Stepping Into the Wilderness

“When I first moved to the land where I live, I shared it with a herd of cows,” notes Barbara Brown Taylor in her book An Altar in the World^[1]. Though the cows had 100 acres to roam, Taylor noticed the narrow paths worn into the land, marking where the cows moved single-file from place to place. There were all sorts of reasons for why the paths came to be—shade from the hot sun, avoiding difficult terrain, or simply taking the shortest path from A to B—but the paths showed that the cows were creatures of habit and routine.

 Taylor goes on to say, “This is normal creaturely behaviour, which means that something extra is needed to override it. Why override it? Because, once you leave the cow path, the unpredictable territory is full of life. Since you cannot see where you are putting your feet, you cannot afford to remain unconscious. Since you cannot count on the beaten path to make all of your choices for you, you need to wake up and take a look around. Where are you? Where do you want to go? How many ways are there to get there and what might you see if you left the path?”

 Lent is a time when we step off the beaten path, step out of the ruts that are expedient, or comforting, or easy. It’s a time to move slower, bring more awareness to all we do, and embark on a different journey than what is comfortable. It’s a time to look at what we’ve been lugging around for so many weeks, months, or even years and measure the weight of that burden. Because what served us before stepping off the cow path may now be too heavy to carry. It’s a time to give up pretending that we are in control and open ourselves to what the wilderness—and the God we find in the wilderness—has in store.

 Have you ever noticed there’s a lot of wilderness in the Bible? In fact, “words translated as wilderness occur nearly 300 times,”^[2] spanning both the Old and New Testaments. Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, the whole Israelite people, Elijah, and of course Jesus. The wilderness is a place of wandering, a place of confrontation, a place of grace, a place where old ways are shaken loose and new paths are forged.

 Lent begins in the wilderness, so must we begin there as well. Have you entered the wilderness yet? Perhaps you stepped off the well-trod path on Ash Wednesday, ready to engage the wildness of Lent. That’s how we hope to do it, but I’m afraid, dear ones, that many or perhaps even most of us found ourselves in the wilderness long before March 5th.

 We can end up in the wilderness without realizing it—like when we’re too busy looking for the cracks in the sidewalk to avoid that when we finally look up we don’t recognize our surroundings. We can also find ourselves abruptly pushed into the wilderness through any number of catastrophes. One day everything is fine and life proceeds as planned, and the next our world is upside down. This abrupt departure of the path feels all too real with the cutting of jobs and an ever more volatile nation and economy; wildfires that have destroyed communities and cities, climate change that brings increasingly devastating weather. Much less if there is anything affecting you personally like illness, pain, or loss.

 The wilderness is at its most dangerous when we perceive ourselves to be alone there: our fear grows, our sense of connectedness wanes, and we lose touch of the resources at our disposal. But we are never alone in the wilderness. Here in the wilderness of Lent, there are many companions for the journey, but even more importantly, the Spirit is with us.

 One commentator notes, “The same Spirit that led the Israelites into the wilderness in Exodus is the same Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness in the Gospels. This is also the same Spirit that leads you now into the wilderness. By remembering that it is God who leads us into this uncomfortable place, we can also remember that God will never leave us or forsake us. “^[3]

 Our gospel passage for today takes place in chapter four of Luke, and the action that happens just before Jesus’ testing is his baptism. In his baptism, Jesus was named as God’s beloved, and the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove. Only then did the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus was not alone there; he took with him his status as beloved of God and remained filled with the Spirit.

 That means that everything Jesus faces in those 40 days—the wildness, hunger, and testing—is not done alone. Jesus could continually draw from the deep, replenishing well of the Spirit that resides within him. The same is true for us. We too have been claimed as God’s beloved children, and we too have been given the Holy Spirit. So we too, when we find ourselves in the wilderness can take with us a blessing and the Spirit that nourishes, challenges, and comforts.

 And it is a when. There is no avoiding the wilderness; whether we are thrown there by life’s circumstances, stumble there through inattention, or tread there purposefully—the wilderness is inevitable. But just as our ancestors were changed there, the wilderness can transform us, reveal more and more the image of God dwelling within us.

 Franciscan monk Richard Rohr says, “Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred space, it’s going to feel like suffering. It’s letting go of what we’re used to. That causes suffering. But part of us always has to die… Here death is part of life, and failure is part of victory. Opposites collide and unite, and everything belongs.”^[4]

 It is in this place of opposites colliding, death and life, failure as part of victory that Jesus encounters the devil. He went through forty days of fasting and testing, and by the end he was famished. The devil takes that moment to present the final tests. The devil wants to provoke Jesus into a reaction, but Jesus doesn’t react. There is no fight or flight response when the devil holds out everything we mortals could want—power, prestige, and possessions—and tempts Jesus to claim them.

 The devil says:

“Turn this stone into bread, and fulfill your every need.” Jesus says no to possessions, to the security that feeding himself this way would bring, because this selfishness isn’t part of God’s kingdom.

 The devil says:

“Worship me and I will give you dominion over all the kingdoms of the world.” Jesus turns his back on the power of ruling in this way, because God alone is to be worshiped, and God’s power is made perfect through weakness.^[5]

 The devil says:

“Cast yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple, for the angels will save you.” Jesus refuses the devil’s offer of prestige because there is no need to prove he is the Son of God in this way. Jesus proves he is the Son of God not through the ways of fight or flight, but through the Third Way—the way of wisdom.^[6]

 And that Wisdom can only be learned in the wilderness. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “There is something holy in this moment of knowing just how perishable you are. It is part of the truth about what it means to be human, however hard most of us work to not know that.”^[7]

 As you step off the well-trodden path this Lenten season, what do you need to lay down? What do you hold tightly to that is keeping you from walking the Way of Wisdom? Is it your desire to do more, earn more, be more? Or is it a need for control and certainty? What patterns of thinking or doing weigh you down, clutter your life, or trap you in place? What can you let go of to fully enter this wild place of transformation?

 As author Rachel Held Evans writes, “Maybe one of the lessons is that the wilderness is a place where we can’t rely on the familiar, which can seem like a hardship but might also be an invitation—an invitation into the truth of our vulnerability.”^[8]

 We go into the wilderness with a blessing, and the Spirit that nourishes, challenges, and comforts. Hear this blessing for these wilderness days,and may you take it with you on the journey.

Blessed are you in the wilderness.

You who stepped off
the path with purpose,
head still dusty with ashes,
you who stumbled there on accident,
lost and unsure
you who were flung there
when life knocked you down,
knees torn and hands scraped.

In this new terrain
that feels dangerous under your feet,
that has no well worn path to guide the way,
may you take stock of all you carry,
weighing what is worthwhile and worthless,
making hard choices for today
for the promise of tomorrow.

Blessed are you who find the strength
to release what is too heavy to carry,
even if it is your most treasured possession.

In this place of wandering,
this place of slowness
this place of awareness
you may be confronted with temptation,
showing you the easy way forward.

You may be confronted with yourself
And see no way forward.
You will certainly be confronted with God.

Blessed are you who look deep within
And discover the strength
to take one more step
And then another
Though your legs feel too heavy to carry you.

Blessed are you in the wilderness
Where grace is found among the thorns
And the road is made by walking.
Amen.

¹ Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, pp.69-70
² Midbar, Arabah and Eremos—Biblical Wilderness
³ Rachel Adel Postler, Enter the Bible, “Taking Comfort in the Wilderness.” 
⁴ Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, pp.158-159
⁵ 2 Corinthians 12:9
⁶ Richard Rohr, Return to the Sacred, p. 172
⁷ Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, p.76
⁸ Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, p. 135