When Worlds Collide

"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness" - Luke 4:1-13

I just can’t read this passage of scripture without allowing my mind to run wild with imagination about how this interaction took place. I wonder what it would have felt like to watch as angels collectively held their breath, hearts pounding as they watched this scene unfold. Like two heavyweight boxers touching gloves in the center of the ring before a championship bout. You can taste the suspense. It’s almost unbearable. And then one of them speaks…

A similar scene played out in one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. Hook was a Peter Pan reboot that determined to tell the story from a new perspective. In this story, Hook, the antagonist, has kidnapped and imprisoned Peter Pan’s children. In Hook’s diabolical mind, the only way to get his arch nemesis to engage him is to attack his kids. The plan works. Predictably, Peter makes the journey from his world to Hook’s world – from earth to a fantasy land – to confront Hook face to face. Peter has entered Hook’s world where, in Peter’s absence, Hook has gained the upper hand. Peter is now in enemy territory, standing on Hook’s ship, walking straight into Hook’s trap. The table is set just as Hook had hoped.

Except, Peter looks nothing like Hook is expecting. In fact, he’s more Peter than Pan at this point, having grown up in the real world where time is aging and forever is a pipedream. And as Hook looks at Peter, he tries to analyze what is in front of him. He stares in disbelief at this form in front of him, as if he doesn’t know quite how to take this version of Peter, that is so different than the one he knew before. He can scarcely believe it is the same person while at the same time resigning himself to the reality that this truly is his enemy of old. But how? He expected Peter the Pan and instead is face to face with Peter the lawyer.

His curiosity about the man in front of him is overwhelming. He is both perplexed and confused. So, in desperation he puts Peter through a sort of test, demanding that he fly and offering to release his children if he will simply drop the charade and float over to them as he had done in days long forgotten by most. But Peter cannot fly, or simply will not, Hook does not know for sure. And in frustration Hook commands his subordinates to kill Peter and cancel the war as this is not the worthy opponent he had been expecting.

This is what I want you to think about when you read Luke 4:1-13. This is the story of Jesus in the wilderness. When preached, this story is usually robbed of most of its supernatural implications. Jesus did not go to the wilderness to escape people or have peace and quiet or to simply fast. With a proper understanding of the role wilderness plays in Jewish history and spirituality, one stumbles upon another, more compelling reason that Jesus would have decided to head straight from baptism into the wilderness. I’ll let Mike Heiser explain:

“In the temptation narratives Jesus confronts Satan in the wilderness. In Luke 8:29 we are told that the Gerasene demoniac was driven into the desert by a demon. And in Matthew 12:43-45 and its parallel Luke 11:24-26 the unclean spirit who has been cast out “passes through waterless places.” These texts are illumined by the Jewish belief that the wilderness, being beyond the bounds of society, is the haunt of evil spirits (see Lev 16:10; Isa 13:21; 1 Enoch 10:4-5; Tob 8:3, 4; 4 Macc 18:8; 2 Apoc. Bar. 10:8). The idea dominated later Christian monasticism. (D.C. Allison Jr., “Mountain and Wilderness,” Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992], 565)”

The wilderness was Satan’s turf. Jesus, upon coming up out of the water through John the Baptist’s baptism, walks straight into Satan’s territory and by doing so sets the stage for an epic confrontation with his arch nemesis, the former Angel of Light, Lucifer.

Like Peter standing on Hook’s ship while throngs of his minions looked on, Jesus is standing in front of Lucifer. Like Hook, Lucifer has placed Jesus’s children in bondage – kidnapped them in a petty attempt to cause pain to their father. An act of hatred. An act of war. Baiting their father to act.

Except, like Peter, Jesus does not look like the fire-eyed Angel of the Lord that Lucifer remembers. No, like Peter, he appears to be just a man. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). The Angel of the Lord, the Word of the Lord, the second Yahweh, the all-powerful firstborn of creation was now simply…Jesus of Nazareth. And like Hook, Satan stares hard in disbelief at the unexpected, underwhelming, very ordinary-looking man standing before him.

And he is perplexed, confused, and curious. So, like Hook, he asks Jesus to perform. You know the story - he puts Jesus through three different tests, just to figure out what this guy is capable of. He tempts Jesus to activate the powers he wonders if Jesus still has. Can Jesus still fly? Is this Peter Pan or just plain old Peter? Is this the Son of Yahweh, or just Jesus? What exactly happened when Peter Pan the boy became a real man? What happened when God became a real human? Is there really a Pan somewhere inside this lawyer? Is God really inside this human?

We take this for granted. We know the end of the story so we minimize the genuine shock and confusion that would have existed in that moment. We have the benefit of being an audience who knows the end of the movie. But just for a moment, pretend you don’t know how this story plays out. Allow yourself to be Hook, expecting a Pan and stumbling upon a Peter.

Do not gloss over this. Do not allow yourself to minimize this into a Sunday School story where Satan fancifully floats Jesus around to tempt him and then leaves. This was an event that sent shockwaves through time and space. For in this moment, the once faithful general turned cosmic rebel stood, for the first time, face to face with the God of the universe fully in human form. God had left his own realm and stepped into ours. His children had been kidnapped and He had come to rescue them. And to signal His intent, He walked straight into the enemy’s camp and made His intentions known. Except, unlike in the movie, Jesus has made the reverse trip. He has left the fantasy land in the supernatural world and entered our world, where time was aging and forever was a pipe dream. He who was the greatest of them all, had made Himself small.

He would not bend, He would not bow, He would not allow Himself to be shielded by His position. “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (Philippians 2:6).

The God who had many times appeared in human form had now been formed as a human.

The one who was timeless had bound himself by time to save those of us who were running out of it.

Jesus had come.

And now He was standing face to face with the one who enslaved His children. And this is why the angels held their breath, and struggled to keep their hearts from racing, and watched in silent curiosity – because the Promised One had come, the rescuer had arrived, the King had returned.

And nothing, not humiliation, not grief, not immense pain the likes of which no human has ever experienced, would keep him from His children. No, He would not fly. Instead, He would die.

But on this day, in the wilderness of Israel, in the forgotten outskirts of the Roman Empire, Heaven would collide with earth and Jesus would announce to the spirit realm that things were about to change forever. Our redemption was drawing near. Our worlds had collided.