B Lent 1 BFC 2021Mark 1:9-15; Mark 4:24-25February 21, 2021
We belong
to one another. This is one of the
fundamental assertions made by the Christian tradition and Scripture. In the Lakota tradition, it is comprehended
by the phrase, Mitakuye oyasin, (Mee-tah-koo-yay Oy-yah-seen) , “we are
all related,” that truth which stretches out beyond humankind to embrace
animals, plants, the wider world. And
it would seem that we are in a time whether we affirm that truth, live out of
that reality, or we perish protesting that we are not our sister’s keeper, the
Grand River, or that we do not belong to our siblings struggling for full
rights and to be without fear in the Trans-community.
And we are
in an extraordinary moment. Activist,
scholar, and author, Angela Davis, recently said,
This is an extraordinary
moment. I have never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently
experiencing, the conjuncture created by the COVID-19
pandemic and the recognition of the systemic racism that has been rendered
visible under these conditions because of the disproportionate deaths in Black
and Latinx communities. And this is a moment I don’t know whether I ever
expected to experience.[1]
We belong
to one another. If this pandemic is not a time of
the wilderness, I’m not sure what is. In
this extraordinary moment, when many of us long for normal, we have too often
failed to recognize that “church” was born out of a time that was far from
normal. For this blessed church, if this
interim time has not been an opportunity to train our attention on what is
important, then maybe we have given up on what it means to be church. Because my concern for you all is that what
this wilderness has become is just a waiting time—a waiting time until we can
get back to “normal”—with each of you having a different idea of what “normal”
means. We belong to one another.
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. We remain
self-differentiated while also remaining connected. 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 in the
landscape of the paradoxes and the tensions of grit and grace, tough and
tender, excited and scared. In our wildness, we have such possibility to
choose from--a diversity of responses that come with nuance and precision.
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 for the present moment.[2] 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[3] 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?
Three
mantras are found in Jesus’s wilderness story in Matthew and Luke.
· God
is beyond just making sure my needs are satisfied through displays of power and
status.
· God
is not about the flash and the show and has nothing to prove. So don’t go around trying to prove God.
· Do
not worship power-over and all of its trappings.. Serve the God who works with power from below
and across the table.
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.[4] 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.[5]
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. Let our self-imposed
wilderness be a spiritual practice of not giving our attention to those things,
as author and community organizer, 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.”[6] Brown believes we are caught up in cycles
where our attention is caught up in cycles of crises and commercialism. Our attention is drawn to stories that keep
us on a string like puppets. We pay
attention to those stories that leave us furious or helpless—without
power. And then the next scandal or
controversy comes along and, “Squirrel!” our attention is once again diverted
and we are manipulated away from what brings power in the wilderness to the
next thing we will buy, the next scandal or controversy, the path that splits
us in 40 different directions.
Let
us fast from those things. Let us liberate
our attention, let us shine sunlight on everything we want to see grow. Imagine bringing our attention to rhythms of gratitude, collective power, experimentation, curiosity and celebration
and doing that together as a congregation?
Imagine bringing our attention to those rhythms and watching them grow?
Right
now our world requires “a shift from individual, interpersonal and inter-organizational
anger towards a viable, generative, sustainable systemic change.”[7] Anger, violence, and outrage and how we have
been wronged or gypped by what did not go our way . . . .seem to be the only
tools we have as we walk into the wilderness.
And we need something more. We
need to remember that the wilderness is about training our attention, helping
us to discern what is important.
If this pandemic is not
a time of the wilderness, I’m not sure what is.
For this blessed church, if this interim time has not been an
opportunity to train our attention on what is important, then maybe we have given
up on what it means to be church.
Because my concern for you all is that what this wilderness has become
is just a waiting time until we can get back to “normal”—with each of you
having a different idea of what “normal” means.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes that when she trains her attention to
rhythms of gratitude, collective power, experimentation, curiosity, and
celebration, she “experience(s) a lot of days where [she is] full
of awe, laughter, work that induces pride, noticing the small and massive miracles
that are part of each day.”
How
do we get there? How do we start with
ourselves and this community of faith in Jackson, Michigan, so that we might
all have a strong back, soft front, wild heart, and remember that we belong to
each other? I believe it starts when we
see this place of pandemic, this wilderness, as a way to discern our rhythms to
decide, what we will leave behind, what we will no longer lug around to our own
detriment, and what we will grow with our attention.
I
pray that you have heard me encouraging you to see this interim and pandemic
time as an opportunity. And that you,
with a strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts bring attention to the
rhythms that will grow you. May it be
so. Amen.
[1] Angela
Davis, “Uprising & Abolition: Angela Davis on Movement Building, “Defund
the Police” & Where We Go from Here,” Democracy Now!, June 12, 2020,
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/12/angela_davis_historic_moment
[2] “strong back, soft front, wild heart: conversation with Brené Brown,” OnBeing, February 8, 2018, https://onbeing.org/programs/brene-brown-strong-back-soft-front-wild-heart-feb2018/.
[3] ekballw
(ekballw)
[4] “strong
back,” Brown.
[5] “The
Anatomy of Gratitude: Interview with
David Steindl Rast,” On Being,
January 21, 2016, https://onbeing.org/programs/david-steindl-rast-anatomy-of-gratitude/.
[6] Adrienne
Maree Brown, “attention liberation, attention reparations,” October 28, 2017, http://adriennemareebrown.net/2017/10/28/attention-liberation-attention-reparations/.
[7] Adrienne
Maree Brown, “what is/isn’t transformative justice?” July 9, 2015, http://adriennemareebrown.net/2015/07/09/what-isisnt-transformative-justice/.
