NRS Mark 1
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
May the Lord keep us faithful in the face of temptation and hopeful in times of trial; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
In 1969 Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross came out with her book On Death and Dying. Through her years of working with people facing terminal illnesses, Dr. Kubler-Ross discerned a common pattern in the way her patients dealt with grief and loss. She proposed a theory now famously known as the Five Stages of Grief: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
This was ground-breaking stuff, and for pastors and many other counselors working with grieving people, the good doctor’s work blazed a new trail in the dark geography of grief. But unless you read the whole book with all the fine print, the theory of grief’s stages can actually make grief work more difficult. Kubler-Ross never stated that everybody goes through exactly the same stages, nor did she write that everybody undergoes these stages in the same exact sequence. But if all you got was the Clift note version, you might think that the path from anger to acceptance was a straight line, that once you got past the anger you were on your way to ultimate peace.
Over the years I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people come to me very distraught, very upset, saying things like:
“I thought I had gotten beyond this.
“I was sure I had reached acceptance.
“Last week I was totally at peace with this loss, and now I’m back to square one.”
And often what I heard was not just distress, but more like failure, like they must have messed up and taken a wrong turn. The simple fact is, the way of grief has more than a few zigs and zags to it. We don’t just go from bad to better to good to, “I’m all well and ready to move on.” Yes, there’s improvement and growth, but there’s also setback and disappointment. Through no fault of their own, people doing grief work can sometimes get stuck, and even people who feel like they’re making progress can go from one day being on top of the world to the next being totally dejected. It’s not just two steps forward, one step back. It’s like the higher we go the deeper we can fall, and the deeper we fall the higher we’re raised up again. It’s – ooh, I hate this word -- complicated.
There’s a parallel I think between our struggle with grief and what Jesus experienced in his journey from baptism to wilderness to proclaiming the kingdom. Because Mark’s gospel is so terse, even abrupt, in today’s reading we go with Jesus from the mountaintop to the valley and back again in the space of only six verses. When Jesus emerges from the River Jordan after being baptized by John, he sees the heavens split asunder and the Holy Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove. From out of the heavens the voice of God then announces to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Notice that this is a message directly intended for Jesus; unlike Matthew or Luke, the announcement is not for the crowds or for John the Baptist, but for Jesus alone. And what an affirmation it is! We all know how important it is to receive the affirmations of our fathers. How much more significant that the heavenly Father affirms Jesus as the Beloved Son from all eternity!
But no sooner are those divine words uttered than Mark reports, “And the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness.” (“Immediately” – in Greek euthus – is one of Mark’s favorite words.) Notice here, too, that the Spirit does not gently lead or guide Jesus into the desert, but instead, the Spirit drove him, or literally, threw him out into a lonely, forsaken place. The gospels often use the same word for when Jesus casts out demons, except, of course, in this case it’s Jesus who is cast out and by no less than the very Spirit of God. It’s really kind of a reverse exorcism, with Jesus not doing the casting out, but rather being cast into a setting where Satan himself tempts him. The verb in Greek for “tempt” is peirazo, which means not just being tempted to do bad things, but more like being tried, tested, put in a bad spot.
Now it’s always an iffy thing to try to figure out what Jesus was thinking or feeling in any gospel story, but you can’t help but wonder what might have been going through our Lord’s mind when one moment he’s affirmed the Son of God and the next he’s going toe to toe with Satan and his legions. Maybe Jesus even wondered, “If God does this to his Beloved Son, what must God have in store for his less faithful children?” But wait a second: do we assume that if we’re close to God, devoted and faithful, that we will somehow be immune from temptation? Do we fall into the same trap as people who mistake the way of grief for a superhighway that only runs in one direction?
There’s a long and deep strain of perfectionism running through much American Christianity. It’s the belief that with the right faith and the right discipline and the right attitude a believer can rise above all the trials and adversities of this life to live in pure communion with God. The assumption is that through deep prayer and heartfelt devotion I can go to that garden alone, “while the dew is still on the roses,” where God walks with me and talks with me and tells me that I am his own. It’s a beautiful thought, and if the only Bible you know is Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” – you might get the idea that our walk with God is all upward and onward and into the light. But as the experience of Jesus himself confirms, it’s more – here’s that word again – complicated.
The great fathers and mothers of the church have left a long testimony to the twists and turns, hills and valleys, bright mornings and dark nights of the Christian way. Taking his own cue from Paul and Augustine, Luther would realize in his own faith journey that while we live in these bodies of flesh, we’re never exempt from the ravages of sin, death, and the devil’s power. Try as we might to cage the beast that prowls our minds and souls, we’re all vulnerable, but we are never without hope. As Paul declared in the lesson from this last Ash Wednesday, we are “as dying, and see – we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6: 9, 10). That’s complicated; but it’s also true.
In the 2003 movie Luther, there’s a scene where Luther, played by Joseph Fiennes, addresses his Wittenberg congregation, preaching:
So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!"
Take that, Satan!
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