The Way: Baptism and Temptation in the Wilderness

Mark 1:9-15

February 14, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

To his disciples Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life..." (John 14:6)  Over and over again he invites them to follow his "way", the word in the original meaning "path", "road", and “journey".  In fact, one of the first names for the early Christians was "children" or "followers" of "The Way" (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 24:22).

What does it mean to follow Jesus' Way?  How does one do so?   Why would it matter here in the 21st century?  Those questions will outline our journey through the season of Lent this year.

The Way begins in the desert.

In the gospel of Mark we have no story of Jesus' Bethlehem birth.   Jesus appears as an adult coming from his hometown Nazareth to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.   John is Jesus' cousin (Luke 1:39-42), a desert mystic/esthetic caught up in the apocalyptic expectation for a new Messiah and the restoration of Israel. The desert wilderness was seen as a purifying place cut off from the excesses and spiritual distractions of village/city life. John was offering the purification rite of water baptism in preparation for what he thought would be the immediate apocalypse and Judgment of God.   John was a fiery preacher of the "end of the world". Historians of the day reported crowds traveling the twenty miles from Jerusalem to hear John the Baptist and to be baptized.  Jesus, the son of a carpenter from the Galilee came too. 

In Mark's version of the story it would seem as if God adopts Jesus as his son as he comes out of the baptismal waters.  A voice from heaven says for all to hear, "You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased."   Then the Holy Spirit immediately drives Jesus into the wilderness where he will be tested and tempted as he fasts for 40 days and nights.

The Lenten season was created by the church centuries ago as a liturgical season during which we could remember Jesus' forty day temptation in the wilderness before the beginning of his ministry (Lent is 40 days minus the Sundays, which are always designated to honor Jesus' resurrection).  Lent reminds us of all those biblical "forties" when the faithful wrestled with God to discover who they were and where they were going; Noah and his family waiting through forty days and nights of the flood (Genesis 7-9:17); the children of Israel who wandered 40 years between their slavery in Egypt until their entrance into the Promised Land; Moses and his forty days of fasting as he received the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:27-28); Elijah and his forty days of meditation and hiding as he waited for the "still small voice of God" (I Kings 19:1-f).

We mark the first day of Lent with ashes, gathered from the burned remains of the branches we waved the year before on Palm Sunday.  On that day we symbolically remember the crowds that hailed Jesus as Messiah with “hosannas”.  But we do not forget that those same crowds cried “crucify him” a few days later.   So we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross that will be the instrument of Jesus’ death and our betrayal of the God of love.

Out there in the desert wilderness John the Baptist was preaching "repentance" to those who would listen.  To repent in the original language means to "turn around".  To repent means to be transformed, to embrace the God that considers each of us "beloved".  "To repent means that we look honestly and fearlessly at ourselves to identify the ways in which we need to grow and change"; to repent means to "recognize that all is not as it should be in our lives" (Greg Weyrauch, Journeying Through Lent with Mark: Daily Meditations, Augsburg, 1999, p. 11).

Lent is an opportunity to do some real soul searching.  To honestly take a look at our lives, our relationship with God and each other.  It’s a time to face our own temptations.

​In Matthew and Luke’s versions of Jesus' baptism and desert fasting (Mt. 4:1-11, Lk. 4:1-13), we hear a dialogue between the devil and Jesus, with Satan offering Jesus three tests; command these stones to become bread; throw yourself down so that the angels can save you; and finally Satan offers Jesus all the Kingdoms of this world if he will worship evil.

​Each time Jesus answers the test by reciting scriptures; "We shall not live by bread alone, but by the words of God"; "You shall not tempt God"; "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve God only."

​Satan has no power over Jesus that Jesus won’t give him.  However you understand the devil in the Bible as metaphor for the reality of evil in the world or as a supernatural being, all the devil can do is offer the choices that lead away from life and love.  He cannot make us choose them.  Satan’s work is as tempter, tester, and accuser.  His power is in the whisper of doubt. He is "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  He is the sower of “bad seeds” (Matthew 14:39).  The devil is an "adversary" but in no way equal to God (note Job 1:6-f).

​We have all used the convenient excuse when things go bad, “Well, the devil made me do it!” (Note scriptural examples, Luke 8:11, John 13:2).  In fact, the devil can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do (Note; Scott Peck, People of the Lie, Touchstone Books; 2nd edition, December 1997).

​There may indeed be a spiritual battle between the forces of light and “darkness” (Ephesians 6:12).  But it is not the battle between two gods.   There is only one God, who by Divine love and mercy gives us free will.  The battle is among and within each of us to choose life or death, good or evil.

Let me site this example as an illustration.

Having thought that the institution of slavery had long been eradicated from earth, in recent years public awareness has grown that nothing could be farther from the truth.   It comes in new forms of indentured servitude and with a new title, "Human Trafficking".  The US State Department informs us that...

-An estimated 27 million people are held in slavery worldwide, meaning there are more slaves in the world than were taken from Africa during 300 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

-More slaves alive now than at any other time in history.

-Approximately 800,000 to 900,000 victims annually trafficked across international borders worldwide.

-Approximately 80 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors.

-The majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.

-Between 18,000 and 20,000 victims trafficked into United States annually.

-In the United States alone, it is estimated that there are 200,000 living in indentured servitude, working in agriculture, illegal manufacturing and the sex industry.

Here in California, Attorney General Kamala Harris has reported that the rescue of human trafficking victims and the arrest of their captors have tripled in the last two years.  Her report says the numbers are likely much higher because many crimes go unreported. (Elliot Spagat, AP, 11/16/12)

Seven teenagers were rescued from forced prostitution in the San Francisco Bay Area during Super Bowl week, authorities announced Tuesday.  Some of the victims had previously been reported missing by their parents, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said. They ranged in age from 14 to 17.  In all, 129 adults were picked up or cited for prostitution and 85 clients were arrested.  Over the last 13 years, the FBI and its partner agencies have recovered nearly 4,800 children and helped convict about 2,000 people in human trafficking crimes, which the agency described as “the most common form of modern day slavery.”  FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson said. (Sarah Parvini, LA Times, 02/09/16)

This social evil doesn't exist by accident or merely by cultural norms.  It exists because there is a market for this evil.  It exists because there are those who choose to pay for such services.    This evil will stop when good people are willing to name it for what it is and expose those making a profit off of such exploitation.

The devil can’t make us do a thing.   Only when in our freedom we give in to that which is wrong can evil have power in our lives and in our world.  We are always free to choose.

If the world isn’t the way it should be it’s not because God has let down God’s end of the bargain.   And so it is a young carpenter from Galilee that will show us the true nature of the Creator of the Universe:

“God made himself weak for one purpose; to let human beings choose freely for themselves what to do with him.” (Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew, Zondervan, 2002  p. 76)

“God’s terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though he did not exist, to spit in his face, to crucify him.”  (Yancy p. 78)

And so Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem with baptism and the temptation in the desert.  He invites us on The Way, and The Way of Jesus is to face evil head on and call it for what it is.    We are invited to use these weeks before Easter to take stock of our lives, consider the freedom we have been given and the choices we have made.

It has been said, "Ethics is what we do while everyone is watching. Morality is what we do when no one is looking."

Lent is a time for us to remember our baptism and keep it holy.

Amen.