He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;
and the angels waited on him.
Winston Churchill once said, “If you're going through hell, keep going.
Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.
The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She'd barely said “hello” when “swwwooooooooooppppppppp!” Chippie got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie—still alive, but stunned.
Since the bird was covered with dust and dirt, she grabbed the little bird and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do...she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.
Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.
A few days after the trauma, the reporter from the Galveston Press who had initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the parakeet was recovering.
“Well,” she replied, “Chippie doesn't sing much anymore—he just sits and stares.”1
The unfortunate story of Chippie the Parakeet has been told and retold by preachers and motivational speakers—who are not always the same people, by the way—for many years now. I can picture poor Chippie as each calamity arrived so quickly, so unexpectedly—the tornado and then the dust storm, the monsoon rain and then the hurricane—all of it leaving little Chippie less than chipper. On his perch, the parakeet tends just to sit there and stare. Poor, poor Chippie. The storms of life had stolen his song.
We can be sucked in, washed up, and blown over by life, too. None of us is immune from calamity. It crawls in under the cover of cancer, slithers forward with a smile on its face and then, at just the right moment, strikes with fangs and poisons so painful we cannot even find the breath to scream. It shakes our hands and twists our financial arms behind our backs so fast we are trapped. We can only sit and stare. Somewhere through the wild storms, our songs may be silenced, too.
The wildness experience of life is an equal-opportunity employer; none of us completely escapes. Jesus walked his lonesome valleys; he hungered in the wilderness; he questioned God's reasons--and so shall we: Why God? Have you forsaken me? Why that traumatic childhood abuse; why that difficult diagnosis; why the loss of love or the loss of my loved one; why trials and tribulation; why such insidious temptation coming at me to gain what I should not possess; why did I eat of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; why not trade all my sufferings upon a tree of sorrow?
So it was that when the Hasidim pilgrims vied for those among them who had endured the most suffering, who was the most entitled to complain, the Zaddck told them the story of the Sorrow Tree. On the Day of Judgment each person will be allowed to hang one's unhappiness and sufferings on the branches of the great Tree of Sorrows. After all have found a limb from which their miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each person is to search for a set of sufferings that he or she would prefer to those he or she has hung on the tree.
In the end, each one freely chooses to reclaim his or her own assortment of sorrows rather than those of another. Each person leaves the Tree of Sorrows wiser than when he or she arrived.2
Mark expends very little space to Jesus' temptation in the wilderness—thirty-three words!--when Matthew gives six verses. Does this mean that Mark is disinterested in the wilderness part of Jesus' journey? Is he more eager to just get on with the healing and teachings of Jesus? We might be tempted to draw this conclusion and give the whole “Temptation of Jesus” episode the same amount of brain power as it takes in the time to read verses 12 and 13. However, that would be a mistake. Mark does consider the wilderness temptations extremely important, just examine the language he uses.
Jesus didn't happily walk into the wilderness, drying his hair from the river and wondering where he would spend the night. This wilderness test was not just another item on Jesus' to-do list. Mark says the Spirit “drove him out” immediately! I see pushing and shoving, jabbing with sharp weapons in those words. In “Tempted by Satan,” I see relentless and harsh spiritual battering of the Lord, bruising him, bearing down on him without one break in the severity of Satan's salacious temptations, so that Jesus could barely catch his breath let alone gather his wits about him.
Picture it: Jesus has the driving Spirit and Satan, too, but then Mark adds the detail of wild beasts—I see saber-toothed evil around every rock and behind every bush, waiting to pounce hard and heavy with one intent only: to devour Jesus. Wild beasts in the ancient world were often considered the harborers of demons unleashed and frenetic, roaring and warring. The only comfort Jesus had came from angels who waited on him—maybe they dressed his wounds, but they could not prevent him from being wounded. And for 40 days, the Lord's pains and sorrows collected in one long chain of misery. Jesus was going through hell the whole time, yet he kept on going. He didn't stop, sit and stare. Jesus loaded up his sorrows and marched out into the wildness of civilization, to do what God sent the Son here to do: not to condemn the world—not to steal its song and end its life—but to save the world.
Satan and the wild beasts may have thrown everything possible at Jesus to break his spirit, end his mission and thwart God's plan for humanity; but in the end, Satan failed; he could not steal the Savior's song.
Sin can steal our song like nothing else. We are vulnerable, but we are not to give up; we are created for great things, not to spend the rest of our days sitting and staring, chirping out a note once in a while.
We all will travel in and out of songless wildernesses, yet shall we triumph, We all are vulnerable to the world's devils, yet we shall triumph. We all are prone to temptation, YET, triumph we shall because that is God's plan of salvation for us through faith in his Son, Jesus our Christ, who died on the cross, the ultimate tree of sorrow.
Jesus--taking all our sins and sorrows upon himself—was hung on that tree; he died on in our place so that we may live to sing God's praises not just for another day, but for forever.
The journey to the Tree of Sorrow is the purpose of the season of Lent; no matter how sucked in, washed up and blown over we may physically or spiritually be, Jesus has saved us from a silent and certain death. How can we keep from singing? We are wiser for taking this Lenten journey to the Sorrow Tree. Now we know that there will come the day, one glorious, triumphant day, when “poor, poor” Satan will be the one who never knew what hit him. Amen.
February 26, 2012
First Parish Federated Church of South Berwick, Maine
The Reverend Donna Lee Muise, Pastor
1Lucado, Max. In the Eye of the Storm: A Day in the Life of Jesus. Nashville, TN. 1991, p 11.
2Cavanaugh, Brian. TOR, The Sower's Seeds found at www.inspirationalstories.com.
