C
Lent 2 (OL 1) BFC 2016
Luke
4:1-13
February
21, 2016
Day 1
John sees the end of this order,
this world. But I do not see it. I see what he sees with the land, and the
people, and how the whole thing leads to rot.
The whole thing leads us to protecting the little we have. The whole thing leads us to eat out of the
bowl of another. The whole thing thrives
on using position to push down. The Law
has been forgotten. The land is not ours
to share. John will cut the whole tree
down to purify. John will set the world
on fire to purify.
“What will be left?” I ask John. “Who will be left?” He throws his head back and laughs at
me. “You think like a slave,” he
says. “Do you remember what the slaves,
the Children of Israel, had to do for forty years before they could walk as
free people?”
“I remember they needed Moses and the
Law.”
“Moses and the Law, is that all you
remember?” he says, as he picks through the fire between us. “Is that all you remember?” The silence between us is long. I don’t know how he wants me to answer. “Where did they walk, how long did they
walk?” He answers his own question,
“They walked for 40 years—a long, a long time, and they walked in the
wilderness. The Children of Israel had
to be purified of that slave story. It
took them that long to live life, to get organized, as a free people.”
He looks at me, through the fire, with
the voice he uses to call people to the Jordan.
He screams, “What slave stories are told in you? What will the Land of Desolation, the
wilderness, purify in you? You can no
longer remain wood.” With that, John
throws his last stick into the fire and walks away from me. I watch the stick glow, crackle, burn, and become
ember.
So that is where I am beginning. Today I started in the Land of Desolation, in
the wilderness.
Day 2
None of the familiar landmarks I
leaned on in the past are out here.
John’s voice walks with me. “The
wilderness will strip you of everything you have left until all that remains is
God and you. God will cover you like
night, like a dark shroud, and maybe then you will find out exactly who you
think God is. The wilderness will tell
you what you are afraid of, and you will find out what you depend on. The voices will spew out of you, and the
stories you carry will be revealed.
“How shall these things be?” I
remember asking him time after time. And
he would throw his head back and laugh at me again. John was just a little bit too crazy to trust
and just a little bit too true to dismiss.
One day, just before I began, he said,
“Listen, Jesus, stretch your ear for the wilderness. What do you hear?” And I would listen . . .closely . . . hoping
to hear something I could offer back to him.
Finally, I gave up. “I hear nothing. I’m sorry. I hear nothing.”
Then he would whoop in laughter again
and say, “Yes, yes, nothing, wonderful nothing.
It will be just you and God out there.
You will not be able to create or make up any idol to make your
god. The wilderness will purify you
every time you try. It will purge you of
your slave stories.” John scares me a little bit.
“Remember how long the Children of Israel
were in the wilderness? It took them
that long to learn who they were, to purge their slave stories. It took them that long to build themselves as
the people of promise. It took them that
long to know God was not some imitation of Pharaoh.”
Day 3
Today I walked all day—from the
sun’s setting to its rising. John’s
voice was starting to slip from my walk.
I only remembered him saying, “The Spirit is leading you to the
wilderness. Right now God is only a
reflection on the water—just telling you back your own wants and needs.”
I walked and walked. As the day began again, and the sun began to
set, I looked for a place to lay my head.
It was the first time I felt hungry.
I kept waiting for there to be some other person or just some familiar
sound so I could sense my surroundings, but there was nothing. I am scared.
For if the Spirit is the One who leads me out into the wilderness, where
was God now? Where was God now?
Day 4
It’s the same old thing. I walk and rest, rest and walk, and there is
nothing, no sound. Voices are pounding
inside my head. Without anything to feed
them, they have become restless. I try
to sort through each one that is demanding something from me, but they are too
loud. And there is nothing to feed them
out here. I worry that I am beginning to
starve. Or is that the voices that are
beginning to starve, demanding comforts from me?
The silence makes them much too loud
as I try to hear them, sometimes tell one from another, sometimes just escape
them. It is like the outside noise was a
wall which prevented this chaos from spewing forth from me. And now . . . and now the wall gives way and
the voices come like a rush of water.
I’m afraid one of these voices will devour me. They keep coming and coming.
Now the sun rises and even the horizon
blends into the same colors.
Day 8
I continue to walk. The voices . . . I have just grown weary of
them. They no longer support me like
they once did.
Day . . .
I’m not sure what day it is. I’ve been careful when I get up and sit
down. Because I feel a little
faint. My soul just feels empty now. Some time ago, I can’t remember when, all
that within me stopped, or poured out, or I don’t even have the energy to think
about it. I think they starved. I don’t know where I am or what day it
is. The moon has become my friend. Its light offers no heat. As the day ends, I can’t even tell where the
sun is in the sky.
There is another voice rising out of
me, a strong voice, one that is very forceful.
I am wondering whether this is finally God beginning to come to me as
John said would happen. Or maybe this is
just another one of the old voices coming to overwhelm me now that I feel so
weak. I’m not sure what the voice is
saying, but it is telling me I have great power. This must be God affirming me as I felt
affirmed with John’s baptism.
Now I just need to sleep. The darkness and the light blend together. But I think night falls and a new day has
begun.
The next day
I wake and the voice is there waiting
for me. It comes from within me and tells
me again and again how good and righteous I am.
Mmmmm, the voice is sweet and seems to tell me nothing of my
shortcomings. Everything about me is
good. Every step I make is perfect. No struggle, no work. It surrounds me and pounds away at me. I feel faint much of the time, like I am
spinning without my feet touching the ground.
The voices says that I am very powerful.
John has told me that. John? Is that you?
I can leave the wilderness now, end my
hunger, take care of my needs—just by turning these stones around me into
bread. Take care of your own needs, the
voice says. The immensity of the voice,
how it surrounds me at all sides . . . it scares me. Almost like a pack of animals, it pushes me
not to think.
Walk out of the wilderness? What?
But you told me, the Spirit drove me, into the wilderness.
The voice went on encouraging me, “God
has given you this power for your own pleasure and comfort. Be powerful for your people. Be a hero.
Supply them with all the food, all the answers they will need. Let go of the struggle. Turn these stones into bread. You don’t need others. You don’t need their hospitality.”
I lick my dry lips over and over
again. My bones ache. “Yes, this is good,” my body tells me.
Wait.
You refer to God, then who are you?
You aren’t John. If I turn these
stones into bread, then how will the Children of Israel know themselves to be
powerful? What will I learn? How will I trust the hospitality of God?
Like a sliver of light receding, the
voice slipped back from view, and I knew it was not done with me.
I slept and woke again. The voice was there, waiting for me, smiling
as I looked around for some touchstone, some balance. It wanted ease for my life. I still feel faint and dizzy. The light moved in on me and spoke, “I
realize now that I offered you so little in bread. You are a good person. You want what is right for everybody. So how about I offer you more than just for
you. I would put you in charge. Better than ending all the hunger in the
world, I offer you Rome and beyond its borders.
Command and the people will live in justice. Command and the people will once again make
Jerusalem the city of peace.”
I inquired, “But how can justice be
commanded from on high? If the Children
of Israel do not walk the path of justice with God, we shall only worship violence
and death to maintain the kingdom you give us.
If the Children of Israel do not build Jerusalem with the bricks of
peace, we shall only worship Jerusalem through warfare and slavery. Worship begins with the ground under our
feet.”[1]
I slept and am not so sure I
awoke. I felt like I had been stripped
bare for the whole world to see. Nothing
more to protect me, the light sensed my vulnerability and surrounded me. “Twice I have given you the opportunity to
end misery and show how powerful and righteous you are. I whispered softly in your ear of how I would
take care of your needs. Twice you have
proven that you care little for the misery of the Children of Israel and their
God. I think you are a hypocrite, a
fraud, a pretender. I give you one last
opportunity to prove yourself. Show
yourself so that God knows, the Children of Israel know, the Romans know who
you are. Show that the ground under your
feet, the things you do, will really be of God and for God. This is the last choice you have. After this, there is nothing. You will be nothing.”
And I remembered John laughing . . .
and the wonderful nothing, nothing else but God and me. And I began to laugh. When did God ever demand such foolish tests? When did I ever need to be protected from God?
And the light grew in anger as one
last threat. It threatened to leave,
disappear, and no longer whisper sweet things in my ear. I was no longer afraid. And it slipped from my soul, no longer even a
sliver of light.
In the wilderness I began to know who
God was. And there was nothing to
protect me from the absolute terror of God’s kindness and goodness. I wanted nothing to protect me. For I knew God loved me without interest in
what God could make or force me to do.
And there was no more reflection on the water. I wrapped God around like a dark shroud. The wilderness and the night came within me,
became my friends, and God had been there all along.
I knew the voice would return at
another time.
Here was peace. But for now I pulled in my horizon like a
great fish-net. Pulled it from around
the waist of the world and draped it over my shoulder. So much of life in its meshes. I called in my soul to come and see.[2] I began the journey to Galilee. Amen.
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