54 years ago, when I was eleven, I put on an ill-fitting canvas backpack and followed a line of other boys up a trail into Kings Canyon National Park in California. I had enjoyed the outdoors before, fishing along a creek in Arizona, a few car camping trips and day hikes with my Scout troop before this trek, but I was about to plunge into genuine wilderness for five full days. There were no cars, no restrooms, no shelter, no other “services” for miles and miles. There were just pine forest, wildly rushing streams to cross, patches of snow, and granite rocks everywhere. I discovered that I loved it.
There were, of course, things I didn’t love about the experience. At various points along the way we heard the buzz of rattlesnakes and once came upon one right in the middle of the trail. Going “number 2” was more difficult than I’d ever experienced. And with only a thin foam mat and a cheap sleeping bag between me and the ground, I was colder and more uncomfortable at night than I wanted to be. But I still loved it, loved the “wilderness.”
I was far from alone in my generation that made REI, Eddie Bauer, North Face and other esoteric backpacker’s brands into household names. But our modern love for wilderness makes it a bit harder to get at the meaning of our text for this Sunday, Mark 1:9-15. It’s placed in the lectionary on this first Sunday of Lent particularly because of the brief narrative in verses 12 and 13 of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
The word “wilderness” in the biblical text is both like and unlike what we might mean by it. Versions that translate it “desert” are unfortunate except that the word does mean a “deserted place,” one with no human habitation or presence. Yet “desert” does connote some of the dryness of most wilderness there in Palestine, albeit not the empty stretches of sand which “desert” conjures up for us.
That the place of Jesus’ temptation was not totally arid rock and sand is seen in the further mention that “he was with the wild beasts.” Animals have their own needs for water, vegetation, etc.
We might be tempted to skip over further pondering on “wilderness” to focus on the number of days Jesus was there, forty. That number has called to mind for Christians the forty years in the wilderness of the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 8:2), Moses’ forty days on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 34:28), and Elijah’s forty days journey to Mt. Horeb (I Kings 19:8).
The final phrase of verse 13 about angels ministering to Jesus there in the wilderness may recall the experience of Israel being cared for by God in the wilderness, with manna, water, healing, etc. Yet if we hold that forty years of what was often human failure in the wilderness up against Jesus’ forty days of successful resisting of Satan’s temptations, then the Savior’s time there represents a fresh new start of human encounter with the challenges and temptations of wilderness.
Another way to read that bit about the wild beasts, unique to Mark, is as, rather than an indication of the dangers of Jesus’ situation, the sign of a return to a paradise-like state of harmony with the animal world. One thinks of Isaiah 11’s promise of a “peaceable kingdom” in which the lion lies down with the lamb. Jesus here displays the coming shalom of God’s kingdom by being with wild beasts and yet safe.
All of this should ask us to struggle a little with what form “wilderness” may take for us. An image of a camping or backpack trip today may be too fraught with excitement and its own form of comfort in escaping noise, pollution, work, etc. for us to really “get” what spiritual retreat to wilderness was about for Jesus. It might be better to focus on the isolation, hardships, and spiritual battles of the past year’s pandemic as a kind of “wilderness” of our own time.
However we construe wilderness for ourselves, the message here is that Jesus triumphed over it, successfully overcoming the temptations found there, and found His Father’s comfort and help. Perhaps trying to discover both those aspects in our own spiritual wildernesses, strength to overcome accompanied by comforting help, is the best we can do with this text today.