“The desert offers us the chance to live out the Gospel, if not perfectly, then concretely and, as much as humanly possible, fully.”
Towards the end of my sermon on Pentecost Sunday (5/19), I addressed the topic of idolatry in 1st century (AD) Asia Minor and in 21st century America. I said:
“Worshipping false gods was a very live issue in the Roman Empire in the 1st century and beyond, since the Roman state sought to blend religion and politics, first with Roman ‘pagan’ religion, and then with Christianity. In the first three centuries, Christians were encouraged to worship the emperor as a god and participate in public pagan rituals in homage to other gods. After the conversion of Constantine in 312 AD, the situation changed, but not by much.
While Christians ceased to be persecuted and martyred on account of their faith, they were encouraged to adopt a politically shaped faith, which was precisely what they were asked to adopt before. Christianity became so blended with imperial power that priests, bishops, and patriarchs functioned more as diplomats and politicians than as prophets, disciples, and church planters.
Idolatry ceased to be “worshipping the image of Caesar or Jupiter” and began to be “worshipping the idea of the Holy Roman Empire” (i.e., a Christian nation). Over time, theological debates ensued which in retrospect seem more political than theological. Some Christians tried to escape such politicized faith, setting up camp in the desert to live lives of authentic devotion to Christ.”
Now, I could devote a whole series of posts to the politicization of Christianity in the late Roman Empire (post-325 AD). However, in this post, what I’d like to address is that final line:
“Some Christians tried to escape such politicized faith, setting up camp in the desert to live lives of authentic devotion to Christ.”
These would be the monks. And while monks proliferated throughout Palestine, Syria, Persia, and beyond, my focus is on the monks of Egypt, thought by many to be the pioneers of the monastic tradition and lifestyle.
I was recently made aware of a beautiful little book by the esteemed Coptic historian Tim Vivian, entitled: Journeying into God: Seven Early Monastic Lives (Fortress Press, 1996). The book is by no means new and includes texts that are upwards of 1600 years old! However, the wisdom contained in these early monastic biographies is uncanny in its relevance to our present moment, especially in the United States.
Vivian begins: “Jesus was the first monk–at least according to Saint Euthymius… Each year on the Epiphany, in the East the feast day of Christ’s baptism, Euthymius would follow his Lord’s example (Mt. 4:1-11) and go off into the far reaches of the desert, where he would remain until Palm Sunday… For Euthymius, and thousands of other Christians in the fourth through seventh centuries, monasticism was, literally, the following of Jesus Christ.”
Monasticism as a phenomenon, however, is tragically misunderstood by many in the modern West.
It is often described (pejoratively) as a decisive break with the world, an attempt to escape from society’s ills (as opposed to helping resolve them), an anti-social (selfish) rejection of life with other human beings. However, it must be remembered (as Vivian so helpfully points out) that the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, deliberately and decisively took up the monastic cause.
The famous story of Jesus’s “wilderness wanderings” (Matt. 4:1-11 and parallels) comes immediately after his baptism in the Jordan by John. When read intertextually –with an eye toward the many OT texts and themes invoked by the NT– it becomes clear that Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan, especially in Matthew’s Gospel, is meant to mimic or re-enact Israel’s crossing of the Jordan and their settlement of the Promised Land.
In the OT, this Jordan river crossing comes after the people’s wilderness wanderings. In the Gospels, however, the order is switched.
Just as Joshua (Yehoshua in Hebrew; Iēsous in Greek) began his official career at Israel’s Jordan river crossing in Joshua 1 & 3, Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew; Iēsous in Greek) experienced a similar commissioning at his baptism in the Jordan in Matthew 3:13-17.
The first thing Jesus does after being commissioned as the new (and better) Joshua is go into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. In Matt. 4:1 we read that it was the Holy Spirit who led him into the desert, meaning that God willed it to be so.
Other figures throughout Scripture spend considerable time in the desert.
Abraham, of course, journeys through the land of Canaan (moving from the northernmost tip down south) all the way to the Negev (the southernmost desert region) and beyond to Egypt. The sons of Jacob journey through a famine-stricken Canaan down to Egypt, where they’d remain for 430 years.
Moses was deep in the wilderness when he was commissioned by God at the burning bush. The people of Israel spent their first 40 years of freedom (from Egyptian captivity) in the wilderness of Sinai. It was in the desert that God gave Israel Torah (on Mt. Horeb).
Moving forward several hundred years, David fled Saul’s pursuit for nearly seven years, writing some of his most eloquent Psalms in the arid desert of southern Israel. Elijah was fed by God’s hand (via ravens) in the wilderness of Gilead, experienced an existential crisis in a “desert place,” and met the “still, small” presence of YHWH in the wilderness of Sinai.
Many passages can be found in the major and minor prophets which speak of God making a way in the wilderness, causing streams of water to gush forth in the desert, creating an oasis and new Eden in the desolate regions, which would become home for the monks of later centuries.
The desert (or wilderness), therefore, holds a prominent place in the entire Biblical story. It is the place where people leave the trappings and distractions of sinful society, and often end up meeting with God.
Vivian goes on: “The monks of Mount Athos in Greece still refer to their way of life as that of the desert… That desert is and is not our own, can and will never be our own. It is, after all, a place and a time, both distant, both subject to the glories and infirmities of all time and every place, our own included.
That time and place in the early desert must not be idealized. The desert was, conspicuously, inhabited more by demons than angels. Perhaps finally that is what the desert still offers us, and what we most need: to see our demons, to confront them, and finally through love, prayer, humility, and sacrifice, to overcome them.”
Vivian then states what I believe is one of the most poignant lines ever written about the desert:
“The desert offers us the chance to live out the Gospel, if not perfectly, then concretely and, as much as humanly possible, fully.”
It must be said at this point that desert monks, such as those described by Vivian, were not all hermits, that is: solitary monks who lived alone in cells far away from other human beings. Early Egyptian monasticism has bequeathed to us not only these hermetic personalities but also the possibility of communal (coenobitic) monastic life.
Such communities of monks, living together, eating together, working together, and of course praying together, may comprise the most counter-imperial, non-politicized Christianity the late ancient world had ever seen. And such deliberate, focused, authentic devotion is of the utmost relevance to an American Christianity which teeters on (both sides on) the edge of becoming yet another imperial religion.
Like the monastics of Roman Egypt, American Christians must reject the idolatry of imperial religion of any kind. Christians after 325 AD were urged to adopt a politically-shaped faith which became an idol of power and glory to all living in the “Holy” Roman Empire.
Like the monastics of the fourth century and beyond, we must recognize the idolatry of our times, and must choose the desert like our Savior Jesus did.
By “choose the desert,” I do not mean we must up-and-leave physically or geographically. Nor do I mean we must reject all aspects of civilization and development.
By “choose the desert,” I mean rejecting the trappings and deceptions of politicized religion of all kinds, and committing to lives of authentic devotion to our (desert) Savior Jesus Christ.
Jonah Bissell
Pastor