2-15-18 - Wild Beasts and Angels

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Ash Wednesday behind us, we return to our gospel passage for Sunday, focusing on the two sentences about Jesus’ forty days of testing in the wilderness. Mark may be short on information about the actual temptations Jesus faced, but he does include an odd detail: 
“He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Wild beasts and angels: two kinds of creatures over which human beings have no control. Was that part of Jesus’ trial? To have to rely on help he couldn’t control, to get used to a ministry in which he would always have to depend on others for basic sustenance? Or are wild beasts and angels two kinds of creatures whom ordinary humans cannot control, but who recognized Jesus’ authority and helped him out? Mark doesn’t tell us. Mark doesn’t even tell us that Jesus fasted – Matthew and Luke throw that in. Maybe Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness was not so much about withstanding deprivation as boot camp for the spirit.

This line evokes stories about the prophet Elijah, who during his time on the lam from the wicked Queen Jezebel was fed by angels, and another time was fed by ravens. Is Mark drawing the parallel to Jesus as the new Elijah? I envision a beautiful wolf and a chipmunk and maybe an owl hanging out with Jesus, with tray-carrying angels hovering around. God’s prophets have it hard, but God provides.

Today we are fully in the season of Lent – we’ve left the threshold of Ash Wednesday and now make our first foray into whatever wilderness is drawing us. Let’s keep our eyes out for “wild beasts” – companions who may at first seem scary, but might have gifts for us. These “wild beasts” may be other people, ambitious callings, wrestlings with failure. They may come from inside us, what Jungians would call our "shadow” parts, even buried or wounded parts that are calling us to look, notice, welcome, re-integrate. Making changes in our daily life, allowing more silence or space, can invite these parts of us out of hiding. If we can bear with the discomfort their presence elicits, we might be able to receive their gifts and experience some healing.

And let’s stay tuned to the presence of angels bearing the gifts we need to most fully benefit from this Lenten sojourn. We do not do this work of growing in God alone.

Some American Indian traditions teach that whenever we encounter a wild creature, it has a message for us. I pray we experience some wildness this Lent, within and without, and just enough angelic waiters, as we wait upon the Spirit.

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