February 22, 2015

Dr Carolyn Kelly, Auckland University Chaplain                                                                

Lent 1

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Sometimes we need to ‘get lost’ to be found. One way to do that is head for the wilderness. There is something about entering a great wild place where human beings are relatively unimportant, that helps to clear the mind. The physical challenges can effect a deeper sense of displacement, a loss of ‘self’ in some important way, like the shedding of a skin. Venturing into the mountains, tramping in thick native bush or negotiating a great desert can open the way to gaining fresh perspective. The disorientation that happens when familiar landmarks and quotidian rhythms are absent is itself a kind of absence and can be very unsettling. Time away from the rigours of home in the city, can be deeply restorative.

‘Wilderness has for a long time figured as an escape from civilization, and a judgment upon it’ suggests the American novelist Marilynne Robinson. Western culture is populated with the paintings of awe-inspiring views and the stories of personal restoration in great wild places abound: from Robinson Crusoe to Wordsworth’s trek over the Alps in the Prelude, to Antoine St Exupery’s, Le Petit Prince, and even The Swiss Family Robinson. I recently viewed the movie Wild, a more contemporary version of the healing power of wilderness for a troubled soul. A young woman who became locked into destructive patterns of drug use and promiscuity decided to walk the Pacific Coast Trail of the western USA. She seemed to embark on this challenging trip without much preparation or experience, but with a good deal of resolve; she just had to go, on her own. As the film unfolds the challenges of her physical journey are beautifully interspersed with scenes of past events and sad memories: as she stumbled along, even losing her boots at one point, so she began to find footholds. As she buckled under the weight of carrying her heavy rucksack, so she began to shed emotional baggage. As she doggedly followed the path of the Trail, so she gradually became aware of her own sense of direction - her inner compass.

I need to lose myself sometimes. I wonder if you do too.

Our reading from the Gospel of Mark mentions Jesus’ venture to the wilderness in a couple of brief verses. Mark’s version of this story is very economical and the narrative moves with great urgency. So we are not given the content of Jesus’ temptations, nor does this writer dwell on his psychological trials in preparation for ministry. Although there is something for listeners and readers to learn, this is not primarily an example of wilderness wanderings for his disciples to emulate. No, the narrative is sparse and unrelenting like the landscape itself. It is unsettling. It clarifies the mind and invites active response, a new direction.

It might help if we round out one or two details. Jesus’ time in the wilderness is one part of a journey: from his familiar territory of Nazareth in Galilee, via the waters of baptism at Jordan, to the margins toward the lower Jordan valley before he returns to engage with society and proclaim the gospel of justice and peace. In each part of that journey the Holy Spirit is present, another player or actor in the drama. So when it is said the Spirit ‘drove Jesus out’ to be in the desert for forty days or six long weeks, we know this is important; it is something that needed to happen. Jesus heads to a stony and waterless area: barren, uninhabited, unpredictable. The Greek word eremos for ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ is not just a physical description, but evokes a sense of isolation, of loneliness. This place was deserted, therefore dangerous or threatening. It was the place of demons, where taunting voices were un-moderated, where one’s inner doubts and fears could overwhelm. It was a place you did not choose to go. A person, even a strong person, could be unmade there. No phone coverage, no rangers’ huts, no passers-by. One could get seriously lost. Unhinged.

Yet Mark’s audience would also have recognised his clues linking Jesus’ time in the wilderness to that of earlier prophets and leaders: the features of epiphany (voices from heaven, dramatic signs, angelic beings), the backdrop of opposition, the number 40 reminding them of Moses, and Elijah. Each detail of the sparse narrative is carefully chosen to make it very clear that something important is going on: at this place, in this moment – in this person – reality has shifted. It is a time between times; here is a ‘before’ and there will be an ‘after’ to these particular events, to this particular life in first century Palestine. Jesus’ baptism was in the Jordan, the dividing waters, that troubling River the Israelites crossed so long ago and is still so divisive; those waters invite a choosing and force a reckoning of priorities: ‘choose this day whom you will serve’. As so many African-American spirituals acknowledge, going down to the river is a risky business; rarely do you come back the same. When Jesus does so, a ‘voice from heaven’ joins the action and he is called ‘the beloved one’ in whom God takes particular delight. This is a disclosure where the heavens are rendered or ‘torn open’; something – someone – extraordinary is being revealed. It is a full moment, replete with signs and action. Yet it is also what TS Eliot would call a ‘still point’; much is condensed, even more at stake. So Mark’s invitation is to ‘Stop. Look. Listen’. Take notice.

The season of Lent invites us to take notice, to step aside from routines and compulsions and regain perspective; to see ourselves with new eyes. ‘Lent’ refers to a ‘lengthening’ of time, which is what happens in the northern hemisphere as winter gives way to spring It is also a season to consider our life and values, as the psalmist writes: ‘teach us to lengthen our days that we may apply ourselves to wisdom’. Lent is an opportunity to measure and truly value our time, our relationships, even our place. It is not so much an opportunity to deny, as affirm our humanity. In that respect we might enter a ‘wilderness’ of forty days, to stop, look and listen; to step aside and see our routines or habits of mind with fresh perspective.

Jesus’ wilderness time can thus be seen as a renunciation rather than a rejection of human comforts and company. This is also how we might understand the strange practices of early desert mystics, those monks and nuns who left bustling towns and cities in the later years of the Roman Empire to live in the great deserts of Syria, Egypt and Palestine. They too were ‘numbering’ their days, getting the measure of their life. They left compulsive habits to form new ones. They left dysfunctional monasteries to begin afresh as ‘monokoi’, the alone ones (from which we get the word monk). They knew that a physical challenge could help to clear the mind; it could help them take notice, for ‘only the body saves the soul’. (Rowan Williams in Silence and Honey Cakes) We might pause to consider whether this season invites us to enact some new freedom, to take some long neglected action, to see a troubling aspect of our lives with fresh insight or detachment.

Jesus’ time in the desert was part of a whole journey that led to him re-engaging with his society and people. Likewise, the desert fathers and mothers were not only doing battle with their own inner demons to save themselves. They left the cities because their churches were failing to love the cities. St Jerome reflected on 4th century Christian life, which has some troubling resonance for our times: ‘We Christians are supposed to live as though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceiling also, and the capitols of our pillars... Parchments are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering; manuscripts are decked with jewels... Yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the persons of his poor.’ The monokoi left society to learn a new love for people. They left ‘service’ and ‘love’ and ‘spirituality’ which had become calcified as abstract values, to embody practices, routines of work, daily rhythms of prayer and learning that prompted them to love and freed them to serve. (St Benedict would learn from this tradition in the 6th century).

‘Nudos amat eremos’: ‘the desert loves to strip bare’ wrote St Jerome. These ancient writers knew that the future of a city, the ‘good of society’ and the human individual, is intricately connected to the wilderness. That is affirmed in most religious traditions. There is something very important to human flourishing that is only learnt in, or in relation to, wild places. So if we ignore them, or exploit them without just cause, what will that mean for civilisation itself?

At this point it is worth noting an interesting detail about Jesus in the desert. In addition to his encounters with demons and the master accuser, in addition to his being ‘waited on’ by angels, Mark also says Jesus is ‘with the wild beasts’. So he is not only in a battle with non-human creatures, he is alongside the animals. As the ‘second Adam’ it is as if he has suspended the rights of dominion, opening up possibilities for our co-existence with other creatures in the world we both inhabit. This is also suggested by the Genesis story: the human relation to the wilderness need not only reflect the distortions of the fall when we can choose to destroy other creatures and the world God made. Surely this speaks powerfully in our time of environmental uncertainty.

Marilynne Robinson, the American author, has written a series of essays on Western thought. In her piece ‘Wilderness’ she opens with the following:

“We late-modern city-dwellers are reminded that we need the wilderness. We need it to remind us of ways of being alongside other creatures. We need to inhabit the silences of great spaces to help us hear another Voice above the clamour of our own making.”

So may we, in this time of Lent, regain perspective on our lives and have something of abiding value, to offer our city.