For 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus resisted temptation on the strength of his baptism. Where do you find the strength to persevere in the wilderness? Here’s my sermon for the first Sunday in Lent on Mark 1:9-15 looking at baptismal identity as our strength in tough times.
This week, I found helpful this commentary at Living Lutheran from Cory Driver, as well as Debie Thomas’ commentary at Journey with Jesus.
Grace to you and peace from the One in whom we live and move and have our being, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
If you’ve been paying close attention to worship over the last few weeks, this Gospel story might sound very familiar. Just six weeks ago, we heard this same story of Jesus’ baptism from Mark’s Gospel.
The first time we read it, though, we stopped at verse 11, with Jesus hearing the voice from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And that’s a great place to stop. It looks like everything is going well: Jesus is starting his ministry, he’s been baptized, God has affirmed that he’s on the right track, everything’s good.
Today, we get the rest of Jesus’ introduction to ministry, the followup to his baptism, and it’s a very different feeling. No sooner does Jesus come up out of the water and hear that affirmation from God, than the Spirit immediately drives him out into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan.
Jesus’ baptism story feels a little different when it’s followed by wilderness and temptation, doesn’t it?
It’s good for us to hear, because sometimes people convert to Christianity because they get this idea that becoming a Christian is going to fix all their problems, that they won’t struggle with sin any more.
Sometimes we think that when things aren’t going well, that’s when we need to get back to church, because maybe then God will just make things fall into place. I wish that were true, but it’s just not. It’s clear from Jesus’ example: Baptism doesn’t solve everything.
But baptism does give us a foundation to persevere through the struggles. As Jesus finds out, being in the wilderness is hard. But he had the strength to make it through those forty days, because of what happened in his baptism, because of the encouragement given to him by God, because of the identity declared to him at baptism.
I don’t know how you picture this story with the voice from heaven, but especially the way Mark tells it, the heavens being torn apart and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and the voice from heaven are not a sign for the crowd watching; they’re a sign for Jesus. Maybe the crowd could hear and see, or maybe not, but Mark says Jesus could see and hear. All of this is encouragement for Jesus, affirmation from his Heavenly Father that he’s on the right track, and it’s on the strength of his baptism, fueled by knowing his true identity and mission, that Jesus makes it through the wilderness.
Even so, the wilderness challenged Jesus. Wilderness is a place of disruption, on the outskirts, outside of civilization, a place of isolation and uncertainty. In one sense, 40 days doesn’t sound very long. Easter is six weeks from today.
But when you’re in the wilderness, when you don’t have food, when you’re under attack, uncertain about the future, I imagine 40 days feels like an eternity. Maybe you’ve experienced times in life when even tomorrow feels uncertain. Even after a vision from heaven, it’s hard to hold on to a promise when you don’t see evidence of its fulfillment.
Also, from Jesus’ perspective, I don’t see any indication that he knew his time in the wilderness would end after 40 days. 40 is a good, Biblical number—it’s the number of years the Israelites wandered in the desert in search of their promised land; it’s the number of days it rained while Noah was on the ark–so maybe Jesus had some idea, but then, three is also a good Biblical number. So is seven.
I’m convinced people can endure almost any struggle if you know there’s an end date. You can put up with anything for a minute, and if you can endure for a minute, maybe you can endure for an hour, and if you can make it an hour, then maybe a day, you get the idea. But it’s a lot harder when you can’t see the end, when the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t visible.
We’ve experienced that obviously in the last year with the pandemic. Remember “Two weeks to stop the spread?” We could handle that. But then it kept going.
Now we are finally at a point where the end is starting to be more attainable, like maybe we’re reaching the edge of the wilderness. I heard someone in Texas yesterday talking about how the hardest part for her is not knowing when she’ll get power and water back, when things will be ok again.
So imagine Jesus out there alone, questioning everything, trying to remember what that voice from heaven sounded like, trying to hold on to the vision he’d seen, to the sense of God’s Spirit coming upon him, tempted to turn his back on his calling.
None of the gospels give us details about what the wilderness was like for Jesus, which gives us the space to fill in our own wilderness times. More details might be nice, but Mark’s typical brevity invites us to think about our own times in life where we don’t know what’s next, where we’re on the edge of society, isolated, alone, struggling.
And of course, what you’re struggling with is different for you than it is for me. You can fill in the blanks with the temptations you wrestle with.
Maybe it’s feeling like your work doesn’t matter, or that you can’t live up to someone’s expectations, or even your own expectations. Maybe it’s life not working out the way you anticipated. Perhaps it’s times of struggling after the loss of a parent or a friend or even a child, or friends turning their back on you, feeling overwhelmed by work or school.
Maybe the temptation is to take the easier path, to give up on working for justice and loving our neighbors, to give up on faith, to deny our calling. Most of us have had moments in life (and by moments, I mean anything from long nights lying awake to weeks or years, whole seasons of life) where we feel attacked, disconnected, unable to make any progress.
In those times of being in the wilderness, I wonder, where do you get encouragement to keep going? What are the means by which God speaks to you to remind you who you are, to declare to you that you too are a beloved child of God?
One way, perhaps the primary way, is by doing what you’re doing right now, being part of a church congregation, part of a family of fellow believers who also go through wilderness times.
We need to keep gathering together for worship to keep being reminded that we’re in this together as the body of Christ. We are here to support each other.
Another even more core way to hear from God is to read and study God’s word. Again, we’re doing some of that right now, but I really hope you open the Bible more than once a week. Mark doesn’t give us these details, but in Matthew and Luke’s accounts of this story, Jesus pushes back against Satan’s temptations by quoting from Scripture, drawing from God’s word.
Often that encouragement comes from other believers. Whether or not they’re in this congregation. It’s important to have those meaningful faith conversations with friends, to be able to discuss what God is doing in your life, and to encourage each other. The Christian journey is not meant to be lived alone.
Especially during Lent, daily devotions can help keep you on track as daily reminders of God’s love and care for you. We have some printed ones that you get here at church or in the newsletter. I personally do much better with daily emailed devotions, and I’m happy to recommend some to you if you want.
The point is to pay attention to what God is telling you, to who God says you are. Satan’s attacks most often look like challenging your sense of identity, and the counterattack is to hold on to the promise given to you in baptism. Martin Luther, during some of his most challenging times in the wilderness, what he called dark nights of the soul, wrote that he comforted himself by repeating, “I am baptized. I am baptized.”
Two final points. First, as much as we go through wilderness times as individuals, we also go through wilderness times as a congregation, and I think we’re in one right now. We’re in uncharted territory, with lots of obstacles facing us right now, and we don’t know how long we’ll be out here in the wilderness of pandemic, disconnection, apathy, and all the other challenges we’re facing. But the solution is the same: Remember who we are as the body of Christ. Remember our baptismal identity.
And finally, did you notice what else was out there in the wilderness? Satan was there to tempt him, but who else? Wild beasts and angels. I assume the wild beasts are meant to represent how scary the wilderness is, part of the threat, not some kind of a Tarzan situation! But also, even in the wilderness, there are angels, messengers from God. Even in the loneliest places, God’s agents are still working. God is present even in the most grim times.
On this Lenten journey, take comfort that Jesus has been in the wilderness, and even in the darkest times, God is still present with you. May you find strength in your own baptismal identity, knowing that God has declared that you too are beloved, and with you God is well pleased.
Amen