Wandering Was the Point

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit”—and fresh from the waters of baptism and the words of belovedness which have just washed over him—“was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” And there for a full forty-days, he wanders—placing one foot faithfully in front of the other toward a destination that is anything but clearly marked.

We of course also embark on our own journey on this first Sunday in Lent. If there is one thing we can be quite sure: journeying through the wilderness, whatever form it may take, will shape us. So, as we reflect together, I invite you to ponder a question over these few minutes... Where will you find yourself on the other side of these forty-days?

I wonder if Jesus felt prepared for this moment or if maybe this journey crept up on him a little unexpectedly? I wonder if he worried he wouldn’t have everything needed to face whatever unknowns awaited him? Whether or not, Jesus sets out—and is led by the Spirit.

In the early centuries of the Church, the accounts of Jesus confronting the devil’s temptations sparked a mass countercultural movement. Christians were so inspired by his powerful resistance that they retreated themselves into the deserts of Egypt where they waged a kind of spiritual warfare against forces of evil. Many of our own current spiritual practices are indebted to the insights of these “Desert Mothers and Fathers.” Later, Celtic monks replicated this desert experience for themselves on the rocky shores of Western Ireland, which they believed to be the literal edge of the world. They would put out into the deep water in a “coracle:” a small circular boat typically about four-feet in diameter.

Coracles were also rudderless so that the monks would wander aimlessly in the ocean, trusting the Spirit to lead them wherever it would.

Wandering was the point. Its purpose was to test whether, like Jesus in the wilderness, they could hold onto a truth that had been revealed to them even when faced with seemingly insurmountable perils. For as eccentric as all of this might sound, these practices strengthened them to live faithfully through the reality of precarious times.

These themes of wilderness and wandering resurface again and again throughout Christian scripture—not to mention other religions and popular stories like Lord of the Rings or Dune, Finding Nemo or Moana—because “desert” experiences are training grounds for faith. 

It is good to wander for awhile. 

Several years ago, I set out on a solo backpacking trip around Yellowstone Lake—one of the largest freshwater lakes at this particularly high altitude. And it was utterly miserable. Just before setting out on the trail I dutifully covered my arms and legs with mosquito spray. But while spraying with reckless abandon, the repellant evidently also got on my lips. Just a few hours later they were completely dried out. Which was also precisely when I realized my lip balm was left back at the trailhead, several miles behind, locked safely away in my car where no one could use it. And for nearly every moment of that three-day trek—as my lips chapped, then cracked, then bled—I fixated on that lip balm. Again, it was miserable.

...But this, of course, is only one way of telling the story. Because for several days on that trip, I witnessed some of the most stunning scenes Yellowstone National Park has to offer: golden sunsets and sunrises, hot springs, more stars than I had ever seen before, a wild moose, and the kind of palpable silence you only encounter in places like that. The experience was so moving it has remained with me ever since.

Even while I desperately waited for that godforsaken trek to end so that I could return to the balm in Gilead, so to speak, it was full of tremendous beauty, too. And that is also the story.

I first used this backpacking story as an illustration in a sermon on Moses and the Hebrew peoples forty-year journey through the desert. When I shared the manuscript with my spiritual director, he read through without offering any commentary, paused for a lengthy moment, and then said rather bluntly, “In my experience all sermons are autobiographical.” 

His response floored me and I’m sure my face flushed with embarrassment. Because in that instance I hadn’t intended for the story to be any kind of personal disclosure whatsoever—it was about the wandering experience of others, not my own. Over the years since though, I have learned this to be true—as I’ve also experienced more than a handful of wandering seasons.  

Just as every preacher’s sermon is unavoidably autobiographical, the lessons we hear week after week have a way of reading themselves onto all of us. Scripture reflects back to each of us something of our own story... 

Making our way through uncertainty is interwoven in our spiritual lineage— stretching back even further than those early monastics. In Deuteronomy, we hear this faith we’ve inherited comes from folk who knew about journeying toward a place God had called them—but perhaps just as much so about pausing along the way.

As we hear in our lesson, this ritual of offering “first fruits” was a way of ensuring the people didn’t simply move on to the next thing after completing a journey. Because constantly moving from one thing to the next without pausing would be a surefire way to forget the place from which they came. Practicing this ritual of giving first fruits was a way of shaping collective memory—that it was God who faithfully led them through trials and tribulations.

Offering up gifts of celebration and thanksgiving wasn’t about living in the troubles of the past, though; it was about forming how one lives now, no matter what the present circumstances may be. 

Remembering what God had done functioned as a reminder of what God will do, bringing reassurance of what God surely is now doing.

From West African notion of “Sankofa” is a similar way of thinking about this. Loosely translated, the word means “go back and get it.” The principle of sankofa suggests that it is good to reach back in history to reclaim something that may have been forgotten or left behind. Sankofa is a reminder that if you wish to live faithfully into the future, you would be wise to look back into the stories of those who have gone before.

And this is precisely what Jesus does in the Gospel of Luke...

When Jesus goes into the wilderness, the devil meets him there armed with lies and half-truths. In the wilderness Jesus is tempted to place his faith, what Paul Tillich would call his “ultimate concern,” in things promising false salvation: material comforts, power and control, fame and influence. As the tempter attempts to convince Jesus to pledge his allegiance to something other than what he knows to be true, Jesus hearkens back to words he has committed to memory... With each of his three replies, he quotes the book of Deuteronomy:

“...one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut. 8:3) “...the Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.” (Deut. 6:13) “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” (Deut. 6:16)

In the wilderness, Jesus is promised all of the comforts of empire. 

But rather than embracing that story, he places himself in the story of God’s deliverance of Israel and enduring care—as told in Deuteronomy. In holding fast to the waters of baptism and words of belovedness that have washed over him, he reveals what real resistance and power looks like.  

Then, at the end of those forty-days, he emerges from the wilderness differently.

Friends, this is our spiritual lineage. So, again, where will we find ourselves on the other side of wilderness?

Just as surely as one does not live by bread alone, neither does one live by democracy alone, or by job security, or tax breaks, or even the stability of the economy—but by every word spoken from the God who loves us and will not leave us.

Faith is not an assurance our journey will be free of trouble. Neither is our baptism an amulet against the difficult realities of this human life. Truthfully, walking the way of love, in the words of the Good Friday song, will at times cause us to “tremble, tremble, tremble.”

But this is not the whole story.

However stony may be the road we trod, it is filled with beauty. With messiness, no doubt, alongside moments of grace we can’t adequately put words to. With belonging and friends who accompany us on the way. With deep abiding love. 

So then, let us not hold our breath, waiting to live once we’ve safely reached the other side of the journey. With the same steadfastness Jesus shows in the wilderness, let us offer offer up the first fruits of our lives in thanksgiving, even now.

Because we too are led by the Spirit.