“Where the Wild Things Are”
By Julie Yarborough
February 26, 2012
Mark 1: 9-15 and Psalm 25: 1-10
[ Audio
(mp3, 5.4Mb) ]
the children's book Where the Wild Things Are[1], the protagonist, Max, is sent to his room for acting too wild. When he goes into his room by himself, the room is transformed into a forest and Max sails across an ocean to a land where the wild things are, each one more terrible than the other. They roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth, roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws. Max tames them with the magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once. And after a long and glorious wild rumpus with the wild things, he comes back to his room, where he finds a home cooked meal waiting for him, and it's still hot. It's a good story for the beginning of Lent.
Today
is the first Sunday of Lent, recognized in Christianity as the 40 days prior to
Easter. Lent is traditionally a time of fasting and repentance and refocusing
on our faith in preparation for Holy Week and Easter. Every year, on the first
Sunday in Lent, we hear the familiar passage of Jesus going into the wilderness
for forty days. The passage, bracketed by Jesus' Baptism and the beginning of
his preaching ministry, is found in three of the four gospels, but Mark, in his
usual brevity, gives us very few details. Luke uses 33 verses to tell about
this time in Jesus' life. Matthew uses
21 verses, but Mark tells us everything he needs to in just 6 verses. Matthew and Luke go into great detail about
the temptations that Jesus encounters and how he resists each one. Yet, today's
text doesn't give us the benefit of that information. Mark gives us the bare
bones account. Jesus is baptized and hears the voice of God saying, “You are my
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” He then is led into the desert for 40
days and nights. We don't hear any specifics about Jesus' temptations or trials
in the desert – just that he is led into the wilderness where he encounters
Satan, wild animals, and angels. Then, at the end of his 40 days in the
wilderness, Jesus begins his ministry of preaching the good news.
The
Greek word that is usually translated as desert is er––ēmos – not a hot, dry
place, but a desolate, lonely place.[2]
It's a place that was necessary for Jesus to go, in order to prepare for his
ministry of teaching, preaching and healing. In fact, Mark tells us that Jesus
was led into the desert immediately
following his baptism, after hearing the voice from heaven calling him the
beloved. He didn't have time to pack his clothes, say goodbye to his family or
even grab a bite to eat. Without even so
much as a water bottle, Jesus was cast into the wilderness.
We
all experience wilderness places in our lives. Sometimes it's by choice, when
we make a conscious decision to enter into a time of retreat and reflection, in
order to spend time in prayer and introspection and grow closer to God. More
often than not, however, we are led (or should I say, thrust?) into the
wilderness – often kicking and screaming. Illness, job loss, a breakup or
divorce, the death of a loved one, experiencing racism or homophobia first-hand
– all of these things can catapult us into times of loneliness and despair.
Facing inner shame like addictions or past sexual abuse can also take us into
desolate places.
This
has been a difficult month for many people around me. A young mom of two boys
at my children's school died after complications following a medical procedure.
The same day, the daughter-in-law of one of our church families (apparently,
she fell down the stairs in her home.) She was the mother of two young
children. Less than a week later, the 18 year-old grandson of one of our members
died in his sleep. This week, my sister called and asked for prayer for a
friend of hers whose fiancée died suddenly. The families and friends of these
people who died so young and so quickly have all been thrust into the
wilderness, without any warning or any time to prepare. For a couple of my
friends, their very faith has been called into question. “How could God let
this happen?” they are asking. They
believed that if they lived a good life and were faithful to God, they would be
protected from tragedy and heartbreak.
When
Bad Things Happen to Good People is
the title of a book that I recommended to those friends. It was written by
Rabbi Harold Kushner after the death of his young son, Aaron from a rare and
fatal disease. In an attempt to make sense of this event, Kushner essentially
argues that God cannot be both all-loving and all-powerful. God is love,
period.
Kushner
writes “… No one ever promised us a life free from pain and disappointment. The
most anyone ever promised us was that we would not be alone in our pain, and
that we would be able to draw upon a source outside ourselves for the strength
and courage we would need to survive life's tragedies and life's unfairness…
God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused
by bad people and some are simply the inevitable consequence of our being human
and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful
things that happen to us are not punishment for our misbehavior, nor are they
in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not
God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We
can turn to [God] for help in overcoming it, precisely because … God is as
outraged by it as we are.”[3]
A
couple of years ago, our morning Quest group read Marcus Borg's book, The
Heart of Christianity. In the chapter on faith, Borg began with a story
of meeting a woman on a plane who told him that she was more interested in
Buddhism and Sufism than Christianity, because Christianity was focused on
believing, but the other religions were more about following a path. Borg
understood what she meant – for many Christians and non-Christians alike, faith
has been defined by what we believe to be true. And yet Jesus spoke many times
of faith as following a path or way.[4]
Faith is so much more than belief. To define faith as belief locates faith in
the head, but Borg argues that faith is more a matter of the heart, a matter of
radical trust and fidelity to God. Like floating on water, faith requires a
letting go and sinking into God's love, trusting in the buoyancy of God.[5] As Borg writes, “In this life, a radical
centering in God leads us to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see
and live our lives… And in our deaths, dying means trusting in the buoyancy of
God, that the one who has carried us in this life is the one into whom we die.”[6]
Psalm
25 refers to this type of faith: “To you
O Lord, I lift up my soul. Oh my God in you I trust.” The psalmist also speaks about faith as
following a way: “Teach me your paths, lead me in your truth.” The poet who
wrote this psalm was in a desert place, calling out to God for guidance and
wisdom and asking to be spared from shame. Leaning on God, the psalmist
remembers God's faithfulness and steadfast love, trusting that God has forgiven
the sins of youth and other past transgressions. It is this steadfast love that
the psalmist relies on for guidance through the wilderness.
When
we hear the voice of God calling to us, telling us that we are the beloved, and
we choose to follow that voice and even to offer our very lives to God's
service, we are not offered protection from catastrophe. We are not given
immunity to pain and suffering. We are, however, blessed with hope and faith
that can carry us through the difficult times. We are held up by the buoyancy
of God. Even the most faithful believers are not spared a trip into the
wilderness. But when we trust in God's love, we will be given the
guidance and strength to face the temptations and trials that await us, and we
may even recognize those who are sent to offer us solace and comfort in our
times of need, as the angels that they are.
As
a matter of fact, the wilderness is a necessary place that each of us must go
to, to discover who we are and whose we are. Jesus discovered who he was in the
wilderness, and we need to go to unfamiliar places (un-familiar, literally
meaning not family) we need to go away from family, away from what we know,
away from what makes us comfortable in order to discover who we really are. We
can learn some valuable lessons in the wilderness. Now let me be clear: I don't
believe that God makes bad things happen to us in order to teach us a lesson,
but I do believe that God can use those wilderness times to help us learn more
about our resilience and our faith, and can (and does!) send us angels to help
us on our way when the going gets tough.
The
wilderness experience can be an outer one or an inner one. Just as Max is banished to his room for
behaving like a wild thing, there are times when we too must go off by
ourselves to get in touch with the wildness inside of us. The 40 days of Lent
provide us with the opportunity to enter the wilderness willingly – to confront
the wild things within us as they roar their terrible roars, gnash their
terrible teeth, roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws. In that
moment, we realize that we have the ability to tame the wild things by staring
into their yellow eyes without blinking once. In other words, we can go into
the desolate places of our lives, and examine them closely. We can confront the temptations, shame and
addictions we encounter, look into the face of the things that scare and
confound us, and let the angels minister to us in our
times of need – maybe even with a home cooked meal that's still hot when we
most need it.
Hear now the words of Elizabeth Canham,
who reminds us that the wilderness is something we need not fear:
“The
desert sometimes issues its own invitation: ‘Come! Enter into my silence, my
uncluttered solitude, my stark beauty, and I will show you depths of your own
soul you never knew you had. Come and listen to the Holy One who speaks within,
tells you that you are loved, and clarifies your call to service. Come and find
strength; let grace encompass you; let go of baggage; and wait simply for God.”[7]
Amen.
Benediction:
In every desert, let clarity come.
Let discernment drench you.
Let angels attend you.
Let them give to your hunger their sweetest
delights.” [8]
