Jesus’s wilderness school lasts only 40 days, and then he graduates into a life of public ministry. Immediately after his wilderness school ends, he begins teaching in the Galilean synagogues and returns to Nazareth to, essentially, share his job description with his hometown neighbors: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and set free those who are oppressed.
If ever Jesus understood his purpose to be doing something safe, and uncontested, and innocuous…something that wouldn’t challenge him (or anyone else for that matter)…something that would guarantee his comfort and security, he learns in this 40-day wilderness school that that is not the work he’s being equipped to do. He has been baptized and named God’s son, God’s beloved, but that isn’t his golden ticket to a life of ease. Just the opposite. Full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’s job is going to be hard. It’s going to make him unpopular. It’s going to test him at every turn. Wilderness school prepares him for this reality.
In that 40-day wilderness school, Jesus faces three tests. The first challenges him to use his power to preserve himself. You know you’re starving. Turn this stone into bread. But it also challenges him to prove himself, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” This test looks ahead to the ultimate test to come. As Jesus hangs on the cross, the leaders scoff at him and the soldiers mock him: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah… If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”
Jesus passes the test both times. He refuses to prove himself to anyone; he refuses to preserve himself at the expense of others.
The second test challenges Jesus to forsake the God who has named him beloved and to worship the devil instead, so that he can have authority and glory – power and privilege – for himself. Jesus again passes the test, refusing to trust his life with anyone – or anything – other than God. “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him,” he answers the devil. Later, on the job, Jesus astounds the people as he speaks and heals with authority. He doesn’t need the devil to give him self-serving authority. God has given him the only authority he needs – the authority to proclaim the good news of God in word and deed.
The third, and final, test again challenges Jesus to prove who he is. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Prove who you are, Jesus. But prove, too, that what God says is true. Prove that God can be trusted.
Jesus knows who he is. He knows who God is. He refuses to take the bait, again quoting scripture that recalls lessons learned during the 40-year wilderness school experienced by his ancestors: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Jesus graduates from this 40-day wilderness school clear in his identity as God’s beloved son but also clear in how he will go about living (and dying) as the Messiah. He will not serve himself; he will serve others. He will not grab at power; he will be empowered by the Holy Spirit. He will wash the feet of his friends, break bread with the outcasts, feed the hungry, heal the sick, let the little children come to him, ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, wear a crown of thorns, give his life for the sake of a world that ridicules and rejects him.
Jesus will trust God…all the way to the cross…forsaking comfort and ease, wealth and privilege, to stand for justice and mercy, radical hospitality and unconditional love. The beloved will be love for a world that, even now, is enrolled in its own wilderness school.
Christianity itself is being tested by those who claim to be Christian, but preach hate…who claim to be Christian, but worship power and protect their own privilege at the expense of anyone who doesn’t look like them…who claim to be Christian, but hoard resources for themselves, refusing to serve the common good.
It’s as though this warped version of Christianity follows a Jesus who, instead of passing every test, failed every test the devil gave him – a Jesus who looked out only for himself, a Jesus who sold his soul to wield power, a Jesus who lifted himself higher while those around him sunk lower and lower.
God, help us. This is not Christianity. This is not the Jesus we follow.
In this season of Lent, in this wilderness school in which we’re living, we ask Jesus to teach us, shape us, form us, free us, and lead us all – the whole world –to the promised land.