Those of you who are connoisseurs of children’s literature will know that the title of today’s sermon makes reference to two children’s books.  The Please You’ll Go, was the last book published by Dr. Seuss before his death.  Released in 1990, it has become a popular gift for high school students at graduation time.  It describes in inimitable Dr. Seuss style the pitfalls and possibilities of life’s journey:

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, was published in 1963 and was the 1964 Caldecot medal winner for children’s literature.  It describes the fantasy life of a boy named Max, who after terrorizing his family and the family dog while dressed in his wolf costume, is sent to bed without his dinner.  Once in his bedroom, Max sails through days and weeks and years to the place where the wild things are.  The illustrations in this book have been somewhat controversial, because they can seem frightening to some children.  My own children loved to hear these words read aloud about the wild things:  “they roared their terrible roar.  They gnashed their terrible teeth.  The rolled their terrible eyes.  They showed their terrible claws.”

These two titles came to mind as I read Mark’s ever so brief and concise, but wonderfully rich description of Jesus’s time in the wilderness.  If there are connections between biblical literature and children’s literature, it is that both have the capacity to deal with the great dramatic themes of human life:  risk and courage; wilderness and promise; hope and disappointment, peril and possibility.  It seems to me that there is a clear and very significant connection between the time Jesus spent in the wilderness with the wild beasts, and the places he would go once he emerged from this wilderness.  It’s difficult for us to say exactly how this connection unfolded, since we have so little information, really, from the gospel writers.  But I think it could be expressed in several different ways – and any of them hold potential for helping us understand the relationship in our own lives between our wilderness experiences and the pitfalls and possibilities of our own life journeys.

Jesus struggled with his identity in the wilderness:  who am I?
Jesus struggled with his vocation in the wilderness:  for what or whom shall I expend my life?
Jesus struggled with temptations in the wilderness:  what threatens my identity and/or my vocation?

And doesn’t each particular struggle have its own set of beasts which wander about, roaring their terrible roar, and gnashing their terrible teeth, and baring their terrible claws?

The late Henri Nouwen wrote in his own journal during a period when he was struggling with his own spiritual wilderness about the temptations that must be gradually overcome in order to discover true identity:  immediate satisfaction, distracting entertainment, busyness, guilt and worry, self rejection.  When each of these wild things are faced, he writes, “This is a movement toward full incarnation.  It leads you to become what you already are – a child of God; it lets you embody more and more the truth of your being; it makes you claim the God within you.  You are tempted to think that you are a nobody in the spiritual life…but this is a mistake.  You must trust the depth of God’s presence in you and live from there.  This is the way to keep moving toward full incarnation.”  [1]

If we are willing to journey into the wilderness with Jesus – to face our own terrible beasts, we will encounter the terrible roar of this fear:  we fear that we are not good enough to be loved by God.  In facing that beast we discover this:  we are loved by God.  Independently of our own self understanding, God loves us.

Jesus carried into the wilderness the words and the experience of his baptism.  It must be that the assurance received in the presence of the spirit, “You are my beloved,” was a source of strength for the wilderness journey.

When Max encounters the beasts roaring their terrible road and gnashing their terrible teeth and rolling their terrible eyes, and showing their terrible claws, this is what Max does:

He speaks “Be still!” and he stares “without blinking once.”

And the beasts become his friends.  On the spiritual journey, it serves us well to befriend the wild things that live in our own inner places, and stare them down and speak to them this truth:  “I am a beloved child of God.”

There is a clear sense in the gospel that the wilderness time is a time of preparation for Jesus for his own ministry – his vocation of teaching, healing and loving.

The sense of vocation – of living out a call upon our lives that comes from God is a theme throughout the writings of the great spiritual teachers.  But there is always a sense that this vocation is neither discovered, nor lived, without great struggle.  And an abundance of grace.

John Wesley in “A Plan Account of Christian Perfection” gives advice about growing in grace, and this lovely assurance:  “The bottom of the soul may be in repose even while we are in many outward troubles, just as the bottom of the sea is calm, while the surface is strongly agitated.”

Wesley’s key to attaining this kind of spiritual calm is essentially prayer wherein we are to embrace all events as God’s will; that is, as useful for shaping us in the image of Christ.  Time in the solitude of the wilderness can teach us about the kind of prayer of which Wesley speaks.

“Whether we think of or speak to God, whether we act or suffer for God, all is prayer when we have no other object than God’s love and the desire of pleasing God.  All that Christians do, even in eating and sleeping, is a prayer when done with simplicity, according to the order of God… prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed on outward things.  In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer.  As the furious hate the devil bears toward is termed the roaring of a lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.  God only requires of his adult children that their hearts be truly purified and that they offer him continually the wishes and vows that spring from perfect love.”

Jesus comes out of the wilderness to show us what that perfect love looks like when it is employed on outward things.  We do nothing but exhaust ourselves is we attempt the outward things without the inward discipline of prayer.

Mark does not elaborate as the other gospel writers do, about the nature of the temptations that Jesus faces in his wilderness time, but we know that there are temptations – especially for those who are seeking to be faithful.

It is likely that every human encounters wilderness times on their own journey.  Whether driven by the spirit of God to encounter wilderness, or thrown unexpectedly into it by the randomness of life’s unfolding nature, we may at any time find ourselves feeling lost, threatened, and outright terrified.  As grown ups, of course, we are not supposed to admit that, but Dr. Seuss warns us about these lonely times.


Lent invites us to embark intentionally on a wilderness journey, that we might invite God to prepare us for the times when we don’t want to go on, but know that we must.
In the text, there is another thing that strikes me – which I had never paid particular attention to in any previous reading of this text.  Where the wild things are – there are also the angels – the consoling, comforting, ministering agents of God’s love.
Dr. Seuss’s poem is really about a lonely kind of journey.  As endings go, I like the sense of consolation and connection that is present for Max.
When he sails back through the years and weeks and days and the night, and is again at home in his bedroom, there is his dinner, on the table for him, and still warm.

Wherever we go on our own journey; whatever wild things we must encounter and stare down and still with our inner voices; whatever days and weeks and years and dark nights we must travel through, whenever we return here…the bread of life and the cup of God’s new covenant with us are prepared, waiting for us to come to the table.

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[1] from The Inner Voice of Love:  A Journey through Anguish to Freedom; New York:  Doubleday, 1996.  pp.  51-52.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geiss); Random House, 1990.

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, Harper and Row, 1963.