Into the Wilderness

Suppose you decided to take a solo camping trip in a remote area. You needed to get away – don’t we all sometimes? Or you wanted to see another part of the country. Or you needed to test yourself. Suppose that you decided to walk the Appalachian Trail by yourself. The AT is 2200 miles long and runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. People who commit to walking the entire trail, “through-hikers,” as they are called, usually start out at the southern end in late March or early April and reach Mt. Katahdin in late summer or early fall.

So suppose you decided to walk the AT by yourself. When would you go? Would you try to hike the whole trail or just a section? What would you take? Remember, you’d have to carry everything on your back. You’d need some shelter, a tent or lean-to perhaps, a sleeping back, stove, and light. Would you take food or count on buying what you needed along the trail? How about books or extra clothes? Would want a small MP3 player with your favorite music? What about batteries? As your backpack starts to get heavy, would you begin to wonder, “What’s really essential?” Would seeing a bear or a bobcat make you leave the trail? Could you handle the silence? Would you use all that time to think about the choices you’d made in your life? Would God be more present to you along the trail than at home?

Did Jesus face some of these questions on his own solo camping trip? As if Jesus were a unique and mysterious person, the writer of the Gospel of Mark provides few details about Jesus’ decision to go off into the hills of Judea or of his experiences over the weeks he spent walking those hills. Jesus had already had two powerful spiritual experiences. He had followed the Spirit’s urging and sought John’s baptism. He had plunged into the Jordan River along with all those from Jerusalem who were there confessing their sins. Coming up from the water, he had felt deeply God’s affirmation of him, and he knew himself to be connected to God in a new and different way. Was his whole life about to change? He had scarcely climbed up the river bank and changed into his dry clothes when the Spirit, now not a gentle nudge in his ear or a dove on his shoulder, but an arm of surprising strength, gripped him and led him up into the bleak hills.

Did Jesus know how long he would stay out in the hills? Did he have time to pack a kit bag or a backpack, to decide what to take with him? Did he have a blanket to wrap around himself during the chilly Judean nights? Did he take a cloak or second tunic? A knife? A lantern? Did he eat wild roots or leaves? Perhaps there were wild apples or other fruit up there. What did Jesus do when he met a wild animal? Did he see it as a threat, or as a creature that also shared God’s life? What did he think about, pray about, or wonder about, during those long, silent hours? Perhaps he knew himself to be in a “thin” place, where the veil between earth and heaven gives way, and deeper communion with the Holy One becomes possible. Did his heightened sense of nearness to God clarify God’s call to him? Did he understand that a ministry of preaching God’s good news, teaching, and healing would be bitterly opposed by the religious and political authorities and would ultimately lead to his death? How did Jesus know when to come back down? Was he ready for the arduous labor that now lay ahead of him? Did the Spirit warn Jesus that the political leaders who had had John arrested were after him as well, and that he should begin his ministry in Galilee instead Judea?

Jesus was not the only one in Scripture to feel the powerful grip of the Holy Spirit. After Samuel had identified David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, as the next king of Israel, Scripture tells us that, “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (1Samuel 16:13). As the exiles began to return to Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah knew that, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me…. 61:1). At the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus would apply that very declaration of Isaiah to himself. Other prophets report encountering God in desolate places, in deserts, and in mountains.

Throughout the centuries, serious followers of Jesus have sought out mountains and deserts, or have been driven into them by the Holy Spirit, in order to experience God’s presence more deeply. Beginning as early as the third century AD, holy men and women left behind the temptations and rich life of Egyptian cities. They settled in small desert communities and lived simple lives, dedicated to contemplative prayer, charity, and forgiveness. As they wrestled with God, they wrote about their experiences, hoping to share their insights with their followers. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they are now known, are rich source of spiritual wisdom to this day. Following his vision of Jesus in the country chapel of San Damiano, St. Francis renounced his identity as a prosperous cloth merchant’s son and lived as a beggar in the hills of Assisi. After much careful discernment, Teresa of Avila left the settled, relatively relaxed life of Carmelite nuns in 16th century Spain to found a new order that allowed for periods of silence and contemplation. Closer to our own day, Trappist monk Thomas Merton led us into the contemplative desert through his book The Wisdom of the Desert, while Belden Lane, Kathleen Norris, and Terry Tempest Williams recount their own experiences of being drawn by the Spirit into secluded places.

My friends, in Lent we too are invited to go on a solo camping trip, to venture into a spiritual wilderness. This year we were not able to confront once again our mortality, in the imposition of ashes. Nor did we hear the exhortation for Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless our work for this season, as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, is to observe a holy Lent "by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” For most of us, given our 24/7 overly busy lives, the only way to fulfill that charge is to let the Spirit drive us into the wilderness, to find some time and place apart where we may truly listen to the Spirit and discern God’s direction for our lives. What do you need for such a solo camping trip? Perhaps you need to commit to a definite time of prayer, perhaps first thing in the morning, over the noon hour, last thing at night, or on a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon. How many minutes will you give to God? Ten, twenty, thirty? You may need to commit to particular place, where you can pray without interruption for some brief period, a room where you can shut the door, or even a basement or attic. You might consider joining a quiet morning or day, where you may hear God in the silence of contemplative prayer. Do you need anything special? A book of Lenten devotions perhaps? A notebook or tablet for keeping a spiritual journal? Perhaps you can create your own “thin place” by lighting a candle, wearing a prayer shawl, or using Anglican prayer beads. Perhaps an icon, a window, or a painting will lead you into God’s silence. What else do you need to take with you? The support and help of family and friends, perhaps? What do you need to leave behind? Expectations of “what’s in it for me” or what the outcome of prayer should be? Can you let the Spirit work her will in you, giving you glimpses of God’s affirmation of you and leading you to a clearer sense of vocation?

If you let yourself be led by God’s Spirit, you may well be surprised. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised by what happened to him in the Judean hills. Perhaps he came down from the hills surer of his vocation, clearer about his role in God’s design, less fearful of what lay ahead, and more confident in God’s love for him. We too are invited into a process of transformation. When we return from our solo camping trip, our time apart with God, we too may find ourselves surer of God’s call to us, less fearful of what life may hold for us, less afraid of death, and more confident of God’s love for us.

Perhaps too we will be empowered for greater ministry. When Jesus’ retreat came to an end, the Spirit lured him from the silence of the hills to the noise of the needs of his people. Jesus went public with the message of God’s good news for all of humankind, indeed for all of creation. For us, too, time spent in the wilderness leads to transformation, to seeing ourselves and others in new ways, to understanding ourselves as members of God’s realm, and to sharing God’s healing and welcoming touch with others. As we sojourn more closely with Jesus, we understand that contemplation must always lead to outreach, introspection must always lead to action. Jesus has been there before us. Jesus is with us still, assuring us in the wilderness that we too will find divine refreshment and spiritual insight. God bless us all during this most holy season.