Discerning Weakness

Jesus’ baptism may seem an odd place to start our observance of Lent. Actually, of course, Lent started a few days ago on Ash Wednesday. We began this Lenten season appropriately with ash upon our foreheads, reminded that we are dust, and called by the church to keep this season of Lent holy. Then every year the lectionary appoints for this first Sunday in Lent a Gospel reading that begins with Jesus’ baptism. It begins with Jesus’ baptism. The focal point of today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Mark only devotes one sentence to the temptation, so it would be understandable if you didn’t catch it as the main focus. “[Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” A brief, but significant story. The sentence before that one is important, too, because it links Jesus’ temptation with his baptism. Jesus was baptized by John and the voice from heaven claimed him as God’s Son, the Beloved. And, hardly had the echoes of God’s voice died down, when “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Then after his return from the wilderness, as today’s short Gospel passage ends, Jesus began his public ministry.

Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry. Three hugely important pieces of Jesus’ life all described in this brief passage from Mark. Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry. Three elements of the Christian life. All essential and all connected. Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry. None are optional; all are essential parts of the Christian life. And they are connected. For Jesus and for us. Baptism is the beginning, just the beginning, bestowing Christian identity. Ministry is the activity of the Christian life. And somehow wilderness is an important connection between the two. Part of what Lent is for us is our own time in the wilderness. In baptism we are named as Christ’s own, given our identity as God’s beloved. To live as Christians, to take up the daily activity of Christian life, which is ministry, we need some time in the wilderness. Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry.

So besides being a place full of wild beasts, what is the wilderness like? What happens there? The synoptic Gospel writers all describe Jesus’ time in the wilderness as a time of temptation; Matthew and Luke detail specific trials. Jesus’ spiritual fortitude was tested under very harsh, very tricky conditions, trials constructed by the devil himself. Jesus passed. At the risk of sounding flip, “duh.” Of course Jesus passed. And under similar conditions, none of us would. Not one of us would pass. Nor would even the purest saint. No human being would pass. So we should not think of the wilderness as a pass/fail test, for Jesus or for us. It is not a test to determine if we are good enough at withstanding temptation. That is not the point of the wilderness. It is not some sort of hazing or ordeal or trial that must be overcome before we can proceed to the next level or the next phase of our Christian journey.

And that’s a good thing, because when the devil tempts us, we will succumb. We will succumb to temptation… more than once. That said, the process of being tested can be a helpful one. Forty days of fighting temptation can build discipline, even if we lose quite a few of the battles. Like an athlete, as we push the limits of our own spiritual abilities, we do grow and improve. In a recent sermon Presiding Bishop Schori likened Lent to baseball’s spring training (she was in Costa Rica). But Lent is training for life. Indeed, this is a part of Lent’s wilderness opportunity for us… to build discipline and spiritual strength that will help us live more faithfully throughout life.

But Jesus didn’t need training before he could live faithfully or begin his ministry. So why did the Spirit drive Jesus into the wilderness? What else happens in the wilderness?

Dorothy Sayers wrote a series of radio plays about Jesus’ life. The scene of Jesus’ baptism has always stuck with me. She stresses that Jesus and John are cousins, similar in age and well known to one another. After Jesus is baptized by John, Jesus and John are speaking together, a sort of breathless conversation, both aware that something new and momentous has just happened. Jesus says, “When you baptized me with the water of repentance—” And John interjects, “Being utterly unworthy to kiss your feet, my mother’s cousin’s son—” Jesus continues, “When you baptized me with the water of repentance, I felt the shoulder of God stoop under the weight of man’s sin. And I knew…” “What did you know,” John asks, “you whom the voice called Son of God?” Jesus replies, “I knew what it meant to be the Son of Man.”

I knew what it meant to be the Son of Man. Christians often wonder when and how Jesus became aware of his divinity. We mortals can never answer that question. He was fully divine from the beginning of time. Some imagine that it was at his baptism that Jesus came to know himself as God’s son. Sayers suggests that at his baptism Jesus did not so much become aware of his divinity. Rather, he became fully aware of his humanity, and of all that it meant for him to be the agent of redemption for humanity. Maybe that’s what he was thinking about in the wilderness. Not so much about how good he was, as God, at avoiding temptation. But about how impossibly hard it is for human beings to live faithfully without God’s help.

The wilderness is a time and place to discern human weakness. Maybe the Spirit led Jesus apart into the wilderness for forty days to become aware of human sinfulness. Maybe he was writing the Great Litany. Identifying, cataloguing, naming all the places in human life where we need God’s deliverance. Encountering within himself and understanding human infirmity and weakness. Maybe he was discerning all the temptations and frailties that human beings cannot overcome without God’s help. And then he began his ministry of bringing the kingdom of God to those places of human need.

The wilderness is a place to discern weakness. We use the word discernment a lot in the church. We talk of discerning positive thinks like our gifts, discerning God’s unique call for each of us. Lent is about a different sort of discernment… discerning our weaknesses, our infirmities. Discernment means recognition… recognizing a reality that is already there. We have weaknesses and infirmities. Remember today’s collect. We say to God: “Thou knowest our several infirmities.” (“You know the weaknesses of each of us.”) Our weaknesses are there within us. God knows them. Jesus understands them. And then in the collect we pray, “Let us find you, God, mighty to save.” In Lent our task is discerning, recognizing, acknowledging our weaknesses, our helplessness, so that we can turn to God who alone can save us.

The wilderness isn’t so much about us getting better at saving ourselves, although developing spiritual discipline is always good. The wilderness isn’t a place for getting better at saving ourselves, it’s a place for figuring out that we need God to save us. That’s the training for the Christian life that Lent provides. Training us to turn to God, to depend upon God. First we must recognize our need. Do you recognize, can you name, your own several infirmities? The specific weaknesses of human nature or of your own nature where you need God’s help? Go into the wilderness, use the Great Litany if you need help getting started. The wilderness is a place to discover where and how much we need God’s help. Then, with God’s help, we can get on with living our Christian lives in ministry. With God’s help.