Introduction:
This is the Pastor’s Blog for the Service on Sunday Feb 22nd at 10:45AM. Included here is the primary Scripture of this message and the Pastor’s notes. Prior to the service it will include an excerpt of the Pastor’s notes and following the service the complete notes will be added. Also following the service a link will be provided at the bottom to Replay this service. We hope you will join us in Worship on Sunday.
Scripture: Matthew 4:1-11
4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’
11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Pastor’s Message;
The wilderness. What comes to mind when you hear that word?
[responses]
“Wilderness” can bring up all sorts of responses and reactions. The wilderness speaks of the wild – both wild places and wild animals. The untamed and untamable. Threatening in some ways, alarming. So big that one can feel insignificant.
And yet, we need wilderness for our physical and mental health. The estrangement of humanity from wilderness is producing effects we’re only just beginning to understand. Wilderness connects us deeply with creation, and that connection is frayed and unravelling. Everyone suffers from this disconnection – humanity, animals, ecosystems.
The wilderness was a formative place and important motif for ancient Israel. After they are freed from slavery, the Holy One leads them into the wilderness for forty years. In the wilderness, their identity as a people is forged, their community built around Torah, the divine law given on Mount Sinai to give them identity and organization.
The people of ancient Israel don’t navigate the wilderness alone: the Holy One is with them, as a pillar of cloud during the day, and a pillar of fire at night. Ancient Israel learns that God pitches the divine tent with them wherever they wander. The word in Hebrew is a verb: “sha-kane” – to tent (with). The noun form is “Shekinah” and is used to refer to the presence of the Holy One with the people – the God who tents with the people wherever they pitch their tents.
The people are given the gift of Sabbath in the wilderness – a day of rest for the whole community, including servants, animals, and the land. Manna comes to the people in the wilderness – a word that means literally “what is it?” – giving them daily sustenance, a gift from God. They can’t hoard it, as it spoils. God sends quail for them to eat as well, and gives water from a rock. The people find God is with them in the wild, that they are never alone.
Just before the people enter the Promised Land, the “land of milk and honey: that lies on the other side of the wilderness, they receive a caution In the book of Deuteronomy:
Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness … keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in [God’s] ways … For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing …. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that the Divine has given you….Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God,… When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness … Remember the Lord your God … so that the Lord may confirm the covenant that was sworn to your ancestors, as the Holy One is doing today.”
These words may have been playing in Jesus’ mind as he followed the Spirit into the wilderness right after his baptism. Perhaps the Spirit wants Jesus to revisit the experience of Israel. By getting deeply in touch with his ancestral story, Jesus might discover his own deepened identity and ministry.
Just as Israel struggled with temptation after entering the Promised Land – they did forget their wilderness sojourn and the presence of the Shekinah who sustained them – Jesus is faced with temptation while in the wilderness. He has to struggle with the same questions his ancestors did: do we rely on God for provision and well-being? Or do we strike out on our own, seeing our good fortune as evidence of our own efforts and cleverness?
The “devil” comes to Jesus as a sparring partner, presenting the ancient, time-worn temptations of Jesus’ people. How will he relate to the Divine? Will he view his work and life as his own, produced under his own energy? Will he use his own individual power to sustain himself? Will he forget the One who called him “Beloved” at his baptism?
One commentator movingly stated this: “the devil’s temptations are an attack on Jesus’ baptism, on the very idea that Jesus is God’s beloved child, made for a life of humble, open-handed reliance on God … Does God love me, or not?”
Jesus doesn’t play the role of the hero here, the one who exhibits fortitude, strength, and self-reliance. He counters the devil’s temptations with emphatic responses grounded in the scriptural traditions of his people: “God is the source of my sustenance and well-being. God is the source of glory and beauty. God is the ultimate home that offers security and well-being. I choose to rest in divine provision, nurture, and peace; I choose to be in relationship with the One who has called me Beloved.”
These questions march down to us through time and touch every believer – they’re not just for Jesus. These are the great questions of Lent: “Whom do we trust for nourishment? Whom do we trust with our service? Whom do we trust to love and care for us no matter what? What obstacles stand in the way of resting in the presence of the One who has created us and called us beloved?”
These are the questions that beg for introspection and intention. Maybe our Lenten practice can involve giving something up – a common practice going back to medieval times. In our very full and often-loud lives, giving something up might be life-saving. Or perhaps we can take something on that deepens our intention: a simple spiritual practice, or commitment to a matter of social justice that begs for intention.
Whether we give something up, or take something on, the questions of Lent beckon us into the wilderness.
We have forty days to live with these questions. The Holy One is with us in the wilderness, and beyond.
Let us prepare to enter the wilderness with this blessing from Jan Richardson:
Dry and dry and dry in each direction. Dust dry. Desert dry. Bone dry. And here in your own heart: dry, the center of your chest a bare valley stretching out every way you turn. Did you think this was where you had come to die? It’s true that you may need to do some crumbling, yes. That some things you have protected may want to be laid bare, yes. That you will be asked to let go and let go, yes. But listen. This is what A desert is for. If you have come here desolate, if you have come here deflated, then thank your lucky stars the desert is where you have handed— here where it is hard to hide, here where it is unwise to rely on your own devices, here where you will have to look and look again and look close to find what refreshment waits to reveal itself to you. I tell you, though it may be hard to see it now, this is where your greatest blessing eill find you. I tell you, this is where you will receive your life again. I tell you, this is where the breath begins.
