We All Need A Wilderness Now and Then

Lent began last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday). Ash Wednesday was a day in which many of us rubbed ash onto our foreheads, accompanied by the words "from dust you came and to dust you will return", as a tangible reminder of our need for God. Lent is a 40-day season of preparation in the lead-up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday (Easter Day). Lent is a season often marked by repentance, fasting, self-reflection, and prayer, and not in a self-punishing way, but in a pruning way, a way that ultimately "greens the soul" and creates space for the newness God to enter our lives and church. Throughout Christian history, many Christian sages and teachers have likened the season of Lent to a wilderness experience.

This week's gospel reading (Mark 1:9-15) touches on Jesus' baptism and the start of his ministry, and it also speaks of Jesus' wilderness experience (albeit very briefly). What might the notion of wilderness hold for us? Wilderness experiences are something humans have in common; we all have them, and they come to in a variety of of forms:

Shattered dreams.

Personal tragedy.

Feeling adrift when our inherited conceptions and understandings of God don't match our experience and the foundation which we thought was firm begins to crumble.

Life's wilderness experiences are sometimes self-imposed; our decisions distract from God's goodness and life, leaving us feeling lost, alone, and afraid. Sometimes, our wilderness experiences befall us for no logical reason; life is full of heartbreak and often not of our own making. Occasionally, our wilderness experiences occur because we live in ways that reflect the way of Jesus and God's reign of justice and peace; following Jesus can (should) get us into trouble. Sparks fly when God's reign of justice, love, and peace, embodied by God's people, bangs up against the death-dealing logic of the world. And that's hard but good. And sometimes, perhaps like in our Gospel reading this morning, God invites (or drives) us out into the wilderness because it's what we need; a time in the desert will be good for us.

Wildernesses, whatever they may be for us, are places fraught with difficulty, but they can also be places of goodness and growth. Wilderness places are difficult to pin down; they places filled with beauty and peril (our reading speaks of testing, wild beasts, and angels, all mashed together, co-existing); and wildernesses are places that, if we are open, have the potential to form and shape us in profound ways because, at least from a biblical perspective, wilderness places are where God is present: pillars of smoke by day and fire by night guiding a wandering people through the desert, where the Holy Spirit is at work (think of the wild goose Holy Spirit of the Celts chasing Jesus into the desert, not gentle dove Holy Spirit of his baptism), and wilderness places are places where God can be encountered (burning bushes and holy ground). As many of you know, me & Mai's time in Kolkata was a wilderness experience full of heartbreak, hope, and beauty. Moments when God felt close and moments when we felt abandoned by God; a season that has left its scars, but a season that has profoundly shaped us and formed us in who we are, how we relate to God, and how we see the world around us. That wilderness experience was an invitation; the Spirit (we think) pushed us out into that place and into that community. Was it what we expected? No. Was it hard? Yes. Would we change a thing? No (as much as I would like to some days).

We need wildernesses, and I think God is inviting us into them more often than we might think (or want). Wildernesses provide an opportunity to break from the status quo, disengage from the noise, and come face to face with God and ourselves, which can be frightening. Sometimes, I wonder if the wild beasts in our reading this morning aren't physical but the wild beasts that live within us: self-doubt, anxiety, loneliness, confusion, etc.

I love what Joyce Hugget says, "Since God's very own Son was transformed so radically by the desert, since it was in the actual or symbolic wilderness that his life-motto crystallised; his life-goals clarified, he was envisioned and empowered; since, in solitude, he received God's perspective on his ministry and was re-energised by love, perhaps we should not be surprised when our own pilgrimage takes us into desert-like places? Instead, of feeling guilty or afraid to admit that we are wandering around in the trackless wastes of the spiritual wilderness, perhaps, like Jesus, we should accept, with humility and versatility, the worst and the best the wilderness offers? Perhaps such an attitude would enable us to look back on our desert experiences with awe and gratitude? Perhaps it would better enable us to learn the desert's lessons with eagerness?" (Formed by the Desert, Joyce Huggett, pg 25)

Do you need a wilderness? Is the Holy Spirit (the wild goose one again) beckoning (driving) you into a wilderness? Are you ready to go, or will you resist with all your might? This Lent, as we make our way to the cross and on to resurrection and beyond, may you/we have the courage to enter the wilderness, whatever that may be, and in and through times alone, time in Scripture and prayer, may the God of love and life meet you in new, transforming, and liberating ways.

Peace, Revd D.

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Photo Credit: Tim Wade