Wandering in the Pandemic Wilderness
By Barbara Richardson
TWO YEARS of the pandemic have turned our rhythms and routines upside down, and we feel as if we are wandering in an unfamiliar wilderness. But we travel on, returning to another Lent, in another kind of wilderness. We walk through it, anticipating Easter joy. We worship together weekly (perhaps online), celebrating new life and the promise of resurrection. But in the background, we wander in that pandemic wilderness, with its uncertainties and fears. Catastrophes abound. Who can we trust to rescue us? What leader is strong enough, wise enough, to lead us out? How do we handle the temptations along the way to put ourselves first, to try to manipulate God, to want to ‘have it all’?
Luke’s account of Jesus’ wilderness temptations, and other Lenten scriptures, address our biggest need in the wilderness – to know Jesus. In them, we are reminded about our dependence on Christ alone for salvation. In them, we see the great contrast between God’s plan for his people, and our way of acting in our own strength.
In Lent, we read in the Genesis account how God provided everything good for Adam and Eve, while Satan tempted them to question God. Doubts arose, and Adam and Eve united in disobedience. And so sin entered the human race, and peace was lost.
During Lent, we also read the Exodus account of God’s people wandering through the wilderness. Whenever I think of their experience, I remember our daily warning from Psalm 95, in Morning Prayer:
TO-DAY, O that ye would hear his voice: / ‘Harden not your hearts as in the Provocation, and as in the day of Temptation in the wilderness;
When your fathers tempted me, / proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I grieved with that generation, and said, / “It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways”;
Unto whom I sware in my wrath, / that they should not enter into my rest.’
When Satan tempted God’s people in the wilderness, they too gave in. They complained against God and Moses for bringing them there to die. So God provided manna. Did that stop their complaining? No! Did they listen to God? No! They gathered the manna their way, not God’s way. The result? Their hoarded manna went bad. They failed to trust God for daily bread – they wanted their way, and their way did not work.
It did not stop there. In Exodus 17, they were angry with Moses again, and demanded that Moses give them water – immediately. Did they not know, after eating the manna, that God could also handle their thirst? No! They were impatient and they refused to trust him.
In Exodus 32, God’s people were tired of waiting for Moses to return from the mountain to which God had called him in order to give him the Law. They took matters into their own hands and made a golden calf to worship. Again, they did not believe that God was powerful enough to bring them through the wilderness, and their solution, in their impatience, was to look elsewhere for guidance.
In Luke 4, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. At the end of a forty-day fast, Satan tried to make Jesus misuse God’s power for his own benefit. But Jesus did not doubt God’s plan; he refused to listen to Satan and He remained obedient to God. Jesus showed Satan that he understood God’s word. Satan tried his best to slander, censure, and sow doubt; he did his utmost to twist God’s word, but failed to prevail. Satan had to retreat.
The first temptation hurled at Jesus was to take matters into his own hands and to doubt God’s provision by using his power to turn stones into bread. But Jesus quoted the scripture: It is written that a person will live not by bread alone, but by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. And he resisted Satan’s suggestion.
The second temptation in Luke’s gospel was the temptation to idolatry. The devil took Jesus to a high mountain. He showed him the kingdoms of the world and said Jesus could rule them if he would bow down, just once, and worship him. Jesus again quoted the scriptures, It is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.
The third temptation was about testing the Lord. Satan took Jesus to the highest point on the Temple. This time, he quoted scripture, since Jesus had twice used it against him. He quoted a psalm about how God keeps people safe, how angels would rescue him from harm. So, he suggested, why not test that out? Jesus said to Satan, it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. Satan misused the scriptures in an attempt to trick Jesus into creating a spectacle. But Jesus would not test God. Satan could not prevail – he had no power against Jesus.
Adam and Eve yielded to temptation. God’s wilderness people yielded to temptation repeatedly. Jesus did not. We read Psalm 95 every day to remind us of our inability to resist temptation. And during Lent we read about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We look to the one who has prevailed, who fulfills God’s word, who is our perfect sacrifice for sin. Jesus is sinless, yet he died on the cross, punished for our sins.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3: 13).
Satan still tempts us to forget who we are as Christians, to seek to bargain with God or ask for personal gain, to aim for success, to compromise, to seek comfort and avoid sacrifice and suffering, instead of remaining faithful, as we make our way through the wilderness.
In Luke 4, Jesus shows us how the Word of God prevails against the temptations Satan puts in our way. He gives us all we need to withstand, ‘and, having done all, to stand firm’ (Ephesians 6: 13).
Where are you in the wilderness journey? With Jesus, the wilderness becomes a place of grace. Jesus has dealt with temptation. There are those for whom these past two years have brought a decline of faith. But where are you in your wilderness journey? Lent calls us to return to the Lord. It calls us to use the disciplines of giving, praying, and fasting, to ‘lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,’ and fix our eyes on ‘Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.’ (Hebrews 12: 1, 2) TAP
The Rev. Dr. Barbara Richardson is Rector of St. Chad’s Anglican Church Toronto, a charter parish of the Anglican Network in Canada, in the Anglican Church in North America.
