The Wilderness Sojourn

Our story in Luke begins directly after Jesus’ baptism. Even though the lectionary has already taken us through the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth and the transfiguration, when we get to this passage in Luke, Jesus’ public ministry was only about to begin.

Up to chapter four, most of what we know about Jesus is passive information. It is conveyed to the reader through someone talking about Jesus. Elizabeth, pregnant with John, spoke of the great things Mary’s baby would do. The people in the Temple spoke about Jesus. Simeon, a devout man, spoke of the change Jesus would bring to the world, the prophet Anna praised God for the child (2.22-38), and John the Baptists heralded his coming.

Until Chapter four, Jesus’ only words were to his parents, after he had run off from them in the hubbub of Jerusalem during Passover. When they found him at the temple and reprimanded him for his running off, Jesus words were that they should have known just where to find him, in the temple. Even in his baptism, it was not Jesus who spoke, but God who offered a heavenly benediction.

After a relatively passive beginning, Jesus took action. After he had come up from the Jordan following his baptism, Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (4.1). Like the Israelites who wandered for forty years before coming into the Promised Land, Jesus wandered the wilderness for forty days being tested.

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I had a friend in college who undertook a fast. Looking back, it must have been during Lent, but at the time I could not figure out why she was attempting such a feat. She was a member of a religious group on campus that had a charismatic leader whom the members adored. Some months before the fast he asked each member of the group to consider fasting. He said that he was going to fast for forty days and for forty nights. He would consume only water, and only when he had to.

The leader said that Moses and Elijah had each fasted for forty days, and he said that Jesus had fasted and been tempted for forty days. He explained that this was an opportunity for the members of their group to feel united with the other members of the group, with Jesus in his struggles in the wilderness, and it was an opportunity for them to confront their own temptations. He had done it before, he assured them, and he said it was a life changing experience.

He suggested that they prepare for the fast. He said that they should pray and talk with him and listen for God’s guidance. Unfortunately, he did not suggest that they see a doctor to see if they were fit for a long fast or read about any possible short-term or long-term side effects from food deprivation. That was, after all, a luxury that Jesus and Elijah did not have before their fasts.

My friend undertook her fast with gusto, so to speak. She ate nothing and drank very little water. Her stomach ached and churned for the first few days, but she was sure that would get better; and she was sure that only made her closer to Jesus.

Even as she gave her body nothing, she still asked the same amount from it. She went to class everyday and went to her job as an after school nanny shuttling three kids from school to soccer games and piano practice and then home for homework and dinner before their parents got home. Making dinner for the kids was a particular struggle, but she welcomed it as added temptation to her discipline.

The first time she had chest pain was about day ten. After that she started eating fruit, an apple while she made the kids’ dinner. The first time she blacked out while driving the kids was about day fifteen. After that she convinced some of her friends with cars to drive her from place to place and she added some more fruit and renewed her efforts. A few days after that she finally went to the doctor for abdominal pain and was told that she had to stop immediately or risk permanent and irreversible damage to her organs.

She was devastated. She believed she had gone into the wilderness and failed. She had not been able to unite with Jesus in his temptation. She had not been able to last without bread made of stones. She believed she had failed the group. She believed she had failed the leader. She believed she had given into temptation.

*****
Jesus went into the wilderness the Son of God and the Son of humanity. As the days stretched on his stomach ached with the pain of hunger. His body and mind weakened without their necessary fuel, his eyes blurred and his thoughts wandered to the gently rounded river stones that so nearly looked like bread. It wouldn’t take much imagination to think they were bread. And for the Son of God, it wouldn’t take much effort to change them into bread. And who would know? Who was there to see the stone transform? He struggled between the urge to fulfill his hunger and the desire to honor God.

After the bread, his delusions became grander. Beyond satiation, Jesus was tempted by worldly power, which so easily was at his hands. He could have taken over kingdoms and ruled countries and peoples. As the Son of God he could have thrown a successful coupe against any government and all governments. As ruler of the earthly realm, he would have possessed all the power of the world. Though, very truly tempted, Jesus did not concede to his desire for earthly power. Jesus did not succumb to the enticement of the power of the world. Rather he held fast to the power of God.

*****
Jesus went into the wilderness fully God and fully human. He was God incarnate – clothed in human flesh. We do not fast to be united with him; rather he was tempted because of his union with us. Had he been fully God, there would have been no temptation. It would have merely been a wilderness sojourn. He would have had no need for food, no desire for power, no urge to test. If Jesus were only God, there would have been no struggle.

Instead, as Jesus is united with us in our humanness, Jesus struggled in the wilderness. He struggled between his human wants and what he knew to be God’s desires for him. He struggled between his own self-gratification and glorifying God. Jesus’ struggles were our struggles because Jesus’ body was our body. Therefore, we have no need to undertake a self-imposed, heroic temptation to unite us with Jesus. Jesus has already bridged the distance to us.

Rather, we give things up so that we can create time and space in our lives to spend with God and to glorify God. We give things up not as proof of our stubborn devotion to God, but as proof that we want God to be so much more a part of our lives that we are willing to create space for God.

It was not the temptations themselves that gave God glory, any more than our giving up chocolate or over-working or television gives God glory, but the way Jesus responded to the temptations. Jesus response to temptation was active. He did not passively allow the temptation to wash over himself and claim his motives and motivations. Instead, Jesus responded to the temptation by turning to scripture and turning to God.

Jesus had prepared for his human life by reading and listening to scripture. From scripture, he knew well the nature of God and the desires God has for humanity. Knowing God’s nature, Jesus turned to God in prayer during the temptation. His reliance on God fortified their relationship. It was not the temptations that glorified God, but Jesus acknowledgement of his reliance upon God and Jesus’ acceptance of God’s sovereignty.

*****
We have no need to create temptations for ourselves. They are all around us. Temptations lure us from God and lure us from what God desires for us. During lent, we do not need to focus on the temptation. During lent we have the time to focus on how temptations draw us away form God and we have an opportunity to create space for God in our lives. We have the time set aside, during the wilderness of Lent, to prepare ourselves – to read scripture and listen to God and pray - for the temptations we will endure ahead.

What is heartening about Jesus’ wilderness sojourn is that he was tempted. What is inspiring is that he did not give in to temptation, but consistently glorified God.

Lifting The Veil

Exodus 34.20-35
2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2

Moses had gone up the mountain for the first time back at the end of chapter 19. At the beginning of Exodus, Moses and Miriam and Aaron and the Israelites had fled Egypt on foot through the Sea of Reeds and they had continued to walk, until chapter 19 when they came to Mt. Sinai. There they stopped their constant moving and made camp at the base of the mountain.

Having been led there by God, Moses did as God requested. God desired for Moses to climb the mountain to the very top to draw near to God. There was a lot of going up and down those first few days. He went up and heard God and then went down and told the people. Moses went up and heard God and then went down and got the people to bring them closer to God, closer to the top of the mountain so that they could hear God for themselves. Eventually God and Moses got passed the greetings and pageantry and got down to work.

Moses, daily, climbed the mountain and, daily, descended to tell the people what God had told him. There were all sorts of commandments. There were commands about justice like “you shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; [and] when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice…” (23.2). And there were commandments about Sabbath – keeping the seventh day holy for God and resting in the seventh year to allow all animals and fields and people be refreshed by God (23.10-13). There were several chapters worth of details about how to build the sanctuary made of tents and how the lampstands should look and how to carve the ark of the covenant and who was to go into the Holy of holies and when and to do what (27-28).

God was explicit about desires for the Israelites, and daily Moses would descend the mountain to tell the people what God had said and what they should do. There were mandates and rules and laws. The Israelites were inundated with details for how to build their buildings and how to build their lives.

Finally, “when God finished speaking with Moses on Mt. Sinai, God gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God” (31.18). The tablets held ten simple rules that anyone could follow. There was nothing too difficult. They didn’t say that everyone had to climb the mountain or go to seminary, just that they had to worship God and set aside time to be with God and respect each other.

But even with ten straightforward rules about how to live with God, the Israelites had trouble drawing near to God. God’s glory was so pure and strong that it was intimidating. Most of them had tried to be holy for a while, they had really meant to, but giving up their routines was hard and giving over to God made them a little anxious.

The second time Moses descended Mt. Sinai with the tablets, having broken the first set in the ugly Golden Calf incident, the people were afraid of what they saw. “The skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (34.29). When the Israelites saw Moses, they were afraid.

When they looked into the face of the man who had drawn near to God, when they saw in his eyes that his very being was aligned with God’s being…when they saw on his face that his countenance shone from having drawn near to God’s presence, the people of Israel were afraid and disdainful. They did not want such relationship for themselves. They were afraid of what such a change would mean for them and for their daily living. They did not want to give up the way things were going for the way things could be, even if the status quo was imperfect. How were they to know for sure that devotion to God would be better? How were they to be certain that drawing near to God would make life better instead of destroying their lives for something worse?
Rather than being troubled by the interruption of God, the Israelites encouraged Moses to cover his face with a veil so that they would not be confronted too readily with the presence of God.

*****
Now I think Paul had Moses all wrong. I don’t think Moses was ashamed of his shining face. I don’t think he was apologizing for God by covering himself. It wasn’t that Moses bore the glory of God with shame, I think he bore it with respect for God and respect for the Israelites, who did not have the Son to mediate the glory.Moses experienced God without mediation and the Israelites experienced God through the residue of glory left on Moses from his encounter. They had no one to synthesize the experience. There was no Jesus who was fully human and fully God to convey to them the glory of God. In Jesus we are confronted with the presence of God, clothed in flesh, and extended to us in the world.

*****
I’ve brainstormed on how to convey to you God’s glory, and I am not sure I know how to conceive of it myself. I do not think I can comprehend it shining on someone’s face except in the person you pass daily who radiates God’s goodness. Or maybe as you watch the countenance of another change from tension to relief in the face of kindness. God’s glory is in the majesty of the redwoods that are nearly impermeable to change and in the ferns of the plains, the fronds of which draw closed when pressed between finger and thumb. God’s glory is in the brilliant discoveries of science and in the fleeting moments of clarity in loved ones living with dementia. We cannot contain God’s glory and we cannot attain God’s glory.

But Paul says, there in verse eighteen of his second letter to the Corinthians that, through Jesus Christ we all see with unveiled faces. Through Jesus, God is made plain to us and God’s glory is conveyed to us, not in heavenly or mountain top ways, but in earthly and human ways. In Jesus, God’s glory was unveiled to us in human flesh, in terms we understand, as though “reflected in a mirror,” which I think is just amazing, that God allowed the Glory to be contained in such a fickle vessel as a human body.

But even more amazing than God’s willingness to be near us, is God’s willingness to allow us to participate in the glory. Not only are we able to see the glory of God shone bright on Moses face or in the incarnation of Jesus, but also, there in verse eighteen it says that we are “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” It is through the Lord, the Spirit, that we are transformed, from the mundane and curious human form into the extraordinary and miraculous glory of God.

And it is through the Lord, the Spirit that we are being transformed. It is not one fell swoop. We are not one day sinful humans and the next images of the glory of God. God has freely given us the grace of Jesus Christ so that we are forgiven of our sins and we may have the freedom to come out from behind the veil and respond to God with thanksgiving and discipline.

*****
In Lent, we are given the opportunity to throw off the veil behind which we live. We are given the opportunity to shed the things that hold us back and distance us from God and God’s glory. On this last Sunday before Lent, Transfiguration Sunday, we can stare at the world in Jesus and see what could be. We can see a world transformed to God, a world given to God through the grace of Jesus Christ. It is our opportunity to contemplate what veils we have put upon our faces – veils of over-work and time away from home, veils of doubt of self and of God, veils of self-reliance and individualism. Today we have the opportunity to see not only what the world could be, but also what our lives could be lived in conformity to Jesus Christ. Lent is the season we are given to spend with God, to contemplate God’s glory and to lift the veil we have put upon our faces to shield us from the terror of drawing near to God.

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Before Wednesday, when Lent begins, take the time, just a moment even, to contemplate God and your relationship with God. Think about how God’s glory is breaking into your life. Think about what you do to impede it. And think about what it is that you can cast aside to lift the veil; so that as you look into the mirror that is reflecting God’s glory, you may see and work toward the image into which you are being transformed. You are being made holy. You are being transformed into God’s image.