Hope in the Wilderness

Hope in the Wilderness

Written by Dan McDonald

 

“Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.” –Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

            St. Matthew’s Gospel follows a discernible pattern. In the first chapter we have the genealogy describing in weeks of generations how Jesus is the son of David and of Abraham born in the fullness of time. In chapter two we discover that he is born the Son of David the King in the city associated with Rachel’s passing and her sorrows for her children. Jesus life is endangered by Herod so that early on Jesus must be whisked out of his homeland, the seed of David acquainted with sorrows. Directed in a dream, the Holy family takes Jesus to Egypt. For out of Egypt God calls his Son. When they return years later, Jesus spends his youth and early adult years in obscurity, a metaphorical wilderness between his Incarnation and his active earthly ministry. He comes to the Jordan River where Israel as a nation had been metaphorically baptized before entering the Land of Promise, as they passed through the divided waters of the Jordan. Israel had been baptized a generation before by passing on their return from Egypt through the separated waters of the Red Sea before entering the Wilderness. Matthew is telling the story of Jesus as a retelling of the story of Israel. Jesus has entered the story of Israel to establish once and forevermore Israel’s redemption. At the end of Matthew 3, Jesus is baptized and is declared by the Father in the form of the Spirit’s resting as a dove that this Jesus is his beloved Son. As His Son has been called out of Egypt, and has baptized on the way to the Land of Promise, he is immediately led by the Holy Spirit into the Wilderness to be tested. I was once told of how in the language of Hebrew a beautiful illustration to what is taking place can be presented. Like those Russian matryoshka dolls, the Hebrew word for wilderness (Mdbr) contains other words including (dbr = word) and (br=son). So the story of the Wilderness is the story of how in the Wilderness through his Word God reveals his son.

            The story of Jesus in the Wilderness is loved by most all Christians, whether or not one participates in Lent. For those of us who participate in Lent, it is a pivotal story as we with ancient Israel realize we are called out of Egypt, baptized, brought into pilgrimage in the Wilderness, and set on the way to the Land of Promise. We recognize in the practice of Lent that we travel not alone in the Wilderness but rather that we participate in our Wilderness wanderings in the Son, by the Spirit in the way of return to the Father.

            This year during the Lenten season I have been reading approximately seven pages of Thomas Merton’s No Man Is an Island so that I will finish it as the Lenten season finishes. I am Protestant enough that I do not seek to convince others to keep Lent. But it has been for me a particular blessing as I have partaken in the Lenten tradition associated within the Anglican tradition. Whether you participate in Lent is of lesser importance than to realize we all participate as aliens and strangers in passing through an earthly Wilderness on the journey towards the heavenly kingdom of which we are already citizens even though we wait for the kingdom to take its place in the midst of the redeemed world in the Day of Christ. Whether we practice it in a Lenten observation or as mere Christians, we are all wanderers in the Wilderness who pass through the Wilderness in the strength of our Redeemer by the power of the Spirit and to the glory of the Father.

            Merton’s words about hope especially speak to me regarding our being in the Wilderness following our baptism into Christ. Hope in its Biblical setting is focused on things unseen. Hebrews, a book focused on our being presently in the Wilderness describes faith’s relationship to hope saying “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” (Hebrews 11:1) The Christian hope is a hope especially focused on things unseen, things hidden from our sight by the veil of the seen created order. Merton is trying to teach us to have a proper understanding of our hope focused on unseen things while living in a seen visible creation.

            It might seem that a hope focused on the invisible would dismiss and treat as unessential the visible world around us. That is not the Christian faith’s objective. That is a teaching dismissed as Gnosticism. Gnosticism had a low view of the earth around us. The Christian is taught that God has loved all things that he has created. He looked upon the world he created and saw it as “good” and as “very good.” The good in this context could as easily be rendered “the beautiful.” God sees creation as good and as beautiful. It has since been infected with sin, but the creation is good.

            Merton thus carefully teaches us that hope looking beyond the veil recognizes that as Christians we worship God alone for all of his glorious attributes and likewise for his works of creation and his desire to sustain his creation and to redeem it. We separate the Creator and the Creation not to minimize or treat the creation as disposable, but to render worship to creation’s Creator rather than to the creation of itself.

            Surely this is part of what Jesus sought to do when he went into the Wilderness so as to fast for forty days and nights. Satan sought to deal with him in his hunger. Turn these stones into bread. But Jesus replied that one was to live by every Word of God. He would apply this message in differing ways in his earthly ministry. On occasion he would describe how he had food in doing the will of God. But on another occasion he and his disciples would offend the Pharisees by eating grain in the field on the Sabbath. They had done the act of harvesting. Jesus would point out that the Pharisees erred for God created the Sabbath for man and not man for the Sabbath. The creation was made meaningful because in faith and hope we learned to see the goodness and the beauty of the creation in what was unseen. We learned to distinguish the Creation from the Creator so as to worship God alone.

            As we journey through this earth we are ever reminded how God alone is the creator and he is unseen. This does not make the earth we see as something to be despised but to be valued for we learn at last what the purpose of the creation was for us mortal men and women created in God’s image. We are to understand that through the Creation God has given us a testimony of Himself as Creator. St. Paul describes it, saying, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” (Romans 1:20 probably based on Psalm 19)

            If we fail to distinguish between Creator and Creation, we fail to see both God’s glory and Creation’s purpose. So our hope is focused on what we cannot see but can only believe by faith. But instead of this leading us to deny the beauty of creation, we see it as God’s handiwork and evidence in what is seen, of what is unseen. Ultimately we are reminded of these things when we draw near to God in the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper. We are given bread and wine, and in these earthly elements we are given the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The seen and the unseen are ultimately not divorced but united, but we worship God alone.

            As we pass through the Wilderness, and especially for us who observe the Season of Lent let us know that in hope we focus on what is unseen that we might better learn to worship God alone and to appreciate all the more the beauty of his good creation. If for forty days we abstain from meats or sweets, or some other delicacy let us know that what we really desire is to worship the God who nourishes us in his strength through the foods he graciously gives us.