Forty is a symbolic number in Israel’s story: the great flood lasts forty days and forty nights; Moses spends forty days and forty nights on the mountain of God; Israel wanders for forty years in the wilderness; King David reigns for forty years; the prophet Elijah travels forty days and forty nights in the wilderness on his way to the mountain of God.
The wilderness is ever so real and at the same time symbolic. In Israel’s story, it is the place of testing for God’s people: ‘ Remember the long way that your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness… testing you to know what was in your heart’ (Deut 8:2). In Luke’s account, the ‘devil’ becomes the instrument of God’s testing. In each instance, the test is expressed in terms of Jesus’ relationship to God: ‘If you are the son of God….’ The Lukan Jesus passes the tests that the people of Israel have failed in the wilderness of Sinai. He refuses the way of special favour from God, the way of status or self-aggrandizement. He is prepared to suffer whatever it takes to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world. In other words, he chooses the way of God’s Empire rather than the way of the brutal Roman Empire. Jesus demonstrates that he is indeed ‘of God’.
Most people of faith would agree that being ‘of God’ right now has more than a little to do with the way we relate to earth’s human and other-than human inhabitants, the value we ascribe to earth’s precious resources, and the respect we show for life through our responsible use of those resources. In this context, Lent and wilderness take on a whole new meaning.