Parish of Llandudno North Wales, Rector's letter

February 2015

According to the first three Gospels the first things Jesus did after his baptism was to go into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Matthew and Luke tell us that the Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness – it all sounds very gentle and normal. But Mark, probably the first Gospel to be written and perhaps nearer to the truth, says something quite different. He says that ‘the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.’ It sounds as if the Lord didn’t really want to go and had to be pushed!

And who came blame Him! Only a fool would voluntarily go into the wilderness. Forget the romance of the film Lawrence of Arabia, the Judean wilderness was not a place any normal person wanted to be. In addition to the physical privations, the desert was also regarded as the dwelling place of demons – it was a place of both physical and spiritual danger, a place not to be trifled with.

But why did Jesus need to go there to be tempted by Satan? To put it another way, he went into the wilderness to come to terms with evil and to sort out in which direction his future ministry would go, to get his priorities right. It was undoubtedly a time of great discomfort and suffering for him. No wonder he had to be driven there, nobody, even the Son of God would relish such an experience.

In Lent we often talk about going into the desert with the Lord. Of course this is only symbolic language. Keeping Lent in the comfort of our homes and church is not really comparable with having to face the dreadful physical privations and spiritual conflict that The Lord had to deal with. And yet, on a much smaller scale, Lent is indeed meant to be a ‘desert experience’, a time in which we open ourselves up to God and thus also to the demons within us; it’s a time for getting to grips with what it really means to be a disciple of the Lord.

In recent years the emphasis when it comes to Lenten disciplines has been more about ‘taking things on’ rather than ‘giving things up’. To do more to help others rather than spending time on introspective devotions.

My view is that both are necessary. If Lent is just about inward looking devotions and doesn’t result in real changes in our behaviour and in the world around us then it is pointless. But by the same token it would be easy to evade the need to grow in prayer and in disciplines of mind and body.

A little like the Lord having to be driven into the wilderness to face his time of spiritual testing and physical danger, I sometimes feel quite ambivalent about entering Lent. As Ash Wednesday approaches part of me is excited about the prospect of keeping this time of special devotion, but at the same time I feel a reluctance to ‘do battle’. It means putting myself out, making an effort – and I suppose that it’s only human to want peace and quiet rather than conflict. Perhaps you feel this ambivalence too.

What we all need to do as we approach Lent is to allow the Spirit of God to lead us or push us into the desert. We won’t accomplish anything worthwhile on our own, we can only do it with his strength. If we can allow the spirit of God to lead us where he wills then this Lent could be a real time of growth and of strengthening in our faith. Our Lenten programme with its times of prayer and devotion and other suggestions as to what we might do are designed to help us to open ourselves up to the Spirit of God in this way.

May I invite you to join with me in the ‘keeping of a holy Lent’ so that when we celebrate the joy of the Resurrection at Easter we will truly have grown as disciples of the Lord.

Fr. John

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