Year B
Mark 1:9-15
The Rev. Denise Vaughn
Wilderness Good News
When I was a young girl and we were stationed in El Paso, TX, the Army decided to transfer my father to San Francisco for a year. I remember we traveled through Death Valley on our way which is a desert valley located in Eastern California in the northern Mojave Desert bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is one of the hottest places in the world. This was back in the early 1960’s, I don’t know how it is now but then it seemed you traveled for miles and miles with nothing but the desert. I can remember signs warning us to gas up now because there was nothing for miles. It seemed so desolate; a wilderness of cactus and tumbleweeds. Last Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday, we were called to the observance of a Holy Lent which in many respects calls us to enter the wilderness, the desert, as a preparation for Easter. For in the call to observe a Holy Lent, we are being asked to consider this sacred season of reflection and repentance, of spiritual discipline and renewal, as a wilderness season.
After all, the wilderness is a place where pretense fades away and honest vulnerability becomes possible. It is a place where we are unable to keep up the public image of perfection that plagues us and are free to confess the reality of our sinful lives. We are laid bare in the wilderness and open to all the things that God calls us to be. It can be a dangerous place but it can also be a place where we can become even more aware of our dependence on God, we learn to trust God’s way of being and we become connected to what God is doing in the world. The wilderness is a place where we can learn the value of things and the ultimate value of love.
Therefore, I believe it is no coincidence that Jesus after being baptized is driven by the Spirit into the desert, the wilderness of Judea; a desert of miles and miles of desolate land with not much vegetation, just rocky and deep terrains. The same Spirit who descended at Jesus’ baptism drives him out, where he will spend forty days tempted by Satan, surrounded by wild beasts and angels. He did not seek a way out but accepted the company of God in the wilderness. Though he did not need to be confronted with his sin, he still is lead to discover who he is, and is tempted by the things that are not part of God’s plan for him and his ministry before he can begin his work. Jesus had to prepare for the test that would eventually call for his complete obedience to God, even unto death.
While Mark tells us very little about Jesus’ time in the wilderness, the opening prayer or collect today reminds us, we, too, are “assaulted by many temptations “and we are called to dedicate ourselves in our “weaknesses” to face the same tests that Jesus confronted in his wilderness but not alone, like Jesus, we each can find God “mighty to save”. The aim of Satan was to move Jesus from faith in God to doubt. The forces that work against God today try to move us toward doubt, selfishness and away from love. Jesus resisted temptation by keeping himself connected to God. And this is exactly how we can resist the beasts of our lives; this is how we can overcome the evil that lurks within us and the sin that is a part of us. We resist, as Jesus did, by staying connected to God through studying the scriptures, prayer, the sacraments, through regular self-examination and confession, through repenting of our sin and accepting God’s forgiveness, and by leading renewed lives.
The wilderness path of Lent is not an easy road because it calls us to choose who we will be and whose we will be. If we choose this Lenten journey for the weeks ahead; we gain clues as to what we can expect from today’s portion of the twenty-fifth psalm. The psalmist begs God to lead him in the paths of righteousness. Righteousness just means becoming right with God in relationship and in doing so, the language of the psalm recalls not only the stories of Yahweh leading the people through the pillars of cloud and fire in the Exodus, but also, recalls the whole formation of the people of Israel. It was in the wilderness that they were given identity as a gift in the granting of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The Lord told them that they were not like other people but had a unique identity. One they were taught as they wandered in the wilderness. They wandered the paths of righteousness in the trail’s and tribulations, the testing and the teaching for forty years before they were able to enter the Promised Land.
We come to understand from the Israelites experience of wilderness, the reality of enemies and treachery and that the wilderness is a time and place for teaching the ways of the Lord. The psalmist tells us that we will be led to self-examination and repentance while being led in paths of righteousness to become mindful of our need for forgiveness, humbling us before the steadfast love of God. Lent, takes us in the wilderness of preparation. Just like the people of Israel, who were prepared in the wilderness for the Promised Land, and Jesus was prepared in the wilderness for his public ministry of proclaiming the kingdom, we are being prepared in this wilderness season for the renewal of right relationship that will be proclaimed by the risen Christ at Easter.
In these two short verses, Mark is giving us a vision of what is to come in his Gospel. He is giving us hope, food, drink, and courage for our journey of faith. Jesus leads the way and we are called to follow. Surely we too will be tempted and confronted with our true selves because in this experience, we are laid bare and open to all the things that God calls us to be but we also find the transforming Spirit of God which will sustain us on our journey to meet with God face to face, to come to know the depth of God’s love which helps us resist the temptations and defeat the beasts that dwell among us. By our baptism, we gain the sign that marks us as Christ’s own forever. And as the receivers of the Good News Jesus proclaims, we are empowered by the reality of God’s kingdom that has come near, so we become a people, who, with God’s love, can transform the world.
As we set out on this Lenten journey, remember the truth of our baptism: we are claimed; we are chosen as God’s beloved; we are empowered to set out in search of our voice and our vocation. The work is not easy in this wilderness called life. I pray that you may remember who you are a beloved child of God, and that you find the renewal of a right relationship in your life, that this time will be preparation through the reading of scripture, prayer, the sacraments, through regular self-examination and confession, through repenting of our sin and accepting God’s saving forgiveness, and by leading renewed lives, for a truly joyful celebration of God’s grace and mercy this Easter. May we be granted a blessed and Holy Lent.