A man was walking in the park, when suddenly he heard a voice coming from behind him. “Hey! Hey!” the voice called out. Startled, the man turned abruptly to look behind him. There he saw a man wildly waving his arms, attempting to flag him down.
There was a pause, and then a look of embarrassment on this second man’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I thought you were someone else.” To which the first man replied, “But I am someone else!”
The man, of course, said this just to be clever. But let’s think about the phrase for a moment. In certain extreme situations, the declaration “I am someone else” can be a painful admission.
By “extreme situations” I have in mind what the Bible calls testing.
Can you recall a time in your life when you were tested?
And by this I don’t mean a time when, for example, your annoying neighbor “tested” your patience by playing loud music until the early hours of the morning, keeping you awake.
I mean something more serious. By testing, I mean a difficulty, hardship, or trial, whatever it may have been or may be still, that shakes us to our core.
Testing in this sense sifts us. It strips away all our pretense and reduces us to our bare essence. It tears off our masks and reveals us to ourselves.
And it often does this by bringing us to our breaking point. Under extreme pressure, we struggle to stand firm, to stay true to ourselves. And because we are fallible and prone to sin, we say or do things of which we are later ashamed.
And then, in a moment of sober reflection on those things, we ask: “Did I say that?” “Did I do that?” “Am I that guy, am I that woman, I never imagined myself to be?” “Maybe I am that someone else!”
For so many this is as far as it goes; they can look no further. As that shrewd student of human nature, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, observed: “Memory says, ‘I did that.’ Pride replies, ‘I could not have done that.’ Eventually, memory yields.”
Last Sunday we were with the disciples and Jesus on the high mountain, where he was transfigured before them, appearing in the resplendent glory that he shares with God, because he is God’s own Son. Moses and Elijah also appeared there with them, talking with Jesus.
But with Peter we learned that we could not stay there on the mountain heights. And so, with the Peter, together with James and John, we had to follow Jesus down the mountain.
From the mountain, then, we have come down and today we are in the wilderness. This is the place where our Lenten journey must begin. Just as Jesus was forty days in the wilderness, so must we begin with him here in the forty days preceding Easter.
What can we say about the wilderness? What is most obvious is that the mountain and the wilderness are polar opposites. For example, on the mountain, Jesus enjoyed congenial company. He was with friends. In the wilderness, he does not. He is without friends. Instead, Satan is there, “tempting” him. One meaning of the name Satan is “adversary” or “enemy.” And as if this were not enough, he is also with the wild beasts.
Granted, the angels did attend him, but presumably this was only after he endured the forty day ordeal, as we will have occasion to note later.
But we need to pause here for a moment, because the lesson raises critical issues here that we have to clarify before we can grasp what is really happening in the wilderness, according to Mark.
First, we need to know that in the original language there is only one word for “tempt” and “test.” For us, these two are distinct. To be sure, when we undergo testing, we are very often vulnerable to temptation, as we have already intimated. But the two phenomena are distinct; hence we have the two words, to which we assign two different meanings.
Which is it then? Is it the case that Jesus here in Mark is tempted by Satan, as our translation has it? Or is it rather the case that he is tested?
We are used to referring to this episode as the “temptation scene,” because of the accounts in Matthew and Luke. In both, the devil (Satan) puts before Jesus three attractive courses of action, suggesting that he is entitled to each of them in virtue of his status as Son of God. For example, “If you are the Son of God, then turn these stones into bread… This is the first temptation, as you will remember.
But Mark mentions neither this one nor the next two temptations; he simply tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, “tempted” by Satan.
For this reason, many Bible students argue that Mark prefers to see the ordeal that Jesus undergoes in the wilderness as a testing.
If so, then Jesus is in venerable company. Remember that Abraham is “tested” when God calls him to go and take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah to offer him there as a sacrifice. Job is “tested” when Satan goes out from the presence of the Lord to bring him to ruin.
And, of course, when God led the people of Israel all the way in the wilderness forty years, it was to “test” them, to see what was in their hearts.
This provides a clue to what is really happening in the wilderness with Jesus, according to Mark.
The wilderness is a lonely place; it is a place of desolation where evil stalks. In the Bible, it is usually associated with danger, chaos, sin and death.
Author and Presbyterian minister Meda Stamper observes that there is also a wilderness of the heart, where the wild beasts lurk, haunting our memories and staking out their territory in our nightmares.
In light of these observations, we may say that the wilderness is a metaphor for those “extreme situations” I mentioned earlier. It is a place where in the absence of human support and divine assurance, the strength of our resolve to stay true to ourselves is assessed and refined (B. Byrne).
Put simply, the wilderness is a place of testing.
In this light, consider again the experience of the people of Israel in the wilderness. Since Israel is God’s “son” or “child,” God tests or disciplines Israel as a father does a son.
“Know then in your heart that a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5).
Fatherly discipline is a thread that we can trace throughout the Bible. In Proverbs, the sages refer to the need to be careful to discipline one’s children. The responsibility to discipline was based on the premise that fathers were to be obeyed: A wise son heeds his father’s instruction. In Proverbs 3:12, the Lord is compared to a caring father who disciplines those he loves (B. Rosner).
This is what lies in the background of Jesus’ own 40 day sojourn in the wilderness. He has seen the Spirit descend on him and received the assurance of his filial relationship with God. The voice from heaven declared: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11).
This is who he is. This is his identity. He is God’s beloved Son. The question is: will he, come what may, stay true to he is, when he himself is in an extreme situation, with Satan and the wild beasts?
This is the highest point of dramatic tension in this brief narrative. What is Satan’s aim? We find clues in later references to him in Mark’s Gospel. In the Parable of the Sower, he is the one who takes away the word that is sown in people, like birds eating seeds on a path (Mark 4:15; M. Stamper).
So perhaps here in the wilderness Satan seeks to devour the word that is sown in the Son himself, making him lose sight and let go of who he is. If he succeeds, then Satan can deflect Jesus from the mission that God has given to him.
This interpretation of Satan’s aim is confirmed later in Mark 8:33, when Peter chides Jesus after Jesus first tells the disciples that he will suffer and die and rise again. Jesus turns to Peter and says: “Get behind me, Satan! You don’t have in mind divine things, but mere human things.”
The paraphrase here is: You are playing the part of Satan, Peter! You are trying to deflect me from the mission that God has given to me!
The good news is that Satan, neither here nor later as he stands behind Peter, succeeds. Jesus stays true to who he is. Despite the danger and the chaos, deprived of human comfort and exposed to demonic power, Jesus stays true to he is and to his mission.
Simply put, he passes the test.
With the appearance of the angels who attend him, the drama finds its resolution.
But we cannot say the same about own dramas, our personal dramas, at least if we are honest. For the question that nags at us is this: Jesus passed his test in his extreme situation, but I cannot say the same about myself. I have not always passed the test. Under extreme pressure, I have not always acted with integrity. In fact, I have said and done things of which I am ashamed now. So where does that leave me?
Hold on. Our Gospel lesson continues. When Jesus emerges from the wilderness victorious, he goes out in the power of God to proclaim the good news of God. “The kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).
This invitation goes out to us today. You have failed your test? There is repentance. There is salvation in Jesus: “Though he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb. 5:7-9).
God doesn’t give up on you. When we stumble and fall, we can pick ourselves up again and again.
In light of the repentance that God graciously gives us in his Son, the question that we asked with resignation and despair “Is this who I am?” is transformed. It becomes a question that we ask in expectation of a new future: “Is this who I want to be?”
Lent is a time to ask such questions. Lent is a time to bring our faith to bear on such questions. Is my identity rooted in baptism, faith, and discipleship? Or is it rooted in something else?
Again, it is worth noting that the identity that Jesus receives at his baptism immediately precedes the testing that he undergoes in the wilderness. He comes to know who he is at his baptism and stays true to who he is in the wilderness.
Do you know who you are? When we fail the test in our own wilderness, when we do not act with integrity, it’s because we momentarily let go and lose sight of who we are. It’s then that we need to recall the identity that we have received at our baptism.
Listen to the first verse of our epistle lesson: “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).
This leads Peter to consider the subject of baptism. And for good reason. In baptism, we are united with Christ in his death. Who we once were is put to death with him. At the same time, we are united with him in his resurrection, that we may live a new life in the power of the Spirit.
For this reason, in virtue of our baptism, faith, and discipleship we count ourselves dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ.
That is why the Apostle Paul can exclaim elsewhere: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Finding our true selves in Christ, we identify through our baptism with him who loved us and gave himself for us, follow him as his disciples, and thus continually find ourselves anew in him.
No doubt we can hear this in the good news of God that Jesus comes out of the wilderness to proclaim. But it seems that it is not possible for us to appreciate this good news until we go out to the wilderness with Jesus. So let us expect to meet Jesus there. For he is with us in our testing. He knows what it’s like, for he himself was tested, and stayed true to who he is. Let us then begin our Lenten journey of 40 days with him there. Amen.