Driven

Lent 1 Year B
Mark 1:9-15
Driven
By Rich Gamble


I believe that it is in the Catholic Church in Marshalltown Iowa, which has this very large stained glass window and in that window is a dove, but not just any dove, not one of those nice little doves that glide on a steep vertical descent from the sky down to Jesus. This dove is flying straight at the viewer, this dove fills the window which fills the wall of this fairly large church. This dove looks you in the eye. This dove has its feet in front of it like an eagle ready to pounce on a victim. This is one seriously intimidating dove. Now maybe I’ve embellished this dove in my memory but that is how I remember it, a giant dove with attitude.

The scripture here says that the Spirit descended like a dove and we imagine a nice little white dove which drifts down from on high to perch upon Jesus’ shoulder. So when later in the scripture we are told that the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness it is hard for us to imagine a sweet little dove driving Jesus out of town. But the great white glassy eyed metaphor depicted in the stained glass of that church could easily drive Jesus’ whole softball team out into the wilderness.

Usually we like to think of the Spirit as our helper, our solace, the giant slurpy machine which dispenses endless giant gulps of warm fuzzy feelings. But in Mark’s gospel today the Spirit is a force that won’t be argued with, it is in charge, it is not our crutch but a bit of a bully.

Jesus is driven out into the wilderness. Now in Mark as in other gospels, geography has symbolic content. The wilderness is not just a place on a map it is a place in our experience. The wilderness is that place that is not settled, it is too inhospitable to set up a homestead. It is the unsettling place, the place that is not under the control of civilization. In the wilderness the things that normally stood you in good stead are of little use. The wilderness does not care whether you are attractive, witty, wealthy, or well connected. The wilderness is the great leveler.

In the wilderness you can get away from the assumptions of civilization. Our psychological landscape is filled with the walls and rules of our human created reality. In the wilderness there is nothing to reinforce the ways of perceiving reality that have been planted into us by our culture.

Now just because it is a kind of blank slate doesn’t mean that the wilderness is a place free from reach of what Walter Wink calls the Domination System or what the Bible calls Satan or the “god of the world.” We carry our assumptions about the world and ourselves wherever we go. And these assumptions have been formed in a culture controlled by the Domination System. This way of perceiving reality is there to tempt us and test us, to lure us back into the safe folds of commonly held ideas about the world, ideas like the necessity of domination, the necessity of violence, the vindication of the drive to secure ourselves at the cost of others. This is what Satan does, he tries to convince us of the sensibility indeed the inevitability of domination and violence. Don’t fight it, he whispers to us, you want to look like a fool, a loser, a dreamer? If you want to make a difference you have to have money, you have to have power, you have to have influence. Existence is about putting yourself over others.

Oh Satan is slick, he’s so slick that we don’t even know that it’s him speaking. It just sounds like the voice of reason, and history. In the city, Satan’s rules are plastered on billboards and broadcast on the air, and experienced in the expectations of our parents and peers. In the wilderness, it is just Satan in your head that you have to deal with, but that is no small thing.

Jesus, like the people of the Exodus, had to spend enough time in the wilderness to cleanse the old values, the old priorities, the old ideas of power and authority out of his system. And like the people of the Exodus he was cared for by God through the angels. The angels served Jesus the text says, the word is the same as the word used when Peter’s mother-in-law served Jesus and the boys. The implication is that the angels provided for Jesus’ needs. Mark doesn’t talk about fasting. Jesus was being cared for in the wilderness. Now if you want to think of angels as being winged creatures, fine. Since I’ve not met any cherubs, that image doesn’t work for me. To me an angel is a messenger from God, so that a messenger of God’s care in the wilderness might be huckleberries, or a spring of cold water, or cozy cave. Let your imagination work with the story but when you imagine this experience of Jesus, don’t put it outside of your context. Don’t use so many special effects that you could never imagine it happening to you. God’s messengers of grace are all around us, and we may miss them if we are waiting for some chubby guy with wings.

Which gets us to today, what does it mean to see our entry into the faith, symbolized by baptism, as cause for our being driven from our routines, driven from our plans, driven from our goals and driven out into a wilderness of re-evaluation, re-orientation to a new way of perceiving reality.

For some this wilderness experience comes not out of their choice to follow the way of Christ but by some other means. If you get cancer or some other illness you may be forced to re-evaluate your way of experiencing the world. Illness, like the wilderness doesn’t care whether you’re witty or beautiful or whether your able to retire early. If you or a loved one becomes ill your world changes and the old values and dreams may not work. If you lose your job and can’t find another, if the stock market swallows you savings, if you become homeless, if your child dies in a pointless war, or is swallowed up by addictions, you may experience an opportunity to question commonly held values, to see behind the curtain of lies our culture creates. These too are wilderness experiences and one outcome may be a choice to move in a new direction, a rejection of the plastic smiling god of the world and an embrace of the path of the crucified and rejected one.

Our faith calls on us to align ourselves with all of those for whom the Domination System does not work. We are driven by the Spirit to the wilderness places of suffering and there along with the victims of the System we may experience God’s care, and an opportunity to find a new way of living our lives.

In the story, Jesus baptized by John, driven by the Spirit, tempted by Satan and served by the angels finds himself back at the beginning. John’s been arrested, Jesus picks up where the prophet left off and the story of Jesus’ life as an embodiment of God’s will for humanity begins.

In our story, the wilderness, the tests, the grace and the ministry are constantly moving in and out of our lives. In truth to choose the path of Christ is to choose to place yourself at odds with the Principalities and Powers which rule our world, who rule in such potent ways as to be almost invisible to us unless we’ve experienced the wilderness. Such a choice will inevitably put us at odds with those around us even friends and family.

The “god of the world”, the Domination System, Satan whatever metaphor you wish to use is so powerful that most of its followers think of themselves as faithful followers of the God of Jesus or Moses or Mohammed or Buddha. They think of themselves as true believers, true patriots, true realists. And they will see any other belief system as irrational or as a threat. The Spirit of God seeks to drive us like some huge menacing dove out beyond religion and nation and genetics, out beyond any rationalization for violence and domination. The Spirit seeks to drive us to the realization that there is another path for our lives and for the world, a path of compassion and love. The Spirit drives us to doubt anyone who wants to make us fearful or vengeful or apathetic to the needs of others. The Spirit is driving us to where the old solutions fail, the common beliefs crumble, and the old measurements for our lives become irrelevant. This wilderness world is neither good nor evil it is merely a place to face our demons and receive God’s grace if we so choose.

The wilderness journey is celebrated in this season of Lent. This wilderness journey is difficult and dangerous, joyous and wondrous.

Welcome to the journey. Watch out for the bird.