Do you have any idea how many times the number forty appears in the Bible? A lot, as it turns out. The number forty plays an important role in our readings today. We always start our forty day Lenten journey with the story of Jesus forty days in the wilderness from one of the three Gospels. And this year’s lectionary cycle pairs Jesus forty days in the wilderness with the covenant God made with Noah, a covenant made after Noah was in the waters of the flood for forty days. Off the top of my head I could think of a couple other examples of the number forty. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness forty years after they escaped Egypt. Moses was on the mountain forty days to receive the Ten Commandments. I have this program on my computer where I can run word searches through the Bible, so I decided to run one on the number forty. Oh my gosh, I was amazed at how often it came up! Isaac was forty when he got married, his son Esau was forty when he got married. While the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, they sent spies to check out the Promised Land, the spy was forty years old and he was in the Promised Land forty days. In the time of the Judges there were forty years of peace, followed by forty years of war with the Philistines. King David reigned for forty years, King Solomon reigned for forty years, I could quite literally go on like this all morning. What struck me about all of these instances of forty, and what I think is more important than the exact amount of time itself, is that the use of the number forty is meant to clue us into something. In each of these examples, forty signifies the amount of time it took the people to be ready for something, the time in which God needed to act. Think about it. Noah was on the flood forty days because a new covenant was being formed. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness not because they were bad at asking for directions, but because God was making out of them a new people. In forty days, Moses was gathering the laws that would create a new community. Each of these periods of forty were not just dead time where people were hanging around waiting, they were periods of rich, creative work on the part of God in setting up a new reality for God’s people, a reality so different that it would take a long break from the old so that people would be ready to receive the new.
So in our Gospel reading for today, “Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
Something I noticed about this wilderness period for Jesus is that the wilderness falls right on the heels of Jesus baptism in the Jordan. Immediately after the Spirit of God descended on Jesus and declared him God’s Son, that very same Spirit drove him into the wilderness. Jesus wasn’t called into the wilderness, he wasn’t invited into the wilderness, the Spirit didn’t walk along beside him gently as Jesus braved the wilderness. No the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. Which I think means we can assume something; Jesus didn’t really want to go. The wilderness was not high on Jesus priority list of places to begin his ministry. Jesus, like the rest of us, wasn’t really interested in spending any time in the uncertainty of the wilderness, Jesus would have been just as happy to have headed back to Galilee following the announcement of him as God’s Beloved Son. But the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, because God was about to do a new thing with Jesus and that new thing was going to take some time.
Another thing I thought was important was that in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted, actually tested is a better word, by Satan. Not, by the Holy Spirit. I’d never caught that difference before. The Holy Spirit didn’t drive Jesus out to be tested; the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. Now, yes, in the wilderness, Jesus met Satan, Jesus was tested, but testing Jesus, putting Jesus through suffering, was not the role of the Holy Spirit. Suffering, testing, happened in the wilderness, but it was not the point of the wilderness. I think this is important because I think so often when we find ourselves or others in wilderness times, it is tempting to look for answers in attributing that testing to God. Like God wants us to suffer so we can undergo some sort of great learning. And I think this story tells us that is not the case. Wilderness times, times of uncertainty, times when we do not know the way forward, those can be God times, times when God is doing a new thing in our lives and until that new thing has come into creation we cannot see the way. But suffering, testing, pain, while that can be found in those wilderness times, it is not God’s purpose for us, it is not God’s hope for us. We’ll get into this a lot more next week when Peter and Jesus talk about carrying the cross, but for now I want to make the distinction between wilderness as a time of creativity and as a time of suffering. The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, but the Holy Spirit did not test Jesus, Satan did that. Testing, tempting, was not the work of God, though it happened in a place God had set up for Jesus to be.
I also think it’s important to note that Jesus was not alone in the wilderness, “he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” When I first read “he was with the wild beasts,” this thought came to mind of one of those old cartoons, Jesus sitting alone at a campfire, surrounded by an encircling darkness of glowing red eyes. But, here’s your obscure Greek fact for the day, the word “with” is an unspecific terms. So we don’t really know what it means that he was “with” the wild beasts, but it seems actually more likely that being “with the wild beasts” means that Jesus and the wild beasts were together around the campfire, allies against the encircling wilderness. A better image may be Jesus, a lion, a wildebeest, and whatever other animals one might find in the Jordanian outback all seated together around a crackling campfire, protecting each other from the uncertainty of the wilderness. Envisioning the scene this way, we might ask ourselves, who are the unexpected companions we have found in wilderness journeys. Who are the unlikely bedfellows who have shared the path with us? And who might God have placed in our wilderness now to journey with us?
But Jesus was not just with the wild beasts, the text also tells us the angels waited on him. Now, of course, you might be thinking, he’s the Son of God, of course the angels waited on him. But here’s something I’d never thought of before, there’s another time in the Bible where there is wilderness and man and angels, and the angels are not waiting. In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve ate of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were driven out of the garden, same word there, Jesus was driven into the wilderness, and an angel was set to guard the entrance. So in Jesus time in the wilderness we see the beginning of the end of the angel as a guard. This new thing that God is doing with Jesus, this new thing that will end at the cross with the defeat of death and restored relationship between God and God’s creation, we already see the start of it right here in the wilderness, where the angel goes from guardian to guide, from adversary to companion on the journey. Already a new thing is happening in the wilderness, and it is happening despite all the temptation that Satan might be throwing at Jesus. Jesus time in the wilderness is a creative time, it is setting the stage for this new thing that God is going to be about in the world, and all the tempting of Satan cannot get in the way of the change that is about to come out of the wilderness.
This story of Jesus time in the wilderness is a great story for us, not just at the start of Lent, but at this time in the life of our church and in the life of our world. Because wilderness time is a time we can relate to. Advances in technology, changes in culture, moves in our personal lives, retirements, family changes, illnesses and joys, things are happening at a rapid rate, and even the great things can seem unsettling. It can be hard to see the way forward, hard to figure out who we will be at the end of all this shifting. But here’s what we know from Jesus time in the wilderness, from all of the forty day, week, year periods in scripture. We know God acts in times of uncertainty. We know that just because we cannot see the way through, does not mean that God cannot see the way through. We know that God’s vision is broad enough to encompass the whole of the wilderness, and that God meets us, leads us, guides us through these times, even when the path is unclear. We know that sometimes Satan shows up in the wilderness, but we know that evil, pain, suffering, while it may occur on our paths, is not a part of God’s plan. And we know that when we encounter suffering, we do not encounter it alone. We have companions on the journey. Some companions are holy angels, guides and leaders who walk with us, support us, and protect us. Other companions look at first like wild beasts, we may worry about their presence or wonder about their plans. But God uses strange tools to accomplish God’s mission, and the most unlikely relationship may be our greatest blessing.
So as we enter into this season of Lent, let us also enter into this season of wilderness. This season of creative becoming, trusting that God has a plan for our path and a will for our lives. And that in the uncertainty God is doing a new thing, and it will be different, greater and newer, than the thing we had before. Amen.
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