Wild Beasts and Whatnot

This  year in Lent, we are considering our Wandering Hearts. How we start off in one direction, and yet…….end up somewhere we never intended.
Like the speaker in today’s reading from Psalm 25.  Verse 3 of the Contemporary English version which we heard today reads: Don't disappoint any of your worshipers, but disappoint all deceitful liars.  Hebrew Scholar Robert Alter translates this verse as: “Yes, let all who hope in you be not shamed. Let the treacherous be shamed, empty-handed.”
The speaker begins this song with offering their heart to God, trusting themself to God, asking not to be shamed or defeated.  In this worldview of Jesus’s culture, as I understand it, there was a spectrum when it came to social status, and the two ends of the spectrum were honor—or to have high social status —and shame–to be at the lowest end of the social status.  So to be shamed would be to be defeated within the community and one’s society.  
The speaker in today’s Psalm begins this poetical journey with placing their trust, and therefore their lives, and their hearts into God’s control. The speaker seems to deeply desire to follow Love’s Ways, and the speaker knows the source of wisdom: Love itself. And yet……..Let the treacherous be shamed, empty handed.
The speaker also seems to have a fairly strong hold on God, whom I will name as Love, and Love’s traits throughout the psalm; they seem to know who and what Love is, naming Love as wisdom, Truth, trustworthy, compassionate, patient, kind, honest, faithful, merciful, a Teacher.  And yet……..Let the treacherous be shamed, empty-handed.”
This poet and speaker of the Psalm is asking God—is asking Love—to make certain folx “the other.”  Even as deeply embedded as they are in Love, having proclaimed Love as merciful and compassionate, this speaker still wants Love to be unmerciful and unloving to certain folx. You know…….  “Just the ones who deserve it.”
How human is this Psalm, right? The Psalms, after all, are not songs written by God for us humans, but they are songs written by humans—prayers, if you will, to God.  And within them we find nuggets of wisdom about God and absolute disasters of descriptions of God.  Let the treacherous, be shamed, empty-handed. 
That word: treacherous—just who is the Psalmist talking about? Is it the enemies they have already written about: don’t….let enemies defeat me? 
The Hebrew word for treacherous here is about faithlessness, the unfaithful, those who betray or abandon. So I am hearing the Psalmist tell God how to respond to people who are not as faithful as he.  And the speaker is declaring there should be a difference in Love’s behavior: Let those who follow you be on the honor end of the spectrum while those who do not follow fall into shame.  Let them be empty-handed. Without.
And here’s the danger of the Bible. If we hold this Psalm as “God’s word,” meaning God is speaking to  us, we can land with the understanding that this is actually what God does.  That God does leave the treacherous shamed and empty-handed. And that’s good and right and true. And Biblical.
I saw a meme this week that read:
Two people read the same Bible. One sees reasons to love. The other reasons to hate.
One sees unity. The other division.
One finds prejudice. The other equality.
One discovers compassion. The other, indifference.
One goodwill. The other malice.
Two people. One Book.
One book. Two views.
The Bible is a mirror.
The reflection is  you.
Ouch! But, it can be so true, right? We can pick up the Bible and read it, and if we are the reflection, the Bible is going to end up agreeing with us. Our prejudices, our likes. This is how we can end up asking God—who is mercy and compassion—to go ahead and be merciless to certain folx. And not only do we think it is okay if God is merciless to those folx, we can then go on and convince ourselves that we can be merciless as well.
I hear today’s Gospel story in Mark as a corrective for those followers who want a merciful God to be unmerciful to certain people, and a corrective for thinking and wanting God to be a relentless judge and punisher. After all, as Richard Rohr says, Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God.
In today’s Gospel story, we have Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism, and then his 40 days of wandering in the wilderness and the start of his ministry, just in seven verses, no less. Mark is succinct; he doesn’t spell out the “temptations” of Ha Satan in specifics like Matthew and Luke do.  Ha Satan, (a.k.a Satan) in Greek means “adversary, opponent, enemy”  Satan, as I understand this concept, is not an entity—a red dude with a pitchfork or a malevolent being that swoops in on a black cape. Satan is anything that opposes Love, anything that is an adversary or enemy to Love’s ways.
So here’s Jesus, newly activated to ministry by his baptism, but the first thing the Holy Spirit does is push him out into the wilderness where this human Christ has only God, only Love,  to rely on. We can almost hear Jesus mutter the Psalmist’s words: “I offer you, my heart, God, and I trust in you.” Because in the wilderness, that’s all we got.
And then Mark offers an interesting detail that no other Gospel has: Jesus was with the wild beasts.   Both Matthew and Mark tell  us angels ministered to Jesus or served Jesus at the end of the 40 days, but only Mark has this detail about the “wild beasts.” So, of course, that made me wonder: Just what are these “wild beasts.”  Wild animals of some sort? In the Greek, wild animals is a good translation. But, there is another possibility, another translation for this Greek word for “wild beast.” “A brute; a brutish man,” but the word is plural, so brutish humans.
Hmmmm, there’s another story in Scripture when humans were wandering, having only God to rely on, and lived among the animals. You find it in the first chapters of Genesis; we call it the Garden of Eden. And what changed those animals, those humans, from right living to brutish ways of being is when humanity chose to go their own way instead of walking in God’s ways. 
Beloved, I am hearing  in this 40 day wilderness adventure of Jesus’, what could be an apt description of what it was like for the Christ to come into this world: A human, who is filled with Love and Love’s power, walking among brutish humans, getting tempted to turn from Love, to join up with vengeance, anger, self-centeredness, greed and power, tempted to make sure those beasts in his way become shamed and empty-handed, but this Love-filled human chooses to stay on Love’s path. At personal expense. With real cost. 
Here’s the thing: Mark tells us Jesus was with the wild beasts. What is not in this story is that Jesus defeated the wild beasts or proved the wild beasts to be wrong or beat the wild beasts or killed the wild beasts or sent them away empty-handed. Jesus simply went on—letting angels serve him. Probably binding up the wounds the wild beasts left.
That’s it. We are all on this wilderness journey; tempted along the way to jump off Love’s path—to give into our self-interests at the cost of the Common Good, to seek honor and power at the expense of our neighbor, to fill our pockets to overflowing even if it causes drought and death. Like Jesus we find ourselves among brutish humans.  At times, we find ourselves to be those brutish humans.
But, Beloved, let us not forget: angels are everywhere. Love’s messengers are a plenty, Look around—-right here in this room, in our neighborhoods, in our city—and they come to our aid, to bind our wounds, to make the cost of living Love out loud with our lives endurable, bearable, more than worth it. 
I can’t help but think of another story; so following in Jesus’ footsteps, I will tell it and leave it there for us to ponder. You probably already know it; It’s a story of our country’s Indigenous people, specifically, the Cherokee Nation. A different tradition than our own, and yet, we share this Gospel Truth:
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
The grandfather continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”