Cultivating Faith that Withstands the Wilderness

Psalm 91:1-9; Luke 4:1-13

  Black Panther is T’Challa, Son of the King of the tribes of Wakanda. You might know this superhero from Marvel’s Comic Universe. Like most great heroes, T’Challa must go through some kind of test or challenge before he can become leader set out on his mission. T’Challa bests his adversary in a fierce battle at the peak of a magnificent waterfall in Wakanda. This is what earns him the right to follow his father as King. But before he assumes the crown, T’Challa undergoes the ritual of the Heart-Shaped herb which grants him the powers of the Black Panther and allows him to visit his ancestral plane. Buried in the sand, he is transported to a mystical realm where the sky glows in shades of purple and blue, and a vast African savanna stretches before him. T’Challa’s ancestors appear to him in human form and as panthers perched in the branches of a large tree. He is embraced warmly and challenged to consider the responsibilities and burdens of leading his people. The encounter is profound for T’Challa and empowers him to carry on the legacy of his father as a heroic leader of his people.

     It’s a tragedy, to never be given a chance to succeed, but to have your chance come and not be ready for it would be just as tragic. (Brian McLaren)

      Luke’s Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. It is to be a spiritually cleansing experience. He would fast and pray in solitude for forty days. Indigenous cultures have practiced rituals like this for thousands of years. Young men, typically, are called out into the wilderness to receive their calling. Sometimes, an elder might go with them. Other times they may go all alone. They go into the wilderness knowing that they will come out on the other side a clearer, stronger version of themselves. These pilgrimages often included rituals of purification such as fasting and smudging – the burning of sacred plants and bathing in their smoke. The young man would spend 4-5 nights alone on some windswept butte or within a shallow pit with little food. He learned to deal with his fears and find his own personal strengths out in the natural world. The vision quest might bring on life-changing visions and dreams. A Lakota medicine man once said, “I do believe every young [one] around high school age, should do a han-ble-che-ya-pi (vision quest) to get direction in life, to know what life is all about.” [1]

     I wonder if considering these kinds of quests, pilgrimages may help us see something different in this story of Luke’s Jesus in the wilderness. Because if you are like me, you have read this story and focused on the negative aspects. That is the devil who tried to destroy Jesus and ruin his life’s calling before he ever got started.[2]

     What if we saw this trial as “communion with the wilderness” that prepared him for his ministry, in which he learned things about himself.  After his own ritual cleansing experience, his baptism, then he sets out on a quest. What if he spent most of those forty days wrestling with his own past and present and his own thoughts about good and evil and out of that “found himself, his voice, and his own spiritual journey unfolding.”[3]

That feels different, doesn’t it? Than thinking the Spirit led him into a trap to be harshly tempted and tested.  But that WAS what also happened. Jesus, in this physically weakened state, perhaps more emotionally vulnerable having been all alone all this time; and spiritually laid bare, was exposed. He was open to attack. 

That’s when it happens, right?… to all of us. Times like these when we are weakened and vulnerable are when temptation comes, The Adversary can smell it.[4]

Who is this devil, this adversary? Scripture characterizes the power of evil in the world in different ways – as a tendency within ourselves, or a personal being outside ourselves; a powerful angel gone astray; a cosmic power; or forces gathered against the will of God. Whatever it is, this force is in strong opposition to love, health, wholeness, and peace. And no one is exempt from the struggle against it. If Jesus struggled, who is immune?

The Tempter slides in like the sly snake he is. His timing is perfect. His temptations always have a little something in them for Jesus, but also for everyone else. If Jesus can turn a stone into bread and feed himself, won’t the hungry be grateful that he can always feed them, too? The second test is political. Will Jesus submit to his adversary – who names himself the ruler of this world– in order to achieve good for the people of this world? The oppressed hope so.  The third temptation is to prove Jesus’ almighty power. Will Jesus win over those who doubt him by coercing faith and avoiding death?

     The real temptations always sound good, noble even. He resists the devil before him each time quoting scripture. What else does Jesus resist?  He resists the temptation for immediacy – the quick fix. And he resists the temptation to let anyone else tell him who he is.

If we are going to mount a resistance to the devils in front of us, these are the temptations we will have to overcome as well.

There is no quick fix for wide-spread hunger, poverty, racism, or bigotry. This takes organized advocacy, intentional messaging, systemic disruption over time. Jesus’ time in the wilderness confirmed that his ministry to the people and for the people was a marathon, not a sprint. He would have to pace himself, build coalitions of disciples who would believe in his vision. In the wilderness Luke’s Jesus also embraced his identity as God’s called and chosen son sent to redeem the world (as seen at God’s pronouncement at his baptism and a recount of Jesus’ genealogy right before this).

Nadia Bolz Weber says, Identity is always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God’s own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, [media that says we’re too fat or too thin, too old, or too young; co-workers, PTA moms, kids at school.] “They all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation. Maybe [devils] are… anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are.”[5]

 When were you ever tested like this?

          Maybe the first time you moved away from home -

Maybe it was in your first “real” job -

Maybe as a sleep-deprived new parent -

Or new recruit

Ever been tempted to take the short-cut? Or claim credit for something that wasn’t entirely your doing? 

What is the wilderness you are living in? Most of us will go through several seasons in life that feel like wilderness. Any big life event or transition can feel lonely, overwhelming… a divorce, a diagnosis, a down-size. Unknowns in our workplaces, mental health challenges: They can make us feel stuck: whether in the muck of things we can’t control; or in the mud of things we can. Wilderness might feel like punishment… FOR our sins, or BY our sins. Our choices often leave us in the wilderness of their consequences.

     Brothers and sisters, I don’t know everything that you are dealing with and going through. But I do know this, if we learn anything from Jesus' experience in the wilderness, it’s that it is not all wild. It is not all emptiness and loneliness. Spirit is there to comfort and guide and help us remember whose we are. Spirit reassures us that even if we are alone and a little afraid that sacredness can be found there. Kaitlin Curtice (grew up Southern Baptist and has learned to value her Native American roots) writes,

Let’s look at our own wilderness experiences differently. If you are in the middle of your wilderness now, look for what it teaches you. Let the wilderness speak to you, let the lone quiet, perhaps the lonely quiet, breathe something back over you…

[Do not run from the pain you might encounter there.]

Do not rush the learning and the listening, the ending or the beginning, the birth or the re-birth.

Let yourself listen.

Do not hush the wilderness.

     In the end of the passage, Luke warns us, the enemy departs only to return at a more convenient time. (4:13, 22:3)[6] Evil has not given up, but we know what happens at the end of these forty days. We know who has the ultimate victory.

The actor who played Black Panther / King T’Challa was Chadwick Boseman. He died after a relatively short battle with colon cancer. He once said, “I don't know what the future is, but if you are willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that's ultimately proven to have more victory, more glory, then you will not regret it. This is your time”.

 This Lenten wilderness may be such a time for us to learn, and listen, and grow. God help us.

 Invitation to response

Where do you want to be spiritually by the time Easter gets here?

How might we be shaped and emboldened in this season of Lent?

What do you want to have cultivated in your life?

What do you hope you have let go, given to God, been set free from?

[1] Kavasch and Baar, American Indian Healing Arts

[2] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kaitlinbcurtice/2017/05/08/jesus-us-a-shared-wilderness/

[3] ibid

[4]Craddock, Fred  Interpretation Commentary series, Luke

[5] Bolz-Weber, Nadia, Pastrix:The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & a Saint 2013

[6] Crowder, Stephanie Buckhanon True to Our Native Land