The First Sunday of Lent, 21 February 2021 - online
Sometimes we choose aloneness; and sometimes aloneness is thrust upon us.
At the end of World War Two, the liberated prisoner of war Jozef Stawinoga emigrated to Britain, securing a job at the steelworks in Bilston, Wolverhampton. In 1953 his wife of just one year left him, and Jozef had a nervous breakdown that brought on his withdrawal from society. He took to wandering the streets of Wolverhampton in an increasingly bedraggled state, sporting a long beard and pushing his possessions in a pram. In the 1970s he set up a tent on the central reservation of the Wolverhampton ring road where he remained a virtual hermit until his death in 2007. The council let him stay there and, in return, he would sweep up leaves. Local Hindus regularly brought Jozef gifts of clothes, blankets and freshly cooked delicacies because they saw him as a holy man. One said: 'This man doesn't want any relation with the world, he is connected with God and so we believe he is a saintly person.’ Writer Rowena Macdonald remembers Stawinoga from her childhood.'He looked like a Biblical character. Someone out of time, or timeless,’ she says. ‘Really he was more like a mendicant’. [1]
People who set out alone might come to carry an aura of holiness about them…. even when that’s unjustified. For sometimes we choose to pursue holiness by taking time alone; and sometimes aloneness is thrust upon us.
Mark is the briefest of the gospels but what it lacks in detail it makes up for with its breathless pace and stark imagery. After his baptism in the Jordan, Mark tells us, ‘the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.’ This naked sentence of scripture provokes us to ask, did Jesus choose to pursue this way of holiness; or was this journey into aloneness thrust upon him by the driving force of the Holy Spirit?
In the history of his people Jesus was by no means the first to be driven out into the desert. Remember Hagar, Abram’s servant-girl, who, made pregnant by her master, was ill-treated by Abram’s wife Sara and so ran away into the wilderness, where the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water and gave her confidence to return home. [2]
Think of the people of Jacob, once enslaved in Egypt and now being led by Moses through the wilderness towards a promised land. [3] Recall the words of Deuteronomy, “[God] sustained [Jacob] in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.” [4]
Some in Israel saw the wilderness as a place to escape from their enemies: like the troubled author of Psalm 55 who, turning on his heels, sang, “truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.” [5]
And some chose to take themselves away into the wild to nurture a more devout way of life - notably the ascetic sect the Essenes, some of whom settled in the desert near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, to live lives of poverty, piety, and celibacy. [6]
When Jesus was driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness he was entering into experiences which others before him had also had. And interestingly, according to Mark, he wasn’t alone. For he completes his description of this season of Jesus’ life by telling us that ‘He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.’
Were the wild beasts friendly or unfriendly? How did the angels show themselves to Jesus? - perhaps in ways similar to how Satan appeared? And what about this driving Spirit which projected Jesus into that desolate place?
One thing we can be fairly sure of, is that those who are driven by the Spirit of God have spent a great deal of time and devotion nurturing the presence of that Spirit in their lives. The Spirit driving Jesus to aloneness does not appear from nowhere; this is the Spirit who was with Jesus in the very beginning, a co-creator of all things with the Father, and this is the Spirit who was present with Jesus at his baptism, descending like a dove as the Father’s voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
The Spirit may be driving Jesus into an unknown place where he would have to struggle alone. But Jesus knew who that Spirit was. For all the years up to that moment, by his practice of prayer and learning and devotion Jesus had nurtured the Spirit’s presence in his life; this was how he could recognise that the drive which would propel him into the desert and beyond was the power and presence of God.
Sometimes we choose to pursue holiness by taking time alone; but even those other times when aloneness is thrust upon us, we can accept as opportunities to learn, reflect and grow. To get to know the Spirit who might drive us deeper into holiness.
We can experience the wilderness as a place of discomfort as the wandering Israelites did when they complained to Moses about their lot. [7] Or we can embrace it as a place where visions of a new and better life can emerge, as the prophet Isaiah did when looking out over a tired, corrupted society in its last throes, and announcing the moment when “a spirit from on high is poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.” [8]
This has been our wilderness year - and as we now approach the second year of this pandemic we also enter Lent. In this time, let not the Satan lead us into temptation, let us not be paralysed by fear of the wild place we find ourselves in. Rather, let us keep watch and every day ask, Where is the Spirit who can drive us through? Where are the angels who will attend us?
Notes
[1] Gareth E. Rees, Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places, p.38-39. Altered.
[2] Genesis 16.
[3] Exodus 20.
[4] Deuteronomy 32.10.
[5] Psalm 55.
[6] Wikipedia: Essenes.
[7] Numbers 11.
[8] Isaiah 32.14-17.
[9] Wikipedia: Józef Stawinoga
Comments