Jesus, like Noah, is in the wilderness, for 40 days, surrounded by wild beasts.
(40 days away from everyone and everything in your usual life: as we all probably know all too well by now, this is what the word quarantine means.)
Noah’s quarantine is a 40-day rainstorm on a fathomless, borderless ocean, locked in the belly of a boat with beasts of every kind. The quarantine of Jesus takes place in the arid moonscape of the Negev Desert, crawling with wild beasts. (Water can drown us, but its utter absence can also kill us.) Wilderness, then, is a deathly landscape of extremes. And in that dangerous place, we are surrounded by wild beasts. Not evil beasts, necessarily, but wild. They are not tame. They are not safe. They can be our companions, and even our teachers. But the wild beasts are not neutral. They are not fuzzy kittens or cute puppies.
Wild beasts can be self-evidently dreadful things: for some of us, including myself, alcohol is a wild beast. The recovery literature calls the alcohol beast “cunning, baffling, and powerful.” That resonates. But then, even peanut-butter cookies are something of a wild beast for me, though they are considerably smaller and less life-threatening. So I am stepping away from dessert during Lent. (Though I have packed little tiny chocolates, fewer than 100 calories each, in my wilderness pack. I’m not a heroic desert mystic.) I say “no thank you” to sweets for a season because, as I walk through this wilderness with all of you, cane sugar is a low-key dangerous creature that I want to be (mostly) far from me, lurking along the horizon, safely barred from entering my tent, or at least kept from running wild in my tent. But maybe that beast is less threatening to you. Maybe there are others that frighten you but leave me unfazed.
Digital screens can be beastly. They are wondrous: they keep us informed, they keep us connected, they keep us entertained and engaged with the wider world. They make our worship together possible! But their blue light disturbs our sleep, and damages our eyes. Our species hasn’t evolved to properly handle or manage the busy, buzzing stimuli of our many devices.
Some of our emotions are beasts, too. And these may be both impossible and inadvisable to fully give up for Lent. We may just have to spend the Lenten quarantine learning how to wrestle with them. Anxiety stalks some of us. Depression is another dread foe, pacing the top of that rugged cliff over there, watching us, waiting for us. Anger, too, can threaten us. Anger, like Anxiety, is something we have, something we need, to overcome adversity and keep our campsite safe. But Anger can turn into the wolf that bites us, if it is not controlled, tamed, ordered into its proper place alongside other important emotions, like empathy and compassion. Jesus angrily (and justly!) cleanses the Jerusalem temple, but he also stands at an overlook and weeps for that city, wanting to gather it into safety, like a protective mother hen. So — the wild beasts of human emotion can sometimes be controlled, or kept inside a sound boundary.
But then there are other dangerous creatures. Look at this one, right here in the middle of our camp, in broad daylight — we call it White Supremacy. White Supremacy is a venomous worm, slithering quietly through our community, stinging everyone while we sleep, poisoning us with the lie that, as George Orwell frames it, “some of us are more equal than others.” This venom damages white people and people of color alike, just in different ways. And Patriarchy: now that is a ravenous desert locust, consuming the health and well-being of women and girls, and tearing jagged holes in the souls of men and boys, too. These wild beasts are deadly for everyone, including the people who mistakenly believe that they benefit from them.
But some of the wild beasts wear sheep’s clothing, as it were. Even Love can turn on us, if it is blind to ethics and justice. Love can be transfigured into Obsession, and do great damage to self and others. Love can urge us to jump heedlessly into a cavern, where we break our bones, or damage someone else who is beneath us when we fall.
So how do Jesus and Noah survive all these wild beasts? Well, Noah has his family, and maybe he also has the creatures in his ship’s hold who are not so wild, and can form a kind of critical mass of benign beings, creatures who are peaceable, a literal herd immunity. We try to do that here at Grace Church. We cultivate community here, and try to support one another, peaceably. We proclaim that this is a safe place for children, and women, and queer people, and people who have been harmed by other churches, and (we hope, and we work on this) people of color. This is no small thing. We want this ark to be a safe ship.
Jesus is bereft of family and friends in the desert, but he has angels who come and serve him. Later on, Jesus himself says that he comes among us as one who serves. So we may look at his predicament in the wilderness — he is surrounded by wild beasts, but also waited on by angels — we could look at this as a prototype for the kind of faith community Jesus begins to build, after his resurrection. The Jesus Movement creates communities that boldly walk among wild beasts, and serve one another faithfully as they go.
Some faith communities get confused or blinkered by the wild beasts. They don’t recognize them as beasts, or they identify the wrong creatures as beastly. People different from me are the beasts! That’s a common mistake. But the other side of that is more treacherous still — that person is similar to me, so she must not be a beast. Are you sure?
This means we have to stick to the community design that Jesus invites us to use: step into this dangerous world, for God made this world to be lived in; and serve each other like the angels served Jesus, and like Noah’s family cared for all the creatures on board, and like the first Christians did in their little house churches that dotted the Mediterranean. Step into danger, and serve. That’s the design.
Lent, then, is a little quarantine time when we practice building this community. Easter is a 50-day season when we celebrate the flourishing of this community. And every day of the year is another opportunity to say Yes to this invitation. Yes, we will face the wild beasts, the ones who lurk within us and without, the ones we find powerfully attractive despite their dangers, the ones that deal death alongside life, suffering alongside joy. We will face them because this is the world where God breathes life into us; this is the world where God resurrects life from death; this is the world of astonishing beauty where the Spirit of God broods, and the Word of God speaks. This is the wilderness — and the garden — that are hallowed by the presence and power of God.
And one more Yes: Yes, we will also practice serving others, as we have been served. We will try to anticipate the needs of others, and go about the work of ministering to them. Near the end of our Lenten sojourn, we will see that even and especially Jesus himself is found not wearing a crown and holding a scepter, but kneeling at our dusty feet and holding a towel. That’s the pattern; that’s the design. That’s what community as the Body of Christ is all about.
And arcing over all of this is the bow God has placed in the clouds, a visible reminder for us that God will look with mercy on all living creatures — beasts included! Note that God, too, sees this rainbow. “I will see it,” God says; “I will see it, and remember.”
Oh, the terrible beauty of this world! Oh, the soaring beauty of God’s mercy! Let us face all this together.
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Preached on the First Sunday in Lent, Year B, February 21, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15