Quick Summary:

Following in the footsteps of his ancestors and the prophets, Jesus moves from a baptism by water in the Jordan to a baptism by fire in the desert. The way Matthew and Luke tell it, Jesus was “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism. But Mark tells us Jesus is DRIVEN by the Spirit into the wilderness.

Israel had spent a whole generation stumbling through the desert and getting tripped up along the way. God provided manna and water, and 10 words to guide their common life, but time and again, those words were rejected, bypassed, or ignored. Three millennia later, we’re not doing much better.
We live in a time when our common life is beginning to feel like an endless slog through wilderness places, the most desolate of which springs from our national obsession with resorting to violence as a means to an end.

At times such as these we need reminding that God’s intention is NOT that we stay in the desert forever. But before we can leave this place, something has to die.