Not purification but preparation.  Jesus didn’t need any purification.  His baptism wasn’t for his purification; rather, it was a sign of his dedication, his official consecration, if you will.  His baptism was a way of demonstrating his solidarity with us as he set out to invite us into solidarity with him.  The Spirit as a dove, the voice from the heavens, affirming relationship and steadfast love—awesome events!  Talk about the best day of your life.  Then this, this being driven, forced, compelled out and away, off into the wilderness.  Growing up in Nazareth, Jesus probably didn’t have what you or I would call a comfortable life, though I like to think it wasn’t terrible for the time and place.

It seems as if, at some point in Jesus’ early teen years, Joseph must have died.  Such things happened; it happened in my own father’s family.  Joseph had children with Mary after Jesus, as the gospel accounts indicate.  Joseph was no longer there.  Jesus was the firstborn son, with a widowed mother and younger siblings to support, so what do you suppose Jesus did?  He helped; he went to work.  The family managed to get by.

In the space of a few verses here, Jesus goes from not much, to everything, to nothing.  That pattern will repeat itself, in due time.  What was there for him, in the wilderness?  What applause or acclaim for him, in the wilderness?  No food, barely any water—if you knew where, when, and how to find it—no companion or friend.  Just the barren ground, hardscrabble, and the sparse animals, hungry, lean, cautious.  No shelter.  What was Jesus, in the wilderness?  Helpless . . . alone . . . Was he there to be alone with his thoughts, his special getaway place?  We read, often, that Jesus would go off to have time by himself and to pray.  The Spirit compelled him, drove him out into the wilderness.  Something had to be done, could only be done, out there.

Perhaps, to put the matter in very human terms, perhaps Jesus needed to be pushed out of his comfort zone.  The Spirit does that, God knows!  Paul reminds us so simply and beautifully that God shall supply all our need (Phil 4:19).  Jesus also tells us God knows what we need and is pleased to provide it.  The conclusion Jesus seems to want us to draw is that, while God is taking care of the basic needs, He wants us to focus our imagination, energy, and labor on something else, something crucial.  Out there in the wilderness, that trust that God would supply the basic needs was going to be put to the test.  Every extraneous thing would be stripped away.  We don’t like deprivation, having to do without, go without.  It leaves us feeling dissatisfied, a little angry, and offended—where’s the justice?!  Where’s the love!?

Deprivation can also show us something about our true needs, teach us something about overcoming ourselves, refocusing ourselves.  Some guys want to get out into woods and mountains to experience total self-reliance—with all their purchased gear and supplies.  Beloved, whether we think of it often or never, we are all of us always entirely reliant upon God.  Much as we may want to train our attention upon God and God’s Word, I’m afraid much of the time, too much of the time, our attention remains focused upon ourselves: our convenience, and inconvenience, our opinions and biases, our goals and ambitions, our pursuit of pleasure and calm can occupy broad vistas in our field of vision and concern.

In the wilderness, priorities get rearranged.  Jesus in the wilderness always reminds me both of the wilderness wandering of God’s people and that bumper sticker from the hippie years, “Not all who wander are lost.”  When Scripture checks in with the people there in the wilderness, much of the time they’re complaining.  Nothing like complaining to wear away at patience, hope, and faith.  It wasn’t that God’s people in the wilderness were suffering, or starving, or dying from thirst: God provided food and water, enough for each day.  But you and I know, we can feel it, that bare sufficiency feels hard, unfair; bare sufficiency leaves us feeling ill-used and disgruntled.  We want more than sufficiency.  We don’t see what’s wrong with more.

I’m afraid that tells me that those people in the wilderness had forgotten all about Adam and Eve—oh, that old story!  Adam and Eve were told they could have more.  They wanted more.  They didn’t see what could be so wrong with wanting and having more.  Then they did.  Beloved, wanting more is not necessarily bad or wrong: it all depends upon what it is we want more of.  More food?  Is that really necessary?  More things?  Why?  More fun—why do we come back from vacation, if more fun is always better?  Is it because we need more money?  What would we do with more money, really?  Well, you and I have our lists, of course, our dreams—where do God and the kingdom show up on that dream list?

The problem is, so soon as our hearts get fixed upon more, they sort of set God to one side—oh, a blessed and highly honored side, to be sure, like a special nook in the wall: always there but not always thought of when we’re busy with other things.  We’re often busy with other things.  The problem is that our pursuit of more, degree by degree, desire by desire, can become the focus, and More itself an idol—an ill-defined, vapory sort of idol, like a mirage or a shadow—upon which we lavish our time, attention, devotion, dreams, and resources.  We spend our lives pursuing More; God would save our lives as we pursue Him.

Deprivation feels hard because, through it, God is breaking us of our idol worship of More.  But He wants to give us more, show us more: more of Himself, more of His love, His grace, His Word.  He would love it if we wanted all of that more than anything.  Let’s say for the sake of argument that God permits us the freedom we say we love so deeply: how in that case shall He, how in that case could He cultivate in us the desire for God above all?

Forty days—that’s not coincidental.  We’re used to hearing that Jesus was being tempted all that time, and there was that, but the Spirit did not drive Jesus out into the wilderness, the stripped-down place, the stripped away place, so that Satan could toy with Jesus for an almost unendurable length of time.  Yes, he was tempted, we know that.  Before and beyond that, however, Jesus was being tested.  God did not send His chosen people out into the desert in order to cause them to fail and sin grievously.  He sent them there in the freedom they so highly valued; He sent them there and was with them, there.  Which freedom would they choose?  There was always the supposed freedom to indulge the appetites, even in the wilderness.  We carry with us our appetites, which have an uncanny way of arranging for their fulfilment.  Out there also was the freedom God was offering, the strange, holy, blessed freedom of obedience.  Indulgence or obedience, resentment or faith.

The temptations the Tempter offered, the tests God arranged, weren’t overcome with just a snap of the fingers.  They are real temptations, and they are really tempting, even to Jesus.  He puts himself into solidarity with us so that we can be in union with him.  Yes, the temptations felt tempting even to Jesus, and Jesus freely chose the obedience of faith, each time.  Faith was better; he chose faith.  God was better; he chose God.  There we see the beginnings of his victory and the power of the Spirit, the power of the Living Word.  The Word empowers us for living by faith rather than dying by indulgence.

Mark reminds us that Jesus wasn’t totally alone, out there.  Oh, the Tempter was there, as we know.  We’re also told that Jesus “was with the wild animals” (1:13).  So, his forest friends are there, to comfort and help, like Bambi, Thumper, and even Flower?  Previously, I thought of the animals as wild animals: savage, because life in the wilderness, as wilderness and only as wilderness, is savage.  And people are far too savage toward one another, as the headlines all too regularly remind us.  Thinking about the matter further, it also seems to me that the wild animals are always also demonstrating something to Jesus, a truth he already knows, but that needs to be re-emphasized, strongly, when the temptations press and demand our attention and urge us to follow and indulge.  Those wild animals—they don’t have much, often they are lean and hungry, and God provides for them according to their needs.  And as Jesus reminds us several chapters later, if God provides for even the smallest, seemingly least significant of the animals, will He not even more provide us with what we most truly need?  He did not create those creatures in order to starve them.  The animals are a reminder that God’s providence is always already there.  His plan, His hand, His love, His grace.  It’s God’s abundance, not abundance as the world teaches us to name it, the “abundance” of More.

Mark tells us also that “angels attended” Jesus (1:13).  We can have the impression that the angels show up only at the end of the forty days, bringing a nice warm bath and food and wine and soft raiment, I suppose.  The way Mark puts it, though, it seems there is also the possibility that the angels were there the whole time, ministering to Jesus.  No, their ministry did not include bringing Jesus food, at least not food for the stomach.  What are angels?  The Hebrew word makes it plain: they are messengers.  Angels bring messages from God.  What messages from God do you suppose those angels would have been bringing Jesus through those forty days of temptation, test, and trial?  What would you want to say to Jesus, sitting out there day after day on the rocks under the sun with not a green plant or living soul for miles, and barely a breeze?

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.