Turn Around: Now Is the Time! (or, I Get A Little Bit Nervous)

As we approached Lent this year, I was unsurprisingly thinking about repentance. Repentance is the act of turning around, a significant theme during the season of Lent. As I thought about this theme this year, I found myself singing the song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. The song repeats the phrase "turn around" over and over again. And then the singer talks about feelings that oddly seem to fit our experience of both Lent and life in general.

I was surprised as I continued to sing this song in my head to note how well the song fits with our scripture lessons for Lent this year. Today, we return to Jesus' baptism as told by Mark, continuing through the next few verses to consider Jesus' time in the wilderness to prepare for ministry as well as the words with which that ministry started (Mark 1:9-15). As I considered the words that Jesus spoke at the start of his ministry, I wondered about the good news that he was bringing and how people might feel about the inbreaking kingdom of God.

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Some of you may have noticed that this is the second time we have read some portion of these words in the last few weeks. As I noted before, Mark packs quite a bit into relatively small spaces. So we return again to the scene of Jesus’ baptism which we heard at the beginning of January.

Streams of Living Water: The Holiness Stream

As we enter the season of Lent this year, I am working on leading the people in this congregation deeper into relationship with God using the spiritual streams identified in Richard Foster's book, Streams of Living Water. Throughout his life and ministry, Jesus modeled several ways of being in relationship with God. From holiness to contemplation, from compassion to incarnation, from the work of the Spirit to the sharing of the Word, this relationship does not take on any single form. While Jesus, the only one to ever be perfect, was able to incorporate all of these ways of being into himself, for us it can be a different matter.

So I will be taking on one of these streams each week to explore what they look like and how we can use them in our own spiritual journeys. In some ways, these different streams of spirituality are something like love languages for our relationship with God. (Some may be familiar with the concept of the 5 Love Languages that ha been around for about 25 years now.) And just as not all of us speak the same love language in our everyday relationships, I suspect we will find along the way that no single spiritual language for our relationship with God works for all of us the same either.

This week, we looked at the Holiness Stream using the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness found at the beginning of Luke 4 (Luke 4:1-13).

Where the Wild Things Are?

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness..."

I have a feeling some of us hear that line and think, "What's the big deal?" Sometimes we think wilderness simply means nature. For some of us, any wooded area becomes wilderness. So going to a state park or other frequented nature area involves visiting the wilderness.

Others of us may have a slightly different vision, though it may still not quite convey what is meant here. While in college, the Boy Scout troop I volunteered with went hiking in the Cohutta Wilderness of the north Georgia mountains. While hiking through this area the only signs of other people were the trail itself and any people we happened to encounter along the way. We packed in what we needed and carried out whatever we took in. This is a bit closer to true wilderness.

However, this is still a much tamer version of wilderness than the gospel writer would have understood. It helps a bit if we think of wilderness as an area unaffected or minimally affected by humans. Wilderness is wild and dangerous, a place where the laws of nature hold more sway than human law. Wilderness areas do not have paved roads, houses, cell phone service, or regular/easy access to food, water, or medical assistance. In the wilderness you may not see another person for days, and it is the woodland creatures you don't see that you have to worry about. In the wilderness you can get lost, you can run out of food or water, and if you get hurt it may be days before anyone realizes you are missing and even longer for them to find you.