The Wilderness Experience

Hebrews 11:1-3, 13-19, New Living Translation

“Faith is the confidence that what we hope 
for will actually happen; it gives us assurance 
about things we cannot see. Through their 
faith, the people in days of old earned a 
good reputation. By faith we understand that 
the entire universe was formed at God's 
command, that what we now see did not 
come from anything that can be seen.
All these people died still believing what God 
had promised them. They did not receive what 
was promised, but they saw it all from a 
distance and welcomed it. They agreed that 
they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 
Obviously people who say such things are 
looking forward to a country they can call their 
own. If they had longed for the country they 
came from, they could have gone back. But they 
were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. 
That is why God is not ashamed to be called their 
God, for he has prepared a city for them. It was 
by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice 
when God was testing him. Abraham, who had 
received God's promises, was ready to sacrifice 
his only son, Isaac, even though God had told 
him, ‘Isaac is the son through whom your 
descendants will be counted.’ Abraham reasoned 
that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back 
to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive 
his son back from the dead.”

The original recipients of the letter to the Hebrews had grown weary. They had put their faith in Jesus some time prior because they believed that his death on the cross had redeemed all of creation. To their great dismay, however, the world around them looked no different from the reality that existed prior to their collective step of faith. They still endured hardships, they still experienced death, they still suffered injustices. These experiences led them to question the reality of a redemption they could not see.

In an earlier chapter, the writer speaks to these questions by comparing these Christians to the Hebrews who were delivered from slavery in Egypt. Those former slaves had experienced God’s redemption in dramatic fashion. They had even seen the defeat of their master, they had witnessed Pharaoh and his army washed away. But these Hebrews were not immediately brought to the Promised Land. Instead they were made to wander in a wilderness for forty years. During this time they frequently forgot what they had seen; they forgot the reality of their deliverance.

The writer suggests that the experience of his Christian readers was the same as that of the ancient Hebrews for although they had experienced redemption in Christ, they were focused on their current struggles. Thus, in chapter 11, he shifts their focus through his famous, although often misunderstood, definition of faith. Faith, he says, is not simply the hope that redemption will happen; it is, rather, the confidence that redemption has already happened, even though we do not always see its effects.

Put differently, faith is confidence in the reality of redemption despite the experience of wilderness.

The forty days of Lent reminds us that we are still experiencing wilderness. We too have placed our faith in Christ and have believed that his work has redeemed creation. Yet, most of us, like these original readers, have endured suffering and have experienced death. Not all of us have suffered injustices, but if we are paying attention to world events, we see a world filled with injustice from the horrors of genocide and poverty to the relatively common and prevalent experiences of gender and ethnic discrimination. The promised redemption can sometimes seem illusory, its reality invisible.

But the Lenten season also keeps moving us forward, proclaiming that the suffering and sacrifice experienced in these forty days can only find their meaning and purpose in Lent’s grand conclusion—resurrection. Like the message of Hebrews, therefore, Lent reminds us to keep our focus in the right place, not on the wilderness we can see, but on the redemption and new life that we cannot see. “And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead.”

Jackson Lashier is Assistant Professor of Religion at Southwestern College.