Mark’s story of the temptation in the desert
is fast
moving and concise.
After Jesus’ grace-filled experience at the River Jordan
where he
heard God call him beloved,
and the Holy
Spirit descended on him like a dove,
things
take a quick turn in another direction.
Mark says, “the Spirit immediately drove him into the
wilderness.”
One preacher says “The Spirit morphs (from a sweet dove)
into a . . .
pecking, beating bird nightmare that sends Jesus
fleeing
into the desert.”
This isn’t the dove on your Christmas tree.
It’s something by Alfred Hitchcock
with Jesus
in the place of Tippy Hedren.
Wrestling demons in the desert for 40 days
wasn’t
Jesus’ idea.
In fact, he was against it.
And the experience probably did not change his mind.
He went on to author the prayer,
“Lead us not
into temptation”
– in other
words, let’s not do that again.
Since Jesus’ time in the desert corresponds
to our
observance of Lent,
we may take
comfort in noting
that he
wasn’t thrilled about the idea himself.
In a progressive young church back East –
on Ash Wednesday, the priest imposes the ashes with one hand
then immediately
washes them off with the other
to remind
the people they live in the Resurrection.
She reduces our reflection on sin and death to about 3
seconds,
and
rushes back to the happy thoughts.
giving up anything
for Lent,
people
should just take some quite time enjoying God.
Some of us don’t want to observe Lent.
That’ s ok. Jesus didn’t want to go there either.
In Scripture, the desert means the place
we
do not want to go.
But immediately after his life changing encounter with God’s
love,
that’s
precisely where Jesus was compelled to go.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron titled one of her books,
“Go to the
places that scare you.”
That’s what the Spirit made Jesus do,
and that is
what the Spirit presses us to do as well
– to go to
the places we would rather avoid
because
something essential happens there.
That’ s where our religion gets real.
The danger in religion is that it so easily becomes escapist.
It so easily becomes a flight into pleasant fantasies.
That kind of religion is fragile, unstable, and undependable
because
reality keeps breaking in on us.
Shallow optimistic religion continues to continue to pretend
and then we
get the shadow on the x-ray,
then
“something amiss” on the MRI,
or our
self-image as one of the good guys
is
marred by a moral lapse.
Reality insistently intrudes on a false faith.
The Holy Spirit turns on a dime from a happy feeling
into reality
forcing us to confront the demons.
And that’s a good thing.
of
optimistic denial “the religion of healhty mindedness.”
He said two world religions are particularly effective
at getting
people through life
precisely
because they are not “healthy minded”
-- because
they acknowledge what we try to deny.
Those two religions are Buddhism and Christianity.
We observe penitential seasons to make room for the minor
key,
to paint
with the darker tone.
That keeps our faith true enough, deep enough,
rich enough
to help us through all kinds of times.
Our faith isn’t about living in an oasis.
It’s about living in the desert with wild beasts
but that’s
where we meet the ministering angels.
Psalm 84 says when we pass through the desert valley,
that’s where
we find springs.
Ours is a faith for the hard times – not a naïve promise
that if we
get our minds right
everything
will be just fine.
Observing a
penitential season runs counter to our culture.
Secular society and some brands of Christianity assume
that it’s
all about feeling good all the time.
Feminist theologian Dorothee Soelle writes:
“. . . W(h)at will
become of a society in which
. . . suffering (is)
avoided . . .; . . . in which a marriage
. . .
smoothly ends in divorce; . . .
relationships between
generations are dissolved as
quickly as possible,
without a struggle, without a trace;
periods of mourning are
“sensibly” short;
with
haste the handicapped . . . are removed from the house
and the dead from the
mind . . .”
Soelle
says that in such a society
“even joy and happiness
can no longer be experienced . . .”
Suffering and joy are two sides of
one coin.
To
anesthetize ourselves against one
is to anesthetize
ourselves against the other.
“No
cross, no crown,” Spurgeon used to say.
We might
say, “No Lent, no Easter.”
Much so-called
“spirituality” tries to insulate us from pain.
Meditation
is reduced to relaxation exercises.
Contemplation
is pretending we are in a pleasant place.
Prayer
is an incantation to drive away our hardships;
and
faith is positive thinking.
Today’s
lesson teaches us a very different spirituality.
Liberation
theologian Jon Sobrino defines spirituality as
“a fundamental
willingness to face what is real”
– including
the realities of pain and injustice.
“the Spirit connects us
to reality in a way that bridge[s] . . .
the gulf between
suffering and hope . . . confronting suffering
without
illusion but also without despair.”
Our
brand of spirituality dares to see things straight on,
to face the joy and the
sorrow alike,
to acknowledge our
failings and celebrate God’s love.
Lent
is the time of the desert,
go there because God is
present in every situation.
When
we are in the desert with the ravenous beasts,
the
ministering angels will be there too.
So, I
invite you to the observance of a holy Lent.
I
invite you to a deeper awareness of life.
And I
invite you to a quiet confidence
that God is with you –
always there to
strengthen and sustain you –
always
there to love, forgive, empower, or console –
always at
your side.
