Our Sunday Message

A Lenten Journey Towards Identity: Mark 1:9-15
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
March 5, 2006
First Sunday of Lent

  Our Lenten journey to Easter is underway. The forty days of Lent are patterned after Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness and so, in order to understand what this has to do with our personal lives, one of the things that we need to ask is, Why was Jesus in the wilderness?
The evangelist Mark is our spiritual guide and teacher this year. Just like in school, you don’t get to choose your teacher each year. They are chosen for you. This is year B in the lectionary cycle and Mark is our chosen teacher.
  One thing that you notice about Mark is that he uses an economy of words. Mark doesn’t say a lot. That is especially true about this wilderness experience. Mark gives the very barest details: nothing about turning stones into bread; nothing about jumping off the pinnacle of the temple; nothing about ruling all the kingdoms of the world. There is none of that in Mark.
  In order for us to learn from Mark, we must listen carefully to what he does say and even in some cases to what he does not say. For instance, Mark does not say a lot about the wilderness experience but what he does say is that it was immediately after Jesus’ baptism and just before Jesus’ public preaching. As one scholar says, Jesus enters the wilderness “still wet from the Jordan.”1 Mark wants us to understand that between the baptism and the preaching, between the call and the work, this wilderness time of trial and testing was necessary. You would think that if Jesus heard God say, “You are my son, my beloved; with you I am pleased,” at the baptism, then he was ready to go and preach the kingdom of God. But this chronology of events reminds us that being chosen and being prepared are not the same. Before he is ready to preach the kingdom of God, Jesus must first endure and survive the wilderness experience.
  What does that mean? How do we apply this to our Lenten journey?   Listen again to the story.
  Mark says, “The Spirit drove him out into the wilderness.” This is a very strong verb. It could be translated, “The Spirit threw him out into the wilderness.” It is the same word that is used when Jesus “casts out demons.” It implies some kind of inner compulsion. It is not unusual for us to say that someone is “driven.” Some are driven to succeed. Some are driven to be the best. Some are driven by anxiety.   We understand that language.
  Mark is describing a man who is being “driven” into this experience out of spiritual necessity. But why? In what way is this experience necessary for his life work? He is not driven to the city or driven to the temple. He is driven to the wilderness. The wilderness will be his seminary.
  The wilderness motif is common in the Bible. Jacob wrestles with the angel and is transformed in the wilderness. Moses hears the divine call in the burning bush in the wilderness. Israel passes through the wilderness to get to the promised land. John the Baptist emerges from the wilderness to prepare the way for the messiah. Paul spends three years in the wilderness before he begins his missionary work. There was something about the wilderness that was transforming for each of these. There are some things that can only be learned in the wilderness.
  The wilderness is a place of barrenness, isolation, deprivation, extreme physical stress. Mark says that Jesus was “with wild beasts” in the wilderness. There is something that is untamed, undomesticated, and dangerous about being in the wilderness. In other words, the wilderness experience challenges our highest values of security, comfort, pleasure, and good company.
  The wilderness is not just a place. It represents all of those experiences in life that strip away our ego defenses and emotional attachments and confronts us with our inner demons of unclaimed emotions, undeveloped potentials, unwanted desires, and unwelcomed memories. Our Lenten journey takes us inward, makes us face our secret sins: prejudice, lust for wealth and power, anger, regret, guilt, grief, fear. Don’t romanticize the wilderness. Don’t underestimate this experience. It was a dangerous place even for Jesus. It is not the kind of experience that you choose. Jesus was “driven” by the Spirit. But as difficult as it was, it was somehow necessary for Jesus.
  What is Mark trying to teach us? Why did Jesus need this experience? In his wonderful commentary on Mark, Ched Myers suggests that one way to think about Jesus’ wilderness experience is the native American “vision quest . . . an outward adventure beyond the margins of society; an inward passage of purification and self-encounter; and a journey ‘in the spirit’ to discover the identity and destiny of one’s people.”2 In the native American tradition, in order to become a spiritual leader and healer, a shaman, the chosen individual had to undergo a wilderness experience. If the individual survived, he returned to the community with a new sense of personal identity and power. Jesus survived and returned to preach the kingdom of God with clarity and power.
  What is Mark teaching us? Could it be that this wilderness experience of Jesus is a reminder that in order for any of us to hear the meaning of the kingdom of God, we must first strip ourselves from all our attachments to comfort and safety?
  Brian McLaren is a pastor and author. He says that we need some new language to recapture the essence of Jesus’ teaching. For example, he says that “Kingdom of God is so last century.” Is there a way to talk about or image the Kingdom of God with new vitality? He offers this suggestion. In The Lord’s Prayer, rather than, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” it could be translated, “May all your dreams for your creation come true.”3
  I like that. But what is God’s dream for God’s creation? How can I discover that when I am committed to the values of security, comfort, pleasure, and the company of people who are just like me? We need a wilderness experience because our thoughts are not God’s thoughts.
  I am here Lord, alone in silence, drawn by something other than myself, waiting to hear and to obey. It is not something that I would choose. You know that this is not easy for me: silence, aloneness, stillness. My mind jumps ahead to other things that I am planning, needing to do. But I come back to this still point because I am drawn. At least some part of me knows I need to hear or rehear your call. I resist. Maybe I know that I can’t give up my security. How is that even possible in a world that feels so out of control? Or how can I give up my comfort? Why would anyone want to? Or how can I give up my pleasures? I need them to make it through another day. What is wrong with pleasure anyway? Or how can I give up the company that I enjoy? I’ve seen the company that you keep and your people are not my people. Forgive me, Lord. I am just being honest with you. But I come back to this still point because I am driven by that inner urge. I would not be here today if there was not something that called me beyond myself. Goodness knows, I have other things to do. But I want to be more than I am. I want to be spiritually whole. I want to hear and obey. And so, I am here Lord, at this still place in myself. In the midst of these Lenten days help me to stop, look, and listen. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. But be gentle, good Lord, for your servant is also weak. Don’t let me be tested beyond that which I am able, but with the temptation, provide a way to endure. Amen.

1 Fred Craddock, Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year B, p. 141.
2 Ched Myers, “Say To This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship”, p. 8.
3 Quoted in, Sojourners magazine, March 2006, p. 16.