Red Bison Faith: Akbaakuxshé: First Sunday of Lent, "Strong back, soft front, wild heart", dialogue sermon with Lisa Harmon

Thursday, May 17, 2018

First Sunday of Lent, "Strong back, soft front, wild heart", dialogue sermon with Lisa Harmon

B Lent 1 BFC 2018

Mark 1:9-15; Mark 4:24-25

February 18, 2018

Scripture:

Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the skies torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately threw Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by the Adversary; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the Empire of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news."

Mark 4:24-25

And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

Research professor, wisdom-giver, and author, Brené Brown, shares what she considers to be the elements of what it means to remember that we belong to one another—a strong back, a soft front, and a wild heart. Having a strong back is to speak truth to b.s. while at the same time being civil. Having a soft front has to do with our deepest need—to be seen by other people, to really be seen and known by someone else. But we’re all so armored up these days, armored up to the point where there is not a chance on God’s green earth that we can be seen. We need a soft front to be seen. Finally, to remember that we belong to one another, we need a wild heart, a heart that lives between the paradoxes and the tensions of grit and grace, tough and tender, excited and scared.

In Christian spirituality, the three basic values are intention, balance, and freedom. These values reflect what it means to be wild at heart. For we are not caught slavishly reacting to whatever the world throws at us. Rather, we intentionally and creatively choose the right amount of grit or grace, toughness or tenderness, excitement or fear.[1] Our balance between those tensions does not allow us to get knocked off our pins. We use these paradoxes as tools, with a freedom that calls for just the right amount in any given situation.

We all have that fundamental need to belong. And to remember that we belong is to be wild at heart. “Wild” comes from that word “wilderness.” Lent is the invitation to walk in the wilderness, to put down the extra baggage, because it just might kill us, if we try to lug it around. The wilderness is the place where the sources of life and sustenance are foreign to us. So we will have to whittle down, figure out what our core values are, liberate our attention to discern what really matters. We will have to develop mantras to repeat over and over, as a contrast to what the world tells us about who we are and to remember that we do belong.

Every year the Revised Common Lectionary has us reading the follow up to Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist. Every year, on the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus walks out into the wilderness for 40 days. This is a not-so-disguised replay of the Children of Israel walking out into the wilderness 40 years after they left bondage in Egypt. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is thrown out into the wilderness by the Spirit. The Greek word[2] is the same one used to describe Jesus throwing out demons from the occupied and colonized Jewish people throughout Mark.

Seemingly, by the spiritual force of the Spirit, Jesus has no choice. As we all do, Jesus must make his way through the wilderness. It is a divine journey. For in the wilderness, we learn the rules for how we are to live in the Promised Land. Every year Lent comes around and we practice living in this stark landscape, this extreme place, to learn of God’s presence and our own power. What are those mantras we will repeat over and against the imperial narrative? In her spiritual practice, Lisa brings forward some of the mantras that work for her.

At this point, Lisa Harmon begins preaching.

We may believe we walk in the wilderness alone, but the wilderness is not loneliness. Loneliness is driven by our lack of authenticity, and our authenticity sometimes requires that we jeopardize our connection with other people to say, “I disagree. That’s not funny. I’m not on board.” Those who have the highest levels of belonging in the world show up, knowing that we stand alone in our values at times. For when we stand up against something we do not think is right or for something we know to be right, we are connected to every other person who has made the journey through the wilderness.[3] In the wilderness, we learn to imitate the wild heart of God, unbound, unfettered, and unattached to the imperial narrative.

The wilderness creates a moment of beholding. Beholding is where we learn to pay attention for the first time. The wilderness forces us to take account of our lives. Instead of being caught up in schedules, rushing around, and deadlines, we come into the present moment and stop. And now we look. What is the opportunity in the given moment? Now with this beholding, we see the opportunity in the given moment. We are called to do something with this opportunity. We avail ourselves of the opportunity and we go.[4]

The wilderness is the call to fast from anything that is not rooted in love. In Lent, we are to develop our spiritual practice of fasting. What we give attention to grows. What we pay attention to grows. So let our self-imposed wilderness be a spiritual practice of not giving our attention to those things, as Adrienne Maree Brown writes, that are “other people’s cycles, their mistakes, lies, or ignorant projections, or the domination cycles of those who measure their humanity in false supremacy.”[5] Let us fast from those things. Rather, let us bring our attention, let us shine sunlight on everything we want to see grow. Right now our world requires “a shift from individual, interpersonal and inter-organizational anger towards a viable generative sustainable systemic change.”[6] Anger and violence seem to be the only tools we have as we walk into the wilderness. And we need something more.

How do we get there? How do we start with ourselves and this community of faith in Billings, Montana, so that we might all have a strong back, soft front, wild heart, and remember that we belong to each other?

Lisa Harmon finishes the sermon.