Embracing the Wilderness: Sermon for Advent 2A

In October 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act. This new law created a system to preserve and protect over 9 million acres of untouched landscape in 800 locations, ranging from deserts to cypress swamps, pristine beaches to alpine meadows, rocky crags and verdant valleys. There are no roads, no paths but the ones the animals who live there have made. There is no potable water, no wi-fi, no electricity.

These wildernesses were preserved as a recognition that even with minimal human interaction, they nonetheless have value in and of themselves as habitats for animals, as places of inspiring beauty in and of themselves, uncommercialized. These places are not viewed as resources to be exploited, but as a gift that cannot be replaced or remade once they are gone.

These diverse wildernesses were protected from disturbance, and for people to enjoy-- so long as those people abide by the wilderness ethics code, which requires human visitors to “Leave No Trace.” It also begins with the expectation to “plan ahead and prepare.” The wilderness can be a place of danger, but it can also be a place of spiritual purification and awakening. As noted author Terry Tempest Williams describes it, “A blank spot on the map is an invitation to encounter the natural world, where one's character will be shaped by the landscape. To enter wilderness is to court risk, and risk favors the senses, enabling one to live well. The landscapes we know and return to become places of solace. We are drawn to them because of the stories they tell, because of the memories they hold, or simply because of the sheer beauty that calls us back again and again. (Williams, Refuge, loc 3550/4534)

The wilderness, in scripture, was a place of extremes of heat and cold, of arid landscapes occasionally interrupted by flash floods that suddenly created short-lived rivers and streams, animals who would suddenly appear out of holes in the ground. It was a place of danger. But it was also the place where one encountered God. The place where the covenant was sealed between God and Abraham. The place where Jacob dreamed of his ladder reaching to heaven. Moses and the Burning Bush. The giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. The wanderings through the Wilderness of Sin—yes, it is actually named that—where the Israelites during their exodus grumbled against God when they got hungry. The place where David hid from Saul and Elijah hid from Ahab. The place where wild-eyed prophets roamed, either fasted or ate bugs, and contended with their God.

For here is another truth: the wilderness is the place where promises are made and kept by God.

Our scriptures underscore the reminder that the wilderness is a place for exploration of the self as much as exploration of a landscape. These are also places that can call us to question the unwritten stories that often operate to support the things we do unquestioningly. It is a place of self-examination, and a place of turning. Unfortunately, for too many of us, the wilderness is a place to be avoided. It is a place that lacks creature comforts. It is harsh and unforgiving, we think. And so we create negative associations and shun the experiences that true wilderness can bring out of us. But the wilderness whether inside us or outside us, is a place where God faithfully fulfils the promise of salvation.

On Friday we went to hear Handel’s Messiah Oratorio performed at Powell Symphony Hall—the very opposite of a wilderness you can imagine. The place was decked out to the nines. There were gigantic wreaths and ribbons everywhere. There were twinkly lights hung on those wreaths and on the garlands arranged like a huge smile beneath them.

We settled back into our comfortable seats, and for two and a half hours we listened to the choir and the harpsichords and the organ and the strings and the lone bassoon and oboe and the two trumpets and especially the four soloists. The music rolled over us in waves. The words were projected up on a screen as they were sung.

And being the Biblical nerd that I am, I noticed the scriptures that made up the first half of the oratorio were almost all from prophetic books, especially Isaiah. Isaiah, the prophet most quoted by Jesus and about Jesus in the New Testament, as we saw in our gospel today. And so, sitting in that grand building, I was left to contemplate the contradiction between the idea of the wilderness and the artful music that resonated all around the audience.

From our reading in Isaiah to our passage from Matthew’s gospel, we see descriptions of wilderness. In fact, in our gospel from Matthew, we hear a prophecy from Isaiah 40—much later in the book we attribute to that prophet. But Isaiah speaks of a king sprouting up from a tree trunk that has been struck down, and that king’s reign leading to not just a restoration of justice and but a restoration of creation in which wild animals no longer prey on tame ones, and there is no longer any need for one to suffer and die for the feeding of another. Wilderness becomes a restored garden of Eden. Most importantly, the wilderness is a place where true community and working together for the common good becomes reality.

Then Matthew describes John the Baptizer as a wild man, but a wild man with a voice. “A voice cries out from the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make his pathways straight.”

And how does one do that, in the place where there ARE no pathways? John answers that too, by calling those he encounters there to repentance. And there’s a word from which many of us recoil, instantly. Calls for repentance are too often associated with feelings of shame, of accusation, of being considered wrong and broken. John’s own words and description here are part of that problem, in fact. But we also get a hint that John himself may have inserted his own preferences here. Jesus will defy even John’s expectations. That is why later John will be shown as questioning whether Jesus is the actual Messiah or not. With Jesus, there was a LOT less smiting and burning than John expected, and a whole lot more healing and reconciliation.

For Jesus, repentance is about healing. It’s a place where promises are made and kept by God from tender compassion and mercy. All that repentance really means is to take time to examine our lives, and where our choices and stubbornness are not serving us, to make a decision to turn. And in this way, we are being asked to understand the wilderness not as something internal, but as something that lies within us all. All that repentance really means is to have faith in the faithful love of God for us, rather than in our own shallow, misspent scrabbling after the illusion of our own insatiable appetites for more, more, more.

Too many of us fear that wilderness within us too—or at least fear really exploring it, much less acknowledging where we might need some realignment. And this awakening to our own waywardness, our own privilege—that has become such a loaded word but it is a word that MUST be spoken if we are ever to move to reconciliation and healing in our world. That acceptance of our own benefit from injustice is there, and it must become visible by looking at life through the perspectives of others when they offer us their truth. The call to repentance is a starting point for accepting the relief of God’s incomprehensible grace.

But if we do dare to be brave enough to explore the wilderness within us, we can learn that it’s not just a place of danger, impulse, and brutality. It is also a place that calls us to contemplation of who we are as people and what our actions tell others about us and our character. The wilderness inside us is a gift, because it is a place of restoration, of purification. It is a place where we get to know our true selves. It is also the place within us that God most seeks to dwell in—if only we are brave enough to invite God in, to embrace the promise of God’s abundant love for us, yes, but also the transformative gift of living by God’s abundant economy, of straightening the pathways to our hearts to let in our savior.

Externally or internally, the wilderness is no barrier to God-- God loves the wilderness just the way it is. And God spends a lot of time in the wilderness with us. It is us who want the wilderness leveled, not God. Since when does God see the wilderness and respond with a construction crew and truck full of asphalt? God’s time is NOT our time, and God’s schedule is not our schedule. God likes to take the long way home, reminding us once again that God’s home is everywhere, wherever God is but not limited to one place.

It is in the midst of the wilderness that the people are urged to faith. And the kind of faith the people are being urged to embrace is not an easy faith. It is faith that seems to fly in the face of all evidence. The wilderness is where God’s word will be proclaimed, by Isaiah and by John the Baptist and Jesus. It’s a place that strips us bare of all our illusions and vanities and pretended pride. It’s a place where our defenses against admitting our wrongdoing are shredded, but not so that we can be punished. So that we can be moved to repentance—to the turning joyfully to a new life that is more pure and truer to God’s commandments, yes, but more importantly, to a life that is truer to God’s PROMISES.

The readings we explore during the season of Advent are meant to remind us of the glorious promises which are our inheritance as people of faith. We also begin the ingathering of your promises made to support this parish and help it to flourish and to grow in its mission of being the light of Christ in the world. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the darkness and cold of winter, we are reminded of promises made and promises kept. We are reminded that Christ came to call us to unity, not division, and certainly not fear. Confident in God’s abundant plans for our flourishing, amy we make straight the pathway of Christ into our hearts.


Amen. 

Readings:

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

Citations:

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, loc. 3550/4534, kindle edition.

Where the Wild Things Are: Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent B

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. There are only ten sentences in the entire story, which is why, when the book was made into a movie a few years back, a whole lot of detail had to be invented and added in. Mark’s gospel shares that characteristic when compared with the other gospels-- although Sendak’s glorious illustrations and incredible beasts made up for the scarcity of words. Sendak also had a main character whose imagination was running wild, which got him into trouble—unusual in a world at that time of vapid, whiter-than-white and blander-than-bland Dick, Jane, and Spot.

Where the Wild Things Are is the story of a boy named Max. One evening while wearing his wolf costume, he literally goes wild. His mother calls him a wild thing, and she doesn’t mean it as a complement. He responds by threatening to eat her, and so he gets sent to bed without anything to eat at all. As the minutes and maybe hours go by, the walls of Max's room disappear and become a forest, and he wanders through it until he finds a shore and a boat that takes him sailing a long distance to the land where the wild things live. 

Max quickly subdues the Wild Things and becomes their king. He enjoys bossing them around for awhile-- but eventually he starts to miss his home, and so announces his intention to leave. The Wild Things beg him to stay, and threaten to eat him up just as had his own mom. But he refuses them, climbs back into his boat, and sails back over that long distance. Even at sea he can smell the smell of something good to eat. And when he gets back to his room, he finds his supper there waiting for him on a table, still hot. (1) 

In Mark’s gospel, we get a lot of drama happening in just these first total fifteen verses, and our gospel today includes the last seven of those fifteen verses. And just like in the children's book, a whole lot takes place in these sentences in Mark.

All this happens in just ten sentences of the children's story: Max goes from miscreant, to prisoner, to escapee, to adventurer and king all by sentence number four. In our gospel passage, Jesus goes from leaving his hometown, his baptism and theophany in the Jordan by John, his being seized by the Holy Spirit to be driven into the wilderness, his 40 days of temptation by Satan, and his return to Galilee to begin his public ministry as God’s Son, God’s healer, God’s teacher, and God’s prophet. All in six sentences. Seven verses.

Often the wildernesses of our imaginations are the most frightening of all. Yet it is at times when we are thrown upon our own resources that we learn a lot about our own strengths and weaknesses, and about who we really are.

How does Jesus end up in the wilderness at all?

In the verses just before our gospel, it is stated that John had been baptizing people from throughout the countryside, predicting the coming of one more powerful than he. And here comes Jesus, the one who was predicted, and he steps up to take his turn to be baptized. Mark explained that John’s baptism was for repentance, and that people undergoing it confessed their sins. And thus, we see connected between all three of our readings, excluding the psalm, a discussion of water as enabling the remaking of creation, of a rebirth.

But why does Jesus need to be baptized, if we understand him as being without sin? Perhaps by undergoing this baptism, Jesus publicly aligns himself with the need for repentance; his baptism story does not include any confession, unlike the others mentioned in the narrative before our reading. This act demonstrates that God’s kingdom is breaking in, as demonstrated with the heavens being powerfully and maybe even bewilderingly torn apart in our gospel today. The term for this is used only one other time in Mark—and that is at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross. The proclamation of God’s kingdom by Jesus will prove to be a dangerous political statement in a place ruled by a puppet king within the Roman Empire.

And when Jesus is baptized, he also receives the Holy Spirit, which hovers “like a dove” over him. With the arrival of the Spirit we see represented the complete Trinity—as St. Augustine of Hippo noted, God is the Voice, Jesus is the Son revealed in the Jordan, fully human yet fully obedient, and the dove is the Spirit. This Spirit empowers Jesus to embark upon his public ministry. The voice from heaven also speaks directly to Jesus, not to those observing, and declares that Jesus is God’s Son, “the Beloved,” who has pleased God by his willingness to undergo this baptism. This reference to pleasing God reflects one of the Servant Song in Isaiah 42.

Jesus is baptized in the Jordan—a place of significance in Israel’s history. It’s the place where, Jesus’s namesake Joshua (“Y’shua” is both Jesus and Joshua) led the people of Israel into the Promised Land after their own time wandering in the desert for 40 years. Thus we hear echoes of the Exodus story in this story from Mark.

But that Spirit is not content to hover there like a pretty little bird. It then immediately takes hold of Jesus and “drives” him into the wilderness. Jesus is then (immediately, again) driven out by that same Spirit to be tempted for 40 days—always a significant number, especially when referring to time. Jesus, just like us, in plunged into the wilderness, regardless of where he might have chosen that his feet would take him. Although in Mark we get no details of the temptations themselves, Jesus himself was vulnerable to those temptations, or they wouldn’t deserve the word. But he is not defenseless during this long time of trial. God is with Jesus—just as God is with us especially in times of disorientation, pain, and even suffering. Even tight-lipped Mark includes the reassurance that angels and wild beasts are “with” Jesus while he is in the wilderness, with the angels actually serving Jesus.

And that turn of the phrase is interesting, though if you slow down and look at it. Angels? You would expect them to wait upon Jesus, especially if you have read Psalm 91. But wild beasts? Less so. In most stories from ancient times, wild beasts were expected to live in the wilderness, which is a large part of what makes the wilderness dangerous. These wild beasts behave more like Max’s Wild Things, acknowledging Jesus as being at one with creation, in harmony with their wild, free hearts.

And of course, that is a great reminder to us. We are far too prone to try to “tame” or “domesticate” Jesus. Too many people try to make Jesus into a prop for their partisan philosophies by stripping out the absolutely radical political message of love, community, and resistance to oppression that Jesus brings to earth. Stripping out the wild, radical nature of Jesus’s gospel makes Jesus into a two-dimensional prop, when we all see over and over again that he lives in at least FOUR dimensions. It makes him palatable and toothless. It’s a point C. S. Lewis made in his epic allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia. When first asked to describe Aslan, the great character representing Christ, Mr. Beaver, one of the Narnian creatures is very clear about the wild, powerful heart of Jesus:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh,” said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…” and she trails off
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver... “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (2)

And so where does this lead us? As we enter more deeply into the season of Lent, we too are being encouraged to enter into the wilderness of our own souls. Not to domesticate them. But to do something far more dangerous: to open them to the unpredictability and yet the glory of life in the Spirit of God. A life that will not necessarily always take you where you want to go. But then again, we often prove ourselves to be spectacularly bad at choosing our own paths—perhaps because we try to hard to pay it safe, to maintain our own independence, to deny our dependence upon anyone, much less God.

With so many of us living lives shut up in boxes all day—houses, skyscrapers, classrooms, offices, even our cars are really just sealed moving boxes in which even the air is filtered and stale-- we need desperately to let go and enter into wilderness places that remind us of our wild beating hearts. Hearts that are called to connect to each other, to God, and to all creation and recognize our essential unity and solidarity. Lent calls us into that wilderness alongside Jesus, to confront all that might try to pull us away from God: our arrogance; our greed; our hard-hearted denial of any claim of our neighbors upon us—as we see tragically playing out right now in the crisis in Texas; our worship of money and the power we think it gives us, making it a god rather than a tool for good; our destruction of the natural world in pursuit of immediate comfort at the expense of the health of the planet for our children; our scoffing at science which is actually a scoffing at the Creator herself.

It is when we open ourselves to the dangerous beauty of the wilderness within us that we see that we are all only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. To understand, as this pandemic continues to prove to us, that we are only as healthy as the most ill person among us. That we are all bound together—and to rejoice in that rather than respond with denial that only makes us more vulnerable. To enter into what the agrarian essayist and poet Wendell Berry describes in his beautiful poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which has even been set to music for choral voices by choral composer Jake Runestad (3):

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (4)

As our gospel, and Wendell Berry’s last line reminds us, the foundation of the wilderness places is not fear, but grace. No matter what wilderness we may be plunged into, God is there with us, just as the Spirit and the angels and the wild beasts were there with Jesus as he endured the temptations we’re just left to guess at in Mark’s spare telling. To enter into the beautiful, creative darkness so that those day-blind stars are revealed to our hungry eyes once more, reminding us that the ages of humanity are but a flicker in the eternity of God’s creation—and yet God seeks us out again and again, calling us back to covenant and relationship. To lean into the beauty of Lent and the beauty of life without being blinded to the beauty of NOW by the “forethought of grief.”

Our gospel today reminds us that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the wilderness. Yet that is a gift, for the wilderness keeps us honest and fully alive. As Anglican theologian N.T Wright notes, the way of pilgrimage is the way of risk. 

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.” (5)

May we embrace the wilderness journey alongside God this Lent. May we remember our essential unity with all creation. May we lie down in peace with all wild things, and embrace the wildness of the spirit that God seeks to awaken in us.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on February 21, 2021.

Readings:

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Citations:

1) Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

2) C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), p. 79.

3) Jake Runestad, "The Peace of Wind Things," from American Triptych, recorded by Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson, on the album The Hope of Loving (2019). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CseiIKJC7wo .

4) Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from Openings: Poems (1968).

4) N. T. Wright, The Way pf the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today, (1998), p. 32.

Images:

1) Alessandro Bonvincino, Christ in the Wilderness, 1515.

2) Maurice Sendak, from Where the Wild Things Are, 1963.

3) Sir Stanley Spencer, from his series Christ in the Wilderness, 1954.

4) James Tissot, Jesus Ministered to by the Angels, (1886-1994).

The Wilderness Way of God: Sermon for Advent 2B

In the Wilderness Prepare the Way, ©Jan Richardson janrichardson.com

This is a story of three prophets and three roads.

The first road is actually a crossroads. And poor tiny Israel --or what's left of it, the southern Kingdom of Judah --lies right at the connection of several major roads that tied Asia, Europe, and Africa together. Israel, already a small country, divided herself by inner bickering and made herself vulnerable two division by conquering armies, armies that often passed through Israel and the pinch point that she occupied on their way to take on their rivals at this juncture of three continents. That's where the book of Isaiah begins: Disaster looming on the horizon, disaster that the prophets believe is recompense for the people’s waywardness and faithlessness. Thirty-nine chapters later, that disaster arrives, and the elites are carried off into captivity.
Then a silence falls. One hundred and sixty years of silence. Years in which, undoubtedly the captive priests and rulers felt God’s silence deeply, and the people of the land left behind struggled mightily under the harsh expectations of their foreign overlords to produce food for their captors. As Psalm 137 describes it, years in which the people carried off into captivity mourned,

By Babylon’s streams,
   there we sat, oh, we wept,
      when we recalled Zion.

On the poplars there
   we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors had asked of us
   words of song,

and our plunderers—rejoicing:
   “Sing us from Zion’s songs.”
How can we sing a song of the LORD
   on foreign soil?(1)

Chapter 40, which begins a prologue to the second part of Isaiah, starts sixteen decades later. A new prophet has taken up Isaiah’s mantle, but reluctantly. We start with a silence, and then a conversation. Because the verses we hear are not spoken by one voice, but by three different voices: God, the heavenly hosts, and the second prophet to call herself-- yes, there is evidence that points to her being female—Isaiah.

God speaks first—as God always does. God speaks to the heavenly court, commanding them to deliver comfort to God’s people, communicating to Jerusalem, who had been completely leveled by her enemies, that she has been released from her shame of faithlessness. The double command (Comfort, O Comfort) adds extra urgency. Yet the focus is not on punishment (a sentence), but forgiveness.

A voice in the heavenly court cries out a word of hope, describing a scene of victory in which the exiled leaders of Jerusalem return from their bondage –but not along the terrible road upon which they were led away, but upon a new road. God’s highway, along which God’s glory will be revealed. Then another voice commands the prophet, who has been listening in disbelief, to cry out herself. The prophet objects, pointing out that humans are too fleeting in their existence to be able to join in this discussion; she has been worn down by the trials of exile alongside her people.

The heavenly host respond, yes, human life is fleeting, but God’s promises are not.

And so, the prophet takes up the words of reassurance, convinced by her encounter with God, and moved from despair to proclamation of that same comfort that at first was only expressed by the heavenly court. The prophet then calls the people to join her in seizing that hope and proclaiming the faithfulness of God. To proclaim faith and hope and strength where previously they have only bemoaned their abandonment. There is always a time for grief. But that time for grief is passed, and now is a time to renew their faith. So this conversation concludes. Point and counterpoint. And eventually the voice from the wilderness becomes one bearing tidings of tender care from the shepherd who cares for us all.

Haven’t we all felt like we have been in a wilderness at various points in our lives? And haven’t we felt lost and forsaken when all the neat, straight paths we’ve made for ourselves have ended up leading us astray?

In the most hostile of environments --wilderness and desert --the word of God comes to offer comfort, respite, and safety, despite Israel’s sinfulness and fault. It is in these most unlikely of places that God's comfort is offered and maintained. God’s comfort is a gift of grace in a time when all hope had been lost, when the fear of abandonment was seemingly permanent. Yet God’s promise remains true, and doesn’t depend upon human measurements of time to come to fulfillment. It is in this light that we read our gospel introduction of John the Baptist, who similarly is called to cry out from the wilderness to proclaim the comfort that is to come, comfort from the presence of God Godself taking on human flesh and living among the people.

Once again, it is God who takes the initiative. At last, the light appears at the end of a long night. The Babylonian Exile stripped the people of everything that mattered to them. Our own exile—from faith, from compassion, from dedication to community and true justice and equality—has also left us longing for meaning, for purpose.

We think we can make our own pathways straight to success, to crushing our opponents. It’s part of the modern myth of independence that ignores how much we depend upon each other, and upon God.

Yet our paths to God don’t have to be straight. It is often the most indirect, wandering stop-and start journeys that end up being the truest, because they don’t fool us into thinking that the life of abundance can actually be acquired. The broken road is often the road that leads us to God, because it strips away all our defenses and resistance to God.

The wilderness is no barrier to God-- God loves the wilderness just the way it is. And God spends a lot of time in the wilderness with us. It is us who want the wilderness leveled, not God.  Since when does God see the wilderness and respond with a construction crew and truck full of asphalt? God’s time is NOT our time, and God’s schedule is not our schedule. God likes to take the long way home, reminding us once again that God’s home is everywhere, wherever God is but not limited to one place.

A friend of mine shared these words earlier this week: “I imagine God taking one look at the straight paths we’ve scarred into the wild earth and either laughing or weeping or both, wondering if what we wanted was a tamer God or just one on speed dial who is always waiting to pick up. But isn’t God perpetually going out into the wilderness, out with the wandering Israelites or searching out a lost sheep, out beyond the cell towers, voicemails, and text messages?”

Instead, God walks in the opposite direction our straightened paths lead, just to see if we want a God who follows us or if we want to follow God.” (2)

The life of abundance that God offers to us starts with opening ourselves to the wonder of God’s creation all around us, and of celebrating our place in a web of relationships that each offer us a chance to ourselves bear the light of God into the world. Have you ever heard anything more absurd than the idea of anyone making a path straight for God to amble down?

It is in the midst of the wilderness that the people are urged to faith. And the kind of faith the people are being urged to embrace is not an easy faith. It is faith that seems to fly in the face of all evidence. The people are being asked to sing joyful songs even from the chains of exile and oppression. Being challenged to take up this confident proclamation of God’s presence even when all evidence points otherwise is a call to faith that doesn’t deny fear but responds to fear by proclaiming the power of unity and community over those forces that attempt to use division and loss as levers of control.

We, too, may feel like there has been a long silence, these last many months as this pandemic has stretched on here in 2020. For us, who expect instantaneous responses, eight months certainly can feel like an eternity. In the face of that pause, two doubts commonly arise to plague our spiritual lives: we either believe that God is powerless to change our suffering, or that God is indifferent to us and possibly even inflicts the silent treatment upon us. None of these take into account, as we are reminded in our epistle, that God’s time is not our own, and that God doesn’t wander from us. When we feel God’s absence, it is when we have wandered from God, allowed ourselves to drift, or believe that God is punishing us when we go through trials.

We may feel that we do not know the way out, the way of God’s highway—and how can we be blamed for that? Even Jesus’s own disciples and apostles cried out the same plaintive plea when they couldn’t follow the path he walked right before them toward wholeness, wellness, and peace.

The wilderness is where God’s word will be proclaimed, by Isaiah and by John the Baptist and Jesus. It’s a place that strips us bare of all our illusions and vanities and pretended pride. It’s a place where are defenses against admitting our wrongdoing are shredded, but not so that we can be punished. So that we can be moved to repentance—to the turning joyfully to a new life that is more pure and truer to God’s commandments. And this awakening to our own waywardness, our own privilege—that has become such a loaded word but it is a word that MUST be spoken if we are ever to move to reconciliation and healing in our world. That acceptance of our own benefit from injustice is there, and it must become visible by looking at life through the perspectives of others when they offer us their truth. has to be seen not as a source of shame but as a starting point for accepting the relief of God’s incomprehensible grace.

But perhaps God is calling us to embrace a long pause, a resetting of our priorities away from our worship of the god of our unending appetite for more, and is calling us to see creation ongoing all around us. We are reminded that the arc of human experience is short, and that for all our technology the processes of nature-- the mutation of a virus, in this case, that has always been around us in one form or another—can call us to an accounting that we cannot just wave away every challenge in an instant.

After the long pause, God promises a way through the wilderness, not an exemption from the wilderness. God calls us back from the exile we have put ourselves in, through fear and faithlessness. The story of the Exodus reminds us that we cannot allow our fears to master us: when that happens, we often end up longing for the familiar chains of slavery rather than taking up the hard work of the journey to equality and true justice, which can only be found when we proclaim community and insist upon it.

The closing image of our reading from this section of second Isaiah is the image of God not just as a mighty warrior, but also as a tender shepherd—a shepherd who endures all things alongside their sheep. This is one of the most common claims about true leadership that runs throughout scripture. A leader is called to unify the flock, not scatter it. The flock itself is called to observe this tender care for the weakest of its members, and likewise stand in solidarity with them. God calls us to order our societies in such a way that the leaders share in the burdens of the flock, knowing their needs intimately because that leader is not aloof to them but intimately familiar with those needs. God will act as a shepherd, and calls each of us to take up our duty and responsibility to each other likewise—to order our lives so. That we too will carry the youngest or the frailest in our arms. God as our shepherd calls the flock to likewise never abandon the least of their members to the wolves that prowl often in the shadows and out of sight of the most privileged among the flock.

Perhaps we can listen and hear God calling us to embrace the way of mercy and steadfast love, the way that lies straight and true before us, if only we will put our feet to the path and our shoulders to the wheel of mercy and compassion. And once we embrace that pause, seize hold of the chance to cleanse ourselves of all that draws us from love and faith, perhaps we, too, could then hear a word of comfort, and embrace a promise of renewal and resuscitation, of God’s Loving coming down and walking among us, teaching us to walk in the Wilderness Way of God.

Amen.

Preached at the online 10:30 am Morning Prayer service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO. during Coronatide.

Readings:

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

Isaiah 40:1-11

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

Sources:

1) Robert Alter, The Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 3: the Writings

2) The Rev. David Henson, quoted by my friend the Rev. Anne Lane Witt

Fearlessly Human: Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent, Year A

From the birth of philosophy, one of the ultimate questions has always been, “What does it mean to be human?” It’s an attempt to define those unique human characteristics that separate us from other animals, and from the rest of creation. What makes humans unique? 

We start with eliminating things. It certainly isn’t strength, or speed, or agility—other creatures have us beat on all of those fronts. No, it must be something else. Over the centuries, the possible answers have been varied. Reason, some highlighted—and then we learned that dolphins, ants, and chimpanzees problem-solve and use tools. Language, others proclaimed—and then were learned about whale song and Koko the gorilla learning sign language. Memory, others suggested—and then we hear stories of elephants grieving their deceased kin, even years afterward, and loyal dogs returning to their family home after years of being lost thousands of miles away. Some claim that only humans have souls—but that takes us down another rabbit hole again, since you can’t prove the existence --or not-- of a soul in ANYTHING. 

There are things that unite us as creatures: a desire for growth, breath; a need to communicate and be understood; a drive for assuring the survival of our offspring; a longing to be fed, nourished, watered. Hungers and needs met. These are some of the basics of existence—and we are even learning that about organisms we once arrogantly assumed lack awareness. Trees sing to each other, and eavesdrop on each other through their roots. The dance of the honeybee communicates where to find water and pollen to their hivemates. Yet are they as free as human beings? 

What DOES it mean to be human? Perhaps it is bound up in the misuse of the freedom that is our inheritance. Sadly, often those who have asked that question have done so in order that they can exclude some OTHER group, and justify taking something from them or using them as objects rather than accord them dignity and rights. 

We seem to always get into danger when we overlook the responsibility part of being free humans, in favor of the argument from exceptionalism that confers more rights on whoever we define as “us” versus whoever we define as “them.” When we define being human as something that makes us exceptional, that elevates us above the balances built into creation, that’s a dangerous endeavor, because it inevitably leads us to trying to justify satisfying our wants throug selfishness, violence, and injustice. Like all creatures, we are driven by hunger, but God holds us accountable for how we assuage it. 

In the 15th-19th centuries, many Europeans denied the humanity of Africans so that they could be enslaved, abused, and killed. In the 20th century, Nazis famously denied the humanity of Jews, using a German term for them that translates to “beneath human.” And right now, we see some loudly deny the humanity of immigrants, or people of color, or LGBT people. We see people even now, through fear and prejudice, deny the humanity and right to life of people merely suspected of crimes, much less of actual convicted criminals. 

That denial of these “othered” groups as fully human is used to justify denying them their rights to life, liberty, and property in one guise or another—to justify the filling of one person’s hunger for status by denying someone else’s humanity. We run the terrible risk of privileging our own freedom and our own surrender to hunger until it morphs into the mistaken belief that it rests upon the necessity of others’ oppression. 

I was thinking about this question of humanity and exceptionalism as I pondered our readings this week. There IS one thing that scripture mentions that makes us different from other creatures—the fact that we have been specifically charged to be obedient to God. That's not because we are special-- it's because we HAVE to be told. Faithfulness comes naturally to the other creatures, but not to us—it’s part of the other side of our freedom. Our stories this week are about our temptations to place our freedom, our hunger and the materialism that together they spawn ahead of our faithfulness and trust in God. 

Our readings seem to be pointing us toward consideration of one thing that humans definitely are really good at—and that is rationalizing sin and disobedience. Ultimately, one of the hallmarks of humanity is our ability to sin, our ability to know right from wrong, and to do the wrong thing anyway. 

As our readings from Genesis and Matthew point out, the root of sin is unchecked hunger—of pridefully “independent” people surrendering to the fear that we will lack something or be denied something we want. It is that ability to choose the expedient or the pleasurable thing over the right and honorable thing that lies at the heart of the excuse “Well, I’m only human, right?” when we get caught doing something wrong.

The story of Adam and Eve is at the beginning of scripture for a reason, after all. This story begins with the reminder that God had provided Adam and Eve everything they needed for survival and even comfort—and yet they were driven to try to take something that God said was not meant for them. I am always struck by the fact that right after God supposedly makes humans the lords and masters of the rest of the creatures, humans are depicted as misusing their freedom and thus risking throwing away our privileged place where we imagine ourselves to be most beloved of all of God’s creatures. 

I love the fact that the ancient people who first told the stories in the Torah start right out with admitting that when it comes to temptation, we humans have almost never met one we didn’t like. It’s so incredibly honest. It’s like that great saying, “Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.” 

The placement of that story as the first with human characters is an important and honest admission – that from our earliest knowledge of ourselves, our ability to sin is bound up with our freedom. Part of the creaturely condition is a desire and hunger for freedom. But God gave us as humans the freedom to choose, and we live in a time when people often lose sight of the fact that freedoms must be balanced in the name of justice and the good of those around us. 

God knows that’s absolutely not a popular message today. But especially with a backdrop of a fears of an epidemic and climate catastrophe looming before us, I think it bears repeating that especially for us humans, freedom comes not just as a privilege, but also as a responsibility. 

In the story from our gospel today, we get another story of temptation, but with a far different result. And just to make it clear that the result is bound up with freedom, Jesus faces not ONE but THREE temptations. And this time, Jesus in his full humanity—he is famished after all, just as all of us would be. So up pops the Devil, just as crafty and cunning as that snake in the Garden of Eden. And then we get to watch a little game of “dueling scriptures:” 

Devil: (in wilderness) You’re hungry; 
I dare you to turn stones into bread. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 8:3 says no, 

God is sufficient.     

Devil: (on top of temple) Yeah? Well, 
Psalm 91:11-12 says you are bulletproof. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:16 says no, 

God should not be tested (Irony!).

Devil: (on high mountain) Okay, just 
worship me for political power, then. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:13 forbids it, 

and commands worship of God only. 

Once again, the parallels jump out: the temptation of Adam and Eve started out with a discussion of food, there through God’s providence; in the first two temptations, the devil tries to get Jesus to turn his back on God’s providence, and use his power for himself and deny his humanity. 

 The first two temptations try to play up to what in anyone else but Jesus would be human vanity— “Hey! You’re God’s son! The rules don’t apply to you, and what can it hurt?” The first two try to lead Jesus from obedience to God by setting himself up over God. The third temptation drops all pretense and nakedly reveals the agenda: “Abandon God, worship me, the God of the Belly.” 

What we see here in looking at the parallels between our Genesis reading and the temptation of Jesus here is that the “original” sin has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with not trusting God. It has to do with putting the trust and faith that we should have in God instead in our own arrogance and our own judgment—even as we know that our judgment is often tainted by fear, anxiety, and feelings of scarcity. Focusing on our hungers makes it impossible to have true peace and contentment. 

Our original sin is to let our hunger for more, which is inwardly focused, override our true calling to love and generosity which is outwardly focused.

We are often drawn into sin when we try to escape the hunger and longing that lies at heart of our existence as humans. That’s why giving up something for Lent CAN be instructive—IF it leads us to sit with our hungers and our longings as a way of getting to know ourselves better. Our longings can be blessings or curses, depending upon whether we master them or whether we let them master us. When we let our hungers master us, we fall into greed, selfishness, anxiety about perceptions of scarcity that our fears persuade us are fact rather than perception. 

Christian educator Debie Thomas notes that temptations can also been seen as invitations to lean into our relationship with God and our understanding that we don’t have to grab everything we can get our hands on, especially if that comes at the expense of others. She says this, and it pierced my soul so much I wanted to share it with you: 

Hunger in and of itself is not a virtue, it’s a classroom. To sit patiently with desire — to become its student — and still embrace my identity as God’s beloved, is hard…. But this is the invitation. We can be loved and hungry at the same time. We can hope and hurt at the same time. Most of all, we can trust that when God nourishes us, it won’t be by magic. It won’t be manipulative and disrespectful…. And through us — if we will learn to share — it will feed the world. (4) 

It’s absolutely vital that we understand Jesus as being BOTH fully human and God’s son—an understanding that Jesus demonstrates during his temptations. Jesus fearlessly faces his time in the wilderness because he has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness as God’s beloved Son, for the express purpose of being tempted to deny his humanity. Jesus, in facing down these particular temptations, redeems and reclaims the full goodness of humanity that some, like Paul, have claimed ended with Adam and Eve’s downfall. 

And what can we learn from this? Jesus is fearless and bold in the face of the devil’s temptation because he knows who he is, and he knows that God is with him. And we can do the same, if we trust that God is with us, too. Jesus’s ultimate trust in God means that he can’t be tested away from his faith or his obedience to the will of the Father. He is secure within the love of God, which satisfies far beyond any bread made from stone. We are tempted to sin when we are afraid— afraid that we are alone in the world, that we will never have enough, despite all the promises of God that God is always with us. 

Jesus shows us how to sit with being hungry, yet still and nevertheless faithfully, fearlessly human—and part of that lies in not being afraid to rely upon God. To put our trust in something beyond ourselves. That’s what it means to be fearlessly human—to be strong enough to be vulnerable. To be generous and openhearted, even when there are hungers for “more” beating out a cadence in each heartbeat. To be strong enough to depend on God, and depend on each other. To be fearless, because no matter how much we fall into temptation, through God’s grace, we are still beloved.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on February 29, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am services on March 1, 2020, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.


Readings:

• Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
• Romans 5:12-19
• Matthew 4:1-11
• Psalm 32

Sources:

1) James Tissot, Jesus Being Ministered to By Angels, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

2) "Adam and Eve Eating the Forbidden Fruit," Detail from Ste. Chappelle, Paris.

3) James Tissot, Christ Borne Up unto a Pinnacle of the Temple, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

4) Debie Thomas, "Tempted," in Journey with Jesus, February  23, 2020

5) James Tissot, Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Prayer, day 2233: 1st Sunday in Lent

Lord God,
we gather together around your altars this day,
to purify our hearts and minds,
and give thanks for your mercy.

Accept our heartfelt offerings
as we place our lives before You,
that we may serve You with humility and compassion.
We thank You for abiding with us
in the wilderness of our hearts,
and attending to all our needs.
Feed us with the bread of life and hope,
that we be strengthened and unified to worship You.

Let us seek not to rule
but to serve You and each other,
uplifted by the grace and mercy of Christ.
Holy One, You are our Rock;
we rest secure in your embrace,
and fasten all our devotion upon You, our Savior.
Bless and keep us throughout this day, O God,
and envelop those we now pray for with your mercy.

Amen.