Into the Woods

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.”

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Typical Mark, stingy with the details.  He only tells us the bare facts here – and barely that.  We already know, if we have read Matthew and Luke, that there is more to the story of the wilderness.  But Mark has decided that what he has said is enough.  The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.  He was there 40 days.  Satan tempted him.  There were wild beasts – but there were also angels.

We know enough about wilderness to know what that might have felt like.  We know that wilderness is a God forsaken place where anything can happen.  It’s a scary place.

Israel was in the wilderness with Moses for forty YEARS after they escaped from Egypt.  Forty years they sojourned in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land.  It wasn’t that they were lost, physically – it was just that God kept them in a holding pattern.  They weren’t going back to Egypt but they weren’t quite ready for Canaan.  They were spiritually lost, in a sense.

Elijah was in the wilderness forty days and nights waiting on a word from God. When he was being pursued by Jezebel and Ahab he waited on the mountain, which is a kind of wilderness too, for God to speak. The people of God sometimes have to wait a long time.  Things don’t happen in a timeframe for our convenience, and the wilderness is sort of like the waiting room.

But it’s a waiting room where a lot can happen.  Wilderness is a place rich with possibilities, both bad and good.

Most of us were raised on wilderness stories.  Think of the fairy tales you learned as a child.  Little Red Riding Hood set off through the woods to see her grandmother.  Her mother strictly told her not to stray from the path.  But the wolf she encountered was cunning and deceitful; he lured her off the path to pick flowers. Then he used that opportunity to get ahead of her and eat Granny before the girl got there.  Then he ate her too.  The wolf is a force of evil, which will devour us if we are not vigilant.

There were Hansel and Gretel, who were sent off into the woods by their parents.  They made a trail of breadcrumbs in hopes of finding their way back home, but the birds ate them and the way home was lost.  Which is an important detail, symbolically, because when you go out in the wilderness you never return home the same way you left.  Hansel and Gretel were left wandering, trying to find their way out of the woods.  Starving, they encountered a gingerbread house in the woods that looked like a delightful safe haven, but we know it was anything but that.

The story of Beauty and the Beast is a bit more complex.  In the story, Belle’s father is lost in the woods and stumbles into the castle of the beast.  In the original, non-Disney-fied version, there is more to his problem than that he can’t find his way home.  He is a man who has lost everything – his fortune, his vocation, his sense of purpose.  Stumbling through the woods he is merely acting out the manifold ways he is lost.  His daughter Belle tries to save him and ends up being a captive too.  You know how it ends. Love will set them free.

Wilderness is a place where evil lurks.  There always were and always will be dangers in the wilderness.  In the ancient world, the wilderness was a place where anything could happen to you, and in contrast, the villages and cities were places of relative safety. In Revelation the return of Christ is envisioned as the coming of a great city.  We read over and over again about the beautiful city, the great city, the holy city. 

We think differently about cities now – we tend to see the big city as a place of potential danger.  But it used to be a place of safety, law and order, with walls and gates to keep out the disorder of the natural world.  When you left this place of order and safety, you were, to some degree, taking your life in your hands.  You would be unprotected out there in the wilds.  There are always dangers in the wild places.

But strangely, these are also the places where good things can happen.  In Red Riding Hood, the hunter comes to the rescue and cuts open the wolf’s belly and Granny and Little Red emerge – like being born anew.  In Hansel and Gretel, the innocent children discover they are clever enough to outwit the witch; that they have the resources to save themselves.  And in Beauty and the Beast, Belle discovers over time that the beast has a soft side and she loves him.  Then magic takes over.

Yes, in the fairy tales, magic happens in the wilderness.  I put no stock in magic, but in real life, things happen in the wilderness that can’t quite be explained.  I will call it mystery. 

When Jesus goes into the wilderness he encounters something mysterious – it’s a battle between the forces of good and evil.  How he manages this will determine everything that comes after. 

You know that saying – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?  Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.  Sometimes, what doesn’t kill leaves you broken.  But even in the brokenness there is the chance to heal and become whole again, stronger than before.

There is a story called Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko about a Native American man who went to war and came home broken, like so many have.  But back on the reservation his community had rituals of healing available to them, to help this young man return to them.  They go out into the wilderness to begin the path of restoring him to health and wholeness – something the psychiatric hospital couldn’t do, the wilderness could do.

For us, going into the wilderness is a way to find our way back to Christ.  There are many ways we get lost, lose our way, lose ourselves, lose our faith – our source of well-being.  We can go into the wilderness to find our way again.

When Jesus came out of the wilderness after forty days he called on us to repent – repent and believe the good news.  Today, and during this season of Lent consider this word in a new way. 

Think of repentance as turning – turning around in a new direction.  Think of it as being changed, and changing direction.  Coming through and out of the wilderness.  Think of it as turning away from what is harmful to us and turning toward Christ. 

There are forces for evil in the world all around us, wanting to have their way with us, wanting to reshape us in their image.  We can deny their existence but that won’t mean they cease to exist or infect our world and our lives, pulling us away from the goodness of God.  Sometimes we need to go into the wilderness because that’s where we come face-to-face with the demons.

The problem, though, is it’s getting harder and harder to find wilderness anymore. 

We can enter the wilderness in a spiritual sense when we enter the silence.  When we are willing to sit alone with ourselves, to invite God in.  When we cease to make excuses about how busy our lives are.  When we don’t back away from the experience too quickly as it becomes uncomfortable.  We enter the wilderness when we sit in that discomfort. 

I said last week that our God only means good for us and invites us into God’s presence.  It is helpful to remember that when you are in the wilderness.  It may feel like you are alone, but you are not.  Like Elijah in the mountain cave, who had to wait for the storms to pass before he could hear God speak, we often have to wait … attentively … for God’s direction.

In the coming weeks, may you take time to repent, to turn your face toward God, to wait for God’s direction.