"Changing in Wilderness – Again"
Mark 1:9-11 and Matthew 4:1-11
Yonce Shelton, Westmoreland UCC
Oct. 19, 2025
Change. Everything seems to be changing around us. Last week I invited you to feel how change has thrust us as a people into the wilderness. How we are somewhat like the Israelites wandering for 40 years. I asked you to find hope in understanding that and engaging what this time is doing to us. Today, the focus is still on change – but more on inner change.
Remember, the Israelites wandered for 40 years because they rebelled against God by wanting to return to Egypt instead of facing new challenges in the Promise Land. That's key to understand: they wanted to return to the familiar; they couldn’t accept the new. But God used this time to prepare them; to foster growth. God taught them to trust.
In the wilderness is where we should go deeper with God. Today, I’ll focus not on 40 years of wandering with others – but on 40 days of sitting with yourself and God in the wilderness. Like Jesus did.
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Change happens to us. It is often beyond our control. Maybe that is how Jesus felt.
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished.” In the Gospel of Mark, instead of “led" the more forceful “driven” is used (Mark 1:12). Seems like a change Jesus didn’t see coming and didn’t have much time to prepare for. It's a major event that presents Jesus time and space to learn how he will respond to challenges: to being tempted by food, comfort, and power.
Jesus had time. Time to consider how he would react. The chance to be and experience differently. To grow in understanding of self and God. I caught part of an interview with Brene Brown on NPR last week. She said that "between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is the power of choice. And in that choice is our growth and our freedom. And I understand right now that stimulus and response are just smashed together, but it's the job right now ... of great leaders ... in our families, in our own lives, to create a space between stimulus and response.”[1] Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is the power of choice. ... We need to create a space between stimulus and response.
I immediately thought about how not choosing well is really harming our relationships and how we function in society. But how Jesus reacted to his stimulus - being driven into the wilderness after this affirming baptismal moment with God - is different. He had time to experience, reflect, and determine how he would react to that stimulus and others. How can we honor space - make it longer, deeper - so that we make better choices that lead to growth? So that the changes that come our way don’t control us?
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Political change. Cultural change. Church change. It all connects with personal change. It all invites personal transformation.
When life leaves you weak, are you able to sit, resist moving in usual ways, engage with God, name things in new ways? Or do you simply react on instinct? When you are driven into foreign emotional territory and tested, where is God? How do you deal with chances to exit that uncomfortable space? To take back some power, control, comfort? The text makes it seem so easy for Jesus to resist the devil. But there is a lot between the lines. And 40 days is a long time.
How are you tempted to react to the changes happening around us? I have caught myself either overengaging and thinking I can do more than I really can, because I want to see change; or underengaging and being lazy because I am not directly affected. I am tempted by comfort, as Jesus was. Tempted to withdraw to the security I know. And blaming is a temptation: to get rid of my anger and sadness by placing it elsewhere and on other people. But I know that's not the best course. I need to wonder more about change.
So, I sit with big questions about what I’ve thought and done in years past. Was that well informed? Too aligned with the status quo? Too dismissive of legitimate concerns and needs? I’m not totally clear on all the specifics that go with that. I’m just opening to alternative paths and answers as I evaluate my allegiances to groups, thoughts, and investments of energy. I'm trying to resist leaving my wilderness in 40 days and going back to business as usual; back to ignoring things that are inconvenient or don't jeopardize my way of life. Pretty human stuff.
I resist going back because despite Jesus being fully divine and knowing what His journey needed to be, He was also fully human. The fully divine Jesus knew how the story would play out. But the fully human Jesus needed to experience it. What was Jesus like between the lines of this passage; between the verses in which he seems to easily rebuff the devil? Was he frightened? Did he want more information? Did he feel alone? I guess we can’t know. But we can engage what we feel.
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Have you ever fasted? Done a retreat where that was part of the rhythm? How about just preparing for a doctor’s appointment? Take whatever you know of fasting and wonder what that would be like for 40 days - with the devil offering you escape!
Several years ago at a semi-silent retreat, I talked with a man who had taken part in a unique wilderness experience. He did four, four-day solo silent retreats while fasting. Yes, you heard correctly: four, four-day solo retreats. Every 6 months or so he went to a different remote spot in the Colorado mountains for four days with only water and a tarp to sleep under. He sat in a circle in one place and fasted. We didn’t have time for him to fully share how he grew, but I could tell it had transformed him. I could feel it. But what he did share was how his awareness and sense of time changed when he wasn’t thinking about eating, preparing food, actually eating, cleaning up, etc. Time changed. So maybe we don’t need 40 days. Maybe we just need the openness to a new time and the courage to stay in it with God.
Time and experience. Parker has just been part of an important experience; he has accepted a gift from God. As opposed to an infant, Parker chose to be baptized. There was a stimulus that put him on a journey to respond. He eventually said yes to God, and we trust God will be with him in the years to come. Moreover, unlike an infant, Parker can understand today’s message. To some degree, he grasps that life will not be perfect just because he is baptized. He knows he may be driven into tough situations and that there will be temptations. And he knows he has the example of Jesus’ 40 days to help. So today, as a young adult, Parker honors – and reminds us to honor – the power of choice. And we affirm the power of community; of being in this together. That is a choice. That is hope.
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Last week I lifted up Amy Oden’s thoughts about the Israelites finding God in the wilderness: “... It is here, in the wilderness, with no map, no resources, no cache of food or water to rely on, that the Hebrews encounter God. … [T]he crowd turn[s] to face the wilderness as though trying to envision the manna there. And what do they see? The glory of God! There has been nothing like this sort of encounter with Yahweh up to this point for the wandering people. It is only once the people enter the wilderness and complain that God’s glory appears to them.”[2]
In today’s Gospel, after Jesus is alone dealing with inner temptations, “the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” I can’t imagine the fully human Jesus didn’t struggle and complain and almost give in to temptation before that. But he stayed true to what God was doing with him. And God came to him, just as God did the Israelites.
Last week, I also introduced a form of Ignatian prayer whereby Christians immerse themselves in a biblical setting and scene; in which they transport/place themselves there and use their senses to draw practical fruit for their life. The goal of this practice is to make scriptures come alive so that we can make a personal application to our lives.[3] I hope I have given you enough to prayerfully transport yourself to wilderness and sit there, maybe with Jesus. You’ll struggle and likely complain. So be it. Just don’t go back. Like the Israelites in their wilderness and like Jesus in His, we can’t return to the familiar; we must accept a new way.
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With the recent attention on the Middle East and hopes for progress, I find myself thinking about the people I have met there and travelled with: unique Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers who deeply move me. They are leaders and “regular people” who have the vision, courage, and fortitude to seek reconciliation; to pursue a different way despite being victims of violence and marginalized for their counter cultural views. These people act from a place that is deeper than I can imagine. They are in touch with something spiritual and a way of being and seeing the other that only comes from experiences that no one wants, and from great awareness, intention, and struggle. They do their sitting in the wilderness. They fight temptation. Their witness gives me hope for how I can be transformed in the midst of change.
Jesus transformed in the wilderness because he trusted and grew. He left knowing more about His calling. He was focused. And one of the first things he did was to recruit others.
I wonder if these Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers are the kind of people Jesus tapped to be his disciples when he left the wilderness, and then developed in a whirlwind of change? And how do they resist the temptation to go back? Come to the event here on November 1 with John Munayer and maybe find out.
Changes and stimuli will drive us into our own wilderness. May we have the strength and courage to stay there with God. May we learn emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. May we respond – after our 40 days – in ways that honor growth and change. We are free to choose that. That is good news.
Amen.
