The Rev. Carol S. Wedell
March 1, 2009

As most of you know, I am a fairly avid sports fan.  OK, clearly there are some of you who have me beat, and I know that rooting for the Steelers has not endeared me to all of you.  However, I am definitely a Cavs and Indians fan.   So I am well aware that there are 35 days until baseball's opening day - on Good Friday, no less.  The first game of the Spring Training season was this past Wednesday - Ash Wednesday!

But prior to these "training" games, a familiar ritual was repeated.  Hundreds of men who have played baseball for most of their lives head either to Florida or Arizona.  These highly experienced and successful ball players start by practicing the basics of baseball:  throwing, fielding, batting, even running the bases.  Now you would think they would have learned all of that already.  Why spring training every year?

Well it is certainly not because Grady Sizemore has forgotten how to steal a base, or that Kelly Shoppach has forgotten how to crouch as the catcher.  They, along with all of the other players head to spring training so that they'll get better.  Even the best of the best have room for improvement. So they start with a return to the basics, so they'll be ready and able to give their best at what they are called to do.

Every year on Ash Wednesday, Christians begin the Lenten journey again.  Following the lectionary, that means we always begin with either Matthew, Mark or Luke's version of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. And we moved from there, journeying in the shadow of the cross. Like ball players, most of us know the basics.  But we need to return to them year after year, so that we will be able to give our best during this season of figuring out, yet again, what it means to follow the One whose life will end on the cross.

Mark was writing from and for a community of followers who were trying to figure out how their own baptisms directed how they were to live.  To be Christian in that context was challenging; the environment was hostile.  So Mark, in his terse but vivid manner tells us of three critical events in a few verses:  Jesus' baptism, Jesus' trip into the wilderness, and the very beginning of Jesus' ministry.   During the season of epiphany we dealt with both Jesus' baptism, and the beginning of his ministry.  So this first Sunday in Lent we will focus on Mark's account of Jesus' trek into the wilderness - all two verses!  Matthew and Luke give us much more detail.  Mark understands the concept that saying less is often better!

As the gospel of Mark tells it, Jesus was still dripping wet when the same Spirit that had just named him "Beloved" gives him, as one person has said, "a swift hard kick into a place where problems loom large and people feel utterly alone." (Elizabeth McGregor Simmons in (Journal for Preachers, Lent 2009, page 4). We need to be careful not to import what Matthew and Luke tell us about this same occasion.  The word that Mark uses is forceful:  Jesus was driven, or cast out into the wilderness, not gently guided.

This wilderness is not some idyllic place where one goes to commune with nature and rest.  Mark's listeners would have understood fully how dangerous the wilderness was.  It was the place of demons, wild beasts, little water, and very little vegetation. Into that wilderness, the Spirit hurled Jesus, where he is put through a time of trial and testing. Jesus spent long days discerning what it meant to be Jesus.  Days to see if he could face the wild beasts that tried to distract him, who tried to scare him out of the ministry to which he had been called.

We know that the area surrounding the Jordan River was filled with real wild beasts:  leopards, wild boars, and bears.  But external "beasts" are not the only ones that track us down in the wilderness.  Wild beasts come by many names: anxiety, envy, selfishness, greed, bitterness, jealousy, or despair.  And they are every bit as terrifying and potentially destructive as any beast on four legs.

But the verse does not end with wild beasts.  No, Mark tells us:  "and the angels waited on him."  Those angels didn't wait until Jesus is done being tempted to care for him.  No, right in the middle of a time of intense testing, the angels appear and see to his needs. Jesus may be facing the toughest challenges of his life, but God has not abandoned him.

Friends, the story of Jesus' trip into the wilderness is the human story. It is your story and it is mine.  As we enter Lent, we, like Jesus, find ourselves in a wilderness surrounded by beasts. All of us are thrust out there on our own, trying to figure out who we are.  Those of us who follow Jesus often figure out what that our baptismal identity means when we are confronted with wild beasts of various kinds when the going is tough.  We know all too well what it means to be tempted and tested.  The wilderness is outside of our comfort zones, for sure.  It is a place where the things we most fear are there to greet us.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban an interesting thing occurs one day in the class taught by Professor Lupin.  Something starts banging from the inside of a wardrobe.  When it is opened up a strange creature, a boggart, appears.  A boggart, for you muggles out there, takes the form of whatever an individual student fears the most.  To defeat the boggart, the students cast a spell and think of the thing they fear the most in the most ridiculous manner.  For example, Ron's greatest fear is a giant spider.  Ron defeats it by thinking of it wearing roller skates!  Neville Longbottom's greatest fear is Professor Snape.  So he imagines the professor wearing the clothes of his grandmother.  Their laughter at the absurdity of their image dissolves their fear.

I believe there is a truth in this magical book.  The things we most fear will be the things we have to face down and conquer, or we will be immobilized.  Sometimes those fears or "beasts" will be found outside of us.  What are your "beasts"?  Where or what is your wilderness? Our wilderness may be that of addiction and substance abuse; it may be a jungle of depression and despair. Perhaps our current wilderness is an economic wasteland that reflects the world's current financial disarray and capitalizes on fear and anxiety. Many of us have walked through the wilderness of divorce, or of betrayal.  Our wilderness may be one of grief and pain, of illness or chronic health struggles. Just like the boggart, the wilderness takes many forms beyond the literal desert place of desolation and loneliness.

Quite clearly the wilderness does not have to be the Sahara, or any other desert for that matter.  It may be the wilderness of a hospital room, the barrenness of a dead-end job, the wasteland of a broken relationship, the emptiness of a life that is absent of meaning and purpose.  It may be the desolation of realizing that in the end, even in a crowd, you are alone. The desert is where the sounds of silence take on distinguishing characteristics, so that the voices which compete with God for our allegiance can be distinguished for what they are--Satan's seductive voice.  

Our enemies can be found outside us or within us, but for most of us, most of the time, the real danger lies within us. Sometimes we have to enter the wilderness to hear what God is saying to us. Even when we can identify our enemies outside us, they can tempt us to forget who we are as beloved creatures of God.  They tempt us to forget our identity as followers of Jesus. In the wilderness we are forced to see how the things we love are cutting God out of our lives.

Yet I have found that trips into the wilderness hold the chance for enormous growth, if we are receptive to the possibility.  We may learn things about ourselves that we didn't know, and find the power to change them. When we walk out of that wilderness we will know that we are survivors - or even more, people who, having seen the darkness, choose the light.  I spoke with a friend just yesterday who, even in the anguish of a painful divorce she wasn't seeking, saw herself as stronger, more assertive, more truly the person she wanted to be.

For all of the fear and danger and anxiety of the wilderness, there is good news.  For any wilderness we may face, currently or in the future, is a wilderness that Jesus understands and has, in fact, been through.  We are not in the wilderness alone.  God's angels are there, waiting and willing to care for us, to see us through, to hold our hand when the next step seems impossible. The beasts of the wilderness, however we define them, gain power only when we abandon Christ's power and reign in our lives.   As God sent ministering angels to care for Jesus in the midst of his struggle, so God still sends angels in the midst of our struggles.

A poem by Ruth Burgess sums it up well:  The desert waits, ready for those who come, who come obedient to the Spirit's leading; or who are driven because they will not come any other way. The desert always waits, ready to let us know who we are-the place of self-discovery.  And whilst we fear and rightly, the loneliness and emptiness and harshness, we forget the angels, whom we cannot see for our blindness, but who come when God decides that we need their help; when we are ready for what they can give us. (Ruth Burgess, in Bread of Tomorrow, from Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year B. p. 88)

This Lent may you and I follow Jesus into the desert, facing the beasts which threaten us, and allowing God's angels to care for us, reminding us that we belong to God, who will not abandon us. Then, as Jesus left the wilderness and began his public ministry, may we too leave our anxiety, our fear, our wilderness behind energized to serve others, ready to be the hands and feet of Jesus, in a world much in need.