Tag: Wilderness

Lent in the Desert

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV)

The Church traditionally observes the season of Lent each year for a total of forty days beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter Sunday. The Sundays in Lent “don’t count” as fast days during Lent because they are considered “little Easters” when we celebrate Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death through the corporate worship of the gathered people of God – in other words, Sundays don’t count ’cause that’s when we go to church!

However, the rest of the days in Lent, we are thrust out into the big bad world with all of its trouble and nasty surprises just waiting to jump out and get us. It is during our time in the extreme, unforgiving conditions of the desert of life that we are tempted. Temptation may take different forms, but there is more to temptation than just the common physical things we think of when we hear the word temptation. It can be much more subtle than we might expect. For example, we all have that little voice in our head that likes to criticize us all the time. We get the idea to do something that we think would be a good idea, something that has the potential to help others, make a difference, and the little voice speaks up, “That won’t work. Why even bother trying?” Some people hear that voice a lot, and hear it enough that they are tempted to listen to that voice instead of the voice of God calling them to do a new thing.

New things don’t seem to happen out here in this desert – at least, not very often. Things tend to go along as they always have. It’s one of, if not the, universal habit of human nature: the habit of resisting change. We’ve lived our whole lives in this desert, this wilderness, and we know how things work. It’s tempting to allow that sense of superior knowledge seep into our relationship with God and convince us that, somehow, we know better because our past experience tells us so.

Maybe that’s why Jesus fasted from food from so long in the wilderness before the tempter approached him. Reminding himself, preparing himself to meet the tempter with the first words Jesus spoke to him about not living by bread alone.

But bread (understood as referring to food in general) is how we survive. We know that from experience. We have to have it or we will die. We need to make getting it and making sure we have it a priority. We better store up extra just in case. Does this sound familiar? Yet, God calls us to give it away. It is tempting to listen to the first voice and ignore the second, especially in the midst of all the threat of ruin we encounter while living in the desert.

So now we are observing Lent in the desert, since we have established that we can’t remain up on the mountain. We have chosen whatever it is we are going to give up or, alternatively, what we are going to take up as our Lenten discipline this year. We have attended Ash Wednesday and received the imposition of ashes, the stark reminder that dust we are, and unto dust we shall return. We are all prepared and ready to keep a Holy Lent, even in the midst of the wilderness and all of its nasty threats.

When the feeling of hunger (real or metaphoric) sets in, let us remember whose voice to listen to during these forty days, and may we live by every single word that voice speaks.

Amen.

Sticking Out Like A Sore Thumb

In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Matthew 3:1-11 (NRSV)

This is the first blog update in a few weeks because of my inability to login and access the website. Thankfully, we have that fixed and now I can get back to regular weekly updates.

By the standards of people in first century Judea, John the Baptist was a weirdo. He stuck out like a sore thumb. I don’t know the exact origins of the idiom “stick out like a sore thumb,” but it usually is used to describe something that is clearly out of place and does not match its surroundings. John the Baptist certainly fit that description. He did not seem concerned with making himself look like other people. He did not seem concerned with acting like other people. Instead, he was focused on his mission to “prepare the way of the Lord.”

When the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up, he did not cut them any slack. He called them a “brood of vipers” (think “den of snakes”) and proceeded to tell them how the cow ate the cabbage, so to speak. John the Baptist doesn’t sound like the shining example of how to win friends and influence people, yet people from all over the countryside were coming to him for baptism in the Jordan.

What was his secret? Well, he was following God’s calling on his life for one thing. Another thing is that he was singularly focused on his mission. One of the most important things about John the Baptist though is that he was not afraid to just be himself.

He wasn’t weird just because of what he wore as clothing or what he ate as food. John was weird because, in a world of so many people who were so concerned with keeping up appearances, John just went along being his authentic self.

How often do we just allow ourselves to be our authentic selves? What kind of pressures do we face in life to present ourselves in a certain way? Who has God created us to be and how are we reflecting that to the world?

There is an old movie from the 80’s called “The Breakfast Club.” I’m sure you’ve seen it. Some teenagers get stuck in detention together after school and the whole movie is about how they relate to each other and the trouble they get themselves, and each other, into before they are allowed to leave. Each character is unique, and each one presents to the other as her or his authentic self. Through doing so they gain new understandings of each other and are changed in ways that make them better people. When John the Baptist preached repentance, from the Greek word metanoia meaning “change of heart and life”, what if he was telling the people, at least in part, to stop pretending and just be who God created them to be? That’s what John was doing. That’s what Jesus did.

Let us go with the confidence of children of God and do the same. Amen.