Lenten Bible Study Day 4; Luke 4

Luke Chapter 4 (NRSV)

Today, in chapter 4, we come across the story of how Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days of fasting and trial. As a preacher I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this particular story because it appears in one version or another every year on the first Sunday in Lent.

For the first few years that I was preaching I focused on the lesson, and on the struggle between Jesus and the adversary that it describes. Later on I started to focus more on the meaning of Lent and calling people to take this season as seriously as possible. I wonder if I did that in part because it was hard for me to understand the starkness of the story and the fullness of the language and scenery it describes.

A bit more than six years ago I accepted a call to serve as the dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Arizona. I had never been to Arizona before. I'd hardly ever been west of the Mississippi. I was deeply familiar with the intimate lush green landscape of the mid-Atlantic. The desert seemed like a grand adventure.

When I first got out to Phoenix and saw the vastness of the Sonoran desert from the airplane it was hard to see anything but jagged rocks and thorny plants. I remember when we were buying a house and looking all around the valley. The real estate agent would point out that a particular house had a mountain view. I didn't want a mountain view. The "mountain" was a pile of dark brown dirt and some very jagged rocks. I didn't want to look at that every morning.

It took me years to learn to see the beauty of the desert. But eventually I came to see the fragility that was hidden in the crags. My eye learned to see the colors of a new palette. I noticed the tiny flowers hidden behind the thorns.

But I also learned to respect the desert. I used to lead hikes into the wilderness on Saturday mornings with whoever wanted to come along. On a couple of occasions people on the hike weren't working hard enough at drinking water. Dehydration comes on fast. And it's very dangerous. We had a couple of moments that were a bit more exciting than I wanted them to be.

The idea of one person spending forty days in the desert without food or water is more than I can wrap my head around. I learned from my hikes that the only way to manage in the hostile environment of the desert was to cooperate with the people around you. Those exciting moments stayed merely "exciting" because we shared our water and food with the person who had run out. I think the nomadic people's "over-the-top" sense of hospitality must come out of this same recognition. Either you cooperate with each other or you are in danger of dying.

Jesus though goes into the wilderness on his own. He is in the wilderness by himself. And Jesus doesn't cooperate with his adversary when he appears. (The name "Satan" in Greek literally means "adversary".) And Jesus is not overcome. This time of testing in the desert is not the same thing as retreat or spiritual fast - at least not according to the accounts. This is a real and desperate struggle in the starkest and least forgiving place on Earth. And Jesus both endures it and overcomes it.
In Mark's Gospel, the picture of Jesus that is presented shows us a man of great power who does things that leave the people around him amazed and confused. This story in Luke, so close to the Markan version, is a close echo of that. There's something deep and powerful at work here.

I wonder that sometimes we tame our experience of God. We reduce God to a nice manageable idea that we can get our heads and hearts around. But this story is a reminder that there is more to God and God's work among us than we are comfortable with.