The Pedagogy of Wilderness

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Faith is the courage to be afraid. Fear impeding our journey is the attestation of the fragility of our faith. To be faithful is to confront ourselves while we endure the heat of wilderness. Wilderness becomes the battle ground of our real self and ideal self. To augment the intensity of this onslaught, temptations become the catalyst. Most often we survive by trading our inherent image of God to the evil one. Guilt permeates our being, urges us to repent and before we know we have grown. One who has not met his weakness vis-à-vis has never known the sweetness of transformation. Wilderness thus becomes a subversive educational arena with temptations as the pedagogy and Spirit as the teacher. It has produced great students whom the world knows as Desert Fathers and Mothers.

The Lection set apart for today by the Church is Luke 4: 1-13 – The Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness which is the foundation of the Great Lent. The visualization of this event by Barbara Brown Taylor is indeed poignant. She writes;

The wilderness Jesus was driven into was probably the desert south of Jericho, where the Jordan River feeds into the Dead Sea. You can see for miles in every direction there, and it is all sand-coloured: the hills, the rocks, the brush, and the scorpions. It is also very quiet, both because the sand absorbs sound and because there are not many living things to make any noise. If you sit still in that desert all by yourself, then you will soon notice a mechanical humming between your ears, roughly equivalent to the sound of a small electric clock. This is the sound of your nervous system at work, with all its elaborate wiring and sparking synapses. Once you have gotten used to it, you will begin to notice how much noise you make when you breathe. Your lungs might as well be fireplace bellows, with all that wheezing in and out. When you breathe in, you can hear the wind whistling through what sounds like your hollow skull, and when you breathe out you can hear the roar it makes as it rushes out through the narrow passageway of your nose.[1]
The exodus of Jesus into the wilderness following his baptism has dual symbolism. Firstly it fulfils the Old Testament type, in which Israel journeyed in the wilderness for forty years after its “baptism” in the Red Sea. Secondly it prefigures our own journey through the fallen world after baptism as we struggle towards the Kingdom of God. Jesus reverses Israel’s falling to temptation in the wilderness. The Israelites were tested for forty years in the wilderness and proved disobedient and disloyal. God humbled them by first letting them go hungry and then feeding them with manna to help them learn to be dependent on God (Deut. 8:2-5). On the contrary, when Jesus is tested, he does not sin but overcomes the desires of flesh.

By rejecting the temptation of bread Jesus inverses the story of Adam. While Adam disregarded the Divine word in order to pursue the passions of the body (Gen 3), the New Adam – Christ – conquers the temptation by the Divine word. The refusal of Jesus to comply with the comfort of power offered by Satan – the ruler of the world (John 12:31) is his affirmation to identify himself with the vulnerability of powerlessness and to bear the wounds of suffering for the redemption of the cosmos. The denial of Jesus on being instigated by the Evil to act upon his free will by throwing himself off the pinnacle reiterates the Father Son relationship which shares one common will (John 5:30). Thus by refuting the temptation Jesus re-ascertains his divine Sonship. He imparts the wisdom that bread, power and authority gained by prostrating before the unjust is equivalent to death. The “means” is as important as the “end”. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36)      

Wilderness has a unique pedagogy. It is in wilderness humans meet their finitude. We truly understand the pain of being human. Arch B. Taylor considers the wilderness the real place where incarnation of Christ happened. He remarks;

In a certain sense it might truly be said that the Incarnation occurred at this point (in the wilderness) rather than at the conception or birth. For here, for the first time, Jesus became fully aware of the possibility of being something else besides human, and he made the deliberate, conscious decision to remain a man. In choice to identify himself completely with humankind he also committed himself to the cross. Subsequent decisions only made plain what was implicit here.[2]
It is also fascinating to note that the medium of temptation used by Satan was the Scripture. Scripture is a double-edged sword. It is just not enough to know the scripture but one should have the prudence to use it well. Scripture could either be used to wound or to heal; the choice is ours. The temptation episode inspires us to make Christ the yardstick to interpret the scripture. Heed the words of Benjamin L. Corey;

Jesus doesn't call us to a life of becoming progressively more and more like the Bible. Jesus calls us to a life of becoming more and more like Him. The Bible is simply the vehicle to make the introduction. The goal has never been for us to live biblically. The goal has always been for us to live like Christ - and there is a massive difference between these two options.[3]
Lent is a time to wrestle with temptations. It is a time to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn the art of interpreting the Scripture as Christ did. This is also a time to keep our senses at alert to discern the approach of temptations. The joy of grappling with temptations could only be felt by the one who lives and not just exists. To live is to be sensitive to the happenings around you rather than existing in a bubble. I conclude with a story from the Desert Fathers;

Abba Marcellus told his disciples the following story. One night, he woke up for his usual prayer and suddenly heard the sound of trumpet and the noise of a battle. The elder was baffled and perplexed. “Where does this sound of trumpet come from and what battle can occur in the middle of the desert?” While he was thinking about it, a demon appeared in front of him and shouted, “What are you thinking about? There is a battle going on here, indeed; but if you don’t want us to attack you, just go back to bed and sleep, and we won’t do anything to you. We don’t fight the lazy ones; we deal only with those who fast and are vigilant in prayers. That’s who we fight against.”[1] Amen

Prayers
Dn. Basil Paul

   
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Four Stops in the Wilderness” in Journal for Preachers Lent 2001, 3.
[2] Arch B. Taylor Jr. “Decision in the Desert: The Temptation of Jesus in the light of Deuteronomy” Union Seminary Magazine, 14/3, 303.

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