Have you ever felt like you’re living in the wilderness? Have you ever had a time in your life - maybe now - when you feel as if you’re living in a place of chaos and instability, when you feel like stability and order are as far from your life as you could possibly imagine? Maybe you’ve suffered through events in your life that leave you feeling alone and tossed about, moments when everything you believe about God and the world and yourself is being tested. These are wilderness moments - times when we feel like we’ve been thrust into the great wilds of life. These wilderness moments might be caused by a medical diagnosis, or an unexpected reduction in income, or by the loss of someone whom we love dearly. Wilderness moments might be caused by depression, or by a change in living arrangements, or by watching some terrible event in the news. Our times in the wilderness might be only momentary, or they can feel like eternity.
In the Bible, the wilderness is always full of wild beasts. The Bible doesn’t give us any detail, but we’re familiar with those things in our own wilderness that seem ready to pounce on us and devour us, those things that are ready to kick us when we’re down, that pour acid on the wound, as it were. Sometimes these beasts are disguised as friends or family who let us down or turn on us in our moment of need. Sometimes the beasts come in the form of crippling pain that drives us into bed and pins us there. Sometimes the wild beasts in the wilderness come in the form of thoughts that suck all hope and faith from us and make it impossible for us to see anything good. In the wilderness, it can feel like we’re facing opposition and predators at every turn, and that our patience, and our strength, and our resolve are being put to the test by even the smallest thing. When we’re in the wilderness, wild beasts can come in the form of doubt and despair that leave us feeling alone and wondering where God is, and even doubting that God is anywhere at all.
The worst part of the wilderness is the feeling that we’re totally alone out there with the wild beasts. Struggling with illness, or financial insecurity, or a major change is hard enough to do alone, but struggling with the doubts and worries and a weakened faith that come with those events is even harder. When thoughts of depression and despair and failure assail us, they are impossible to get through alone. The wilderness, along with its wild beasts, is a strong and powerful place, and it’s a normal human experience to struggle and wonder if God is even out there at all. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed. It’s normal to feel completely overwhelmed, and totally swamped - flooded even - by forces beyond our control.
In the church season of Lent, we focus on wilderness experiences. Noah was in a watery wilderness for forty days, stuck with the animals on the ark. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years. Jesus was sent into the wilderness for forty days after his baptism. The wilderness functions as a powerful metaphor for the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual events that leave us feeling alone and overwhelmed.
But the Bible also tells us that we are not abandoned in the wilderness. God acts in the wilderness. God, in fact, creates life in the midst of the wilderness. God acts in Noah’s watery wilderness to wash away the chaos and instability that comes from unchecked evil, and to create a new world where life is protected. God floods the wilderness and cleanses it in order to reassert that humans are made in God’s image, to ensure that humans and animals will live in harmony, and to reestablish God’s unbreakable relationship with all of God’s creation. God acts in the wilderness of the Israelites, giving them the life-giving law, and acting, once again, to renew God’s unbreakable relationship with them.
Most importantly for us as Christians, God acts in our wilderness by sending Jesus to experience the wilderness for himself. This story of Mark that we just heard is critical to helping us make it through our own wilderness experiences. It’s a short story - much shorter than the versions that appear in Matthew and Luke - but it’s the story of Jesus, who is fully human and fully divine, experiencing the same trials that we do. As a human, Jesus’ wilderness experience is caused by forces beyond his control: In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus doesn’t choose to go into the wilderness, he’s driven there. He is forced out there, just as we are forced into our own wildernesses by things beyond our control. And, as a human, Jesus is tested in that wilderness. The translation we just heard says “tempted” but the original Greek really means more like tested, or examined, to see if he really was God’s Son. The writer of Mark doesn’t tell us what happens to test Jesus, other than that Satan is at work, but even that short phrase is enough to tell us that Jesus was faced with the same doubts and despair and questions about God’s plan for our lives, and even God’s existence, that we face. In the wilderness, Jesus was put to the test - his commitment to God and his strength and resolve to be obedient to God was tested, just as ours is. In that wilderness, because Jesus was truly human and not just pretending to be, Jesus experienced all of the things we experience in the wilderness: the chaos, the despair, and the pain of being alone. He, too, was with the wild beasts.
There is a difference, though, between us and Jesus. Jesus, in addition to being human, was also divine. Jesus was God’s beloved Son, and so the writer of Mark tells us that Jesus wasn’t in the wilderness with just the wild beasts, but also with God’s angels. Because of Jesus’ divine connection with God, at the end of his test, Jesus was surrounded by God’s angels. The wild beasts did not overwhelm and devour Jesus, and Jesus did not give in to his wilderness experience.
Of course, we are not Jesus. We are not divine. We are only humans, struggling with our own wilderness experiences. How can Jesus’ wilderness experience help us in our own moments of despair? If we do not have a divine nature to keep us going, what hope do we have of making it through?
I said earlier that God acts in our wilderness by sending Jesus to experience the wilderness for himself. But more than that, God sends Jesus into our wilderness. God sends Jesus to be our companion amongst the wild beasts, to share with us the experience of being overwhelmed, to live with us in the instability and chaos of our lives, to walk alongside us in our doubts and despair. When you are suffering through those wilderness moments, and wondering where God is, know that Jesus is with you, by your side, having experienced those same moments and those same questions. You are not alone with those wild beasts - Jesus has faced those same beasts and is with you in your wilderness. Jesus, in fact, sends those same angels that kept him company in the desert - God, through Jesus, sends angels in the form of friends, and even strangers, who ask you how you are and who are willing to face the beasts with you.
Although it may not always feel like it, you are not alone in the wilderness. Through Jesus, God is in that wilderness with you. In the midst of your pain and your doubt and your feelings of being completely overwhelmed, God is working to bring you new life. The forty days of wilderness - a number that symbolizes totality and completeness - these forty days of wilderness and drowning and Lent are when God is acting and working towards resurrection and new life and Easter. No matter how eternal your wilderness might feel, cling to the promise that Easter is coming. New life in Christ is coming, and is already here. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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