This past weekend I preached two sermons – same scriptural text. Even though I knew this when I scheduled both of them, I forgot how different of communities I am in. The first sermon was in Sunday morning worship at the Church of St. Benedict in Bolingbrook, IL. The Episcopal worship order is great; they read four different scripture readings every Sunday. Thankfully with that much scripture the preacher doesn’t have to strap it all together. Here’s my Sunday morning sermon:
The font is dry. Actually, it’s beyond dry; it’s sandy. I’m not sure if you noticed when entering the sanctuary, but the baptismal pool is full of those coarse, whittled down rocks. During the church season of Lent, the ancient Christian tradition of touching the water so we can “remember our baptisms” seems near impossible. The sand reminds us that the life-giving waters of baptism are not everywhere at every time. The waters are gone and in their absence is the sand. Welcome to the wilderness, my friends.
In the next forty days of our church life, we’re going through the season of Lent. Lent is like the wilderness – it’s dark; it’s lonely; it can be full of shame and isolation. It’s a time where joy is scarce and we’re brought face to face with our vulnerabilities and our sins. The wilderness can happen at any point in our lives. It happened in Jesus’s life.
Welcome to the wilderness.
Jesus’ story in Mark is startling, it’s quick, and the story is finished before the details sink in. He did what?
Well, John the Baptist baptized him, the skies were torn open, the Spirit came down, God’s loud voice boomed that Jesus was God’s son and that God loved him and that God was well-pleased. What a euphoric experience! It’s the literal equivalent of what happens emotionally at every baptism. The water marks the person as God’s own; God loves that person and is well-pleased. It’s perfect!
And then the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness? What?!? Why would Jesus leave his own baptism? He’s hearing directly from God! Why does the wilderness – the time of desolation and loneliness – follow the life-giving event of baptism? I think we should ask God: “Wait a second, shouldn’t there be no wilderness after baptism?!?” And it’s even stranger to see what’s waiting for Jesus in the desert. Satan? Angels? Wild beasts? This story is strange! It’s too short. We want to see how Jesus lived in the wilderness besides just having help from Angels. We‘re in the wilderness of Lent; we want a guide. But in the two verses – the measly two verses that marks all of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness – in these two verses we’re left without a guide. We don’t have an exit strategy. We don’t even know what signs to look for.
Welcome to the wilderness; we’re stuck here.
But the more we look around this season, hopefully the wilderness isn’t completely void of hope. Remember how we got here? We came through baptism! We’ve been washed by the waters and marked as God’s own forever. God is behind it all – the prompting to go on a journey of tests and trials. The Spirit was who prompted Jesus to immediately go out.
For me, it happened when I went to college. My support system was gone. My community was in constant transition. I tried to fix it by relying on the only person I could trust: myself. But in the process, I spent so much time focused on myself that I ignored the friends reaching out to me. I made my own loneliness seem natural and unavoidable. In the wilderness we don’t recognize our neighbors. We have trouble even recognizing ourselves.
In the wilderness, we find someone who is probably the strangest traveling companion of all: God. God who promises, God who is well-pleased, God who loves. In normal time this would seem perfect – but in the wilderness it’s strange! It’s strange because in contrast to God’s love, we humans are but dust.
The story of Noah tells us that God saves us from destruction. God makes an unsolicited promise. It’s a promise that won’t change and won’t end. God promises to all of creation that God won’t destroy all flesh by using water. In effect, it’s like God is saying, “I value you enough that I’m going to always save you.” It’s an odd connection – knowing the God could destroy, but chooses not to. Humanity and the rest of creation is forever linked to God, its eternal savior.
Humanity is undeserving; it’s easy for humans to think we’re not worth the love when we compare ourselves to God’s grandeur and ease of giving us grace.
The wilderness is the time and space where we feel like we’ve been whittled down by the waters until we’ve become as small and as unnecessary as the rough sand.
Welcome to the wilderness.
At the end of today’s Gospel reading, we hear that Jesus comes out of the wilderness proclaiming the gospel. If you’re looking for good news, this is it; this is the gospel. Ready?!? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” In one of those answers that seems like a trick, we find the simplest definition of the Gospel. Seriously, the Greek grammar makes it read that basic and simple. It’s like there’s a big “=” (EQUALS) sign in front of Jesus’s words. The Gospel = “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” Simple huh? Repent and believe! This is the gospel!
The kingdom of God isn’t some way off place with pearly gates and well-lit clouds. The kingdom of God is on earth. It’s found all around, where God’s love breaks its way into our lives. Looking back on my experience in the wilderness during college, I came out of the wilderness through a blessed community of Catholic students who invited me in. I came out of my unbelief; and although I wouldn’t say I repented and believed (since that seems like a life-long and always unfinished task), I would say I came out of the wilderness by practicing and believing. It was practicing with others – it was taking the time every year to go back into the wilderness through the season of Lent, knowing that I wasn’t alone.
The second sermon was Monday night at the Disciples Divinity House chapel service. I used one of the same central metaphors, but subverted it to describe how these specific graduate students might understand the beginning of their Lenten season. Here’s my Monday night sermon:
We are an assembly of thinkers – ever curious and willing for new adventures of the mind. We are generalists with some very wide-reaching areas of expertise. We come to the world’s problems and the church’s problems and connect the two. We look for linchpins and ways to make the daunting challenges just a little less fearful. But, in fact, it’s hard to find a collective “we” in this room. We don’t have a common set of experiences, knowledge or skill. We are different in so many ways. But with all of the uncommonalities that “we” share, we’re all here. We’re all in this place that helps shape our vocations. I think we’re all in the wilderness.
Growing up and hearing about Jesus’ and the Israelites’ journeys in the wilderness, I thought I knew what the wilderness was. I lived on a horse farm half a mile away from our nearest neighbors. But the Cheesecake Factory 10 minutes away proved that I didn’t really know the wilderness. Living in Bolingbrook now, I might know something about the wilderness. Our apartment looks over a forest preserve and there are farmlands two miles away. But even Metra runs near us, so I can’t really know the wilderness. Going to Bosnia last summer, I thought I’d finally seen the wilderness. This shepherd and his wife tended sheep and complained that the older they got the more sheep they lost to the wolves. Their nearest neighbor was a 45 minute drive away, over two different mountains. Surely this was the wilderness! But no, in the middle of talking to us, his cell phone rang and he walked over to the edge of the pasture to take the phone call. I’m not sure that the wilderness Jesus experienced can even exist for us in the here and now. But I still think the wilderness is an important symbol of “our” story.
Many of us gathered here have church ancestors who called the wilderness by another name: the frontier. The Disciples were founded on the frontier. The wilderness is our home. Living off the land was commonplace, as was fear of the unknown. With so much spatially that divided, our fore founders wanted to go back to the church’s roots. But as the frontier famously closed in the early 1890s, the Disciples church had to shift in its vocation as well. A united faith started to look different. It started to look more like the structures and institutions that could bind and connect the many churches to each other. Out of the frontier came one of the church’s vocations: unity.
And look around in this place. It may not be the frontier, but the artwork here is also speaking about vocation, and a place set apart. Its gothic framework and its stained glass windows tell tales of quests and righteous journeys. Sir Gallahad, and Sir Percival and Sir Bors behind me are the three knights who quested for the Holy Grail. Mythic, folkloric surely – these heroes were chosen as models. These knights were inexperienced, but they were pious and they were ultimately destined. Facing the potential grace but also destruction that questing for the grail might create, these three knights went through their journeys of formation on their way to their telos. There is a kind of wilderness within Arthurian legend, and in the nature of all quests and journeys.
The University of Chicago Divinity School is a wilderness. Feelings of parched thirsts go hand in hand with the ancient parchments we study. We struggle with vocations, like wild beasts, subdued not by the forces of will but by the forces of Tillich, and Rahner, and Barth. We struggle with our ordination and our dissertation committees, sometimes wondering if there’s an answer they want that we can really give. Or at other times, we struggle with them wondering why they’re not giving us what we need – even while we can barely articulate those needs ourselves.
Our vocations all assume different forms throughout our time in this wilderness. Mine have shifted at least once every year I’ve been here. First it was to teach, then to photograph and become an artist, then to lead congregations, then to be a consultant offering guidance on media to different areas of the church. I don’t expect my vocations will ever fully settle. The wilderness is my home and the place where I must constantly wrestle with what the world needs and what God has given me to give.
I’m not sure as ministers, theologians, ethicists and teachers we will ever finally leave the wilderness forever. My wife Heidi reminded me yesterday that even parish ministry and non-parish callings are wilderness. The unexpected demands of those we care for can have this cumulative, overwhelming effect. Right now Heidi has a parishioner actively dying of cancer; it’s an event that has been coming for months, but it marks a loss which is creeping more and more into the community’s present. The Lenten symbol of dust seems more immanent with Mary’s death. All our human inadequacies and limits come into sharp relief in the wilderness.
But even if the wilderness is our church’s home, and our home as students and our native environment as ministers, it’s important to remember in Jesus’s story what caused his journey into the wilderness.
The Spirit drove him out of his baptism and into place of dangerous formation.
God was behind it all.
We don’t know in wilderness time whether we’ll meet companions, adversaries, obstacles or blessings, angels, wild beasts, or Satan. We don’t even know if there’s an end to the wilderness.
But we do know that Jesus in Mark’s gospel shows us something crucial: the wilderness leads us to ministry.
Out of the wilderness Jesus came, evangelizing, saying, “the time has come, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news.”
Out of the wilderness comes our public ministry.
After delivering each, I knew my favorite. Which is yours?
Welcome to the wilderness!
The traveling companions may be strange – even as strange as God – but they make the wilderness bearable.
Out of the wilderness, out of this season of Lent, we will grow.
After I finished both sermons, I knew which one was my favorite. Which was yours?
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