Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Mark 4:1-13

Yesterday, at the lovely baby shower that the church gave for Dilvan and Patricia, Dilvan shared with us a little about who they are and where they come from. In introducing Patricia’s cousin Jacquie, who is living with them for a while, Dilvan said that Jacquie has just graduated from high school in Brazil and is on her summer break, since, of course, it is summer in the southern hemisphere. Jacquie hopes to go on to a Brazilian university to study oceanography. In Brazil there is a standardized test that everyone who wants to go to a university must take. Dilvan told us that the best universities in Brazil are free, the less good ones charge. It is highly desirable, then, to do well on the test so that one qualifies for one of the free schools. To this end, most students take a year after high school to prepare for this crucial exam.

Of course we have our forms of standardized testing in the USA. The Brazilian test sounds something like the SATs many US high school students take. Standardized testing also brings to mind the way our public education system has come to use such tests as criteria of supposed excellence and as a means of allocating funding. Unfortunately, this sort of standardization fails to take into account sufficiently cultural and socioeconomic variations within our children and our school systems. This morning’s New Testament reading tells a tale of testing that is anything but standardized.

The past couple of weeks have focused on Jesus in mountains; then moving from the mountains to the plain. We have seen how, especially in the gospel of Luke, this means a movement from meditative time with God, from prayer, from contemplation to active ministry among needy people in a in the realm of very practical concerns. It means movement from a time of self reflection and intimate communion with God to doing the work of compassion, healing, caring to which God calls God’s people.

Today, as we begin the season of Lent, we move backwards to a story that takes place earlier in Jesus’ ministry. Here, though we do not find Jesus literally on a mountain top, we are given a tale of an undeniable mountain top experience. Jesus has been hanging out with his cousin John the Baptist and his followers. In the 3rd chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus asks John to baptize him, not in some crystal clear, rushing mountain stream but in the sluggish, muddy waters of the Jordan River as it meanders through the arid Judean wilderness. But even in this low level setting, God is clearly rewarding Jesus’ journey of faithfulness. The writer of Luke says, “So it happened that, as all the people were being baptized, Jesus too was baptized, and was praying. The heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form, like a dove, upon him. There came a voice from heaven: ‘You are my son, my dear son! I am delighted with you.” (Luke 3:21-22, Tom Wright’s translation in Luke for Everyone.)

But the movement is different this time. The movement is not from the rarefied spiritual atmosphere of the mountain top to active ministry among the pressing crowds of needy people with which Jesus will soon be confronted. At this point, Jesus is not ready for that sort of ministry, according to the writer of Luke. He apparently needs a period of intense self reflection and uninterrupted communion with God before beginning his work. In Bible study this week, we speculated that acting immediately after such an affirmation from God might leave Jesus vulnerable to pride and self promotion. As an intently committed young man in whom God seems to take keen delight, moving forward without some seasoning is risky business, even for Jesus. Most of us can remember a time when we felt particularly loved, valued, affirmed in such a way that we believed we were invulnerable, on top of the world, ready to slay dragons, whether they existed or not. In the end, a little seasoning, a time of testing, helped us gain perspective and wisdom about what we could and could not do in life.

When our FaithZone class considered this story Thursday night, I asked the boys if they knew what a vision quest was. I characterized it for them as a ritual practice in some Native American tribes in which a young boy, maybe no older than they, might be taken to the wilderness and left on his own, with limited tools and resources, both to cultivate his inner qualities, his sense of self, and to find his way home. This ritual practice was designed as a way of bringing a boy to manhood. Though certainly not a boy, it seems there are parallels in Jesus’ wilderness ordeal as described in Luke’s text.

Of course Jesus is already filled with the Holy Spirit when he comes up out of the baptismal waters and is blessed by God. It is that same Spirit that leads him into the wilderness on his vision quest. Clearly God has laid a strong hand on him and called him to serve God. What is his life to be? What does God have in store for him? What will be his ministry? In the ancient spiritual tradition he fasts while alone in the wilderness. Now the question arises is fasting meant to be a form or ritual abuse, a self denial that will purify one’s being? I know this is a traditional view of fasting, but it seems to me that an equally viable and valuable reason for this kind of ritual behavior is the intensity and clarity of focus it brings to one’s quest to see God and know God’s will for one’s life. The fewer distractions one has the more likely one is to see, so that both the wilderness and fasting becomes physical aids to Jesus’ vision quest.

So Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, which is symbolic language for a long time, to take the test he needs to take in order to proceed with his life and ministry. Now it is interesting to see that in the most familiar biblical episodes in which the devil or the Satan shows up, he or she is not necessarily the force of evil. In the story of the forbidden tree in the garden, in the story of Job and here in the wilderness, the devil’s primary function is as the tester. I suppose we may hold residual resentment against some of those who have tested us in our own lives and some of that resentment deep-seated. It’s not a leap to see the devil as evil, mean and nasty. Anyway, the function he serves here is to test Jesus.

These clearly are not standardized tests. They are tests with uniquely tempting appeal to the person Jesus is. “You’re hungry after your long time of fasting. You can turn these stones in the bread. That’s a real power you have. Just press the ‘easy button.’” But, no, the point of the fast is to bring him close to God and into a deeper understanding of God’s will for his life. This, too, is vital nourishment, as important to the soul as bread is to the body. Both body and soul must be fed if one is to become the whole person God intended in creation.

From the mountain top, the devil shows him the whole world and says, “This can all be yours if you’ll just bow down and worship me.” The irony is that Jesus already has all the dominion he needs over the earth. After all, he is God’s blessed child in whom God delights. The ploy here is for earthly power, for Jesus to give in to craving the kind of power the world offers, the power of dominion and control. This is the power that the Satan offers; but God offers the far superior power of love, the ability to love and care for the whole earth; not the power of empire, the power to build up a nation through accumulation of wealth and then develop the necessary military might to protect the super power. Jesus says the only real super power is the power of love and that power is only found in worshipful relationship with the great God of the universe, Jesus’ heavenly parent.

Finally we find Jesus to the highest pinnacle of the temple. “Throw yourself down from here. You know God has said that in the middle of your free fall, She’ll send angels to catch you so that you don’t even stub your toe. Make a spectacle of yourself and you’ll have more followers than you’ll know what to do with. It will be a magnificent miracle.” OK, maybe this time old Satan has gone too far. Now he has moved beyond testing Jesus and is actually trying to get Jesus to put God to the test, to prove through some mighty miracle that She is God. As with the other tests, Jesus knows that he could actually pull off what the devil is suggesting, but he also knows that this goes against the way the God wants to move and work among the people of the earth. God’s way, in Jesus, is not dazzling displays of wizardry; God’s way in Jesus is the sweet, persistent lure of love. “Come to God, not because you must, compelled by some magnificent magic, come because you may, through God’s gracious invitation to join Jesus on the journey to a new and very different way of life – a way of life that may actually see us losing life in order to find it, losing the life the devil makes so attractive in order to find the abundant life God offers in Jesus Christ.

Tom Wright says of this passage “Physical needs and wants are important, but loyalty to God is more important still. Jesus is indeed to become the world’s true lord, but the path to that status, and the mode of when it arrives, is humble service, not a devilish seeking after status and power. Trust in God doesn’t mean acting stupidly to force God into doing a spectacular rescue. The power that Jesus already has, which he will shortly display in healings in particular, is to be for restoring others to life and strength, not for cheap stunts. His status as God’s son commits him, not to showy prestige, but to the strange path of humility, service and finally death.” (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone,
p. 44.)

It is in coming from the desert that Jesus demonstrates his faithfulness to his covenant with God by rejecting these very real temptations that the devil lays out to test him. The text from the Hebrew Scriptures shows us the children of Israel as they come wandering from the desert. The book of Deuteronomy is cast as a series of instructions from Moses, interpreting the law he has brought down from the mountain. This particular passage comes as they stand poised to enter the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey. They, too, are presented with a kind of test that is unique to the situation they are about to encounter. As the people of God’s covenant, they are about to enter in to a time of great prosperity. What kind of people will they be as God’s prosperous people? Moses instructs them that they are to be people of gratitude, generosity and hospitality. That is, their lives are to be grounded in gratitude for all that God has given them. They are to celebrate God’s gracious gifts to them right off the top. They are to live an attitude of gratitude. No leftovers for God. They are to care for the widow and the orphan, the Levite and the alien. That is, they are responsible to see that those without access to land and resource are cared for adequately. This is the very real test set before them, which, by and large, they fail miserably as they hoard and squabble and fight and kill over the land and its resources, refusing to see or acknowledge that God has provided more than enough to go around.

So, as we enter this Lenten season, which is a season for reflection, for wilderness wandering, for vision quest, what will we bring to the desert? Every one of us faces tests daily. What are some of yours? Where are you challenged in your daily lives? What challenges have you swept under the rug, hoping they’ll remain there, hidden? What difficult decisions do you have to make? What role does God’s desire for your life play in the choices you make? Where does following Jesus take you that you’d rather not go? Where does the Holy Spirit try to lead you that you resist going? These are the kinds of questions Lent asks of us. In the end, our very personal responses to these questions and others like them will determine what we bring from the desert. Hopefully, we will bring from the desert a deep desire, coupled with the necessary strength, to follow Jesus on his journey to God, even if it leads through the cross. Amen.