The Pedagogy of Wilderness
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.
[4]
Fr. Viktor Gurev, “Against those who deny Demons’ Snares” https://blog.obitel-minsk.com/2019/03/against-those-who-deny-demons-snares.html?fbclid=IwAR3Ydf-wLdkJ5CihaaMuJkc22JJqK4syE9hvvOuJTwUyPdUkw1ZBxuYpL80.
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