Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

The wilderness is literally a wild place. The semi-desert of the Judean wilderness is no less a wilderness than the bleak moorland which separates Huddersfield from Oldham and Rochdale to the west. The Bible says that Jesus went into a geographically wild place, it does not say he had a time of depression, or a hard time — that came later. But there is usefulness in looking at our hard times, our wilderness years, in the way the Wakefield Diocesan Lent Course has set out, because Jesus did have his time of doubt and pain, but it didn't happen in the wilderness, an uncultivated place: It happened in that most cultivated of all places, a garden. And it didn't happen at the start of his ministry, before he'd dome any teaching or performed any miracles: it happened afterwards, at the end of his public ministry when the teaching and miracles were done. Jesus time of what we would now call a wilderness was in the garden of Gethsemane on the evening of his arrest, the night before his crucifixion. Jesus' time in the wilderness does not fall into the stereotype that modern usage of the word wilderness would suggest. The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. Far from being the time when Jesus felt far from God, the wilderness was God's idea. Jesus time in the wilderness was a time to be with God, it was the Spirit which drove him there. There is a lot to be said about getting away from it all, about going on retreat, taking a day, or a weekend away to be with God. As long as we realise that getting away isn't the point. Jesus ministry, as shown in the Bible was full of interaction with people, crowds followed him, he is often seeking people out. But at important times he took time out. Forty days in the semi desert before his ministry, a night of prayer before choosing his disciples. If jesus needed to take time out in order to interact with people better, how much more do we need to?