Jesus by Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola

Author:Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2018-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Desert: Self-Awareness

The desert is the place where you go to find yourself . . . and to find something in yourself.

Jesus, the Son of God, knew a double kenosis, a double “emptying.”118 Once in the incarnation. Once on the cross. In the first kenosis Jesus came down, all the way down, even down to the point of washing His disciples’ feet, which was as far down as any rabbi had ever gone in the history of Judaism.

In the second kenosis, on the cross, Jesus refused to come down. He refused to come down from the cross, and on the crossbeams Jesus united us vertically to His Father and horizontally to one another and the world.

Jesus refused to come down from the deserts of pain, suffering, rejection, abandonment, and failure. He “humbled Himself . . . to the point of death,” on a cross.119

Even after you find the right and righteous path, you will trip along the way. And sometimes you trip and fall to the point where you need to start over. We also need to learn how to start over, not replicate past success. Humility is needed to continually start over fresh. We need a proper humility about ourselves. We need a proper humility about each other. We need a proper humility about God. We need a proper humility about holy things: “We hold these truths in earthen vessels.”120

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Behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.

—GOD TO NOAH 121

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When you are starting afresh or starting over, you need the desert. The desert teaches humility: it is harsh, is barren, and covers a large part (one-fifth) of our planet. It also covers a large part of our souls.

When the Bible says Jesus sought a “deserted place,” the phrase is sometimes used as a metaphor for the relational places of silence and solitude. But sometimes it means an actual desert, a wilderness.122 In the story of the temptation of Jesus, the Greek word for “desert” is heremon, which can mean either a quiet place, a place apart, or a place in the Negev. The Judean desert is less like the Sahara desert and more like the South Dakota badlands, or the surface of Mars.

The most dangerous time in a person’s life is when riding the crest of a wave. After He was baptized, Jesus went up into the desert, where He fasted for forty days and then was tempted by satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended Him.

Deserts impose asceticisms like fasting, and desert conditions enforce the rigors and restraints of solitude. Austerity is unique to the desert, affording the chance to wipe the slate clean and strip away the unnecessary. Deserts clarify (no waste of words, actions, or energy in the desert), purify (exposing our sins and detoxifying our souls), and sanctify (enabling us to be “called again” by God beyond the dark and doubt).

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