First
Sunday in Lent
February
25, 2007
Luke 4:
1-13
Being There
Elizabeth
Macaulay
We begin
our first Sunday in Lent in the wilderness.
Last Sunday
Cooper and I were at our cabin. It was
cold when we got there - we turn the water and heat off and getting the space
up to comfortable from ground zero takes some doing.
Basically,
when we use the cabin in the winter it is winter camping we are about. There is no running water, so every act, like
brushing teeth and draining wash water, is done mindfully and with the
awareness that it takes a journey out of doors in order to accomplish.
I love
it. I love it because while it is a very
genteel version of it, since there are beds and a roof and a great fire place,
we put ourselves a step or two out into the wilderness.
Life feels
different there. The stars feel closer,
the minutes feel more pregnant. The
silence feels more power filled.
In the
wilderness it’s easier to breathe and to remember that I am a creature. Dependent on the power of water and
warm. And that God is giver of those
gifts and I am grateful recipient of wood and water - and good company.
So I was
sorry not to be here, and really glad I was there.
In the
ministry story God gives us in Jesus, we learn about a different sort of
wilderness time. It is crucial and
powerful, this time in the wilderness.
Almost all great hero stories involve the willingness to enter into hardship
and challenge.
The story
of Jesus is no exception. After he is
baptized, and right after he hears powerful affirmation that he is indeed
beloved and called and claimed by God, he is put into a wilderness place.
Alone. For a long time. Experiencing incredible physical and
spiritual challenge. With no company to keep his fears at bay but the devil.
Jesus lived
a wilderness time. It created in him the
ability to live life more fully. And we,
we who are the main characters in our lives.
We too are called into the wilderness.
We too summon our resources to enter.
And we too emerge changed. Is
there a one of us who has not known wilderness?
In order to
prepare him for the ministry and witness that was to come, Jesus faced three
temptations. And, no surprise to we who
look to Jesus as our teacher, we discover that they are temptations that you
and I face as well. We can learn from
his trials.
The first
is this. Jesus is tempted to deny God’s
ability to care for him. Rather than
trust that bread for his aching body will be provided, he is tempted to bypass
his sense of reliance upon God and fend for himself.
When
tempted to create bread for himself - something to tame the ache in his gut -
Jesus tells the tempter that he - and we - just can’t live on the physical
stuffs of life alone. We need spiritual
bread, soul food, which only God can
provide. And we need each other to hold
and to remind and to bless as we go through our days.
There are
hungers only God can fill, and gifts only God can give.
Anyone
going through a twelve step program to deal with addictions with drugs or sex
or food come to know the absolute necessity of that higher power well.
Years ago I
was honored to be in conversation with a woman who after treatment and a number
of failed attempts at sobriety, became able to try to live fully the wilderness
of her sober life once again.
She shared
in our conversation this reflection, this awareness of the bread of God we are
so starved to feast upon, you and I:
“This week
I have struggled with fear, self pity and shame. I have felt lost in those
feelings. After meeting yesterday, I walked the beach. It was very odd, I have
never seen the beach like it was. There was a thick blanket of fog hugging only
the beach. I could only see 3 feet in front of me, but I kept walking, I knew
the beach was there, even though I really couldn't see it. It was then that I
realized I couldn't get lost on the beach or in those feelings. Faith,
gratitude and forgiveness were only hidden by the thick fog, but they were
always there.
So let us
know this, you who like me are tempted to forget the incredible healing power
of the bread of God‘s presence with us:
Never are
we without God’s presence. The fog is
real. So too is the ground.
The second
temptation faced by Jesus is another one we face often. It has to do with the abuse of power.
The
tempter, knowing that Jesus may be feeling vulnerable and lonely and
frustrated, offers to him all the principalities of the world. Laid out before him. All his.
If he would become willing to operate not from God’s ground of justice
and mercy but from the devil’s ground of watch your own back and get all you
can no matter who you step on to get it.
We’re faced
with this temptation every day. But it
is so often cloaked, this thing about power and its abuses. And it is often cloaked by our own
unwillingness to acknowledge the incredible power and privilege we have.
Open the
papers. Daily. Near every story of tragedy has to do with
misuse of power.
For the
longest time, it was unpolitic to mention the words global warming. To do so was somehow perceived as an affront
to our sense of power and entitlement in the world.
And so for
a long time the voice crying out in the wilderness WAS the wilderness. Chunks of glaciers crashing into the sea
because of melting. Species decimated by
pollution. Winds whipped into hurricanes
that scar the land and lives due to temperature changes in the sea. All these things that testified to the use of
power run amok were cloaked in some kind of crazy-making you-can’t-talk-about-this-or-you-don’t-love-your-nation
speak.
Well, as
students of the desert Jesus our goal is to know that the temptation to abuse
our power is real and costly. We have
abused our stewardship of the earth to such an extent that some question the
earth’s ability to heal from our abuse of it.
So we could
deny the ways we abuse our power. We
could continue to scoff and we could continue to treat the ecosystem as slave
and garbage can. We could continue to
refuse to look at the power we DO have to create God’s vision. Which leads us to the third temptation.
The third
temptation was to choose to squander the power God gives us. The devil challenges Jesus - why not take an
ill-considered leap? God has promised to
hold you up. Why not test it.
Jesus tells
him that tempting God - squandering the influence of God - is wrong.
Here again
we know this temptation. We squander the
influence of God all the time. We
squander it in ourselves - the power of the Holy God has promised us through
our baptism.
William
Sloane Coffin was a preacher and teacher at
He made
this statement, and I share it with you because I think it is so perfect as we
consider the power and teachings of the very real temptations of life and our
response to them.
He
said: “Hope resists. Hopelessness adapts.”
So thirty
of us heard John Lavander speak here at church a few months ago and we decided
that we didn’t want to adapt. As
American citizens who have great power to respond, we are going to go into the
wilderness that is
And a lot
of us who can’t go are giving money for mission. Because we don’t believe that we are called
to adapt to the fact that tens of thousands of people are living without basic
services. We cannot believe that
adaptation to that kind of injustice is what God calls us to.
So we are
traveling or giving money and using the power God gives us to say “no” to the
forces of evil that stalk the wildernesses and main streets of our lives.
And it
feels good to say “no”, doesn’t it?
Here’s
another thing William Sloane Coffin said about we who understand that
wilderness wanderings make for richness of life.
I like it
plenty.
He said
this: “If you back off from every little
controversy in your life you're not alive, and what's more, you're boring.”
We’re not
called to be boring.
Amen