The Wilderness

Edit: I know the big banner image on the actual blog page is a gigantic picture of Rue McClanahan. I'm still figuring this whole deal out with formatting and what not. That being said, Rue McClanahan is a treasure and I refuse to change it.

Last Sunday in worship, the scripture reading was the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. A super Lent-y scripture passage that I will commend to your reading on your own time: Luke 4:1-15

And it's a great passage that's worth reading, but if you don't have the time to read fifteen Bible verses (and who does in this fast paced world we live in), the verse that stopped me this go-round was the first one:

"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness"

For context, this comes directly after Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River. One thing that always strikes me about the baptism is that it happens before Jesus really does anything too noteworthy. God's love comes to us before we've even started, it's one of the things I love the most about baptizing babies. 

But I now realize that I've missed something important in all of this.

I'm as surprised as you are.

When I describe the baptism as the beginning of Jesus' public ministry I completely elide the fact that the first thing he did was go out into the wilderness and take the world's worst camping trip. And what's more, he was "led by the Spirit into the wilderness", which is a pretty rude thing for the Holy Spirit to do to Jesus (though I guess there are even worse things on the way for him). Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and then sent out to suffer. And it was only after the suffering and testing and verbal sparring and hunger pangs were through that he started off into the world.

Let me start by straight up saying this - the Holy Spirit does not send us into suffering to test us and toughen us up for the rest of the world.

But also it's really important to me that as Jesus was led into the wilderness that he was "full of the Holy Spirit". This was not an endurance test that Jesus faced alone, but rather one that he faced with the full force of the Holy Spirit behind him. His baptism was important for the start of his public ministry, but it was also important for his journey through the wilderness. 

The Holy Spirit was given to Jesus in his baptism, and the same promise was made for us in our baptisms. Wherever we go, the Holy Spirit attends with us. The Holy Spirit did not make Jesus less hungry, but the Holy Spirit carried him when he was at his hungriest. And that's really important for us.

Because we will all go through the wilderness some time. We all have our wilderness moments: times of grief, times of loss, times of transition, times of illness. But we don't go out there alone. We can't, because God's promises in baptism are not conditional on our own small perspectives. The wilderness does not need to be profound suffering, does not need to be trauma, but can be the very act of starting something new. When we start on a new journey we leave behind the old journey and it takes some work to get from one to another.

When Jesus started his public ministry he was already called good and beloved by God, filled with the Holy Spirit. When we start a new venture we, too, do so filled with the Holy Spirit.

But let's never forget that the Spirit doesn't jump into us only after we've finished our wilderness journey, but was wandering with us as well, soundlessly breathing the wind at our back.

Peace,
Jeff

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