FEAR NOT THE WILDERNESS: FACE THE ISSUE

1st Sunday of Lent
Mk 1:12-15

Sometimes when political leaders are confronted with some upheaval, they have the habit of diverting the people’s attention from the obvious crisis. When their hold to power is challenged, they tell the people that it is the republic that is threatened by terrorism, if not communism. When their mandate is questioned, they pick up the oppositionists for questioning. When the people cry for truth, they shake hands with the masses to show that they are the ones who are truly for the people. When soldiers are disgruntled because of corruption and compromised integrity in the military and civil leadership, they distribute houses to the armed forces. Distracting the people’s focus on the real issues they should face has always been an easy recourse for leaders.

Take the emperor Nero, for example. When Rome faced economic collapse during his governance in 64 A.D., he burnt the city to divert the people’s attention. The weeklong fire reduced half of the city into ashes. If modern day leaders have their oppositionists to blame any turmoil of the day, Nero had the Christians for his scapegoat. Thus, the financial status of the imperial city in 64 A.D. did not rise; rather hatred for Christians spread like wildfire. An era of persecution began. It became a crime to be a Christian. Followers of Jesus were beheaded, skinned alive, stoned to death, and crucified. But the most entertaining for the angry Romans was the most cruel of all: Christians were thrown alive to wild beasts in the coliseum. Certainly, Nero failed to salvage the dying economy of the imperial city but he succeeded in arresting the people’s unrest. The problem, however, was the innocents paid the price.

Our Gospel today was written by St. Mark. It was the first Gospel to be written. Mark wrote it for the persecuted Christians in Rome, who struggled each day with the fear of being thrown to wild beasts. With this in mind, it is easy for us to understand why Mark begins his story with Jesus in the midst of wild beasts in the desert where He was fasting for forty days and forty nights. What a strange and frightening company to have while doing your 40-day retreat! But from our vantage point now, we can see that Jesus, in the midst of wild beasts in the desert, was like the innocent Christians who were thrown to the wild beasts. Though innocent, Jesus was vulnerable to conflict, to test, to distress, to suffering, to facing the adversary. Mark teaches us an important lesson today: Innocence does not necessarily protect us from adversaries. Moreover, instead of shielding us from persecutions, innocence seems to bring us closer to them instead. On this First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel paints for us how Jesus began his ministry by facing trial in the wilderness. Prior to mission, the resolve of the innocent One is tested.

St. Matthew and St. Luke also wrote about this very important test. The two are more detailed in their narration of how it actually took place while St. Mark simply mentioned it in passing. However, all three agree that it was the Spirit that caused Jesus to be in the wilderness. While in the Matthean and Lucan accounts the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, in the Gospel of Mark the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. Being led denotes a gentle gesture but being driven implies some force exerted upon Jesus. In the account of Mark, Jesus was as if thrown into the wilderness. Perhaps, not that He was unwilling to go into the wilderness but that He saw that it was necessary for Him to face His adversary, Satan, in his favorite arena, the wilderness. Jesus would conquer His tempter right in His tempter’s fortress. The horn of His victory would sound from the very camp of His enemy.

But what was the victory all about? We cannot answer this question unless we know what the battle was. Mark is silent about details of the Lord’s temptation in the desert. Matthew and Luke, however, provide us the information. Though they differ in the order that Satan presented them to Jesus, there were three temptations, according to both Matthew and Luke. One temptation was about making half-hearted commitment to God. By proposing to the hungry Jesus that He change stones into bread, Satan challenged Jesus if He could be hungry and at the same time still trust God, if Jesus would still follow God even when He was aware of an emptiness inside Him despite it all. Another temptation was to go to any lengths to get power. By offering to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, provided that Jesus would worship him, Satan tested Jesus if He truly loved God with all His might or was it might that He truly loved. Still another temptation to Jesus was to take the easy way. By suggesting to Jesus that He do a swan dive from the parapet of the Temple and land without a scratch, Satan proposed to Jesus a painless, no risk, self-preserving, and, not to mention, spectacular way of accomplishing His mission.

In the face of all these temptations, Jesus, however, took the road less traveled and was never distracted from the real issue. The real issue was not hunger, not power, and not self-preservation. The real issue was doing the will of God. The same issue is ours as well. Is doing God’s will the food that satisfies our hunger? Is doing God’s will the power we wield? Is doing God’s will the path we tread on?

In the classic play, “Murder At The Cathedral”, St. Thomas Becket says, “Nothing would be more tragic than to do the right thing for the wrong reasons; to do what is noble for reasons that are vain.” Threatened by the prospect of being assassinated by the cronies of King Henry II, Thomas Becket, then Archbishop of Canterbury from 1160-1170, feared not death but the possibility of not having the correct motive for his willingness to lay down his life for the Lord and His Church. There was only one correct motive behind Thomas Becket’s readiness to die a martyr’s death: Doing the will of God. As it was with him so it is with us, we may do the right thing but unless we do it for God’s will, nothing awaits us but tragedy. Our deeds may be noble but unless our motives are honestly rooted in fulfilling what God desires, tragic would be our end. There is always only one correct motive for us: Doing God’s will according to God’s terms.

When Satan finished tempting Jesus, interestingly, Mark does not say the Satan left Jesus. For, indeed, Satan did not leave Jesus alone. Satan kept on trying to divert Jesus’ attention from the real issue of doing what God desires according to the terms set by God. But Jesus was never distracted from His focus.

I remember the controversial film entitled, “The Last Temptation of Jesus”. The movie seems to trivialize the real issue concerning Jesus’ humanity. On the cross, as He hangs, the real last temptation of Jesus had nothing to do about sex and romance, but about obedience to the will of His Father. From the wilderness of today’s Gospel through the Calvary of Good Friday, Satan would tag along with Jesus to distract Him and divert His attention from doing the will of God. But Satan never succeeded.

May we never be distracted from the real issue of our personal, communal, and even national life. The real issue is always the issue whether we are doing the will of God according to His terms or whether we are doing our will, or even worse, whether we are doing God’s will according to our terms. Lent is a special time for us to re-focus our selves on the real issue. May we not fear the wilderness and the beasts that prowl around because as in the case of Jesus, according to Mark in the Gospel today, angels are also looking after us.