Mark 1:9-15
Every year on the first Sunday of
Lent we hear about the time Jesus spends in the wilderness. But today’s Gospel moves at breakneck speed
and if you blink you may miss those forty days in the wilderness entirely. In a
few short sentences Jesus is brought on the scene, baptized, anointed by the
Holy Spirit, and driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. He then immediately reemerges 40 days later
to proclaim the coming of God’s Kingdom.
Though quite a bit of time passes,
40 days to be exact, we are not given very much information about what actually
happens in that time.
The Gospel according to Matthew and
Luke spell out the sort of temptations that Satan places before Jesus, but Mark
does not let us in on what was said or done by Satan and so we are left
wondering just how Satan tormented Jesus.
But there are three things that Mark
does tell us. We are told that Satan
tempted Jesus, that Jesus was with the wild beasts and that Angels ministered
to him. Jesus then comes out of the wilderness, presumably victorious over
Satan because he immediately proclaims the kingdom of God.
With so little to go on we know that
there is no detail given that isn’t important, and in this short account of
Jesus’ time in the wilderness we are shown the nature of Jesus and his
relationship both to this world and the next.
Throughout the Gospel of Mark we will see these little details of Jesus
played out more fully. When Mark places
Jesus among the wild beasts of the wilderness he is placing him among all the
qualities of wildness as well.
Throughout the Gospel Jesus is the wild beast who refuses to be
domesticated by conventional religious practices or social norms. Like the wild beasts in the wilderness, Jesus
lived free. He would not be caged by
Satan or by people. This description of
Jesus being with the wild beasts reminds me of Aslan from the Narnia stories
written by C.S. Lewis who is described as “Not a tame lion, but he is
good.” Jesus too, was certainly good but
not tame.
The season of lent is modeled on the
forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness and during this time we are asked
to face temptation, to look in our selves and see how we are letting ourselves
be caged, letting ourselves be domesticated by sin. The wilderness is about finding the
strength to accept the awesome power of our own free will and not enslaving
ourselves to temporary desires, to the riches of this world or to the small
comforts that domestication brings.
What
do I mean when I talk about Freedom? We
generally think of freedom in a couple different ways. We think of freedom in terms of having
nothing impinge on our ability to do something, like the freedom of
speech. Or we imagine that freedom means
not being forced to do anything we don’t want to do where no outside force can
control us against our will. There is
also freedom which refers to having the means to accomplish our desires, this
is freedom given to us by having opportunity or currency by which we can pursue
our goals.
But
these usual definitions are too small to describe the kind of freedom that we
are called to by God. The freedom that
Christ lived and showed us in his life was freedom that did not rely on the
cooperation of an outside power. The
freedom of Christ is not limited by tyranny or economic hardship, but rather
when we possess the freedom of Christ we are given the strength to stand up
against tyranny, and to cope with economic difficulty. Jesus was still free even when he was taken
captive before his death, even on the cross.
The freedom that is offered to us in the life of Christ is a spiritual
freedom, a freedom to see the world as it is, in all its sinfulness and beauty. The freedom of Christ is a liberated mind and
spirit where we are not controlled by our physical wants or fears. It is a liberty exemplified by the life of
Christ but is also a liberty that we must constantly strive for as
Christians.
I think most people, when asked if
they would rather be free or enslaved, they would say they desire freedom. But I also think that most people, myself
included, don’t really take into account just how hard freedom really is. Like the Israelites travelling through the
wilderness for forty years, when we see how difficult true freedom is, we start
to long for the security that being a slave brings. It is amazing how much we are willing to
sacrifice for simple comforts and illusions of security.
I point this out because Lent is as good a time as any
to take a step back and ask ourselves if we are actually settling for something
less than actual freedom. Thomas Merton
said in an interview with Forbes magazine “The biggest human temptation is to
settle for too little.” God’s love comes
freely to us and cannot come apart from true freedom. How often do we settle for too little, how
often do we settle for smaller love, love that doesn’t require us to be
free? Too often we are bound by fear and
like an animal in captivity we have let ourselves become comforted by our
chains. We spend too much time being
afraid and Fear creates a world of scarcity, not enough food, not enough faith,
not enough will. But Jesus, the
incarnate God made man, swings wide our cage doors because he is God’s
abundance, abundant love, abundant Grace, abundant life.
