First Sunday of Lent

He was in the wilderness forty days tempted by Satan and he was with the wild beasts.

 A mother was trying very unsuccessfully to get her son out of bed one Sunday morning to go to Church. "Come on" she said "its nine-o-clock and the service starts at ten. It's time you were up". "I’m not going" was the reply. Twice more she tried each time just as unsuccessfully. At last the son shouted down from his bed. "Give me three good reasons why I should get up and go to Church". "Right" replied the mother. "One. I’m your mother and you should do as I tell you. Two.  You are fifty years old and you should know better than to argue. Three. you are the Cardinal Archbishop and the service can’t begin without you".

This story isn’t true of course. But there is truth in it in that they reckon that human young are amongst the latest of the animal world to become independent of their parents – particularly the mother. (But a fifty year old Cardinal Archbishop who is still tied to his mother’s apron strings is perhaps a bit much.)

Some birds after caring for their young in the nest for short period of time physically push them out to fend for themselves. It might appear brutal, but instinct tells the parent bird that the time has come; the young must learn to be independent. To delay facing up to the harsh reality of life would be counterproductive. There is something [particularly brutal about today’s Gospel reading.

At his baptism Jesus had experienced the affirmation and the presence of God his father. The Spirit of God had descended upon him. This voice from heaven had assured him that God was indeed his father. ‘You are my Son with whom I am well pleased’. All the closeness to God as a father was there in that moment all the affirmation that  a Father could give – only for Jesus to find himself driven out  into the wilderness by that same Spirit.

Jesus was driven out - that’s what the Gospel says. He wasn’t asked if he wanted to go into the wilderness. He wasn’t persuaded; he was driven. It is as though God the Father was saying to Jesus His unique and beloved Son: ‘Now you must leave the nest.’ ‘Now you must face up to the reality of the life that I have in store for you.’ ‘Now you must grow up by being tested’. So Jesus was driven into the wilderness.

It was of course the wilderness of Judea south of Jerusalem that Jesus was driven in to. I have been there many times myself. There are miles of desert sand and hard rock a moonscape of a land all the way from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea and miles and miles south into the Negev. The Judean wilderness is a barren desolate and dangerous place. A place of thirst and hunger, of snakes and scorpions and wild animals. It is also a place of solitude, of loneliness and isolation.

I once spent a night alone in that very same desert. As the sun set and the darkness and the silence and the solitude of the desert surround you there is, I can tell you, no lonelier place on earth. I was away from home for six weeks whilst on Sabbatical in Israel. I’m always a home-bird – but in that wilderness I longed for home in a way I never have before or since longed for it. That’s the wilderness that Jesus was driven in to.

In the story of the Bible and in the Christian story the wilderness is a place that is full of symbolic meaning. – But it is a symbolism that is double edged. You remember the story of the Exodus, Moses and the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert of Sinai. (Notice the connection between that forty years in the desert and Jesus forty days in the desert). But it was in the desert that Israel discovered that God was indeed their God and that they were his people in a unique and close way. It was in the desert that Israel and God discovered each other and pledged themselves s to each other in the covenant of love and faithfulness. In the desert Israel found God. She found out that God could be relied upon to lead and feed them and free them to become his people. For later generations looking back upon the story that time in the wilderness was seen as time of great blessing.  One of the prophets described the desert time as Israel’s idyllic childhood. Another prophet spoke of the wilderness period as Israel’s honeymoon with God.

But the wilderness in scripture and in tradition is as I say double-edged. Because on the other hand the desert was also considered to be a place where one could encounter those evil forces which were opposed to God and hostile to God. The destructive and demonic powers. That is what we see in the story of Jesus temptation in the Gospel for today where we are told that whilst he was in the wilderness he was tempted by Satan. The desert is a place of trial and testing. The wilderness of temptation.  

Although the Judean desert is a lonely place today  yet in the early years of Christian history it was in habited by literally hundreds of desert monks and hermits. People like Anthony who in the fourth century left behind a life of ease and comfort and wealth to live a life of solitude and prayer in the desert.

In his life of St Anthony, Athanasius describes how Anthony struggled with the demons within him. He battled with the devil that sometimes appeared in the form of a wild beast. In Anthony’s story as Athanasius tells it the connection is made very clear between the desert, the presence of God, the devil and the wild beasts. And the connection in the Gospel story is quite clear also – the desert, God’s presence, the devil and the temptations and the wild beasts – they are all there. Clearly Anthony is following in the way of his Master, walking in the steps of Jesus. He too was driven into the wilderness.

There are those who say that some of these stories of deserts and demons are legendary – and maybe some parts of some of these stories are legendary: who knows? But the wilderness as an experience in human life is very much a reality. Sometimes  we too  can be driven into the wilderness – or at least it feels that way.

For some, life is a continuous wilderness of loneliness and isolation. The elderly and the housebound waiting long and lonely hours for the doorbell to ring and to bring with it the welcome sound of a human voice. For others it may be times of bereavement when life seems lacking in meaning and purpose without the company of that one person: and even a room full of people can be the loneliest place on earth. Or, as we are sadly seeing more often recently, the person who has lost a job and livelihood and a reason to get up in a morning.  Added to the loss of confidence and self-esteem that redundancy brings with it. Life can become a wasteland, a wilderness. We can even find ourselves in a wilderness of faithlessness. Sometimes faith eludes us; God seems to be characterised more by his absence than his presence and we long for the intimacy  that  once we knew -  that child –like faith,  or the honeymoon days with God. Or the temptations of the world simply overwhelm us.