The Way of the Wilderness: Matthew 4:1-17 - Second Sunday after Epiphany

 It’s strange to think that with Jesus being our Messiah, the story of his life before his ministry, including his youth, is largely unknown to us, aside from and the incident where the boy Jesus stays behind at the Jerusalem Temple during the Passover without his parents’ knowledge. 

Masada, Judaean Desert by Ray in Manila on flickr. CC BY 2.0

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, written in the late second century, aims to fill this gap, though it is universally regarded as inauthentic and blasphemous. In it, Jesus is depicted as what could be accurately described as a holy terror. He gets into fights with the neighborhood children, and he curses them dead. When their parents complain to Mary and Joseph, Jesus strikes the parents with blindness.

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Eventually, he learns to use his magic powers for good. He makes clay pigeons and makes them come alive. He resurrects one of the boys he struck dead and restores sight to his parents. He heals a man who had injured his foot with an axe and resurrects another man who died in a construction accident. 

Jesus even miraculously extends a wooden beam that had been cut short when he and his father were building a bed. 

Personally, I don’t think Jesus exercised any miraculous powers in the years before his baptism. On the contrary, he lived an ordinary, albeit godly, life. We know that Jesus’s parents were devout Jews who raised him up in obedience to the Law of Moses. We know that Jesus was an active participant at the local synagogue. We know that he excelled in his knowledge and wisdom. And we know that he earned a living as a carpenter.

To be honest, it strikes me as rather strange that Jesus doesn’t begin his ministry until he’s thirty. But that wasn’t up to him. It was up to God. I truly believe that those thirty years played an important role in preparing Jesus for his ministry, because he was experiencing life, with all its ups and downs, as anyone else would. 

But when Jesus is baptized, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him as a dove, he is immediately driven out into the dessert for forty long, lonely, dangerous days. There’s nothing to eat, there’s nothing to do, and there’s no one to talk to, except for the devil who is tempting him. Surely, this would be the greatest trial of his life thus far.

It seems so cruel for God to put Jesus through such an ordeal at the beginning of his ministry, but there are solid reasons for this. It is a recurring theme in Scripture that the way of salvation goes through the wilderness. The prophets of old, including John the Baptist, spent much time in the wilderness. Yes, the wilderness is a place of testing, but it’s also a place of grace and deliverance. When you trust and obey God, the wilderness is where you see God’s faithfulness. 

The wilderness is also a place of transition. It is the space between one chapter of your life to the next. It is the place where God’s guiding hand reaches out to you, and you take hold of God’s hand, for God to lead you to a life you would otherwise have not gotten to on your own. 

Have you had a wilderness experience? Could you be going through one now?

You’re not lost in an actual wilderness, of course, but your wilderness is a place of pronounced discomfort and uncertainty. Depression is a wilderness experience. So is grief. So is a serious illness or life-threatening injury. Unemployment is one. So is the end of a relationship. So is loneliness. Failure is a wilderness experience, as is when you lose your way in life.

The pandemic has been a wilderness experience for all of us—and you could also say that we are still in the wilderness as a congregation, as we transition from the church we were into the church we need to be in order to reach new generations. 

But the key promise to remember, no matter what wilderness you may find yourself in, is that God will not leave you there to perish. It was this promise that the devil cast doubt on with Jesus because there was nothing else and nobody else who could sustain him in this place of nothingness and death. But God’s grace did not fail him—and God’s grace will not fail you. 

Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, breath after breath, God moves you closer and closer to love, closer to life, closer to the fulfillment of his promises. 

As the Body of Christ, we are sent; you are sent; to visit the neighbor in the wilderness. You are God’s hands that provide bread and water. You are God’s voice to give encouragement. You help the lost find their way. 

You can face tomorrow when you know someone’s going to be there when tomorrow comes. You know God is there when God’s people care.

Ultimately, the grace Christ receives during his forty days in the wilderness will be the grace that empowers his ministry, that transforms the lives of those he serves, and above all, that strengthens him to bear the cross for our sake. 

Sin, suffering, grief, and loss may put you in the wilderness—but Jesus saves you in that wilderness, and he prepares you for the life you will live when you leave the wilderness behind. Every wilderness journey ends in God. 

Blessed be Christ, our Rock and our Water, who joins us in our desert, pouring out his life for the world.