Standing on the uppermost deck of a parking garage, my eyes took in the surroundings. The Medical Center was expanding its buildings, and from my vantage, I could make out the undergrowth of rebar where the foundations were being poured. Pile drivers were pounding steel girders into the ground. In the near distance there were the inevitable low-lying industrial buildings, and further off the clapboard tenements, and drab asphalt shingled houses. Cars and trucks were delivering merchandise, transporting raw materials. Pushing up against the horizon were the outcropping hills, where the remnants of the last snow of the season still lay under the stark trees.
This was all before me, but life itself was distant.
I was not really there.
I had retreated to a separate place.
A desolate place.
**
When I read the gospel lesson for today, the center of gravity that attracts my interest is not the central event of the story – the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. I am drawn, instead, to the aftermath of the baptism when, as the text reports
the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.
I am not alone in focusing my attention on the second half of this story – indeed, I am confident that the reason this text has been chosen for our consideration on the first Sunday of Lent, is because our religious tradition intentionally equates the forty days of our Lenten observance with the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness.
Any religious scholar can tell you that most, if not all, religious traditions of the world involve a story like this, in which the central figure (in this case Jesus of Nazareth) must confront the wilderness. The Buddha, like the Hindu seekers who came before him, spent years in the forest, fasting and meditating. For Buddhist monks and Hindu seekers from that time to today, renouncing the world is a crucial step in the path to enlightenment. Mohammed’s revelation, when he was instructed to write down the Koran, was immediately preceded by a period of time when he was alone in the desert wilds. Elijah, the wild old Hebrew prophet, spent forty days in the wilderness too. And Moses, of course, spent 40 years in the wilderness.
But let’s think about this for a moment.
When this passage refers to the “wilderness” it’s not talking about a lush landscape with rushing streams, vegetation, and abundant food to hunt or gather. Israel is not like that. It is an equatorial land that is prone to extreme heat and low rainfall. The wilderness where Jesus wandered was the dry, lonely, hardscrabble place pictured on the front of today’s bulletin. To be out there alone, without knowing what you are doing?… well… it’s safe to say that you or I would not survive such an experience. Forget forty days – I don’t think we’d last for more than a week.
All of this begs an important question.
All of the most important religious figures in our world have spent time in the wilderness.
Why?
**
When I was twenty-five years old I walked alone into the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.
This was not the wilderness where Jesus wandered!
I followed established trails through astonishingly beautiful landscapes. Sharp peaks rising out of sweeping skirts of Douglass fir and Ponderosa Pine. Violent streams cascading through moss laden ravines. Oh my!
I wore good solid hiking boots, and carried a tent and a sleeping bag. I had a cute little camp stove that folded up to practically nothing, and I had enough food to last me about a week. Compared to Jesus, I was on a luxury cruise.
I had good weather too! The days were glorious!
Every once and a while I would run into someone hiking the other direction, but for the most part, I was alone, and in a state of heightened bliss. Since I was not talking to anyone, I was a pretty silent creature, passing through the landscape, and so I encountered a lot of wildlife. My feet slowly measured the distances, from the valley into the mountains, and down again among the alpine lakes. As I got into the higher altitudes, the distances stretched out before me, and I beheld vast ranges of mountains stretching away from me in all directions. My eyes, my ears, my feet… my body was opened to a new heady feeling of intimacy with the land.
None of this sounds even remotely like what Jesus probably experienced. I would not tell this story at all, were it not for something else that happened on that hike.
It happened every day that I was out there.
On the first day I was not ready for it. It came on without me noticing it, and suddenly there I was… in the dark.
When darkness fell, I experienced fear.
As a young man, I had not experienced very much fear. And this fear was an entirely new kind of fear.
It was not fear of anything in particular – it was not the fear of a bear coming and eating me (though that would have been a legitimate concern.)
It was not fear of being attacked by some crazy person – although that, also, would have been a legitimate fear.
This fear grew. At first it was a fear of being alone in the woods. It grew into a fear of being alone in the universe. The wind moved in the darkness above. The stars came out from behind the clouds, and then disappeared behind them again. Like the wind in the darkness, the fear did not settle on an object. It was not a fear of something. It was a kind of fear of existence – a sudden awareness that this “I” that I had so much wrapped up in, was not really anything to speak of, and that this spark of life that was so precious to me, could easily disperse into this amazing, terrifying, beautiful darkness.
This was a kind of spiritual shock.
In order to experience this spiritual shock, I needed to be stripped down to almost nothing.
I had to be in a raw state, with no human ingenuity or distraction between me and the disturbing, unaccountable beauty of the stars.
What I am describing, though – what I believe to be at the core of the religious significance of wilderness – need not be described only in terms of the natural world.
Perhaps “wilderness” need not be understood so much as a place as a state of being. I am suggesting that you may not need to wander off into the mountains to experience the the “wilderness” where Jesus wandered for forty days.
It is meaningful, as people of faith, to think of the word “wilderness” (midbar in Hebrew) as the state of “spiritual shock” that comes from being stripped down to almost nothing. This, I say, is the emotional… the spiritual meaning of the word wilderness.
This spiritual wilderness was the desolate place I had retreated to when you joined me, at the beginning of today’s sermon overlooking a construction site from the upper deck of a parking lot.
The spiritual shock that I was in – the wilderness of the soul where I was standing – was upon me because, moments before, we had the ICU doctors the permission to turn off my father’s ventilator.
Moments later, while his family held hands and recited the Lord’s Prayer, my father breathed his last, and died.
But before we settle on this emotional understanding of wilderness, let me reveal to you an amazing thing that is hidden in this morning’s lesson.
When I read this passage, I found myself curious about the verb “drove” which appears in verse 12:
the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.
This is a very muscular verb to use in this context – the spirit did not hint or recommend or even push Jesus into the wilderness – the Spirit drove him there.
So what, I wondered, was the original Greek word that has been translated as “drove.”
The Greek verb is ἐκβάλλει (ekballei).
The Bible concordance then told me that this verb, Ekballei was used 81 times in the New Testament – quite a bit! It turns out that this verb is not usually translated into English as “Drove.” It is much more commonly translated using the English words “cast out…”
Sound familiar? This is the same verb that is used when Jesus “casts out” demons.
How interesting!
This verb is closely associated with Christ’s healing power.
Is there an implication, then, that this casting out of Jesus into the wilderness can also be understood as a kind of healing of Jesus?
Can this “spiritual shock” that I have described – this experience of wilderness be an experience of healing?
Can a deep spiritual fear be a form of healing?
Can the most profound grief that a human can experience actually be a form of healing?
This is strange, but I believe it is true.
Wilderness is not only a place of hunger, suffering and grief.
It is also a place to find God.
And so, it is both a place of pain, and a place of healing.
This is a deep irony that is at the core of the human condition and…
being at the core of the human condition – it is also a place where we find God
God in the wilderness.
Amen