Week of March 12, 2000
Wesley S.

"And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out 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."
     Mark 1: 12-13

God hurls Jesus, in Mark's Gospel, into the wilderness just as soon as he is baptized. Jesus spends a period of forty days in the wilderness without food, totally alone, and vulnerable to Satan's attacks. Only Jesus' reliance on God's Word and his determination to go to the cross end Satan's harassment.

The wilderness is not only a significant theme in Mark's Gospel, but a theme with close connections to Lent. Obvious parallels include the forty days, a time of introspection before God, and a time of having to choose God's ways over temptations to do otherwise. Ultimately, however, both Jesus' period in the wilderness and our forty days lead to the cross.

Mark's verb choice for Jesus being driven into the wilderness indicates a strong, if not a violent propulsion. Finding himself in the wilderness Jesus is left apparently to fend for himself amid wild animals and the wiles of the Tempter. For forty days every year we in the church are reminded that the road to the cross can be one of loneliness and apparent dejection and abandonment. But we are not dejected; tested, yes, but not abandoned. Each of the temptations Jesus faced was an effort to get him to choose the easy, glitzy path of glory and to abandon the cross. Jesus fought back those temptations using God's Word and chose to embrace the cross. And as the writer of Hebrews says, it is because Jesus withstood Satan's temptations that he can help us through those periods when we feel hurled into a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and the Tempter. But, no, Jesus is there because of the Cross.

Lord, thank you for being faithful on the road to the cross. Thank you, also, that you are there for us when we face wild beasts and the Tempter in our lives. And bring us with you to the cross. Amen.

Contributed by Westly S.
Published Sunday March 12, 2000
Week 16 of Liturgical Year B