Two weeks ago, we started the Season of Creation with the book of Genesis and the trees and forests that God has surrounded us with. Last week, we saw Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection as we considered the land that God has created. This week, Matthew takes us to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (see Matthew 3:13-4:2).
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In our text today, Jesus comes to John in order to be baptized. They have a conversation about John’s worthiness to baptize Jesus. John thinks Jesus should be baptizing him, not the other way around. Jesus tells him that in order to fulfill all righteousness, John must baptize him. So John relents and does as Jesus asks.
As Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open and the Spirit descends like a dove. Then a voice from heaven claims Jesus as God’s son. Immediately, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights.
There are several connections in this story not only to creation but also to the salvation stories of the Hebrew people. Jesus' passage through the water calls to mind both the waters of creation as well as the Hebrews’ passage through the Red Sea. The descending dove calls to mind the animals that God created as well as the dove in the flood story. Jesus’ time in the wilderness calls to mind the wild places that God has created as well as the Hebrews’ forty years in the wilderness.
And though we could go any of these directions as we consider God’s creation, it is to the wilderness we will travel today.
When you hear the word wilderness, what is the first thing to come to mind for you? What does wilderness mean to you?
Regardless of how we might define wilderness, the wilderness figures prominently in many Bible stories. As already mentioned, the Hebrew people spent forty years wandering in the wilderness. The prophets Elijah and Elisha spent time wandering in the wilderness. The ministry of John the Baptizer took place in the wilderness.
For the Hebrew people we encounter in the Bible, as with many ancient cultures, wilderness would have referred to a desolate or isolated place away from settlements. While the words of C-3PO when he looks on the sands of Tatooine and utters, “What a desolate place this is” may be the first thing to come to mind, wilderness is not necessarily devoid of plant and animal life. But it would be a place sufficiently far from settlements to be beyond easy access to food and aid in the event of danger. It is a place where people might expect to become prey, either to wildlife or to criminals. It is a place that is not necessarily hospitable to human life.
In many of the Bible stories, just as we find here in Matthew, the wilderness is a place of wandering and preparation. It is a place of cleansing and of discovery. For the Hebrew people who escaped Egypt, the wilderness was a place where they were cleansed and prepared for entry into the Promised Land. For the desert mothers and fathers of the early Christian tradition, the wilderness was a place of isolation where they strengthened their faith and reliance on God. In our story today, for Jesus, the wilderness is a place of temptation and preparation for the ministry that he had been called to.
For those of us living in the world today, many of us speak of times of isolation, longing, and growth as wilderness times. Like Jesus, we still seek isolation and solitude as an avenue to “find ourselves.” We may go into times of temptation in order to strengthen ourselves for greater trials to come. For many of us today, this is not a journey into a literal wilderness, but a journey into a social or spiritual wilderness. In some cases, a silent retreat might take on this role. It becomes a time when we strive for silence even as we might be tempted to talk that teaches us to rely more heavily on God. Or, for those who practice a Lenten fast, the temptation of participating in the activity or food that is being given up teaches us to rely more heavily on God.
But in other times it may be a time for retreat into a physical wilderness. Each year, thousands of people attempt to hike the 2,000 mile Appalachian Trail. This is out of the millions that hike some portion of it each year. Across the United States, other similar trails lead hikers through isolated areas in all sorts of terrains. Speak to any of these people, and they will likely talk about the experience in spiritual language. They are places of personal and spiritual growth where the beauty of God’s creation can be at once dangerous and inspiring.
For the peoples of Europe and the native peoples of North America, wolves were a very real threat for much of history. In other parts of the world, bears, tigers, and crocodiles still pose a regular threat to people today. In Jesus’ time, an encounter with dangerous animals was a very real threat while traveling through the wilderness. The further away one gets from human settlements and regular human travel, the more dangerous it becomes.
At the same time, the idea of wilderness evokes a sense of beauty, of nature untouched and untamed by human hands. For many of us today, this may be what we think of when we hear the word wilderness. We think of places like the Cohutta wilderness here in Georgia or the Gates of the Arctic wilderness in Alaska. These are places of protected lands and creatures where development is restricted, places that are allowed to live and grow with limited human interference. These tend to be some of the most naturally beautiful places we can imagine.
We see this type of beauty as well in our protected park lands, such as Yosemite or Yellowstone National Parks. While regularly managed and controlled by humanity’s touch, these areas are still places of wild lands and wild creatures, of great beauty and a touch of danger. They are places where we can see the beauty of God’s creation first hand, in some cases thoroughly removed from the creations of people.
These wilderness areas are places where we can often leave behind the vestiges of civilization for a time. We can turn off our phones and the other distractions we carry with us on a daily basis and allow ourselves to be inspired by the beauty of God’s handiwork. They are places where we can refresh our souls and renew our spirits. They are places where the pace of life slows down from the hustle and bustle of the lives that many of us lead.
As the most significant signs of God’s handiwork left to us, it is important to preserve and protect these areas. In an age where too many people only value a place’s monetary worth, our wilderness areas are in danger of becoming polluted and broken. The search for resources such as lumber, oil, and gold put these areas at risk. But once they are destroyed, it could take millennia for them to heal.
As we learned two weeks ago as we looked at the creation of the Garden, God values beauty. God created all the beautiful trees. God wants us to enjoy that beauty as well. There is a value in beauty, in wilderness, that no price tag can ever capture.
This is one of the reasons why still today, people go out into the wilderness. They go into the wilderness seeking beauty. And in the process, many people return from the wilderness with a better understanding of themselves.
It is this idea of journeying through the wilderness searching for ourselves that inspires the song choice this week. In the song, “A Horse With No Name,” the band America considers a man on a journey to find himself. He finds a land full of life and other things even as it is a place of isolation. It is a place where one can finally hear themselves without the interruptions and distractions of life we find in the center of civilization.
And it is easy to hear this song in connection with the scripture today and imagine the changes that Jesus went through on his own journey in the wilderness. Yes, Jesus went seeking spiritual growth, but there would have been physical consequences as well. In the song, we see the physical changes that the narrator goes through over nine days.
First he takes notice of the wildlife that exists; this place is not empty. But he also notes the heat and the lack of clouds in the sky. By the second day, his skin has begun to burn under the onslaught of the sun. On the third day he discovers a river bed that has long been dry that brings to mind the death that all will experience eventually. By the ninth day, it sounds as if the narrator has begun to hallucinate, whether from heat or exhaustion we can’t be sure. Nine days in the wilderness and this man is burned by the sun, reminded of death, and begins to hallucinate.
And then we look to Jesus’ story and realize he spent forty days in the wilderness. What would this have been like? How would he have been changed by that experience? While we know the three temptations that concluded Jesus’ journey in the wilderness, we don’t know what the daily temptations looked like. All we really know is that the text says after forty days and nights, he was hungry
As you listen to the song below, consider what the wilderness means to us today. What is to become of the remaining areas of unspoiled beauty? What is to become of these reminders of God’s work in the world? Where are those places in our world today that you can go to refresh your soul and renew yourself for the call that God has placed on your life?