Lenten Landscapes: Desert

The First United Presbyterian Church

“Lenten Landscapes: Desert”

Rev. Amy Morgan

March 1, 2020

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Isaiah 35:1-10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus

 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God.

 3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.

 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."

 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;

 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

 8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.

 10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

 3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

 4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,

 6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"

 7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor;

 9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."

 10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"

 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

“The desert tests all men: it challenges every step, and kills those who become distracted.” This is the sage wisdom of the Alchemist, a character in the novel by the same name by Brazilian author Paul (Kwelju) Coelho. The truth of this wisdom is illustrated in numerous desert experiences in the Bible, including the one we read about today.

There are several words used throughout the Bible for desert or wilderness. These terms are often used somewhat interchangeably. And they occur more than 300 times. The desert is a central image for the Israelites. We hear, again and again, in the Hebrew scriptures, about the formative experiences of the Israelites’ wandering in the desert wilderness, of their powerful and intimate encounters with God there, as they long for and search for the promised land that is the antithesis of the desert, a “land flowing with milk and honey.”

An article on the Environment and Society Portal asserts that “There is a psychology as well as a geography of wilderness, a theology gained in the wilderness.” Landscape has a powerfully formative and transformative effect on our relationship with and understanding of God.

The desert especially is a place that calls forth ultimate questions of who we are in relation to the divine. While Adam and Eve may have been able to try to hide from God behind the bushes and trees in the garden, the desert is a barren and unforgiving landscape that unmasks all our vulnerability, our fears and weaknesses. There is no hiding from anything in the desert. It is the place where we must face the stripped-down truth of who we are. There is an honesty about the desert.  

Which is why it was the perfect context for the testing and tempting of Jesus. No other place on earth would have been as revealing as the desert. And revelation is exactly what we get in this story.

Jesus has just been baptized by John in the Jordan. He is then “led up” by the Holy Spirit into the desert wilderness. This term, “led up,” has nautical connotations. It can mean to put out to sea or set sail. Its use is ironic in connection to the dry desert. But it indicates that God intended and orchestrated this event and did so in such a way that Jesus would be set utterly adrift, far from safety and all alone.

The gospel of Matthew seeks to portray Jesus as a new Moses, and so the first thing Jesus must do when he is pushed out into the desert is mirror the Israelite’s 40-year desert sojourn with 40 days and nights of desert wandering. Matthew puts the temptations of Jesus in a different order from Luke’s gospel so that he can draw a clear parallel to the same temptations Israel experienced in the desert.

The Israelites were hungry in the desert, and rather than trust the God who had just performed miraculous feats to rescue them from slavery, they grumbled and complained that God had dragged them out into the desert to die. They were faced with the danger of thirst in the desert, and instead of trusting God for their survival, they questioned if God even cared if they died, using the same “if/then” language we hear the devil use with Jesus. Finally, Israel is tempted to worship the idols of the other people they encounter through their desert wanderings, and they succumb to this temptation again and again, giving their devotion to other gods in exchange for power and security. Jesus resists all these temptations, drawing on the Hebrew scriptures given to his desert-wandering ancestors as ammunition to defeat the tempter.

But this episode reveals more than Jesus’ faithfulness in comparison to Israel’s inconstancy. When Jesus’ humanity is laid bare in the desert, his true character is revealed. The word translated in this passage as Satan is the Greek word diabolos, which literally means “over-thrower.” This over-thrower would topple the coming reign of God by encouraging Jesus to overthrow the kingdoms of the world with greed, violence, and power. The temptations he is presented with all seek to entice him to be a Messiah on the same order of the rulers of this world, including some of the past kings of Israel. The over-thrower would have him be a self-serving, reckless, idolatrous Messiah.

This isn’t some diabolical plot. Most of Jesus’ followers expected him to be a king like the ones they knew. And the truth is, so do we. Jeffery Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford Business School, asserts that, for all the ink spilled on “servant leadership,” in our culture, leaders who are aggressive, politically divisive, sycophantic, combative, narcissistic, and dishonest, are the ones who make it to the top of the ladder and stay there. The over-thrower is doing well in convincing us to overthrow anything that stands between us and power and status through whatever means are most effective. This is what we seek from our leaders today. These are the people we put in power: in boardrooms and courtrooms, in governments and churches.

What is at stake in the temptations of Jesus is whether or not he will conform to the ways of this world or be revealed as the one who will make a new way and inaugurate a new creation. What is at stake here is the transformation of the entire cosmos, to such a degree that, as Isaiah prophesied, “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; … For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.” God’s transformative power extends to the whole creation. Even the desert is transformed.

This transformation is not accomplished through greed, violence, and power. It can only be accomplished through radical trust, reverence, and love. This transformation is accomplished through God’s loving intentions for the creation, and not through our attempts to amaze. It is accomplished in God’s time and not under pressure to prove God’s power.

The desert always comes between things in scripture. Between slavery in Egypt and the Promised Land. Between Jesus’ baptism and his ministry.

And the desert is always where we find ourselves when we are in-between as well. In those times of transition between childhood and adulthood, between raising children and being an empty-nester, between work and retirement, between being married and widowed, between being able-bodied and disabled. In any time of transition, we are in the desert. In this desert place, we are vulnerable, and therefore often fearful. And so we are tempted.

We are tempted to entertain “if/then” propositions about God. If God really loves us as children, then we should be able to take care of ourselves, provide what we need. If God really loves us as children, we shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of our behavior and choices. And when the world is laid at our feet if only we will give our devotion to anything other than God, why wouldn’t we accept that proposition?  

The desert times in our lives are as revealing for us as they were for Jesus. The desert is honest. It shows us who we are in the absence of old identities. When we are no longer a child, a parent, a worker, a spouse, a self-reliant person – who are we? In the desert of these, and all of life’s transitions, we find out. We find out if we will give into the temptation to seek our own security, to doubt God’s love and provision and goodness and even existence, to love and worship anything that will give us power in our vulnerable state.  

Like Israel, we may fail the test, give in to temptation during our desert wanderings. We may get distracted: by our hunger, our insecurity, our powerlessness. And those failures can suck the life out of us more than the struggle of just being in the desert. Those distractions are deadly. Maybe not to our bodies, but to our spirits.

But sometimes something in us has to die before we can transform, and before we can belong to the transformed creation. An entire generation of Israelites had to die before they could understand what it meant to be God’s chosen people, before they could enter the land promised to them. We aren’t Jesus. When we’re in the desert, chances are it will kill us.

We begin the season of Lent in the desert, every year. Jesus comes through it, revealing himself to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is able to resist every temptation and to overthrow the power of the overthrower with wisdom, truth, and love. Try as we might, we’re probably not going to fare so well in the deserts of our lives. Our desert experiences are experiences of death.

Jesus knew that. That is why he chose death, though he hadn’t earned it. He came through the desert unscathed, but then he went to the cross. So that we who die in the desert might have hope in the transformation of the resurrection.

Isaiah’s prophesy testifies that the God who sends Jesus into the desert is also the God who brings that barren place to life, who transforms it into an oasis. And God can do that with us, too. God can transform our dead and barren lives, all that has been defeated by our desert experiences, into flourishing, blooming, verdant land.

Like the desert, we can be, we are being transformed.

When we are in desert places in our lives, those transitional, liminal experiences, may we do our level best to resist the temptations to greed, power, and idolatry. But may we also know that when we succumb to temptation, when the distractions are killing us, God can transform that, too. We are transformed in the desert, not by our own will, but by God.

To whom be all glory forever and ever. Amen.