Eremos | The Wilderness Redeemed

The gospels aren't meant to be inspirational manifestos about how to live your best life and Jesus didn't come to give us a model to copy but to save us. The aim of the gospels is to show us in different ways and through different stories: 'you can trust him!'. 

Understanding this transforms how we interact with the scriptures that bear witness to his life. 

For me this has hit home afresh as I prepared to preach on the temptation narratives in Matthew and Luke. I'm so used to reading these accounts as stories that offer me wisdom about how to deal with temptation and defeat the devil, you know the kind of messages I mean "Jesus used the scriptures, we should use the scriptures," or "the devil twists the scriptures and so we need to know the scriptures better than he does." or "man shall not live on bread alone, therefore we need to read the Bible everyday." 

Those statements are no doubt true, but it occured to me that to stress such things kind of misses the point!

The main point of the wilderness narratives is to show the reader look at Jesus! He's triumphed where Israel was defeated and he's transformed even the desert from being a place of despair into somewhere he can be found. 

Eremos. That beautiful and mystical sounding Greek word is the one translated in our Bibles as 'desolate place' or 'wilderness' and it's the place ancient Israelites were most scared of. According to Leviticus 16 it was in the eremos that Azazel (the prince of demons) lives. Each Yom Kippur they laid their shame and sin onto and a goat and sent it out to Azazel in the desert. They gave him their sin since sin is what belongs to him.  

In the eremos nothing survives for long without divine intervention. If it wasn't for the manna and quail Israel would have died out in days in the eremos. Ghosts, howling goat-demons, owls, serpents and jackals all live in the eremos. They hide among the ruins and carry people off to the grave, down into the dust and decay of the earth. A generation of Israelites lived and died in the eremos their bodies serving as a reminder and a warning to future generations. Death, and therefore the lord of death the Devil, owns all who enter his domain. At least, until Christ came.

Christ could not be swayed or turned away. The devil's threats and tests didn't turn his head, he stayed true, and now Jesus has transformed the wilderness from a place of fear and failure. It's no longer a place to be feared, no longer a place to be avoided. Now it's become a place (and a state) of transformation and comfort. Following this encounter the wilderness became for Jesus a place he went to often. The eremos became the place Jesus withdrew to to seek his Father. He prioritised it and returned to it often.

In turn Jesus' followers came to see it as place to go to themselves as well. They heard in Hosea's prophecy an invitation to welcome whatever God wanted to do in the desert: behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope (Hosea 2:14).

Or, in the words of the Apostle James they came to: consider it pure joy whenever they faced trials of many kinds, 'for we know that the testing of your faith... [will leave you] complete, lacking nothing.'

It is in the eremos that God does his deepest work since it's become a place of evil no longer. It's now somewhere to see and savour the saviour. We can find him there because he went there first (literally first immediately following his baptism). 

By 'eremos' I mean of course 'times of trial and testing'. It can be a remote place but it's more likely a desolate space, somewhere you'd never volunteer to go or an experience you'd never choose to have. 

When my dear dad in 2010 a few months after the birth of our first son, I found Jesus in the eremos with me. When I moved to help establish the church in Seaford and experienced loneliness and loss I saw Jesus at work in my soul. Last year when I couldn't walk more than 10 yards without incapacitating pain, I sat with Jesus and allowed him to meet me deeply. 

There are plenty of other times like this as well but these make the point. In those times I grew but not through seminars and books. I grew but I did so by shrinking. Maybe to fit into the narrow way of the kingdom we need to crawl on our hands and knees. Maybe, like Alice trying to enter Wonderland we're too big and oversized by our pride and self-reliance to be able to see God. 

Jesus essentially says as much when he says both: unless you be born again you you cannot see the kingdom of heaven and unless you become like a little child you cannot enter the kingdom. 

This isn't to become glassy eyed about difficult times and places and neither is it to make a virtue out surrender and self-denial. The desert isn't a romantic place - it's just that Jesus is there. Without Jesus the eremos is still pretty erie. 

A week after preaching about the eremos I was thrust back into once again. My dear wife (for whom of course this is a lot more of an 'eremo's than me) found herself with severe abdominal pain and within 24hrs was under the surgeon's knife. I'm sitting in the waiting room as I write this, I've been here for several hours. It's an unnerving time, my emotions are very close to the surface right now and tears are coming easily. I don't know how things will turn out but what I do know however is that I don't need to be afraid, and neithers does Amy. You see, the uncertainty of the wilderness has been transformed by Jesus. He's redeemed it from being a place of terror and trauma to somewhere I can find peace. 

"Peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you." he said 

"in the world you will have trouble (there will be times of trial and wilderness), but take heart, for I have overcome the world."

Amen.