Jesus and the Wild Beasts: Lent and Good Company
In preparing to create a five-part series of worship visuals at Immanuel this Lent, I was reading the passage from Mark that will be preached the first Sunday:
“ The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”- Mark 1:9-15
I’ve read this passage countless times, and seen countless images of Jesus, utterly alone or in a one-on-one show-down with Satan on a windswept cliff.
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the words, “And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.”
He was with the wild animals.
Christ in the Wilderness. Painted by Moretto de Bescia
In my own, and I would venture Western individualistic, imagination, I see Jesus preparing for his ministry in silence, fasting, solitude, and prayer. I’ve never pictured him watching a lizard scuttle under a rock to escape a hungry eagle. I’ve never included in my sacred memory Jesus watching a kangaroo rat and contemplating how to continue even in his thirst.
Christ in the Wilderness: The foxes have holes by Stanley Spencer
English painter Stanley Spencer did. I only recently discovered his series of paintings created after a time Spencer experienced relational explosion/expulsion and painful wandering.
In what ended up being a much smaller collection(8 instead of his original dream of 40), Spencer explores Jesus’ context that while empty of human companionship, was full of animals and plants and insects:
“Christ in the Wilderness – The Scorpion” , 1939, Stanley Spencer, (1891 -1959), Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (?).
“Christ in the Wilderness -The Hen”, Stanley Spencer c. 1954, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Stanley Spencer, Christ in the Wilderness: The Eagle, 1943
Stanley Spencer, Christ in the Wilderness: Consider the Lilies (1939)
Spencer found great solace in envisioning Christ on the days the Bible does not record: “'I did ... forty little squares and then filled in as many as I could with how Christ may have spent each day, the great adventure all by himself with leaves and trees and mud and rabbits and rocks, just as I was having among two chairs, a bed, a fireplace and a table.”
“In the Christ in the Wilderness series Spencer focuses on the solitary figure of Christ, emphasising Christ's isolation from mankind at this time and his closeness instead to the world of animals and plants. In all eight completed paintings and the preliminary drawings the figure of Christ fills the frame. This close encounter with the body of Christ forces us to acknowledge also Christ's engagement with the sensuality of nature - be it hens, flowers, stone or scorpions - which ultimately enabled his emotional journey to a point of calmness where he could experience the 'spirituality of solitude'. “
-Melissa Harpley, in Modern Britain 1900-1960: Masterworks from Australian and New Zealand Collections, National Gallery of Victoria, exhibition catalogue, pp. 160-161.
“Jesus With the Creatures,” by Laura James
Artist Laura James draws on Ethiopian imagery to capture the same scene in a colorful vision of peace. In contrast to Lenten images of barren wastelands, artists like Spencer and James remind us that even in wilderness, Jesus had good company—both in the spiritual realm and in the community of critters.
People with much more knowledge of Scripture, its languages and contexts have wonderful deep dives into the theological implications of Jesus hanging out with ravens and hoopoes (See Bible Project’s episode, “Jesus With the Wild Beasts” about Jesus as the new Adam and New Testament Professor Matt Skinner’s commentary on how Jesus’ presence amongst wild animals fulfilled prophetic texts, for example).
However, for me, what has struck me in the words, he was with the wild animals, is not its heraldry of cosmic reign a-la-”Joy to the World,” but the quiet belonging, the giving and receiving I imagine as the Creator of the Desert became, if temporarily, one of its residents.
In Wendell Berry’s novel about barber, observer, and loyal lover Jayber Crow, Crow muses,
“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”
The membership of all that is here. I don’t know about you but I feel this sentence deep in my chest. This Lenten season, I want to join Jesus in the wilderness, not only in his soul-searching and slowing but also in his nearness to the wild things, to his contemplation of the community of non-human beings.
Elisa mentioned the other day that she wished the Bible didn’t say, “The Kingdom of God,” because, “What about queens?”
We talked about why the “kingdom of God” was an important choice on Jesus’ part because it was a politically loaded phrase that challenged the legitimacy of Cesar as Lord. But, I also told Elisa about the decolonized phrase, “the kin-dom of God” (Diana Butler-Bass has a wonderful article about the use of the phrase at Red Letter Christians).
Basically, “kin-dom” theology suggests that God’s reign is not only in opposition to empire, but an entirely new order of reality that is much more like an ecosystem, a familia. I’d like to believe that this also includes the wild beasts and the places in which they can teach us.
Three resources stand out to me this season as we seek to repent of the ways we’ve ruined shalom with God, ourselves, each other, and creation.
I read Arma’s Abuelita Faith and found it to be healing and deeply empowering. This Lent, I’m hoping to use Sacred Belonging as my daily quiet time. From the back cover, “"An invitation into a deep, expansive, and healing way of encountering Scripture…highlighting biblical passages that point toward decolonized themes centered on creation, wisdom, spirit, the body, and the feminine, Armas helps us see how Scripture directs us to live a liberated faith--a faith where we belong to God, the earth, and one another.”
Similarly, I devoured Gayle Boss’ Advent devotional, All Creation Waits and want to sit with Wild Hope as a family I mean, look at this description:
“Lent,” at its root, means “spring,” a time for our stiff hearts to thaw and open to a fuller compassion. From polar bears to pangolins, animals magnificent, delicate, and intricate are vanishing at a rate faster than at any time in Earth’s history. In Wild Hope, vivid stories of 25 of these wild ones wake in us wonder—and grief at what they suffer on a planet shaped by human choices. Their stories also wake in us a wild hope that from all this death and ruin something new might rise. The promise of Lent is that something new will rise. In fact, as their stories attest, that Wild Hope is already loose in the world. Twenty-five original woodcuts by award-winning illustrator David G. Klein convey the magnificence and beauty of each creature.”
Pixabay/Dimitris Vetsikas
Finally, I’m stirred by biblical scholar Collin Cornell’s reflection on including non-human creatures in our mandate to love our neighbors (“How to Pray the Lord’s Prayer With All Creatures”).
Today after school, Elisa was in tears—home sick yesterday and back to school today but depleted. We walked home heavy with things that happened between friends and thinking the rest of the evening was shot with negativity and frustration.
Suddenly, we saw a hawk wheeling overhead. It went out of sight, and we took a few more steps. It swung back above us, close enough to see its striped tail. We watched it circle like a kite, spiraling without ever flapping its wings. We heard it call when another bigger hawk turned it back toward its home tree.
All of the tears evaporated. Both of our shoulders relaxed. For a moment, we were members, we were kin, and we were with the wild animals.
This Lent, I’m planning on fasting from scrolling, something I’ve done a few times before—helpful but not revolutionary by any means. In addition, though, beginning tomorrow, I want to add the spiritual practice of watching, touching, drawing, writing about, listening to or praying for the company Jesus kept:our little brothers and sisters with fins, feathers, and fur.
