The Wilderness Road
Lent 1C-19
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
The first Sunday in Lent feels a long way from the cherished stories of incarnation we read this Christmas. Mary spoke to Gabriel. An angel counseled Joseph in a dream. Wise men followed a star, and the shepherds were led by a choir of angels to Bethlehem. But for me, it’s not the manger, but the wilderness, where the Word becomes flesh and Jesus becomes someone I can trust.
This wilderness story is familiar. I bet you know what it feels like to be where there is no clear path ahead. I bet you know what it’s like to be terrified. Moments when your mind is flooded with conflicted, inarticulate feelings and thoughts. Times when you struggle to know what the choices are. Most of us, I think, can relate to that.
Jesus is still wet from baptism when, as Luke tells it, the Spirit took him by the arm and thrust him into the desert. It’s as if God couldn’t wait a moment longer. Jesus is about 30 when he is drawn into battle with himself and the Devil. He goes there to be credentialed. Jesus goes to the DMV, the Department of Mission Validation, to get his Messiah’s license. In the wilderness that Jesus demonstrates he understands the proper use of divine power. Guess what? It’s not the unilateral power like that wielded by Lords and tyrants throughout history. It is the relational, persuasive, persistent, beckoning power of grace that comes wrapped inside each new moment purely as a gift from God.
In the wilderness, Jesus proved he is not a fickle or self-serving friend. This truth inspired Martin Luther to write A Mighty Fortress. God is like a tireless friend who fights beside us to vanquish those who would wish us harm. God is like a wise counselor who helps us dispel our small mindedness and hardheartedness. “Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day, the kingdom’s ours forever!” (Martin Luther, ELW #504)
In the wilderness, Jesus showed us how to be human, not divine, and that in becoming more human, God’s glory begins to shine through us. He showed us that being human is enough. Like us, Jesus had to cleave to love in a bleak and lonely wasteland of rejection and lies. He had to trust he could be beloved and famished, precious and “insignificant,” valued and vulnerable. He had to learn how to find God’s indwelling care within his mortal flesh-and-blood humanity. He had to learn to distinguish truth from empty promises.
We were marked with a cross of soot on Ash Wednesday to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We were sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever in baptism. We are frail and resurrected, dead in sin and beloved of God.
It’s easy to tell the truth when the truth is welcome. It’s easy to be generous when you have enough. Easy to be compassionate when you’re not desperate. In the desert, Jesus models for us how to make faithful choices even when our life is at risk, to speak the truth when the truth is not welcome, to choose compassion while we are drowning in fear, to be filled with life and love when the world is empty.
If you haven’t experienced hell already due to real life circumstances, then Lent is your invitation to take a 40 day walk with Jesus in a metaphorical hell and emerge with him, the victor. ‘The goal is to sit with our hungers, our wants, our desires — and learn what they have to teach us. What is the hunger beneath the hunger? Can we hunger and still live? Desire and still flourish? Lack and still live generously, without exploiting the beauty and abundance all around us? Who and where is God when we are famished for whatever it is we long for? Friendship, meaning, intimacy, freedom? A home, a savings account, a family?’ (Debie Thomas, Human and Hungry 3/3/19)
This Lent, we are in the wilderness. And it isn’t just a spiritual wilderness, like heading off to some retreat center. The three temptations — of bread, power, and protection are sparkly facets a single lure as ancient as time. The devil enticed Jesus to make himself a new Caesar. But Jesus said no. “Jesus showed it all to be a lie, the ultimate human deception, the great sin of humankind — these dreams of every Caesar, every authoritarian, every oligarch, every king and emperor who ever lived” (Diana Butler-Bass, “Wilderness—the Temptation of Empire,” Sunday Musings, March 8, 2025).
“Jesus said God provides bread; the only “empire” is a kingdom of humble love and gratitude to God; and God is “I AM,” the essence and being from which all creation has life. We are fed by bread. We live in a sabbath community of thanks. Only God is God. That’s what Jesus was all about. That’s the purpose of his life, ministry, teaching, miracles, and death. That’s the Kingdom of Heaven” (Butler-Bass)
This Lent let’s learn how to be loved and hungry at the same time; how to hope and hurt at the same time. “In some ways, Jesus’s struggle in the wilderness brings the ancient story of human temptation full circle. “Can you be like God?” That’s the question the snake posed to Adam and Eve in the lushness of the first garden. “Will you dare to know what God knows?” In the wilderness, the devil offers Jesus a clever inversion of those primordial questions: “Can you be fully human? Can you exercise restraint? Abdicate power? Accept danger? Can you bear what it means to be mortal?” The uncomfortable truth about authentic Christian power is that it resides in weakness. Jesus is lifted up — Jesus is exalted, but he’s lifted up on a cross.” (Debie Thomas)
Lent isn’t just about repenting from our private sins or getting our individual souls in shape for heaven. It is about standing with Jesus over and against the satanic enticements of empire that call us to worship any Caesar who sets himself up as God.
Like I said, the wilderness is relatable. In any life, there comes a time, or two or three, when we wander in the wilderness of loss and ashes and struggle with what it means to be human. In another way, we are all living inside this story—only the context isn’t ancient Rome; the context is now.
We walk the way Jesus not knowing where it leads but knowing that it is the right road. The road through the wilderness is the way of the cross. For each of us, following this winding path is not so much a choice, but a matter of life and death, a means of survival, a way of flourishing in the summer’s heat like a tree planted beside water. Look! What joy there is to discover so many companions along the Way following our Lord and Savior, and knowing in our bones, we can trust him.
