The "Maurice Sendak" Jesus!

Text:  Mark 1:9-15

Theme:  “The ‘Maurice Sendak’ Jesus”

1^st Sunday in Lent

February 22, 2015

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water; he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted[a] by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

Jesus Announces the Good News

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

“He was with the wild animals.”  We only get that from Mark’s account of the temptation.  There’s nothing about “wild animals” in Matthew or Luke’s rendering.

Mark’s telling of the story gives us what one might call the “Maurice Sendak” Jesus.  Maurice Sendak, you may recall, was the author and illustrator of a best-loved children’s book titled Where the Wild Things Are.  It features a little boy named Max.  Max dressed in a wolf suit and made mischief.  His mother called him “Wild Thing!”  Max said, “I’ll eat you up.”  So he was sent to bed without his dinner.

In his room, a forest grew.  The walls became the world.  An ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max.  He sailed for almost a year to where the wild things are.  The wild things roared and gnashed their teeth.  They rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.  Max said:  “Be still.”  He tamed them by staring in their yellow eyes without blinking once.  Wild things were frightened.  They called Max the most wild thing of all.  They made him king.  After a rumpus, Max sent the wild things home without any supper.  Max, then, was lonely.  He wanted to be where he was loved best.  The wild things didn’t want him to go.  They said:  “Please don’t go; we’ll eat you up we love you so.”  Max said, “No.”  He sailed back to his own room.  He found his supper, and it was still hot.

Daydream or not, it is a wonderful thing to make your way home, to that place where the people love you best, to where you might find your supper still hot.  There you find your love, your privacy, your nourishment.  Without those precious gifts, you are vulnerable to attack; you are prone to temptation. 

Your journey through this world – mine too! – is something of a wilderness.  We’re not quite sure what’s around the next turn:  a smiling face or a wild beast.  We are tempted to seek an easier or softer way.  We work hard to get into a regular rhythm – which includes, but is not limited to, the habit of going to church.  We hope for our eight hours of sleep, those three square meals a day, and for the refuge of a roof over our heads at night and a comfortable bed to sleep in.  What’s your sleep number?  It’s not too much to ask, we may think.  Forty days in a wilderness, alone, with little if any food?  Well, that’s unfair; that’s sad; that’s not right; that’s not reasonable; that’s not realistic.

Right or wrong, Jesus was there.  It was no fictional daydream.  In Matthew and Luke, it says He was “led by the Spirit” into the wilderness.  Mark’s term is far more graphic; it says that the “Spirit drove Him (lit. “cast” or “throw”) into the wilderness.”  Did He skin His knee or stub his toe? It would appear that no one filed a missing person’s report on Jesus this time.

Years earlier, the ancient Israelites wandered for forty years in the wilderness – and this after four hundred years of slavery.  They followed a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  There were provisions – water from a rock and manna from the sky.  There were fears too – doubts, unbelief, a golden calf, and idolatry.  They had had it up to here with God and with His servant, Moses.

Jesus did the wilderness trip for forty days.  He would appear to be the “new Israel” or “Israel reduced to One.”  Mark says nothing of his frame of mind.  We are only told that He was with the wild beasts.  Satan tempted him, and angels served Him. 

Have you been tempted?  Have you been served or ministered to?  Have wild beasts – in whatever form they may come – lurked around you?  Have you been alone?  Have you felt the hurt of vulnerability and the vulnerability of hurt?  Then you know the “Maurice Sendak” Jesus.  You know where the real wild things are.  Life is not a visit to the zoo where all the wild animals, beasts, and risks are behind cages.  You cannot keep a safe distance from life.

Since this is true, why not live it the Jesus way?  That is, live it through to the end and the next new beginning.  Go at it with banners unfurled.  Turn all of that fear, doubt, unbelief, idolatry over to Jesus.  He made it through the wildnerness; He’s big enough to take it all.  Then take what He has given you, what He has earned for you:  forgiveness, faith toward God, love toward your neighbor. 

In the season of Lent, with the Scriptures as our guide, we follow Jesus to His passion, His crucifixion, to His ultimate wilderness experience (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”), to that place where the angels no longer ministered to Him (that is, His death), to His burial, to His glorious resurrection. 

That is what shall see us through that place where the wild things are.  Even at the worst of it, we may yet get to be a “ministering angel” to serve someone in his or her own wilderness. We know of that which we speak.   With skinned knee, stubbed toe, “Maurice Sendak” Jesus, we’ve been there – where the wild things are.

Amen.