind for humanity since the very beginning.  It is, one might say, a Kingdom “not of this world,”²⁰ a Kingdom fundamentally different from any earthly kingdom that has ever existed.  It is a Kingdom different from the Roman Empire, which maintained peace by crucifying anyone perceived as a threat.  Everything Jesus went on to do throughout His ministry – teaching the crowds, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, cleansing lepers, casting out demons, feeding multitudes, and calming storms – was a manifestation of the reign of God.²¹

Wright points out that Jesus' good news “demanded a definite response,”²² and this response, according to Jesus, was to repent and believe.  The Greek word translated into English as “repentance” is metanoia, which literally means a change of mind.  It is used to describe a change of mind and heart that works itself out as a change of conduct.²³  Jesus' royal proclamation demands a change of mind, for if God is indeed doing something new – something the world has never known – then we must be willing to reconsider everything we think we know.

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A poem by Mary Oliver titled “The Journey” begins, “One day you finally knew / what you had to do, and began, / though the voices around you / kept shouting / their bad advice...”  After years of working as a carpenter, Jesus knew what He finally had to do, and He took the first steps of His journey when He stepped into the waters of baptism.  As He emerged from the water, He received the power of the Holy Spirit and the approval of the Father, both of which He would need on His journey ahead.  The Spirit then drove Jesus into the wilderness, where He faced voices of temptation that attempted to sway Him from doing what He had to do.  He did not heed the voices or their bad advice, for He had already heard the voice of the Father, the only voice He needed to hear.  In the end, the temptations He faced only strengthened His resolve, and, when He returned from the wilderness, He began to make His own voice heard.

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the season on the Church calendar marked by self-denial, soul-searching, and repentance, during which we follow Jesus into the wilderness, figuratively speaking.  During Lent, many chose to give things up – especially those things they tend to use as a crutch – so that they can grow in their reliance on God as they fight temptation.  Some take up new spiritual practices so that they may grow closer to God as they become more disciplined.

I think that this wilderness season is a good time to ponder some of the questions that the story of Jesus' baptism, wilderness experience, and return to civilization might present to us.

What is God calling you to do right now?

What journey do you need to take?

What voices do you need to heed?

What voices do you need to tell to be quiet?

What new thing is God doing in your life or in the world around you?

What changes do you need to make in light of what God is doing?

Consider what you are learning as you journey through the wilderness and what you will do with it when you return.

All of us will journey into the wilderness at various times in our lives, whether it is the wilderness of Lent or a particularly dry and difficult season of life.  When you find yourself in the wilderness, may you listen to the voice telling you that you are a beloved child of God, and may you block out any voice telling you otherwise.  May you know that you are not alone in the wilderness, for God journeys with you.  May you emerge from the wilderness, strengthened in your faith, ready to serve God, as you are equipped by the Spirit.

Amen.


Notes:

1. Adam Hamilton.  Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.  2014, Harper One.  pp. 97-99
2. Brian Zahnd.  “A Burning and Shining Lamp.”  Word of Life Church Podcast, 12/10/2017.
3. Mark 1:2-8 (NRSV)
4. Mark 6:3
5. Justin Martyr.  Dialogue with Trypho.  ch. 88
6. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 20
7. Barclay (Mark), p. 21
8. Barclay (Mark), p. 22
9. Psalm 2:7 (NRSV)
10. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 46
11. Isaiah 42:1-4 (NRSV)
12. Isaiah 53
13. Barclay (Mark), p. 22
14. http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/notes-on-the-gospel-according-to-st-mark/
15. Shane Hipps.  “Driven into Wilderness.”  Trinity Mennonite Church, 03/05/2006.
16. ibid.
17. N.T Wright.  Mark for Everyone.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 9
18. Rob Bell.  NOOMA You | 015.  2007, Zondervan/Flannel.
19. Wright, p. 8
20. John 18:36
21. Richard Byrd Wilke and Julia Kitchens Wilke.  Disciple Fast Track: New Testament Study Manual.  2016, Abingdon Press.  p. 19
22. Wright, p. 8
23. Wikipedia: “Metanoia (theology)”

Christ in the Wilderness was painted by Ivan Kramskoi in 1872.