Driven Into the Wilderness: Lenten Reflections

And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness…..

 

Our lessons on this first Sunday in Lent have a number of aspects worth noting. I would like to focus on three of them.

 

First, emerging from the waters of the Jordan River Jesus hears the voice of the Holy One whom he has always experienced in intimate, familial terms, addressing G-d as Father. He has come to the Jordan River for baptism, responding to the calling he experiences as coming from the Holy One. And in today’s Gospel, G_d affirms Jesus’ response to that calling: “You are my Son, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

 

Such an affirmation must have been overwhelming. Direct experiences of the living G-d always are. As Lutheran scholar of religion Rudolf Otto described it, encounters with the Holy One are shrouded in mystery, evoking both awe if not terror as well as a compelling fascination drawing one to that mystery. Otto called it the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

 

 

So it’s hardly surprising that Jesus felt driven by the Spirit into the wilderness where he would remain the next 40 days, a common biblical reference indicating a significant period of time. An experience of the divine is always unsettling, destabilizing, disorienting. Jesus needs time alone with no distractions to figure out what his calling means and how he will respond to it.

 

There is much in this account on this first Sunday of Lent to inform all of us who would follow Jesus. We, too, are beloved children of G_d as are all living beings G-d has created bearing the divine image. And G-d is well pleased with us, even when we doubt our own value. We, too, seek to respond to G_d’s call to us in our lives as Franciscans. And, like Jesus, we, too need time alone, in silence, stripped of the constant distractions that a world dominated by deafening noise would no doubt see as a wilderness. We need to make sense of what G-d is calling us to be and to do at this point in our spiritual journeys. And we must stop talking and cut out the noise all around us long enough to hear G_d’s voice.

 

There is a reason the church has long marked a 40 day period of Lent.

 

But how do we engage such an undertaking? What should we reflect upon? How do we discern G-d’s voice among the chattering in our minds competing for our attention, a condition that those who meditate often call our monkey mind? I would like to suggest that the creators of today’s lectionary have given us a framework to guide us. And it comes in the form of our psalm. Let’s hear portions of it again, observing periodic moments of silence to engage the questions it raises for us:

 

Psalm 25:1-9, Ad te, Domine, levavi

 

 

1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you; *
let me not be humiliated, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

 

·         What are the aspects of my life I find easy to entrust to the Holy One?

·         What aspects do I tightly hold onto, afraid to let go and let G_d direct me?

·         What might my life look like if I did?

 

  

3 Show me your ways, O Lord, * and teach me your paths.

4 Lead me in your truth and teach me, * for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.

 

        Callings change over lifetimes. Seeking to discern what we are called to be and do here and now is an ongoing process.

 

·         What truths about myself, my soul, my world, does G_d have to offer me this Lenten season?

·         What is G_d’s calling to me at this juncture of my life?

·         How can I know?

 

 

 

5 Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, *
for they are from everlasting.

 

        Jesus was the revealer of G-d. If we want to find Jesus in the Gospels, we should look for where the suffering is occurring. There we see the compassion of G_d, a willingness to enter into and be present with the suffering of others.

 

·         Where am I called to be compassionate?

·         What in my own life requires letting go of judgment, creating a place for me to show compassion for my own life struggles?

·         And where is the suffering around me in the world where my compassion could make a difference? 

 

6 Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; *
remember me according to your love

        and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.

8 He guides the humble in doing right *
and teaches his way to the lowly.

 

        For many of us, our challenge is not believing G_d can forgive us our sins. It is forgiving ourselves. We readily recall our failings stretching back to our childhood. And we often labor under the misapprehension that G_d does, too.

 

·         Where am I called to trust that G_d loves every part of me, including the parts I don’t like, the parts I am ashamed of?

·         Where do I need to take seriously the words our baptismal covenant - “I will with God’s help” - in seeking to let go of my own shame?

·         What might G_d have to teach me this Lenten season about G-d’s goodness and loving kindness toward all of Creation, including myself, without conditions?

 

 

 

9 All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness *
to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

 

Let us give thanks for the paths of the Lord which the psalmist tells us are marked by love and faithfulness. Let us give thanks for the Way of Jesus we see revealed in Gospel accounts like today’s lesson. And let us give thanks for the model Francis and Clare have provided us in following that Way in our own lives.

May our time in the wilderness be meaningful and prove fruitful. And let us depart for the Wilderness with the words of our Franciscan prayer The Aborbeat on our lips:

 

May the power of your love, Lord Christ,

fiery and sweet as honey,

so absorb our hearts

as to withdraw them from all that is under heaven.

Grant that we may be ready

to die for love of your love,

as you died for love of our love. Amen

 

A Reflection for the Lenten Retreat, TSSF San Damiano Chapter

Holy Names Priory, St. Leo, FL

Lent I(B), Sunday, February 18, 2024 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2024

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To Bind Up Their Wounds

You may watch this sermon as it was delivered at this link starting at 30:30 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMJUuyZge_Y

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” May I speak in the name of the G-d who [+] Creates, Redeems and Sustains us? AMEN.

Today’s Gospel lesson offers us what I see as a compelling vision of how to be a healthy spiritual community following the Way of Jesus. It comes from an early group of Jesus followers seeking to preserve his memory four decades after his death. That community would produce the Gospel of Mark.

 

 

In today’s short passage from Mark, Jesus has just departed from a synagogue where he has been teaching. He has scandalized the defenders of the faith there by his powerful insights, these coming from a man with no religious credentials. Jesus is not bound by the understandings of his tradition or culture. From the very beginning Jesus rattled the cages of the guardians of the institutions of his day.

 

"Caring Hands" by Helgunn Bjerga Ravonsheed (2014)

He leaves the synagogue and goes immediately to the home of one of his disciples whose mother is very ill. Jesus stands at her bedside, takes her hand, helps her to rise and her fever vanishes. She is willing to trust Jesus and the G-d he reveals. As a result, she is healed. Quickly the word spreads around the village and by sunset, its residents would bring their sick and demon possessed to Jesus for healing.

 Jesus will have a long night ahead of him.

 

Silence Alone – When G_d Speaks

 

It’s instructive to note what happens next. Jesus rises early, before the sun has come up, heading out to an isolated place to pray. You see, Jesus has realized something critical. If you want to hear what G-d has to say, you must stop talking, isolate yourself to avoid distractions, and listen.

 'Christ in the Wilderness', 1898, by Briton Riviere

While our approaches to religion often tend to be largely cognitive and verbal, marked by constant speaking and references to texts, much like the guardians of the synagogue he has just scandalized, Jesus is modeling a way of engaging the Holy that runs contrary to that. He doesn’t feel compelled to tell G-d what he needs or what G-d needs to do. He trusts G_d to figure that out. And he has also figured out that if you want to hear what G-d is saying to you, you have to stop talking. Silence is not only golden, it is essential if we are to hear the voice of G_d.

When Jesus’ followers finally locate him, they want him to return to the crowds looking for the next round of teaching and healings. But Jesus has other ideas. “Let’s go somewhere else, to the neighboring villages, so I can speak there, too. This is what I came for.”  The Gospel writers were pretty clear that a major focus of Jesus’ mission was offering messages of hope to his listeners. But it was hardly the entire picture.

 

Jesus is Found Where Suffering is Occurring

What we see in Mark’s gospel today speaks to me of the very character of Jesus. Richard Rohr often says that if you want to find Jesus in the Gospels, look for where the suffering is occurring. In our lesson today and in the passages that precede and follow it, Jesus is busy healing people of both physical as well as spiritual illnesses. If there is a overriding aspect to the character of Jesus, it is compassion.

Clearly Jesus is also anxious to teach people, to offer them a vision of themselves and their relatedness to G_d that runs counter to the dominant visions of the First CE Judea. The vision of the Sadducees only permits access to G-d by virtue of worship in the Temple, a practice that requires the money to buy the sacrifices which effectively excludes the poor. The vision of the Pharisees requires living into their rule-driven way of meeting the requirements of the Law. In both visions, one’s relationship to G-d is conditioned upon something, controlled by the defenders of the tradition.

 

But Jesus offers his listeners a different vision. He encourages them to see themselves as G_d sees them – You are the light of the world! You are the salt of the earth!  He is willing to draw socially constructed statuses into question, eating with prostitutes and tax collectors, praising the widow who only has her last coin to offer to the Temple while critiquing the Pharisee on the street corner pronouncing his own righteousness. The good news that Jesus offers those around him is that everyone is valued by the G_d who created them - without exception and without conditions. One doesn’t have to do or believe anything for the G_d who created them to value them. And believing that one has value to their Creator permits many people to see themselves as valuable in a world where everything in their lives suggests just the opposite.

This is indeed good news. And it has the power to mend broken hearts.

 

The Good Samaritan, David Teniers the Younger  (1610–1690)

While Jesus is depicted as being very selective in his citation of Hebrew Scriptures, the words of the Psalms are often placed on his lips by the gospel writers. Our psalm today provides a very good description of what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel reading: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

 As I see it, this well describes the ministry of Jesus and defines the Way of Jesus he modeled. I do not think that can be emphasized enough. And I offer you an example from my own life to illustrate that.

 

A Sanctuary for an Unusual Kid

I grew up about an hour from here in a rural Sumter County long before it had been swallowed up by a sprawling tract housing project called The Villages. In Bushnell, the small town where I grew up, the church where the families of teachers like my Dad attended was the First Methodist Church. I was in junior high when it merged with the United Brethren to become the United Methodist Church. And in a sea of Southern Baptists and Churches of God, ready to tell everyone outside their doors that they were all headed to Hell, it was a real refuge for a nerdy kid like me who was not gifted in sports, who hated hunting, who was not a cattle rancher and who was headed to college. While I had only a dawning realization that my sexual orientation might be different from my classmates then, I knew that I was an unusual kid. I also knew that I had a safe place to be at First Methodist. It was a sanctuary in every sense of that word and I grew up strongly shaped by Wesleyan theology and social ethics. 

While I would become an Episcopalian in college, drawn by the liturgy and the willingness of its clergy to involve themselves in the civil rights and anti-war movements, I always cherished my time at First Methodist in Bushnell, Florida. Last week I read that it was among the one/third of Florida Methodist congregations that had voted to leave the United Methodist Church because they were unwilling to accept people like me as their clergy or as first-class citizens among their laity.  Had I been that young boy seeking sanctuary today, I would have been out of luck. 

This was news but it was anything but good. And it absolutely broke my heart.  

 

A Vocation to Bind Up the Broken-Hearted

Being a community that would seek to bind up the broken-hearted is a very special calling. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry observed in his recent film A Case for Love that healthy spiritual communities can be absolutely life changing for both the members of the community and those whose lives they touch. And for Curry, this is not a mere theory, it is something he knows from his own life experience.  

 

I do not know if we at St. Richards realize how important this vocation to the wounded and broken-hearted is to many people. Indeed, I doubt we are even aware of how many our open-hearted community with a soul deeply rooted in the Holy Spirit and parishioners deeply engaged in the world around us has reached. We tend to take for granted our place as a refuge in a diocese which turns its back on those who find themselves targeted by the dehumanizing ideologies that have become dominant in this state renowned for its culture wars. But for many people, just knowing such a place like this even exists in a church they have learned to distrust and hold at arm’s length, is, as Presiding Bishop Curry puts it, life giving.  

As I see it, the Way of Jesus is marked by awareness of and compassion for suffering. It is marked by teaching and preaching that encourages all of us to see ourselves valued in the eyes of the G-d who created us and thus valuable in our own eyes. It is marked by intentional silence alone with our Creator who will speak to us when we give the Holy One the chance to slip a word in edgewise. And it is marked by a willingness to rise from our places of prayer and meditation to engage a world in which there will never be a shortage of broken hearts. As I often say in my posts online, the Way of Jesus reflects a G-d worth worshipping and a spiritual path worth following.

If our parish would be a place that assists people in discovering G-d’s grace which in turn changes our lives and ultimately has the potential to change the whole world – beginning with our own diocese -  we would do well to keep all these aspects which mark the Way of Jesus in mind. In the words of our patron St. Richard of Chichester, Brother Jesus, “May we see you more clearly, love you more dearly and follow you more nearly, day by day.” AMEN.

A sermon preached on February 04, 2024, Epiphany V, at St. Richard’s Episcopal Parish, Winter Park

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2024

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