Who is this man who went into the Wilderness?

Who is this man going into the Wilderness?

Meditations on the Forty Days #1

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Canyon in the Dead Sea region (the Wilderness)

Downloaded from Shutterstock.com Copyright Kavram

 

            Whether a Christian observes Lent or not, most every Christian I know loves the story found in Matthew 4:1-11 of Christ’s forty days in the Wilderness. For those observing Lent, we partake symbolically in the fast and prayerful struggling which Christ entered fully on our behalf. For those who do not observe Lent, St. Matthew’s description of Christ’s wilderness struggles contains rich food for meditative thought and Christ’s experience in the Wilderness leads us to consider a number of important themes concerning the spiritual life as well as the ministry of Christ.

            It would be tempting for me to imagine writing a number of meditations on St. Matthew’s text during this season of Lent. I imagined doing that and realized that while perhaps I might write some additional thoughts on this passage during this season of Lent, I also might not write anything more than this one piece.

            The passage as I have considered it this week has especially caused me to think of one question to be considered as we look at Jesus’s experience in the Wilderness. That one question is, “Who is this man who went forth into the Wilderness?”

            The early Church, in its struggle to understand the Gospel chiefly sought to understand and describe who Jesus Christ was. The Church’s leaders met for several councils that mostly sought to answer who they believed Jesus Christ was. It is interesting that in the last one hundred years, many Conservative Christians feared that the Church might lose the Gospel because segments of the Church were losing sight of Christ’s divinity. But in the early Church, the leaders came perhaps just as often to the conclusion that the Church in their day was in danger of losing the Gospel by minimizing the humanity of Christ. As I read Matthew 4:1-11, I am moved by how Jesus is described in the weakness of his humanity. Jesus’ humanity is not a super-humanity but a humanity of one who hungers and thirsts, and of one who must face temptation.

            The Apostles describe such weakness of humanity as an essential to the Gospel. St. Paul describes how through Adam sin and death came into the world. But in Christ, the second Adam, Christ died for our sins and resurrection came through Christ. St. Paul attributes the blessing of resurrection as coming to us, not by Christ’s power of divinity, but through the weakness of his humanity. St. Paul declares “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. (I Corinthians 15:21-22) Paul’s understanding of the resurrection is that it came to us through Jesus’ manhood.

            This theme of Jesus’ identification with our weakness surprised those around him. John the Baptist had announced that he baptized those who came to him with a baptism of repentance, but that one was coming who would baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus came to him in the Jordan River, John wondered why Jesus would come to him to be baptized when it was Jesus who ought to be baptizing John. But Jesus explained that it was important for him to be baptized that together they could fulfill all righteousness. Jesus came in the weakness of human flesh to fulfill the obligations of repentance that none of us could fulfill with the completeness due unto the Living God. Jesus came to do this in the weakness of human flesh, though without sin.

            Following his baptism the Spirit of God, in the form of a dove, rested upon Jesus. We are told that the Spirit then led Jesus into the wilderness. Perhaps we don’t think enough about how this shows how Jesus came in human weakness. He does not direct himself to go into the Wilderness but instead he follows the lead of the Holy Spirit. He became, in his humanity, dependent upon the Spirit of God to lead him into the Wilderness. Once he was there he showed his dependence upon God as he committed himself to prayer and fasting. When he was tempted he showed his dependence upon the revealed Word of God found in Holy Scriptures, as he answered each temptation saying “It is written.” The weakness of his humanity is thus put on display in St. Matthew’s account.

            The early Church concluded that Christ was fully God and fully man. The meaning of this is that Jesus’ humanity was not a different sort of humanity from our humanity. He was not a man of steel or a God just masquerading as human. He wasn’t mimicking humanity but had fully entered and become human. This is the person we see who went out into the wilderness, and he did so on our behalf. He is like us in all ways, except he did not yield to the temptations that came upon him. The strength of God that would be needed to redeem us from sin and death was the strength that can only be set forth in the weakness of human flesh.

            Does this somehow diminish Jesus’ Deity? Never! For from the time God created man in his image, God set forth the possibility that God himself could and would fill that image with his very own Divine Presence. In the weakness of human flesh Jesus presented the fullness of Deity. We see this as we see Jesus overcome each of Satan’s temptations, and especially in answering to the third and final temptation. Jesus tells Satan to “Get thee hence” for it is written, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou worship.” As Jesus speaks these words to him, Satan leaves him and the angels come and minister to him. The weakness of Jesus is continued to be set forth in this passage as the angels come and minister to him. But look what happened. Jesus had said in the weakness of human flesh, “Get thee hence.” Satan had no recourse upon hearing Jesus’ word but to leave. The Divine presence had come into the earth and it was expressed within the weakness of human flesh.

 

Review of Maya Angelou's "I Know why the Caged Bird Sings"

Review of Maya Angelou’s

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

 

            Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was a recognized and respected author before she died last spring. She had been one of the few poets given the opportunity to read a poem at a presidential inauguration, which she did for the 1993 inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton. Her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a book now read in high schools across our nation. But when she passed away last year I had never read anything she had written. I had grown up when almost everything we read in literature classes were written by someone white either from North America or Europe. I had not read hardly anything by someone on the other side of town.

When Maya Angelou passed away, I read the words of respect and praise for her. I saw a few quotes that caused me to be more interested in the words she had written. I made a mental note to purchase one of the books she had written and begin reading it. A few weeks later I had not done so. I took a vacation to California in June. While I was waiting for a flight back from San Francisco I went into a bookstore. It was there that I picked up a copy of I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. It sat among my books to be read until February. I now know that I should have read this book years ago. I now know that Maya Angelou was a gift to us all. I know why the Caged Bird Sings is autobiographical, telling the story of how Maya Angelou grew up. It is the unique and powerful telling of some of the events and people who helped shape Maya Angelou.

            It is tempting for an old white man to feel that having read a book or two by black authors that he has gained insight into the black American experience. Maya Angelou's writing tells her story and some of the stories of people around her vividly. But I realize that it would be a mistake to read a book as if in reading a book you could understand a people or what it meant to grow up African-American in these United States. It would not be a credit to an author to imagine they could tell you the essence of growing up in America, rather it would be an underestimating of an entire people group to imagine that any one author could capture the whole of a peoples' essence or experience. But we do look to authors to give us a valid important perspective of a life within a community, and perhaps within a particular community. That is something this work does wonderfully well.

            Maya Angelou tells us the story of her growing up under the varied influences of a grandmother, a mother, and some mentors. She tells the story of growing up in varied settings at varied times in her life. Her story starts as a young girl riding a train to Stamps, Arkansas. This was where she began to grow up in the 1930's when life in her small town was segregated. Her grandmother was a religious woman and there were contributions to Maya's life that her grandmother made. A few years later she was reacquainted with her father and mother. She began to live with her mother in St. Louis. Eventually she moved back to Stamps with a deep wound, but then moved back to San Francisco once more with her mother. The backdrop of her life among the settings where she grew up helped give Maya Angelou a broader perspective from which to look at life. Her story drew upon a diverse background of settings and personalities.

            There were different perceptions about life, associated with each of the places she lived. In Stamps, a grandmother helped give her some grounding. A mentor helped transform Maya's life by reading the opening words of A Tale of Two Cities in a way in which Maya felt the magic of the author's words when read with passion. This served to make her look for more in everything she read, because she realized that her mentor had seen more in the books they had both read. In St. Louis, and San Francisco, Maya's mother gave Maya a broad independence, but showed her support of the things Maya dreamed about accomplishing. There were also painful places in Maya's experience of growing up.

            I think my favorite story in the book is the story of how Maya Angelou became the first black woman to employed by the trolley car company in San Francisco. It is a story of how when she told her mother that she wanted to work on the trolley cars in the blue suits like the gals on the trolley car, her mother had to inform her that the trolley car company did not employ blacks. Maya's natural response was that she would then have to become the first. Her mother, instead of encouraging her to go for something more obtainable felt that pursuing dreams were important. She encouraged Maya to try to plan how she might get the job she wanted. Maya went everyday to where one would apply to work on the trolley cars. After a few weeks of making a daily appearance, she became the first black woman to work in the blue suit on the trolley cars.

            Many other people have read this book. I am sure there are plenty of better written reviews of this book. Having read it, I am so happy to know hundreds of thousands of young people have read this book. I am glad they didn't wait until they were almost sixty years old to read it. I hope they understand that what they read was the compelling story of one who learned to overcome. It is the story of a human being who sometimes had her dignity taken away from her, but always came back proving that true dignity was within her despite the troubling hardships thrust upon her in life. This was a truly wonderful book that I hope continues to be read by millions whether as part of a school curriculum or as something worthwhile at whatever age or circumstances one read it in life.