Here’s a sermon for two rural churches in Warwickshire for the first Sunday in Lent. I’ve wondered whether Jesus only went into the wilderness for 40 days, or was his whole life there? Is wilderness a way to see “life”? The gospel for the day is Mark 1:9-15.
Catching my eye this week were these words of a benediction by Cole Arthur Riley; “May you rest in the immanence of your own worth, knowing you have nothing to prove and everything to love.”
Know you have nothing to prove and everything to love.
It’s the first Sunday of Lent and we’re just getting started. The question is, do we begin with shame, or do we begin with love? When/if we choose to give up chocolate or social media is it because it’s a shame we eat too much chocolate or spend too much time on social media? Do we begin with shame or do we begin with love?
Lent is the opportunity to intensify the awareness in our lives – our behaviours and the life around us. But do we begin with shame, or do we begin with love? Perhaps we begin with shame, and perhaps we begin again with love.
We are fond of thinking that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days – to be tempted by Satan. And that is what the gospels tell us. But were those 40 days an intensification of the wilderness experience which was to consume his whole life? The temptations didn’t stop after 40 days. The wild beasts didn’t go away – they bruised him, beat him and crucified him. They were hard times in a harsh and barren landscape – a lifetime in the wilderness.
His 40 days in the wilderness with the wild beasts were part of his whole life in a wilderness with the wild beasts of empire and religious authority baying for his blood.
Our gospel tells us it began with love, not shame.
Mark gives the sequence of events – and his sequence is his version of “in the beginning”. Beginning the gospel, beginning the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Mark gives this sequence of events:
- First, John appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance, and crowds came out to the wilderness to be baptised by him.
- Jesus, from a backwater village in Galilee was one of them. Just as he came 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.”
- Immediately the Spirit drove Jesus deeper into the wilderness
- Then John was arrested
The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. It began with love. “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” He was driven into the wilderness by love ringing in his ears, giving him the resilience for devilish temptation and for a life with the beasts.
And with love he walked the wilderness for the rest of his life, facing the wilder-ness of human nature and the be-wilderment of the victims of that wilder-ness and beastliness.
Resounding above all the voices of that wilder-ness, the beasts baying for his blood, the crowds shouting “crucify him”, the mockery – above all that din is the voice of heaven: “you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”, and the sound of the angels who waited on him in the wilderness, whose only sound is the sound of heaven and their lyric, “do not be afraid”.
The wilderness is our world too. We are in serious denial if we ignore the wilder-ness of our human nature and the beastliness that so many suffer: if we ignore the beasts that force themselves on us and the beasts that we entertain.
Lent is our opportunity to intensify our awareness of the wilderness of our lives, to take stock of the wars around us, the greed that threatens us, the environment we’ve neglected, the injustice that is suffered, the emptiness of so much of life, the distance between us, and the isolation which is so much a feature of life.
Life is wilderness. The wilderness is so much bigger than any of us can ever imagine – too big for our hearts and minds. We have a problem if we reduce Lent to a personal remedy for our over-use of social media or our over-indulgence of chocolate. Lent will have been a waste of time if all we do at the end is reach out for a Cadbury’s cream egg. The devil will have won big time then.
Just as it was the love shown to Jesus in his baptism that drove him into the wilderness, to love in the wilderness, to do wonders in the wilderness, so it can be the love shown to us in our baptism that drives us into the wilderness, into these 40 days, into the rest of our lives.
We’ve got nothing to prove and everything to love. The wilderness isn’t an easy place to be. Heaven knows we’ve suffered enough there already. The landscape is often bleak and unforgiving. We may be tested to our limits. We will take wrong turns. There will be complicated choices for which there are no easy answers. We will be be-wildered and bothered by the wilder-ness around us and within us
The wilderness isn’t easy. But it’s the only place to be – or, the only place to be is where love drives us, where God’s Spirit takes us. Just don’t make it a guilt trip. Don’t let shame take you there these 40 days, and into the rest of your lives. Let love take you.
From the beginning God brought love to the wilderness. That is clear to us when we open our scriptures. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” In other words there was nothing but wilderness and chaos – and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, and he did wonders in that wilderness and chaos.
Similarly, at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, there are all the signs of wilderness and chaos – that is why the crowds came to John, for his baptism of repentance as a way through the wilderness and chaos they were facing. It is the Spirit of God which drove Jesus into the wilderness and chaos which has never gone away. It’s our wilderness, our chaos – and he begins with love.
When we are baptised, we are christened – becoming one in Christ, driven by love into wilderness. St Teresa of Avila gave us this blessing which will surely help us follow Jesus in his love into the wilderness, far from the easy life some of us may have been tempted to choose. It is the truth of our christening and being in Christ.
Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses the world.
Yours are the hands.
Yours are the feet.
Yours are his eyes.
You are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Jesus began with love in the wilderness. We don’t need to begin with anything other than love. We don’t have anything to prove but we have everything to love.
Mark 1:9-15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised 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 for 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.’
Cole Arthur Riley’s book from which the opening benediction is taken is Black Liturgies, published in 2024 by Hodder and Stoughton
Grits and Grains 