Path Through The Desert

1st Sunday In Lent:





I know this sounds cliché, especially coming from a wanna be orthodox/catholic/anglican/anything-higher-church-than-Methodist ("Look at those Episcopalians with their light flakey Eucharist and their bright, airy Narthex. Boy would I like to dip my hand in their font.") but I just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The thing about this pilgrimage, though, is that it was not planned. I was given the trip last minute from my lead pastor, who had a heck of a week prior to her planned trip and found out that she couldn't go. She and her husband, therefore, gave my wife and me their tickets a little less than a week before the trip left.

While this trip/pilgrimage was not planned, it came at a perfect time. I found out three days before leaving for the trip that I did not pass one of my ordination interviews at the conference level. Long story and much speculation about my failing this particular committee, but suffice it to say that I was in a pretty dry place spiritually when we left for the trip. (For my feelings about this process, see my other blog www.reluctantly&^%$*&#methodist.poopsandwich.gov.)

I don't know if it was a result of my own spiritual drought, or because of the overwhelming beauty of the place, but the most moving part of our trip for me was our time in the desert of temptation. We stopped at a breathtaking overlook, high on top of a hill. If we looked out in front of us there was the "valley of the shadow of death" that David was undoubtedly looking at when he penned his most famous Psalm. Down the valley to our right was the city of Jericho and to our left, in the distance shimmering on a hill, was Jerusalem. There was, however, nothing in between. A perfect place to get lost. A perfect place to fast and pray. A frighteningly peacful place to stay.

I wonder if in the lower moments of Christ's ministry, in Jericho with the sick or in Jerusalem with the twisted, did he long for the peace of the desert? Did Christ ever mentally go back to that place of temptation and long for the time that he had all the answers? The questions and problems were simple and easy-obvious temptation. In the desert, Satan was the clear enemy and the answers were well within reach. Life wasn't easy there, but it was obvious. The distinctions between right and wrong were as clear as those between dirt and water, life and desert.

There is something comforting about the desert. Something centering, clarifying that we don't get when we are in the throws of normal life. Certainly life is not lush in the desert, but it is simple. Food, water and prayer are about all of your concerns in the desert. Comfortingly simple.

This desert that I am in is in no way as profound as Christ's, nor is it as simple (or beautiful) as the desert of temptation. It is, however, seemingly obvious. Our ordination process is broken and inauthentic. My call, though questioned by the committee, has been clarified by the ensuing drought. In an odd way, I am comfortable here, more comfortable than in the lush land of affirmation.

Times inevitably come in life when we have to walk through the desert in preparation for what is to come. Those times can be times of great clarification and simplification. There is a comfort in that...but I fear that we were not called to comfort. We were not created to live in the desert. That is why all paths to the desert inevitably lead through the desert, on to what lies ahead.

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21

Practice Makes Perfect

Perhaps we should start at the beginning. Before we go forward with smearing ashes on our foreheads and saying to one another, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, repent and believe the Gospel,’ before we go forward and do that, we should go back. Allow me to start, in the beginning.
In the beginning, when there was nothing but a shapeless, formless void, God began to create the world. God made stuff, all sorts of stuff. Trees, rocks, grass, water, fish, birds, cattle…and dust, God made them all, and they were good. But when God looked around at all of the stuff God had made, there was something missing. There needed to be something that was God’s signature work, something that could even bear the image of God within creation. But nothing could do that. Nothing in all creation could encompass the very nature, essence, image of God. If God were to make something like that, God would have to start from scratch. So God looked around and found the most basic, nothing, empty thing in the world...dust. God took the dust and began to shape and mold out of the nothingness of dust a masterpiece. This being would have a brain to contemplate, a heart to love, hands to help take care of one another and the world. This masterpiece would have the capacity to worship God rightly, to be in communion with God. So God formed humankind, and when the dust had taken shape, God breathed life into it…and you were born.
You are God’s masterpiece in the world. You were created to bear the very image of God throughout all of creation. To those you love. To those you don’t. To your family, your coworkers, your neighbors and your enemies, you were created to bear the image of God, because you are God’s masterpiece.
But since the beginning of creation, we have marred God’s work by trying to make something out of ourselves. You and I have willfully filled our lives with love of self, with pride, with envy, with hate, with callous hearts. In our attempts to make something out of ourselves, we have taken God’s masterpiece and tarnished it. As a result, you and I don’t always bear God’s image in the world. We don’t love our neighbors. We don’t love our enemies. We don’t love our co-workers. We often don’t even love our families. We rape creation for our own exploitation, we kill others in the name of peace and we see no higher authority than our own feelings or the whims of our hearts. As long as we try to make something out of ourselves, God can do nothing with us. But if we can somehow yet again become nothing, dust, there’s hope.
After all, God’s masterpieces area made out of nothing. The church calls it “ex nihilo,” meaning that God’s creation came from nothing, from scratch. Lent is the time of year that we intentionally seek to empty ourselves, to become as much like nothing as possible, so that God can yet again make masterpieces out of us. The tools that we use are what we call the disciplines of the faith. We do things like pray, fast, give alms, confess, and repent. But there is a a danger in doing these things. These, too, can become something. We can take these disciplines, designed to empty us, and fill ourselves with them. Worse yet, we can seek to be seen as religious, trying yet again to make something out of ourselves. When our disciplines become something, they are useless in God’s hands. Discipline, Jesus says, are never about being seen by others. When you pray, go behind closed doors, so that God can make something out of your prayers. When you give alms, do so in quietness, as though it’s nothing, so that God can make something out of it. When you fast, act like nothing is happening, so that in your emptiness, God can fill you. The disciplines, Jesus says, are not another way to make something out of yourselves. They are a way to empty yourselves. To make us nothing. As dust-like as possible. After all, God’s masterpieces are made out of nothing.
The Lenten disciplines are designed to empty us, to strip us of all those things that are something to us, so that God can yet again make masterpieces out of us. It is good news, this evening (afternoon), when you are smeared with ash and told to remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. God makes masterpieces out of nothing. Pray to become dust, even this Lent. Pray that God takes the disciplines of the faith, and so empties you that you are able to lay dead with Christ on Good Friday, on Holy Saturday and in the tomb on Easter Sunday, divested of everything, emptied of all the trappings in our lives, made, yet again, nothing, as dust-like as possible. Because even now, just like in the beginning, God is looking for some dust to create a masterpiece. Remember that you are dust.