"Into the Wilderness," the senior sermon of David Sugeno, Class of 2006, given in Christ Chapel on March 7, 2006

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."

Moses went into the wilderness. He received a revelation from God in a burning bush. Elijah went into the wilderness. He received a revelation from God in a sound of sheer silence. Jesus went into the wilderness. He got to spend quality time with Satan. That's justice for you.

Soon after I learned that this was to be the Gospel text for my senior sermon, I spent a little time in the wilderness myself -- I went into the hills of southeast Oklahoma for a week of camping and fishing. This allowed me to consider Jesus' temptation in a fresh way. And there was one thing that really struck me, which I couldn't seem to get past. Why would Jesus' temptation take place in the wilderness? When I was on my own little retreat, I felt removed from the source of much of my temptation. Likewise, the eremitic fathers went out into the wilderness for this very reason -- to escape temptation. In the wilderness, the things we normally think of as temptations, whether it be power, wealth, sex, these things are all absent. What, then, was there for Jesus to be tempted by? What sense can we make of the fact that his temptation took place in the wilderness?

Perhaps Jesus was in a different kind of wilderness. Perhaps what Jesus was experiencing was a different kind of temptation. A temptation that is not to something, but away from something.
The spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness, and out of the world. Out of the world in which he could seek after fame. Out of the world in which he could amass a fortune. Out of the world where he could compete with others for power and prestige. Out of the world where the devil runs the show. This world in which we all live, this is the world from which Jesus was driven, into the wilderness.

It was in that moment when Jesus crossed over that Satan suddenly became aware of his existence, and perceived the threat he posed. Nobody had ever left his domain before, nobody had ever escaped his clutches. When Jesus walked out that door, Satan immediately rushed after him, as eager as Jesus himself to reclaim a single lost sheep, to tempt Jesus back into the world. But Jesus would not go with him. For Jesus, being in the wilderness meant walking down a path of perfect obedience to God and opposition to this world, a path that would lead inevitably to the cross, and he knew it. That, I think, was the temptation Jesus felt in the wilderness. The temptation to leave his solitary and difficult path guided by obedience to God, and return to the easy path of abiding by the rules of this world. To leave the wilderness of humility, poverty, and suffering, and return to the world of food, fortune, and comfort.

We think of Jesus being in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, but it is only the Gospel of Mark that makes this explicit. In the version we just heard from Matthew, as well as the version in Luke, it is only Jesus' fast which last forty days, his time in the wilderness is indeterminate. Neither of these gospel writers explicitly recounts that Jesus returned from the wilderness. In a very real sense, I don't believe he ever did.

How does that compare with our own concept of temptation? Who of us is living our lives in such a way that we would be tempted to leave it? How strong can the temptation be for us to leave our cushy homes, our nice cars, our fat pensions? We don't imagine temptation as being away from something, because few of us live in such a way that Satan would ever want to tempt us away from it. How can we be tempted from the wilderness that we have never entered? Rather, we tend to think of being tempted to something. We tend to think of temptation in terms of acting upon our inevitably sinful natures, don't we? We don't even think to ourselves that we could walk that path with Jesus, a path from which Satan would constantly try to tempt us. We simply acknowledge that we are sinful beings, and try to minimize the way in which we act upon our evil impulses.

Bonhoffer wrote of grace without repentance as cheap grace. I think we could look at the other side of that and describe sin that refuses to acknowledge the possibility of discipleship as cheap sin. Sin that sees itself as the inevitable outcome of our corrupted and broken selves. Sin that pretends that the wilderness isn't there.

But after all, he was Jesus, fully human and fully divine. Didn't he have an unfair advantage on us? Maybe. But we cannot hide from the fact that there have been those who have followed Jesus into the wilderness. We commemorate many of these people as saints, and they serve to remind us that we can do better. Today we commemorate some of those saints who walked the path of discipleship into the wilderness and ultimately died there. Today we commemorate Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, and their companions, Saturus, Revocatus, and Saturninus.

Now for those of you who haven't taken Cynthia's Women in Early Christianity class -- well, shame on you, but I'll tell you who they were. Perpetua was a well to do woman, a young mother, who along with her slave Felicitas and three other catecumens was arrested in Carthage in the early 3rd century and charged with being a Christian. While in prison, Perpetua's father, who loved her dearly and knew the fate that awaited her, tried desperately to convince her to renounce her Christianity. Even the procounsel tried to convince her to have pity on her poor father and her child, and offer sacrifice to the emperor. "I will not", Perpetua said. Are you a Christian, the proconsul asked. "I am", she replied. How loudly do you think Perpetua heard the voice of Satan, trying to tempt her away from her wilderness? According to the tradition Perpetua and her companions were led into the arena on this date, March 7, in the year 202. They were mauled and savaged by wild animals, and finally killed by the sword.

We are inclined to associate such incredible tales of discipleship and martyrdom with Christianity's ancient past. Thank God, such devotion to the Gospel is still alive, as you will know if you were paying any attention during black history month, when we commemorated some of these modern-day martyrs. Yet we seem to hear few stories in recent history of those who have followed Jesus into the wilderness. There are many reasons for us not to go, for the personal sacrifices God demands of us are great. But I would like to suggest another reason that we are not following, a reason most forcefully articulated over 150 years ago by the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard.

You knew I wasn't going to make it through my senior sermon without mentioning him, right? To Kierkegaard, the greatest threat to Christianity was Christendom, the established church. Christendom imagined that when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, he had brought the wilderness and the world together, wed them, made them compatible, so that it is no longer necessary for us to leave this world to get into the wilderness. This, to Kierkegaard, amounted to making a fool of God, for Christianity must always exist in opposition to the world. Yet we go on playing at Christianity, perhaps, Kierkegaard thought, in the belief that if we simply call it Christianity we can fool God into thinking that it is, simply by preaching it to him Sunday after Sunday. For Kierkegaard, there could be no both/and. Only either/or. Either Satan or God. Either power and wealth, or discipleship. Either the world, or the wilderness.

150 years after Kierkegaard launched his famous attack, the shackles of Christendom that bind us to this world are rusted and worn, but they are far from broken. So we must ask ourselves; can we as the Church oppose the powers of this world when our own power structures mirror them? Can we feed the hungry, while we stuff our own faces? Can we speak the truth when we fear losing our tax exempt status? Can we preach the gospel with a bible in one hand, the other held out for the world's wealth?

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."

2000 years later, Jesus still awaits us there. The Holy Spirit stands ready to lead us. The devil stands ready to tempt us back. May we know that sweet temptation which only comes to those living lives of discipleship. May we as future pastors and priests have the courage to let go our hold on this world and lead God's people, not out of the wilderness, but into it.

Amen.