Blink and you’ll miss it.
Jesus’ month and a half in the Judean wilderness goes by in a single quick sentence in Mark’s story today.
I suspect Mark doesn’t give us much detail because he assumes that you and I already know what he knows about the wilderness:
It’s dangerous.
It’s lonely.
It’s far away from community.
It’s empty of the resources we count on for day-to-day life.
The wilderness is a place of need, but it’s also a place of miracles, over and over in the history of God’s people. Water from the rock, food raining from heaven like snow. It’s a place of seeing and being seen by God.
Many of us might long for a wilderness without Zoom and Webex and email, these days.
But what we’ve been given – where we’ve found ourselves – instead, is a pandemic wilderness.
Where danger lurks around us; we’re separated from our usual community; and many resources we’ve counted on are gone, or harder to get. We may be lonely, may be struggling to survive. It can be hard to see God, to expect to see God, in this wilderness.
But what if we knew we would? What if we actually believe that that is what we are here for – in this story, in this season, in the pandemic wilderness? What happens when we enter the wilderness, as Jesus does, as beloved children of God?
Mark tells us:
Jesus was tempted by Satan; he was with the wild beasts; and angels ministered to him.
Mark doesn’t need to spell out the details of temptation, of the encounter with Satan, because it’s a forgone conclusion.
It simply doesn’t matter what Satan says or does or offers.
Jesus, beloved child of God, can’t be teased or threatened into putting his personal needs first; can’t be made anxious or arrogant, can’t be tricked into denying God.
Because he simply, completely relies on God. He expects and focuses on God’s presence, God’s care – and receives it, being with the wild beasts unharmed, and ministered to by angels.
Jesus trusts God’s protection and provision as a beloved child, without reservation or hesitation.
So Satan has nothing to grab on to; nothing to leverage. Satan’s defeated before even trying.
Just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean it was easy.
Our fundamental human tendency is to hold on to control, not to trust so completely in someone else’s control. Even God’s. And Jesus was fully human, as well as fully divine.
That absolute trust in God’s faithfulness isn’t automatic, even if it’s essential.
And that’s why we have Lent. A season every year to practice wilderness and trust. We learn by doing.
Many years, we choose some kind of wilderness for ourselves by fasting: giving up some comfort or resource or certainty.
Other years, we just use the wilderness we are in. Even when the world’s not in a pandemic, many of us find ourselves in a season of illness or loss or change that’s wilderness for us.
And in that season of wilderness, we deliberately practice trusting in God.
We practice accepting failure. Acknowledging that we are not enough, and that we need help.
That’s confession, and apology. It makes room for us to depend more on God, and on God’s mercy, than on ourselves and our own success.
It’s also honesty, which builds trust in any relationship. Trust we need between ourselves and God.
If you need help with that this Lent, read and pray the Litany of Penitence from the Ash Wednesday service. (BCP page 267, and a version with reflection questions on the Lent page of our website)
We practice letting God supply our needs by fasting - giving up chocolate or beer or TV or makeup or coffee or meat or something else we usually depend on for comfort or satisfaction or a shield from distress or emptiness.
Letting someone else fill a need – even when we think we can do it ourselves – helps us trust more confidently and deeply.
There are several suggestions for things to do without in the Lenten Micropractices book we mailed to your home recently (also on our Facebook page and website).
We practice acts of kindness, of giving and service. When we act as God would act – to feed the hungry, clothe the shivering, shelter the neighbor or stranger, tend the sick – we build our trust that God would never forget or fail to nourish and shelter and tend us, in our own need.
We build intimacy and trust by spending time with God. Scripture reading and prayer can be like sitting with God on the couch, or working through a problem together.
There are suggestions for several ways of doing that in the Lenten booklet. Or you might read the psalms, which tell the story of trust in God fulfilled in every possible human need.
And there’s one more thing I think we want to do this particular year, in this wilderness we share.
We need to practice receiving care. Being ministered to by angels.
We need to look for the ways that God is actively, right now, caring for you and me, in the daily wilderness.
Set a time – or a dozen times – each day to just notice one thing God provides that you need.
We do this every time we say grace at meals and pay careful attention to the words.
Or you can notice your breathing, the beating of your heart, the life-giving things your body does that you don’t usually think about and can’t entirely control.
Notice, this Lent, what you already depend on God to provide; notice the needs you can’t fill for yourself that are already met, with God’s help.
Practice thanksgiving, because that, too, builds up trust.
Which might mean, this year, that you have to eat more chocolate, instead of giving it up, if that is how you taste the goodness of God in this wilderness.
Let’s practice that trust – however you need to, however we can – here and now, this Lent.
Practice that belovedness, until we rely on God without hesitation or reservation, so that Mark can say of you and me what we heard him say of Jesus:
These are God’s beloved children. Here they are in the wilderness, victorious over Satan, at peace with the wild, and angels are ministering to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment