Luke 3:21-22, 4:1-13
February 21, 2010
Mary Hammond
A noted bible teacher once observed, “The stronger the call, the greater the testing of that call.”
This word of wisdom from my college years never left me, and I’ve seen it play out in my own life more than once. Propelled to run for School Board after the death of beloved church member and peace activist, Bob Thomas, I was diagnosed with cancer three months into a four-year term. The timing of it all made no sense to me. The rational thing to do was to resign and focus on treatments and healing. But then, why the call in the first place? As I pondered these issues, I ultimately decided that the call had been so strong that I would not resign unless I felt an equally strong ‘release’ from that call. I didn’t ever sense that release, so I persevered. And perseverance it was.
I felt a similarly deep call to turn 20 years of insights gleaned form ministry with the dechurched into a book. Like many authors, I faced a bumpy ride getting the manuscript published. Rejections slips piled up, even from our denominational publishing house which published my first book. A year or so later, I had the opportunity to write about ministry to the dechurched in an article for The Other Side magazine. An inquiry from the editor of Chalice Press followed. The irony of ironies was that I had sent him the manuscript a year earlier! It had sat at the publishing house untouched and unread for an entire year.
This correlation between ‘call’ and ‘testing’ is often true to our experience and was true for Jesus as well. His baptism was accompanied by the voice of Yahweh and the presence of the Spirit like a descending dove, both as palpable to Jesus as our own breathing in this room. Fresh from such unmistakeable signs of call, Jesus is driven by that same Spirit into wilderness solitude.
Today’s text from Luke’s Gospel takes only a couple minutes to read aloud, yet its story spans 40 days and 40 nights. The words on the page summarize the most pivotal moments of this Silent Retreat as retold by Luke. Yet, much that hovers in, under, between, and throughout the story is left unspoken. Perhaps the most significant absence is the voice of Yahweh, which thundered so powerfully at Jesus’ baptism.
Once the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, he and the Devil are left to duke it out on their own. And yet, as Walter Savage Landor comments in Paul Hawker’s narrative, Soul Quest: A Spiritual Odyssey through 40 Days and 40 Nights of Mountain Solitude: “A solitude is the audience-chamber of God” (p. 49). The duel between characters in Luke’s Gospel also becomes a duel between characterizations, or interpretations, of the sacred words of Torah. The gauntlet is thrown down. The challenge is given. “Show your true colors, Jesus!” Silently, Yahweh waits to see what Jesus does with that baptismal call he so recently experienced. Paradoxically, Jesus is both on his own and not on his own, at the same time.
Forty days and nights is a long time in solitude. Surely Jesus devotes himself to sustained, deep communion with God and nature amid that vast silence. Yet, stripped of all the distractions and potential deceptions ordinary life can bring, faced day by day with only God and the self, Jesus confronts the most elemental challenges of his nascent call. His vulnerabilities become more visible to him. The demons which lurk along his path become more identifiable. Their strategy to undo both Jesus and his mission can be named. Noted author M. Scott Peck says, “Each one of us–every soul–is a battleground for the struggle between good and evil” (Soul Quest, p. 116). Jesus is no exception.
The Devil pounces upon classic human vulnerabilities that have undone countless leaders over the millenia. “Command these stones to turn into bread–you’re hungry Jesus; eat your fill! Claim all the kingdoms of the world–they’re yours for the asking! Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple–God won’t let you get hurt!” In each temptation, Jesus refuses to accept the bait.
So much more is at stake in these wilderness moments than meets the eye. To walk through this fire, unscathed, prepares Jesus in great part for the many other temptations he faces throughout his public ministry. How Jesus needs these days and nights of solitude, communion, wrestling, and persevering. Luke ends this story with the solemn warning that the devil awaits other opportunities to try to lure Jesus from his path. A major skirmish is won in the wilderness, but the battle is far from over.
Never again during Jesus’ public ministry does he have the time for a 40-day wilderness experience. A night of praying here, a boat trip there, an escape to the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany after a tough day in Jerusalem—these are the more common mini-retreats of Jesus after this point. The call, the wilderness, the testing, and the public ministry are all of one piece, inextricably tied together. The Spirit anoints Jesus in baptism, then drives him into the wilderness, then returns him–powerful in the Spirit–to Galilee where he inaugurates his public ministry.
Carl Jung once said, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakens” (Soul Quest, p. 122). Jesus’ time in the wilderness is a time of awakening. Our journeys in the wilderness are as well.
As we enter the season of Lent, I invite you to consider the gritty work of transformation that comes from being steadfast amid the testing that the wilderness evokes. We each face different issues that trip us up, different allures that tempt us, different weaknesses that have the potential to undo us. But we all have access to the same Spirit, the same Creator, the same Jesus, the same God-in-Community who loves us and wants to walk with us, whether in silence or noise, in presence or absence, in light or darkness.
I invite you today to affirm the importance of your own wilderness journeys. You are who you are now and where you are now in large part because of them. Accept their lessons, whatever they may be, and continue to make their insights part of your lives. Marcel Proust suggests, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” (Soul Quest, p. 203).
Let us pray.
Come to us, O God. Call us. Accompany us in the wilderness. Grant us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands. Transform us into your image. Use our lives for your higher purposes. Take us, during this Lenten Season, on a journey of discovery whereby we find both ourselves and You. Amen.