What comes after the Baptism of the Lord? Well, in the liturgical calendar of Latin Catholics, the answer is simple: Ordinary Time. Today is a brief liminal period, simultaneously the First Sunday of Ordinary Time and some sort of end to the Christmas Season. And that’s all well and good. But what happened to Jesus after his Baptism in the Jordan?

If you know your Gospels, you’ll quickly answer that he went out into the wilderness, where he fasted forty days and forty nights and was tempted by Satan. (And if you’re still in a liturgical frame of mind, you’ll remind me that this happens in Lent, not tomorrow.) After the Father speaks of his Beloved Son and the Spirit rests on him in the form of a dove, the Spirit leads Jesus out to this time of growth and trial.

Reading a commentary on Matthew by a Cree-Anishinaabe Baptist theologian, Danny Zacharias,[1] however, has drawn my attention to one small, connecting detail: the dove never disappears. In the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 3:13–17; Mk 1:9–11; Lk 3:21–22), the dove descends on Jesus. But nothing is said about the dove vanishing or flying away before the next pericope. In fact, the very next thing we’re told is that the Spirit leads Jesus somewhere. But in the narrative at this point, the Spirit is the dove.

It’s in our nature as enlightened moderns to imagine that the dove scuttled or flew off somewhere, and then Jesus heard a still, quiet voice in his heart that prompted him into the wilderness. But the text doesn’t say this.

There are a couple issues with a simplistic interpretation. In the first place, we are not solely invited to imagine a quiet gentleness. While for Luke (4:1) and Matthew (4:1), Jesus is “led by the Spirit in the wilderness” (NRSV), it’s rather a bit more forceful in the earliest Gospel: “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mk 1:12 NRSV, emphasis added). The Greek ekballei is the same word used for casting out demons and etymologically means to throw outside. In the second place, there’s no time gap: “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mk 1:12 NRSV, emphasis added). The Greek euthus means right away, the straight path.

Nobody says the Spirit took a time out to stop manifesting as the dove first.

Both Matthew and Mark put the wilderness time right after the baptism. Only Luke has a gap (3:23–38). But it’s a genealogical account, after Jesus is declared God’s Beloved Son. Even here, the sequence is clear and the timing seemingly immediate.

A far more natural reading of what’s actually written on the page would be to suppose that Jesus followed the dove into the wilderness—or was nagged, swooped at, and pestered by the dove to go there. The Spirit, manifested in some way in the dove, led—or drove—Jesus away from the crowds to somewhere in the natural world. This is what Zacharias says:

It should not be missed that it is the enfeathered Spirit, Dove, who leads Jesus to his vision quest—Jesus is led along by a bird. In Jesus’ case, he faithfully follows Dove as she leads him to the badlands of Israel for his trial. There is no mention of Dove’s departure. In some vision quest practices today, the seeker is given a wide berth by the elder who aids them, as they must rely on themselves and any help the spirit world provides during this time of solitude. But the elder will remain within close enough range to provide aid if need be. The Spirit never departed from Christ, and perhaps the manifested Spirit remained perched close by throughout this time of trial.[2]

As Zacharias says, this is a lot like a vision quest in many of the Indigenous cultures of Turtle Island. The Spirit-Dove is the elder. Jesus goes through fasting. An intense experience follows. He grows in an important way. He becomes ready for something—for his public ministry. It’s a deliberately liminal time.

The identification of the desert experience with a vision quest is far from unique to Zacharias. In the First Nations Version of the New Testament, Mk 1:12–13 has the heading “His Vision Quest”; and Lk 4:2–13, “Vision Quest”. For some reason, Mt 4:1–11 is the odd duck: “Tested by the Evil Trickster”—but even here, the exception proves the rule.[3] Indeed, elsewhere, Zacharias writes with a co-author:

Steven Charleston reads Matthew’s account of Jesus’ experience in the wilderness in terms of the Native experience of vision quests, something further explicated in the Matthew commentary in the present book. Although the precise protocols of vision quests vary across tribes, those undertaking such a quest often begin with a period of prayer and purification. Then their endurance and spirit are tested, which invites self-reflection, a spirit of humility, lamentation, and a recognition of their own vulnerability and need for Creator. A person may even receive a powerful vision that reveals something about their identity, their character, or what role they are to serve in their community-such transformative visions are “good medicine” or divine blessings. Jesus undertakes his own vision quests.[4]

So, we get to this vision quest. To arrive there, the dove leads or drives on Jesus—and possibly lingers around watching over him. Of course, whether or not we imagine the physical dove as participating in the journey and the forty days, the deep Christological and pneumatological points stand. Jesus isn’t alone. The Spirit is always with him. The experience ends in trial and breakthrough.

But something does change if we keep the dove around.

Well, first, the text reads rather naturally, as one narrative unencumbered by later chapter divisions. The sensibilities of the ancient reader are more thoroughly respected.

More importantly, however, the wilderness becomes something new. Yes, it’s a difficult place. But it’s no longer completely inhospitable or isolated or unpeopled. The dove is there, too. It survives, too. This isn’t Jesus alone against nature. It’s Jesus within nature. He deprives himself of some things. He does fast. But this surely opens his eyes to the world that his Father created—not the one of colonization and empire, oppression and violence, fragmentation and division. But the interconnected reality that provides those tender examples of the Gospel text. It provokes

the sensitivity of Jesus before the creatures of his Father: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these” (Mt 6:28-29). “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight” (Lk 12:6). (Laudate Deum 1)

He’s not testing himself in “the wilderness” because he needs to conquer, or subdue or stand apart from, a rotten natural world. He’s led by one creature, or creaturely manifestation, to a place of interconnectivity as his Father made it—difficult and testing, no doubt, especially when one voluntarily does without, but nonetheless very good and appreciated as such by Jesus in those forty days—and when he is there, it could just as well be that this creature doesn’t stray far, perhaps pointing him subtly now and then to some other creatures to dialogue with the Father about.

There are probably a lot of other fascinating implications one could draw from remembering that the wilderness experience follows immediately on from the baptism scene, and thus keeping the dove in the text. I certainly haven’t plumbed the depths here. But this is a reflection that I want to share, because for me, it feels really meaningful and big, and I daresay it better represents my own personal experience of “desert times” in my own life. The Spirit is there. But so is the dove.

[1] H. Daniel Zacharias, “Gospel of Matthew,” in Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peelers (eds.), The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), 41–94.

[2] Ibid., 52.

[3] Note that Satan, personified in the snake in the FNV, is called the evil trickster. This is special, for trickster figures in general, while often derided as bad by European interpreters, were more ambiguous figures in most circumstances. That Satan is depictable as the evil trickster is virtually unique.

[4] T. Christopher Hoklotubbe and H. Daniel Zacharias, “Turtle Island Biblical Interpretation,” in Esau McCaullry, Jannette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peeler (eds ), The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), 25–34 (here, 27).