Psalm Reading #1
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers,
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on God’s law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,
6 for the Creator watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Gospel Reading: Luke 4:1-13
When Jesus returned from the Jordan River, the power of the Holy Spirit was with him, and the Spirit led him into the desert. 2 For 40 days Jesus was tested by the devil, and during that time he went without eating. When it was all over, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to Jesus,
“If you are God’s Son, tell this stone to turn into bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say, ‘No one can live only on food.’ ”
5 Then the devil led Jesus up to a high place and quickly showed him all the nations on earth. 6 The devil said, “I will give all this power and glory to you. It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 Just worship me, and you can have it all.”
8 Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only God!’ ”
9 Finally, the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem and had him stand on top of the temple. The devil said, “If you are God’s Son, jump off. 10-11 The Scriptures say: ‘God will tell the angels to take care of you. They will catch you in their arms, and you will not even hurt your feet on the stones.’ ”
12 Jesus answered, “The Scriptures also say, ‘Don’t try to test the Lord your God!’
13 After the devil had finished testing Jesus in every way possible, he left him for a while.
Sermon
- What comes to mind when you hear the word wilderness?
- Some might think of backpacking trips, fishing, or a desert wasteland
- In the bible, wilderness can be a code word for a place of vulnerability and danger, on the edge of the world, outside the walls of a city; inhabited by criminals and wild animals.
- But the wilderness has also functioned as a place to escape oppression and pursue liberation (as in the Exodus from Egypt)
- Or a place to wait for apocalyptic times to unfold, as the ancient Essenes did when they holed up in caves;
- One scholar I read says the wilderness was where resistance movements formed and trained their armies;
- And then there were prophets like John the Baptist, Elijah, and Jesus who went to the wilderness to connect with God, clarify their mission, and be prepared for facing spiritual challenges
- In every biblical example I can think of, the wilderness is the place where humans are humbled and learn dependence on God.
- It’s a place to experience hunger and be fed by ravens or manna
- But also a place of visions: where people imagine God making a way where there is no way, laying mountains low and lifting valleys,
- making streams in dry deserts and making trees fruitful by those streams
- It seems like we have entered a wilderness time in our culture
- I’ve said this for years about the Mainline Protestant Church, as churches decline and we lose of influence on the culture as Christians;
- But now, it’s bigger than that: the progressive Church is just one part of a larger value system we inherited from the Enlightenment;
- For our entire lives, we were soaked in the values of
- working for the common good,
- democratic decision-making
- and universal human rights
- But that way of thinking seems to be waning in the centers of power
- It’s a time when we’re feeling thrust out of that center of cultural influence and out into the wilderness, and many of us feel lost!
- We are being pushed into a time of soul searching and clarifying what our core values and missions are.
- We wouldn’t have chosen this wilderness time; but maybe the Holy Spirit is leading us here.
- Jesus entered the wilderness by invitation from the Holy Spirit as a time of testing and clarifying the nature of his ministry
- So, when he was tempted to make bread from stones, Jesus clarified that he was not engaging in a ministry focused on doing miracles or merely on fulfilling people’s material needs;
- ‘No one can live only on food.’ ”
- When he was tempted to worship the devil and receive power and glory, Jesus chose instead to be a servant leader and obey God, not to pander to public popularity
- ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only God!’ ”
- And when he was tempted to jump from a pinnacle and let God save him, Jesus chose instead to surrender to whatever risk was coming, even death, without expecting God to save him from the suffering that other humans have to suffer.
- Don’t try to test the Lord your God!
- So, when he was tempted to make bread from stones, Jesus clarified that he was not engaging in a ministry focused on doing miracles or merely on fulfilling people’s material needs;
- In order to do this hard discernment, Jesus needed those 40 days of fasting and wilderness wandering to hear God’s voice.
- Can you imagine spending 40 days in the wilderness alone? Has anyone ever done anything like this?
- What would happen and what might you learn alone in the wilderness?
- Hunger, thirst, cold and heat
- Awareness of your own vulnerability
- Loneliness for other humans
- But also: seeing the way nature copes, adapts, invents, builds, destroys, competes, celebrates and thrives! How it submits to death and then is reborn
- It can calm us and care us;
- It has so much to teach us about resilience!
(Wandering in the urban woods yesterday with Kathryn Lee, we found two trees that had grown their branches out toward each other and, over time, had “held hands” and literally grown together into one shared branch! And we learned about the scary, weird sex lives of mallards!)
- When you let the natural world soak into your senses, it can be a wonderful distraction from all the human-made drama around us;
- The bee, the tree, the muskrat–they don’t care who is president or whether they have crossed an international border to build their nests
- They have their own internal purpose, songs, mantras, territories, core values
- And we can learn from observing that.
- Maybe Jesus needed to watch nature at work during those 40 days
- Maybe he concluded that he didn’t need to be a miracle worker because God was already working miracles around him all the time;
- He saw that, as a human body, he was small and limited like the bee and ant;
- but could also be powerful as a vessel and partner with God, working alongside other humans
- Maybe he was gradually able to let go of self-preservation, accepting the possibility of death
- the way little flowers do when they grow out from cracks in the rock;
- God could still make something powerful from Jesus’ willingness to push through the challenges of life, and then sacrifice and surrender to the Creator to finish the work after he was gone.
- It seems to me that one place we can derive spiritual resilience is from observing nature
- What we experience in nature is not just for our entertainment
- The earth has lessons to teach us about what we should value,
- about what it means to be both vulnerable and strong
- When we should be resilient and when we should surrender
- If, for nothing else besides quiet, the outdoors can help us silence the multitude of voices that clamor for our attention
- It can teach us to listen to the still, small voice that asks:
- What did God put me here for?
- What we experience in nature is not just for our entertainment
- Today in adult ed, we talked about a time when the Church in Germany was deeply challenged by Nazi era ideology and had to choose their faith convictions.
- Most churches responded by following Nazi government propaganda
- But that left a few churches, known today as the Confessing Church, stood in opposition to the German Church and wrote the Barmen Declarations to clarify their beliefs over and against those of the German Church and State.
- Today, in the face of Christian Nationalism, we are being led out to our own wilderness places to examine who we were made to serve;
- One small way each of us can begin this work is by examining our own core values are, as individuals and groups:
- And what principles you’re willing to stand up for against any threat;
- You might try doing this as a Lenten homework exercise;
- maybe go out to a wild place (with Kathryn or on your own) and look and listen to what God has to teach you there;
- Come to next Sunday’s adult ed class and write out what your core values are,
- what you’re willing to stand up for and work for in these times.
- Part of resilience is having beliefs you can hold onto as you are sent into what feels like a brutal wilderness we see around us right now.
- You might turn those values into a little mantra or prayer practice, or find an object to hold to remind you of what’s important to you right now.
- Or maybe there’s a wilderness place you go back to again and again that reminds you of what you are giving your life to.
- We know Jesus accepted the wilderness as both a challenge and a gift for insight, strength and confronting the opposition.
- Hopefully, while we still have some wilderness left in the world, we can harvest wisdom from it in the same way Jesus did.
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