Sermon - Mark 1.9-15

<p>As happens every year on this first Sunday in Lent, we begin our forty-day Lenten journey and we encounter Jesus experiencing forty days in the desert. In Mark’s telling of the story, we find Jesus is driven or pushed into the wilderness. The gospel writer tells us Jesus has just been baptized by John, an experience in which he saw the sky violently split open and God’s Spirit descend upon him in the form of a gentle dove. He has just heard God’s voice say to him, “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love. You are the pride of my life.” Then, immediately following this experience, the same Spirit that descended upon him as a gentle dove, turns into a dive bomber or mac truck and pushes Jesus out into the wild. We are not given any hint or clue that Jesus chose to do this of his own volition. The writer of Mark’s gospel makes it clear that Jesus was forcefully driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, pushed there by something outside of himself.</p> <p>Now, the wilderness is not a safe place. It is a treacherous, wild place with tricky, barren terrain. It is a place where one experiences the burning rays of the beating sun, the hungry wolves and wild beasts, and something many of us do not like to face – solitude. We can probably surmise that, like most of us, when Jesus faced solitude, he faced his own inner voices.</p> <p>Mark tells us that, having been driven into the wilderness, Jesus was tempted or tested by Satan. Jesus did not choose to go into the wilderness, and he did not choose to be tempted. Beyond this, Mark simply does not give us many details about Jesus’ forty-day experience. Unlike the other gospels, we are not given any scripted arguments between Jesus and Satan and no details about hunger for food or power. All we are told is that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, was tempted by Satan, was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. Yes, the angels took care of him. God’s presence was there for him and with him throughout that forty-day experience. And, as we begin our f