| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
First Sunday in Lent The word "wilderness" and the word "bewilder" come from the same root. To be "bewildered" means to be confused, puzzled, or mystified. And the wilderness, at least for Jesus, is a place where that confusion, that state of mystery can take place. It is a dangerous place, a place where all that we suppress comes out of the shadows. The wilderness is a place where we are bewildered. After my sophomore year of high school, I spent about six weeks or 42 days in the wilderness. I was with a group and together we hiked and camped throughout the Pacific Northwest: from the pristine beaches of Washington state, the arid deserts of Oregon, to the piney forests of Wyoming. It was a difficult trip. My body ached from the miles and miles of hiking and carrying a heavy backpack. I often found myself bewildered there in the wilderness; confused, about all the changes occuring in my life at the time. Jesus also ventured into the wilderness. For forty days after his baptism in the Jordan river, Jesus was sent to an uncomfortable place. To a place where he was tempted, challenged, and where he encountered the source of temptation, the source of evil, the source of misplaced desire. Why would God send Jesus immediately after his Baptism to such a place, to a place of bewilderment, confusion, and temptation? What does that say about God? In Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, a young Jesus is tormented; feeling the pain of claws scraping at his head and frenzied wings beating above him. Jesus shrieks, and falls down while his mother pleaded with a rabbi who knew how to drive out demons to help: "The rabbi shook his head. 'Mary your boy isn't being tormented by a devil; it's not a devil. It's God — so what can I do?' 'Why does [God] torment [my son],' Mary asks the rabbi. The rabbi sighed, but did not answer. 'Why does God torment him?' Mary asked again. And the rabbi responded, 'Because God loves him,' the old rabbi finally responded. Because God loves him. And because God loves, Jesus is sent into the wilderness to face bewilderment." That might not sound like love to you. But Jesus' time in the wilderness, where he faced temptations of three sorts, was a time in which he figured out what it meant to be the beloved Son of God. And oddly enough, the devil helped. Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread, a seemingly harmless trick. Afterall, he was probably hungry after all that fasting, and there must have been plenty of stones lying around to change into bread. But that was not his purpose. "Man cannot live on bread alone," he says. Jesus is tempted with the power to reign over all the earth's kingdoms, if only he would submit to the devil's authority. But Jesus knows that the power to command the armies of the world pales in comparison to the power one has from obedience to God. "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him," Jesus insists. Lastly, Jesus is tempted to throw himself down from the top of the temple in Jerusalem, some several hundred feet. A fall from that height would mean certain death, but the devil quotes two verses from the Psalms that say God's angels would "bear [him] up on their hands so that [he] will not dash [his] foot against a stone." Jesus knows that the devil is a lousy theologian, that the understanding of that scripture does not mean to one should put oneself in harm's way on purpose to see if God will really save you. "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," Jesus responds. It is because of all this struggle, this bewilderment in the wilderness that Jesus emerges differently at the end of the forty days than when he first entered. In those forty days in the wilderness, Jesus met the devil; the source of temptation, evil, and misplaced desire. Jesus looked the devil in the eye, kicked sand into his face, and walked away the victor. He went to the wilderness not because he wanted to, but because God sent him. Because God loved him, and knew there was no other way to prepare him for the task ahead. And it was there, out of the struggle, the temptation, the hunger, that it became clear what he was to do as the Son of God. So if you feel you are struggling. If you feel that you are in the wilderness now, know that you are in good company; that God who struggled in the wilderness then, struggles with you now. Jesus did not stay in the wilderness forever, and neither do we need to. We enter the wilderness to be bewildered, to face those things we keep in the shadows. We do not go into the wilderness to set up a permanent residence. It is only through our time spent in the wilderness that we realize, as one author says, that "what seems hopeless is in fact hope-filled, that what appears dead can actually spring forth in life." And the moment we realize that, is the moment we are ready to leave the wilderness behind until our next visit. Towards the end of the trip to the wilderness I took in high school, our group together set out to climb the tallest mountain peak in the continental states, called Mt. Rainier, which stands at over 14,000 feet. It took us two days to get to the top, but the second day was much more difficult. On that second day we started our climb around 2 AM, roped together in teams of five. Upward we climbed through the snow and glaciers in the dark with our ice axes until the sun peered over the horizon. On the way to the top, I faced temptations of all sorts. My body hurt. I was tired. Breathing was difficult with reduced oxygen in the air. I didn't think I was going to make it. But somehow I did. And when I stood on top of that mountain looking out on the clouds below me, and the sun shining clearly in the sky, the other mountain peaks on the horizon, it was remarkable. I left my bewilderment somewhere below underneath those clouds, and for at least a little while, I had found my way out of the wilderness. Amen. The Reverend James M. L. Grace February 25, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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