What was that wilderness like?

 1st Sunday of Lent - 18 February 2024: Genesis 9:8-17, 1 Peter 3:18-end and Mark 1:9-15

The British Caribbean poet Malika Brooker writes:

I know you were weary those forty

days

in the wilderness. What was that 

wilderness like - 

Dry dust, and swirling wind, no colour…

In today’s gospel, Mark leaves us with precisely that question: what was it like?

The brevity of his account means we have to imagine the temptations of flesh and mind; tugging at the identity of God’s beloved Son.  

'Christ in the Wilderness', 1898, by Briton Riviere

Brooker’s word play paints an image of a heart beating fast against a ribcage, of a dry throat swallowing saliva and the way the stomach  contracts with hunger. All this as day stretched like a bending river / day stretched and curled like a meandering river. 

The wilderness has an undertow dragging at the weary one; skin and soul fragile and exposed. Yet, Jesus stood firm in the dry dust. 

River and dust.

Mark places Jesus at a meandering river: plunged into flowing waters in solidarity with us. He comes up and the heavens are torn apart as the Spirit descends with the stirring air. 

God’s Son. Beloved. 

Mark places Jesus in the dry dust: that same Spirit drives God’s beloved Son into the wilderness. Time stretches for 40 days - temptations faced in the wildness of creation and the hope of grace. 

The beloved. 

The artist Stanley Spencer leans into the wildness of the wilderness and creaturely companionship. He finds himself drawn to this brief episode in Jesus’ life saying: I felt because you have not anything much in the actual life in the wilderness except temptation, that one has an excuse for imagining what his life might have been like. 

Spencer gives us colour absent in Brooker’s poem: an earthy series full of rocks and trees and wild beasts. The foxes and eagles, scorpions and a hen with her brood; fingers reaching out to daisies, knees planted in craters, hands extending to heaven. His Christ in the wilderness holds the covenant with all living creatures as Noah was promised. 

There is tenderness as well as weariness here: Christ abides in the wilderness - draws near to every living creature - and attends to God. 

In Christ, God beholds creation - a holy visitation.

He is alone - yet with us.

In the wilderness - wrestling with the ‘what ifs’.

He attends to his heavenly father - in solitude, stretching before him.

In the midst of creation - holding its violence and vulnerability.

The Spirit reveals who Jesus is and the Spirit drives him into the wilderness: from refreshing water to parched land.

Mark’s brevity shows us something of what it is to be human - but also reveals God’s solidarity with us in Jesus.

We are made aware that we are God’s beloved; but that goes hand in hand with the reality of our frailty, the ways we’re stretched and challenged, tested and tempted. The wilderness is for Jesus a time of preparation for his public ministry - but also a foreshadowing of what he accomplishes as in him God reconciles the world to Godself.

It is in him that we see love which is full of compassion and devoid of selfishness or pride; in him we see that hope can emerge from the wilderness, that we are not crushed by it. 

We hold together the truth that we are beloved - loved dust with the breath of God in us - and the fact that we are vulnerable - able to wound others and be wounded by them.  And yet, Jesus not only speaks but also embodies good news for us.  

He invites us to repent, to let go of hurts, regrets and burdens; he invites us to place our trust in the strength of love which goes to the depths; he invites us to notice the nearness of God, breath by breath.

Oftentimes we face our own unchosen wilderness: the tricky colleague, the relationship that ends,  the ways loneliness or anxiety breaks in, the disruption of illness, the waves of grief, the unbidden pressures of life which feel parched, rugged or barren. 

We cannot dodge the discomfort, uncertainty or loss. We wrestle with it.  

In his baptism, Jesus understands who he is: the beloved, the fullness of God in human flesh. It is in the wilderness that it becomes clear how that power of love will be made known - in weakness and sacrifice, not coercion and manipulation. 

For us, our struggles in the wilderness prompt us to explore who we are - and whose we are. 

There is much in the world that seeks to define us by external markers of status - from gender, work, age, gender, sexuality or class. Likewise there is much that tempts us to find ourselves in our image - the brands we consume which consume us, the influence we have and how influences us. The transience of trends and the temptations of tribes that other others. 

The gospel reveals that only God can name us - as beloved, called by name in baptism. Our identity and our belonging is held in that - and we hold onto that promise in times of waiting and wilderness. When we waver, perhaps others hold that assurance for us: reminding us of who we are as we hear echoes of beloved in uncomfortable times. 

For we too rely on angels to minister to us - offering comfort and truth, help and rest, solace and strength. Perhaps Jesus found grace in cooling breezes, fresh water, the company of creatures and the shade of rocks or trees in his wilderness. 

For us too, perhaps divine grace is found in birdsong and domestic animals as well as in the human companionship of those who hold us and remind us that we are beloved. 

But as Peter reminds us, that grace is known in the one who suffers with us and for us; who lives with us and for us. 

As the poet Brooker puts it: Since those days we fast in our thirst / for salvation, / long forgotten, the bloodied scar on his / nailed palm. 

The one who was put to death is alive in the spirit - and our baptism lays claim on that hope of resurrection life through him. 

Our world includes wilderness; even then God’s impulse is to bring life out of death. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024