Repairing The Breach

The Hebrew word for anoint, mashach , is where the word ‘Messiah’ comes from. So ‘Jesus, the Messiah’ means, ‘Jesus, the Anointed One’. Jesus is recognised as being empowered and gifted with God’s spirit, in order to carry out his ministry of bringing good news to those in poverty. How then does the experience of ‘wilderness’, both Jesus’ and ours, connect to the work of the Spirit? As noted above, in Mark and Luke, the Spirit both leads Jesus into the wilderness and is present with Jesus in the ordeal. This can be deeply reassuring for all of us, to know that God’s Spirit is with us, guiding us, comforting us, in challenging and lonely places. And because Jesus also experienced this, we can draw further comfort from knowing that God in Christ has been through this as well. Repairing the Breach The experience of wilderness is one that is marked by authenticity, a place where we learn to discern what is central, what must remain, and what is peripheral and thus can be given up. In this way, it is a journey that repairs the breach within our hearts and within our communities; it repairs the rupture brought about by false starts, illusory means of salvation, by shallow and inadequate forms of life. So wilderness is always a part of the journey of faith, the journey to wholeness – it is a path Jesus himself took, guided by God’s spirit, and a path we traverse in a myriad of ways throughout our lives. The following poem is one I wrote during a ‘wilderness’ time in my life, based on the language of Psalm 13. The Other Side - Carol Aust 34