“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the
wilderness” (Mark 1:12)
Lately I am not into wilderness. I don’t want to be in a
place, physical or metaphorical, where I am at the mercy of the elements, where
I am unsafe, where my very survival is at issue. I much prefer to be in control
of my surroundings, feel safe in the life I have ordered, and have my mind on
things higher up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than simply staying alive.
Therapeutic moral deism—a popular distortion of Christianity which envisions a
God whose sole purposes are to improve my life and help me follow clearly
demarcated moral guidelines—encourages me, perhaps unintentionally, to avoid
the wilderness. But here in the gospels, Jesus is led (driven!) by the Spirit
into the wilderness. And here in Lent, if I am to enter into this season of
reflection, I am invited to reflect on the reality of wilderness. And I am
beginning to think that, in many ways, I am in the wilderness like it or not, so
I might as well face it.
The biblical scholar in me is helpful at this point. I can
take a step back from my personal feelings about entering the wilderness and
ask what wilderness meant to the gospel writers, when they chose to include
this detail from the life of Jesus in their narratives. Recognizing the
cultural, historical, and literary context of this event from the life of Jesus
is a good starting point. Such reflection can provide some guidance for more
personal reflections about wilderness.
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| source: faith.nd.edu |
For Jewish writers in the first century, the wilderness could
be viewed as a place of individual isolation and struggle, but that was not its
only meaning. The theme of “wilderness” also had many other connections, some
with deep roots in the Jewish worldview embraced by the New Testament writers. Wilderness
was the place where their ancestors had wandered for forty years: a place of communal
(rather than individual) purification and testing. It was also a place of a
place of divine revelation. Moses is associated with the wilderness,
encountering God at the burning bush and receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai, in
addition to leading the Israelites through their wilderness wanderings. All of
these aspects of Israelite history suggest the importance of wilderness for the
early Jewish worldview. In addition, in the period of the Second Temple, the
wilderness was a place where rebel leaders against oppressive regimes had
gathered their forces, particularly in the Maccabean era. Finally, the
wilderness has associations with the concept of exile: the forced removal of
the people of Israel from the land of promise during the era of the monarchy.
Though the Bible also recounts a return from exile in the era of king Cyrus,
for many Jewish authors in the Second Temple period, the exile continued to
define their reality as separated in some way from the covenant blessings of
God.
With this rich palate of associations related to the idea of
“wilderness,” any serious reader of the New Testament might want to pause to
consider what particular connotations may be in mind when a gospel writer explicitly
points out that Jesus was led into the wilderness. One might expect divine
encounters and divine revelation in a narrative that involves a journey into
the wilderness. (For an accessible and helpful look at the significance of the wilderness
in the era of the New Testament, see Daniel Smith’s Into the World of the New Testament, especially chapter four).
To me, it seems that the notion of the wilderness in these
passages makes a link between Jesus and Moses very strong. Such a connection is
supported when we see other places in the gospels where Jesus and Moses are
both shown to be a part of God’s working in the world (see John 1:17, for
example). The full significance of Jesus can only be appreciated when his
advent is seen as part of the long history of God’s working in the world. For
the earliest Christians, themselves Jews, the significance of Moses and the
Torah cannot be overestimated. Thus, in his being led into the wilderness,
Jesus is shown to be a participant in God’s age old plan of redemption of God’s
people. And this to me is a vital recognition: for the gospel writers Jesus is
not just a radical new initiative on the part of God to redeem humanity. Jesus
is part of God’s plans from of old. “Wilderness,” as a theme, is one way of
showing that connection to the reader.
This way of reading the wilderness temptation of Jesus does
not preclude the idea that Jesus models a personal practice of piety in which
one is purified through time alone in the wilderness, even as one faces and
strives to resist temptation. Christians have always identified personally with
this narrative, finding in it encouragement and hope when in temptation. But it
is important to also recall that a personal application of this passage to “my
life” is not the whole story. Jesus’s going into the wilderness is a way of the
gospel writer saying: “Hey, pay attention. This story I am recounting is not only
about a unique individual overcoming temptation; what follows will be rich with divine
revelation.” Just as God was revealed in the wilderness in the past, God is
being revealed in the gospel in the life of Jesus, albeit in a new way. The gospel writers are
inviting us to make the connection that this
story (the story of Jesus) is part of that
story (the story of God and God’s people). New Testament historian N. T. Wright
puts it this way: “Jesus is acting out the great drama of Israel’s exodus from
Egypt, Israel’s journey through the wilderness into the promised land” (Mark
for Everyone, p. 6).
When I think about this passage, yes it can lead me to think
about my own experience of wilderness, my own experience of exile. I can take
comfort in knowing that Jesus was in the wilderness as well, and that I am not
alone in whatever physical or spiritual wilderness I find myself. Those are
good things to consider. But I can also consider the larger idea that the story
of Jesus is a part of the ancient story of God’s redemptive work in the world.
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