|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
God Problems: by Dr. Jane Williams JESUS goes into the desert, with God’s words of love and approval ringing in his ears. He has just been baptised by John in the waters of the Jordan, and his baptism is a seal on his identification with the human race. The birth of Christ is the time when we remember and rejoice in the fact that God the Son comes to live with us and share our lives; but the baptism of Jesus would be just as good a point to celebrate. In fact, that is where St Mark’s Gospel chooses to begin its proclamation of the work of the Messiah. If our baptism represents the death of our old sinful life and our birth into the new life of Christ, Jesus’s baptism works the other way round. It marks the renunciation of his free life of heavenly perfection, and his acceptance of the burden of the life we have made. God the creator of all things chooses to live in what we, his creatures, have made. So, when Jesus steps out of the Jordan, the water streaming from his skin is not purifying and life-giving. It will lead straight to his death on the cross. He hears the Father’s words: “My son, I love you and trust you,” and he knows what they mean. “What we have made in joy and freedom, we must now re-make in sorrow and pain.” All the Gospels agree that this is the start of Jesus’s formal ministry — though St John’s Gospel, typically, does not record the baptism itself (see John 1.29-34, which is clearly describing the same incident). In response to this momentous declaration from God, Jesus retreats to the desert. It is as though he has now to decide whether he is actually willing and able to be God’s beloved Son, with all that that entails. He has to face the temptation to renegotiate the contract with God. Yes, he wants to be the beloved Son, the one who pleases God; but does that have to involve walking the hard and lonely path to death? The temptations that face Jesus as he struggles with his vocation symbolise the ones we all face. This is why every Lent we create for ourselves some approximation of a wilderness, where we are forced to confront that same question. We may want to be God’s beloved children, but is the price tag too high? Can we not be good enough Christians without all this self-abnegation? Does God have to be such a killjoy? If he really asks such a great deal of us, do we want anything to do with him? Do we, actually, when it comes down to it, trust God to know what is best for us at all? In Lent, we rededicate ourselves as God’s beloved children, but we can do it truthfully only if we honestly face what that means. It means acknowledging that the world is God’s: he made it, and he alone knows how it works. He comes, God the Son, to show us how to live in the world he has made. He does promise that he will be more than just an impossibly difficult example to follow. He promises to share his life, constantly, through the Holy Spirit; but it does have to be his life, not the comfortable, if pointless, counterfeit that we are used to substituting. So do we want it? It is easy to use Lent just as another kind of temporary lifestyle choice. For a few weeks, we give up something that we know is rather bad for us, such as chocolate or coffee or alcohol. Yet Jesus does not go into the wilderness to get himself a bit fitter and more toned, but to see if he can face the Father’s call upon his life. He is tempted to use his knowledge of his powers, even his knowledge of the Father’s love for him, to put himself and his needs at the centre of his work. In the desert, he faces that temptation squarely and rejects it. Only God will sustain him. Only God will be glorified by his obedience. He will trust God, and put God always at the centre. In doing so, he will walk the path that creation was meant to walk, and be the place where God’s life and ours coalesce. Can we use Lent like that? Can we face the things that tempt us away from our calling to be God’s children, living in God’s world? In the weeks that follow, let’s face with honesty the things that make us doubt God and reject his calling to us. Do we trust this God, and his way in the world, or not? Let us be truthful about the things we hate about God, and which make us doubt if we want to walk this hard path, in Lent and beyond. Lent task RE-READ Matthew 4.1-11. The temptations home in on basic needs for food; for security and love; for power. These needs are not all necessarily wrong in themselves; they are wrong only if they are used to put us rather than God and others at the centre of our decision-making. How do you think those temptations show themselves in your life? Could you give up some of your own power — at work, at church, at home, to empower someone else? How can God allow innocent suffering?
|
|
||||||||||||||
