Context of "Wandering in the Wilderness" Series"
I returned to Bethany and Hopeville to walk with the congregations through Lent. I often say Lent and Advent are my favorite times of the liturgical year, so I felt incredibly blessed to experience these two seasons with the congregations. I based the series around Jesus's trial in the wilderness Luke 4:1-12 to really dig into what Lent means in our lives. Since the two congregations were still without a pastor, I tied these themes to their present circumstances. However, partway through the series, the war in Ukraine kicked off with Russia's invasion. I was tempted to scrap the series and preach directly about the atrocities Russia was committing. However, when I looked back at the texts I had chosen, Luke 4:5-8 already had a good word prepared. Sometimes a Pastor needs a reminder to trust in God's word, and this was one of those moments.
Good morning. It has been a while since I last saw you all. Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I consider it a privilege and an honor to be invited to this pulpit again. I hope this four-part Lenten series will be spiritual food capable of sustaining you through this trip in the wilderness. For it is in the wilderness we find and follow the path of our Savior.
Although few are likely to follow Christ’s example literally, going without food for forty days, I am sure many of you are already feeling the strain of giving up one of the luxuries of non-Lenten life. Maybe you gave up sugar, tv, video games, coffee, junk food, alcohol. Or, you might have added something to your routine, like extra time for prayer or reading the Bible, more time with friends and family, a commitment to exercise, or sitting down to eat with family. Or maybe you did not give up anything. After all, it is fair to argue two years of pandemic living already required many to sacrifice too much for too long.
If you look back two years, to that distant March before the pandemic, you will remember this trial began during Lent. So, if you are feeling burned out or disengaged with this Lent, it might be because that Lent never ended. Maybe we are still in it.
The most important thing to remember when following in the footsteps of Christ is, he worked on a different timeline and with greater hope for success than any disciple can hope for. Although Jesus began his ministry in his thirties, the life, death, and resurrection covered by the Gospels occurred within a matter of years. Also, Jesus was the Son of God and filled with the Spirit, endowed with the ability to reveal a greater life so all may emulate him, even though we will always fall short of his perfection. So, every year, when we return to Lent, it is fair to say our forty days of sacrifice often pale in comparison to Jesus’s ordeal. However, we cannot forget that Lent did not exist during Christ’s time.
Jesus was on the clock. He had great things to do, so he only had time to do everything once. When he began his fast in the wilderness, he had just finished being baptized and recognized by God’s declaration “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:18-22). Therefore, Jesus’s trip to the wilderness was as much a period of formation and contemplation as it was a test. Jesus knew what was to come. Although his forty days and nights were no picnic, they prepared him for what had to come next. This is the point where we connect to Jesus, in the knowledge of what is to come.
We might not know what the next day brings for any of us, but we know what happens during Lent and Easter. Every year, we enter this time of contemplation, preparing ourselves for that excruciating moment when Christ dies…and then celebrate when he is resurrected. All of us in this room have had many more advents, Lents, Christmases, and Easters than Christ ever did.
Christ did everything perfectly once so we might follow his example in all things and be defined by our commitments rather than our imperfections. When we observe Lent, it is a reminder that schedules, objectives, and things we become attached to are finite. In states of deprivation, we understand true fullness.
By feeding and caring for the marginalized we offer direct care to those who are the face of God. After all, Christ was not born to wealth or privilege. He was raised among a colonized people, a Son of God, but not a citizen of Rome. Cut off from the power and privilege of a distant empire led by a man thought to be a god, Christ could speak truth to power because he was not attached to the trappings that required lies to support inequality. So, when this week’s reading proclaims “’One does not live by bread alone,’” this is Christ’s way of reminding us our worth cannot be diminished by what we lack.
For the starving and the poor of the world, Christ comes to reveal value that cannot be defined by dollars per hour or assets. Christ was the ultimate outsider, so all he says and does lifts and speaks to those who have been silenced or harmed.
Although centuries of imperial Christianity have wed Christ to industry, wealth, and power, Jesus is and was beyond the tools of the rich and powerful. Unlike male leaders who tell women what they can do with their bodies, rich people who craft laws to determine what the poor must do to qualify for aid, or white leaders who try to overlook the racism baked into our systems, Christ never speaks from the pedestal of the oppressor. He rises from the oppressed. He turns our gaze to a world that differs from the patterns of history, a world of God. Our Savior lived among us so we might know he speaks the truth.
Although Christ did miraculous things, he was not unaffected by life’s conditions. If Christ could not know hunger, it would not be significant to go without food for forty days and nights.
We know from scripture Christ was not the first to accomplish this feast. In 1 Kings 19:4-9, Elijah endures his own forty days and forty nights of fasting. And, although they have manna from heaven, the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness without any other food. Yet, Christ stands out as the most exceptional example because, unlike Elijah or the Israelites, he was in control of his fast. He could have ended his fast at any moment by turning a stone into bread. In this moment, our savior who is both fully divine and fully human, went to the edge of human limits with faith that God sustains. Although he could feed himself at any moment, the fullness of the Spirit always exceeded any physical fullness that could be granted by a loaf of bread. As we trod through the beginning of Lent, we have the chance to recognize our sacrifices for what they are, things that pale in comparison to the fullness of God and community.
You do not have to go forty days and nights without food to be transformed by this experience. In fact, if you reflect on the last two years, you have likely learned more from this experience than any one Lent could teach. Lent invites sacrifice so all who have something might know what life is like to live with less. When we started that endless Lent two years ago, we unwillingly entered a period where social lives were sacrificed, jobs and luxuries vanished or were altered, mental health and savings were strained, and the comfort of church was moved to the cold confines of Zoom.
As a congregation, you had the extra challenge of navigating some of the worst moments without a pastor to offer stability and leadership when such things were desperately needed. So, as I speak to you today, in this new cycle of Lent, I have not come to check on your resolutions or challenge you to give up more.
Instead, I ask you to spend the remainder of this Lenten season reflecting on what you have lost or gained. When you were at your lowest, who was there for you? When your schedule and normal comforts were upended, what provided shelter and stability? In the new age of hybrid gatherings, what is community, and where did you find it? Finally, where was God in all this?
I do not think God caused a pandemic or is standing silently while a tyrant commits war crimes on the people of Ukraine. If God is attributed only to the good or bad, there is no room for the community that is the true answer to the joys and woes that afflict us. When Jesus declares, “’One does not live by bread alone,’” he invites us to look beyond all the things that appear to be obvious answers to problems. Yes, food can fill a belly, but food does not make a life.
Although Jesus fed the poor, his greatest work was a message that cut at the tyranny and evil that split people apart and enabled some to be gluttons while others starved. Today, Jesus would point to the mighty dollar or the bloody bullet and reveal no amount will ever be enough if we do not change the factors that cause us to mistake bullets and dollars for God. In his greatest moments of hunger, Jesus shone a light on truth that is known best by the poor, deprived, and ill.
Those who are hungry yearn for bread so they might live and be more than the hunger pangs that signal an early end to a life they love. Those who are without money know it is the thing which might buy the warmth, shelter, wifi, transport, and other luxuries which secure the power of the privileged and penalize the poor. Those who are without health are more than their conditions and disabilities and know that worship of health ignores the value of their stories and experiences.
For those of us who have never know poverty, or hunger, or ill health, the pandemic has been a chance to develop empathy and cherish what is easily taken for granted. While God did not strike us with a pandemic, God was with everyone who stepped up to provide food for the hungry, school and security to children, jobs and new opportunities for the unemployed and disenfranchised, or sacrificed social lives and personal comfort to ensure less people lost their lives to a virus that killed and maimed indiscriminately. In this low we knew what it meant to go without. Now that the pandemic seems to be winding down, we find ourselves in Jesus’s place, looking forward to what has been and what can be.
Do we go back to life before the pandemic, to a cycle based on consuming the world’s scant resources and overlooking our neighbors, or do we find a greater life and community that offers fullness no amount of bread or wealth could? Unlike Christ, we do not know what events will define us or when our lives will end, so we must make the choice to begin our ministries. After a Lent that seemed to be without end, we can reemerge from our screens and create a radical new normal. Amen.
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