February 25, 2007
(First Sunday in Lent)
Bewildered
By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13
(From The
Lectionary Page)
For a time in my childhood, Sunday night supper during the winter months often was eaten in front of the television. And Sunday night TV meant The Wonderful World of Disney. Sometimes we watched a full-length feature cartoon of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Occasionally we got to see a movie such as Mary Poppins.
A regular offering was The Adventures of Daniel Boone. He loved the wilderness, from hunting and fishing to fighting and making peace between the natives and the settlers. In 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. (I created a diorama of this in 3rd grade I think.)
However it happened Disney or school I came to associate the wilderness with Daniel Boone.
When asked about all the time he spent in the wild, Mr. Boone answered a specific question saying, "No, I can't say as I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
Elementary school history books decades ago described the vast lands west of the Appalachians -- to the Mississippi River and further west through our area and the Plains during the early 19 century -- as the "wilderness." (The New Yorker still does!) And this term had really only one meaning, that the lands had no strong presence of white settlers. Thus, the wilderness did not refer to terrain, vegetation, rock formations, animal life, the presence of a marsh or wetlands, or the amount of annual precipitation. The wilderness was a place where the white man was not in control. What was the romantic phrase often used: man had not yet tamed the wilderness.
If we take a part of the concept, and say that the wilderness is a place were humans are not in control, well, that is almost a biblical definition of 'the wilderness.'
The Holy Scriptures refer to 'the wilderness' in several stories, and today we enter into two: the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land, and Jesus, after his baptism, being led by the Spirit, into the wilderness.
The Judean wilderness looks nothing like the lush wilderness tamed by the legend of Daniel Boone. Imagine a rock quarry, without the deep pool of water, as far as the eye can see, in all directions, including up to the fortress of Masada atop a plateau, and back down to the lifeless Dead Sea.
No place to hide: no cool shade, only clefts of rock that provide little protection from the lashing sand-filled winds. No life sustaining oases, only the laughing shadows of dried up streams that hold water just five or six weeks every year. Today that landscape still makes one shudder, even as you step on to an air-conditioned tour bus and grab some bottled water after your grueling 15 minutes in the sun.
But the Scriptures, when they refer to the wilderness, do not emphasize the terrain, and but few of the physical consequences of being there. The Scriptures say that the wilderness is every place where we are not in control. Now usually what follows in our minds is the assumption that God is not there. But the wilderness is by no means a place where God is absent. Oh, perhaps the God we have created in our own image isn't there. But the One, True, God is most certainly in the wilderness.
Our family has a list of comfort movies which we watch when we most need to laugh. City Slickers is about three friends who head west to take part in a cattle drive run by a dude-ranch-kind-of-place. The three men are at not-so-good places in either their jobs or relationships or both, and while herding cattle, they come to confess that they are looking for something. The trail boss, a weathered cowboy named Curly, tells them life is about finding one thing.
Please rent this movie for the laughs and not for the philosophy. But if we see life as a journey, we are indeed constantly searching for more of God, more of love, and more of meaning.
Today's lessons confront us and demand that we consider that the wilderness is not a place to be avoided, not the most hopeless of places. For Jesus has gone into the wilderness, and that barren place is now consecrated. It is still alien to us, not because it is bereft of God, but because we so rarely go there of our own choosing, because we like to depend on ourselves more than on the power of God's Spirit. And the wilderness is not simply out there, but it is also in here, in us. For the wilderness is every place where we are not in control.
John Stendahl suggests:
"We who witness Jesus vanquish his tempter may likewise dare to imagine the fearful landscapes of our own life transfigured. Even the exhausted and weak among us may be brave enough to take Jesus' example, to resist evil and choose right. For the desert is not godforsaken, nor does it belong to the devil. It is God's home. The Holy Spirit is there, within us and beside us. And if there are times that we cannot feel that spirit at our side, we can at least imagine Jesus there, not too far away, with enough in him to sustain us, enough to make us brave."
Mark Twain was fond of saying: "There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice."
Lent begins with a call to be brave in the Spirit. Temptation is not a sign that we are weak or that our faith is about to crumble. If we are not tempted, it means that we are not pushing the limits of our faith, and it sure as heck means that we aren't seeking the wilderness.
Temptation does not mean that the devil is at hand. It means that Jesus is near. Let Jesus save you. His love is our life. Go towards temptation. In fact, sprint towards it. Face the wilderness and temptations with courage. Spend some time bewildered. Like Jesus, rely only on the Spirit. And you, too, will trample down Satan under your feet. And so will we all as a community of faith.
Eliot wrote: The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. This Lent, may we do the right thing for the right reason: Love God, love our neighbor, because God loves us.
