This sermon was preached on Sunday 18th February 2024 at Egleton, Braunston and Teigh churches.

So we are now in Lent. HURRAY! Sorry, I mean hurray. 🤫 Lent is a season of forty days where Christians remember and relive Christ’s forty days in the wilderness. We use the forty days of Lent as a time of fasting, abstinence, and contemplation in the lead up to Holy Week and Easter Sunday. I know that many of us can find Lent a particularly hard time. I went out for a curry last night with some friends and it was niggling away at me that I was drinking Coke whilst everyone was drinking Kingfisher. Don’t worry, I know that this sounds quite a minor thing. Some of you might have given up all sweets and chocolates, or some of you have gone vegetarian. These are all challenging things. But I think a lot of us can testify that though Lent is hard, it has often been a rewarding season where God is moving and speaking to us during this time of abstinence and fasting. I often say that Lent is great time for hearing from God because it helps take away some of the distractions and obstacles that prevent us from listening to God. It’s like when we have a conversation with a friend. I don’t know if you have heard of this crazy button here on the top right side of your phone that if you press it, it will turn your phone off. Crazy, I know. And when your phone is off you are able to have conversations without the constant distraction of notifications. The conversation becomes deeper and more connected as a result. Removing the distraction of the phone helps you to hear the other person better, and this same logic applies to our conversations with God. When we remove the distraction, we can often hear God better.

There is a rich tradition of Christians who go out into the desert to be with God. There was a movement in the early church called the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They were monks and hermits who withdrew to the desert to be with God, using the space of silence and reduced distraction as a place of prayer. For those of you who are extraverted like me, then going to be alone in the desert is the worst thing you can practically do. But for those of you are introverted and like your quiet space, you will be like: ‘more Lord, more.’ In Lent, we enter into our own form of desert to help us in our life of prayer. That is what our forty days of Lent are about, but I am keen for us to look at Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness and what they meant for him.

Mark’s account of Jesus in the wilderness is very brief. It’s a total of two lines which say: ‘And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.’[1] This account gives us a limited picture of what goes on in the desert, but we essentially see that Jesus is tempted by Satan and that during his time in the desert, the angels waited on him. For Jesus, the desert was a period of temptation, but also a period of being surrounded by a heavenly presence. If you find the wilderness of Lent hard, then please don’t despair and beat yourself up thinking you are a bad Christian, because Christ himself found the wilderness hard as he was tempted by the Devil. Matthew 4 and Luke 4 go into more detail about Jesus’ temptation in the desert, and it is clear that this was a very difficult experience. The fact that Jesus faced challenges and temptation should be a reassurance to us that it is a normal part of the desert experience and a normal part of Lent.

Throughout all of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, he was not on his own. And I’m not just referring to Satan coming to tempt him. But Mark recalls how the angels waited on him. The angels, the heavenly beings were there with Jesus the whole time. For every difficulty and challenge that he faced in the desert, God’s heavenly angels were there with him watching over him and there to support him if needed. I find this incredible. Jesus was the Son of God. It would be reasonable to think that because he is God that he doesn’t need any extra help when it comes to being in the desert. Yet God sends him help and support. I then think, if Jesus, the Son of God was sent a gathering of angels from heaven to be with him, how much support would God send to little me who definitely cannot withstand challenge and temptation like Jesus can? Surely God will send more support to us. And he does. As we walk the same path as Jesus, Jesus himself comes alongside us and God’s Holy Spirit fills us. As you journey through Lent, when it is hard, know that God is with you and that he sets his angels to watch over you.

As I said earlier, there is not much written about Jesus’ time in the desert in this passage, but I do think it is notable to think about what happened before and after his time in the desert. In the scene before, Jesus is baptised and the Spirit descends upon him like a dove. And God says, ‘This is my Son; with you I am well pleased.’[2] Before the desert comes Jesus’ baptism and anointing by the Spirit. Therefore, Jesus’ struggle in the desert follows his act of turning to God and receiving this Holy Spirit. And I think this can be the same for us. So often we fall into the trap of thinking that being a Christian and having God in your life is a surefire way to have a happy and easy life. However, although God is our ever constant help, we know that it does not mean that our life is easy, far from it. Jesus’ own baptism and subsequent temptation in the desert show us that the path of turning to God and receiving his Spirit is also the path along which the Devil will want to shake us off. He will send temptation and distractions to take us away from our baptism call. But why try and tempt and distract us? What’s the reason?

After Jesus’ time in the wilderness, he embarks on his public ministry. He goes to Galilee ‘proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’[3] The Devil tried to tempt Jesus and turn him away from his baptism to God because he knew what he was about to do. So often I think we face temptations in our life for the same reason. We are about to live out our baptism calling and go and proclaim the good news of God. You have a friend at work having a hard time and you offer to pray for them, or your neighbour is feeling lonely on a Sunday morning and so you invite them along to church. We become a threat to this prince of darkness as we proclaim the good news of the light of Christ. This is why temptation might come our way.

It would be easy to put aside Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness as a tangential episode in his ministry story that we could live without in the New Testament, but I would rather suggest that his time in the desert becomes an integral part of the foundations of his ministry. Jesus’ baptism is tested and pressurised and the diamond it produces at the end is a clear sense of his purpose to live his baptism calling to proclaim the good news of God. A diamond is formed from the intense pressure of carbon atoms to create a diamond that is hardwearing, strong, and clearly reflects light as it shines through it. If there isn’t the pressure, then the diamond does not form. I wonder if our own baptisms and trials lead us to the same place. We have our baptism call to turn to Christ and be faithful to him. But so often we hit the hurdles and the obstacles of the wilderness and then stop there. But when we get up and push through the wilderness, we have a baptismal faith that is refined like pure gold and it is then able to withstand and reflect the glorious good news of God. I invite you to see Lent in the same way. Lent is not a period to push yourself down, but it is a period of withdrawal to the refiner’s fire to be sent out to proclaim the good news of Easter. Ask yourself, is your Lenten fasting and discipline leading you to proclaim the good news of Christ? If yes, that’s great. If it’s a no or a not sure, then why?

To finish, I want to look at what is the good news that Jesus proclaims. He says, ‘the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ The good news we proclaim is that God has come to us, not just him but his kingdom, his heavenly world and heavenly way of being is coming to us on earth. And this leads us to two responses: to repent and to believe the good news. This is what the good news of God come to us does. It was the good news we spoke of at Christmas, Jesus our Emmanuel, God with us. Does Lent lead you to proclaim this good news, that God has come to be with us? That God will knock down the barriers of sin and death through his death and resurrection and bring us to be with him? Does your Lent lead you to proclaim this good news? This is the heart of our baptism, to know that God has come among us, and even in the wilderness, takes us to a deeper place of faith where we can proclaim and celebrate the good news of God with us. Will your Lent lead you deeper into your baptism call? I hope we will all find that Lent leads us to proclaim God’s good news afresh, that God has brought us to himself.

Amen.  

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[1] Mark 1:12-13 [NRSV].

[2] Mark 1:11 [NRSV].

[3] Mark 1:14-15.