The Wilderness
First Sunday in Lent
February 18, 2018
Mark 1:9-15
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.”
Jesus went into the wilderness for a reason – to figure out his purpose in life. We don’t hear about the contents of those temptations in our gospel lesson from Mark that we just heard. However, we learn from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew that Jesus was tempted by Satan to use his talents, skills and gifts for purposes other than the kingdom of God – instead of using his life to teach and to heal and to save, Satan tempts Jesus to make his life purpose to dazzle people with magic tricks, to become rich and to become powerful. And during that time Jesus struggles – but here is the important detail in our lesson for this morning – Jesus does not struggle alone. Jesus was ministered to by angels.
And as much as this reading is about Jesus and his struggle and his purpose – it also speaks to our own experience. Not only, as we emulate that desert struggle during the 40 days of Lent, but that desert is also a metaphor for our own lives. As much as we love to be at the mountain top where life is wonderful and the view is great, we also find ourselves in the valleys, and the deserts and the waste places at some point in our lives: those days, weeks, months, or maybe years of when we find ourselves bereaved, abandoned, betrayed, confounded, afraid, bullied and/or lost.
And that’s when we need angels – in any form that can come to us.
In a book I referred to last week called Discernment by the intellectual and spiritual heavyweight Henri Nouwen, Nouwen talks about a particularly difficult desert place in his own life. And he attests to the particularly powerful role of friends. He writes that his own spiritual life “would have been unthinkable without the intercessory prayers of others. Many crucial decisions needed to be taken, many classes needed to be taught, many promises needed to be fulfilled, and at the same time I felt so tired, so heavy of heart, and so melancholic that I wondered how I would ever be able to live through that time. I couldn’t pray. Not only was I unable to find time to step into the light, but even when I had time I found no inner rest. The prayers I said often felt empty and useless.”[1]
Nouwen goes on to say that during one particularly hard time he was trying to discern between the good he wanted to do, and, to give in to self-rejection and darkness, he decided to write to twelve of his friends who deeply cared and loved him, and he asked them to pray for him every day during the ensuing month. He laid himself bare and explained to them his feelings of spiritual dryness and his deep seated fears.
He writes that through the power of his friends’ prayer, it did not take long before he started to experience something new, and he felt lifted up. He writes “It felt as though others were praying in my place and I didn’t have to worry.”[2]
Until I read it in this book, it would never have occurred to me in a thousand years to write a personal letter to 12 people to ask them to pray for me. And I am not sure many of us would. And not only might we not ask for help, with the spirit of rugged individualism, we might even goes so far as to say to ourselves “I got myself into this desert mess, I am going to figure my way out by sheer determinism and grit.” Or maybe we don’t want to burden others with our problems. But what Jesus, and Henri Nouwen, demonstrate is that everyone needs angels in our lives – everyone needs to be ministered to, and everyone needs to be a minister.
Let us always have strength enough to ask for help, and the perseverance to pray for those who ask for our prayers.
[1] Discernment, Nouwen, 2013, pp. 28-29
[2] Ibid., p. 29
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