PROPERS: FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B
TEXT: MARK 1:9-15
PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2024
ONE SENTENCE: The invitation to Lent is to go within and examine the shadows within.
What does one do in the stark wilderness for 40 days?
I have seen the wilderness. It is largely outside and north of Jericho. It is truly barren. The only life it will support are the rock badgers, the hawks, and the deer-like ibex that wander the cliffs and ravines.
For years, early aesthetics sought to withdraw from society and recreate Jesus’ experience in the wilderness. The cavern walls bear witness to those efforts, with the numerous cave dwellings through the dry creek beds known as wadis. Some monastics still do that today.
But what is the purpose? And what was Jesus seeking during his 40 days of solitude? I think, in a sense, they were seeking both the same and different things.
My guess: They were looking deep within, but for entirely different purposes.
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I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.
In the 1960s, the Rolling Stones had a hit entitled Paint It Black. A single line in the lyrics had vocalist Mick Jagger sing these words: “I look inside myself and see my heart is black.”
There were a number of remarkable aspects to that song, including the basic lyrics, the various musical influences and the instrumentation. But I doubt that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who penned the lyrics, were mindful of the link to a thoughtful psychiatrist and introspective theology.
The psychiatrist: Swiss psychiatric theorist Carl Jung wrote of a concept called the shadow. It is a sound bit of theory. It pertains to that part of ourselves that exists deep within us, but we deny it. It could be anger, lust, envy, ambition, jealousy, covetousness, or any other number of hidden motivations. The irony is that we may not even know those aspects of our spirit exist.
Yet they do exist. And as long as we deny them and as long as they stay in the background of our spirits, they control us. It leads us to the point where St. Paul found himself in his Letter to the Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
I suspect to a greater or lesser degree, we can all identify with that experience… and that we can, on some level, acknowledge the existence of the shadow within us.
Though they certainly would not have put it in those words, I suspect those early desert fathers, climbing into the spartan caves in which they would live for weeks, were seeking to find the shadow within, wrestle with it, and eliminate it. Simply stated, they were seeking a purer heart.
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As Christians, we profess belief that Jesus’ heart was already pure as he entered the wilderness. He was, we think, seeking something different: Guidance on the course of his budding ministry. He knew he would need purpose. He knew he would need courage. And he knew his heart needed to be pure.
He would face demons and temptations in those 40 days. He would emerge with his mission in mind and his face set toward Jerusalem.
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You and I have a little less complicated and more basic task during this Lent: To look deep within… to examine our hearts and spirits… and name those dark places which need the light of Easter morning.
Habits of quiet, prayer, fasting, and solitude will take us along that road. This is the day to begin.
In response to my initial question: There is a lot to do in the Wilderness.
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