"Wilderness Faith." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the First Sunday in Lent.

"Wilderness Faith"

Mark 1:9-15

There’s a hymn in our hymnal that we sing sometimes, “There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place. And I know that it’s the Spirit of the Lord. There are sweet expressions on each face. And I know they feel the presence of the Lord.”

            Somehow, I don’t think the “sweet holy Spirit, sweet heavenly dove” adequately describes the Spirit in Marks’ account of the gospel. As Jill Duffield says, “Mark’s Holy Spirit dove does not sit cooing on a nearby branch, placidly watching.  No. Mark’s version of the Holy Spirit was an angry bird long before the video game came on the scene. The descending dove tears apart heaven to get to earthly Jesus as he comes up out of the waters of baptism… Somehow that image of a gentle bird, branch in its mouth, doesn’t do Mark’s Holy Spirit justice.”[1]

            Jesus had come from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. A voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

            And then, immediately, the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness.  Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

            Now, both Matthew and Luke give us more details about those forty days. Mark’s sparse account leaves a lot more to the imagination.  We might like to fill in the gaps of Mark’s account with details from Matthew or Luke. Some of us might like to minimize the power of evil or tell ourselves there’s little we can do to resist evil. But I wonder if it isn’t more faithful to pay attention to the sparseness in the story…and spend time in the silence …and to invite the story to speak our truth to us.

            There’s a popular Sunday school curriculum for young children called “Godly Play.”  One of the key phrases teachers use in “Godly Play” teaches “The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you have to.” The children are encouraged to run their fingers through large, wooden sandboxes, and to imagine the scorched landscapes Biblical characters encountered as they sought to follow God. Fierce heat. Jagged rocks. Scarcity of water. Wild animals. Blistered feet.

            “The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you have to.”[2]

            We don’t know how Jesus spent those forty days and forty nights. Did he walk for miles each day, or camp out in one spot? Where did he sleep? Did he climb up into a cave? What was the silence like, hour after hour? As the days stretched on and on, did he fear for his survival? Did he question his sanity? Did he have visions?

            What we do know is that Jesus didn’t choose to go to the wilderness, and that it was dangerous.  “The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you have to.”

            Does that ring true for you? Most of us don’t choose to enter a wilderness place. We don’t generally seek out pain or loss or danger or terror. But sometimes we find ourselves in the wilderness anyway.  It may be in a hospital waiting room… a troubled relationship… a sudden death of a loved one… a crippling panic attack… loss of a job… a financial crisis.

            Can we bear to think it’s the Spirit that dries us into the wilderness among the wild beasts? When we’re suffering, we might wonder if this mean that God wills bad things to happen to us?

            Sometimes people will try to tell us things like this.

            I don’t think so.  But I do believe that God can redeem even the most parched and barren times in our lives   and that the dangerous places can also be holy.

            I hesitate to even say this, because I remember that at times Christians have suffered under the false teaching that God gives us human pain and suffering for some greater good. I’ve heard the old platitude that “everything happens for a reason,” and I don’t believe it.  I’ve had a hard time believing it for a long time, because of all the suffering I’ve seen and because I don’t believe the God I love and trust, the God who is love, goes around dispensing suffering and pain to teach us lessons.

           

            A few days ago, I heard part of an interview with Kate Bowler on the radio, on NPR, and I knew I needed to read her book, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved).[3]

            Kate is a Duke Divinity School professor with a Christian background. She was best known, until recently, as an expert on prosperity gospel teachings and author of a book on the subject. Married in her twenties, a baby in her thirties, she got a job at her alma mater straight out of graduate school. She said she felt breathless with the possibilities. She writes, “I felt that God had a worthy plan for my life, in which every setback would also be a step forward.  I wanted God to make me good and make me faithful, with just a few shining accolades along the way. Anything would do if hardships were only detours on my long life’s journey. I believed God would make a way.” She continues, “I don’t believe that anymore.”[4]

            In 2015, at the age of 35, Kate was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer.  

            Kate prayed the same prayer every day: “God, save me. Save me. Save me. Oh, God, remember my baby boy. Remember my son and my husband before you return me to ashes.  Before they walk this earth alone.” She says, “I pleaded with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me collect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart.”

            She had so many questions. “Why?  God, are you here?  What does this suffering mean?”  Sometimes she thought she could almost make out an answer. But then it was drowned out by what by now she’s heard a thousand times. “Everything happens for a reason” or “God is writing a better story.” Apparently, she says, God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows.

            For Kate, THE WORLD OF CERTAINTY had ended and so many people seemed to know why. Most of their explanations were reassurances that even her cancer is a secret plan to improve her. “This is a test and it will make you stronger!” Sometimes, they’d pepper their platitudes with scripture verses.

            So, what I do believe, is that sometimes our life journeys take us to desolate and dangerous places. I don’t think this is because God takes pleasure in our pain or gives it to us to teach us something-- but because we live in a broken, fragile, dangerous world that includes wilderness places. I believe God is with us in ways and through people we might experience as angels.  I believe goodness is stronger than evil and that God can take the things of death and wring from them new life.

            I believe that there aren’t as many simple or certain answers as we might want to believe.

            So that’s what I wanted to say before we go back to the story of Jesus in the wilderness, and to wondering why God’s Beloved Son Jesus needed to be tempted and what it might mean.  

            I think Nadia Bolz-Weber is right when she suggests that temptation--Jesus’ and ours-- is always about identity. It’s about who we are and whose we are.  “Identity,” Nadia says, “is always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God’s own.”[5]

            But almost immediately, other forces try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong.  Forces within capitalism tell us we need to buy certain kinds of cars or houses or clothing to show we have worth.  If we’re poor, parts of society tell us we’ve made bad choices or are lazy or just haven’t tried hard enough. “The weight-loss industrial complex”[6], our parents, teachers, the kids at school all have a go at telling us who we are.

            But only God can tell us who we are.  Everything else is temptation. If we’re out in the wilderness and we hear a voice on the wind telling us that we don’t have enough, that we aren’t good enough, that we can’t keep ourselves or our loved ones safe without gates and walls and bombs and assault weapons-- that’s temptation.

            If God’s first move is to give us our identity and tell us we are Beloved, Satan’s first move is to make us doubt our identity.  As we wander in the wilderness, in dangerous and desolate places, we are tempted to doubt that we are God’s own--beloved.

            The gospel story we heard today reminds us that we will have times of doubt and temptation. The wilderness experience is not unique to Jesus.

            Our times in the wilderness can teach us more about who we really are.

            As Mark tells us, there were angels in the wilderness. They might not have glistening wings and golden halos. Our angels might not come in the form we might prefer.  And yet, somehow, help comes.  Rest comes.  Comfort comes.  Angels come and minister to us. And sometimes we are angels to others.         

            That’s we do in the church, when we are out in the wilderness.  We minister to each other. We minister to each other. We whisper “beloved” …” child of God” into each other’s ears.

            I hope and pray that when angels in various forms whisper “beloved” into our ears, that we will listen and trust in the good news.

            When we’re in the wilderness, we can trust that God is with us, and that we are not alone.  We can trust that we belong to God and that God has named us and claimed us as God’s own.  We can trust that evil will never have the last word. We can know that love wins.
            Thanks be to God!   Amen.

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

February 18, 2018

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[1] http://pres-outlook.org/2018/02/1st-sunday-lent-february-18-2018/

[2] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1660-into-the-wild

[3] Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved).  Random House, 2018.

[4] Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason, Kindle location 69.

[5] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint.” (Jericho Books, 2013), page 139.

[6] I like Nadia’s description of this, on page 139.

"The Promise of Pentecost": A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

"The Promise of Pentecost"

Acts 2:1-21

One of my Lutheran colleagues, Nadia Bolz Weber, was the mission developer for House for All Sinners and Saints, an urban liturgical community in Denver, Colorado.

            Nadia told us that a few years ago a neighboring church gifted House for All Sinners and Saints a full set of gently used paraments.  Their church—a new church development-- is like every other church’s little sister, so they get a lot of hand-me-downs.  As a group of them went through the beautiful altar cloths, they came to the red set and found one with an image of a descending dove with completely crazy eyes and claws that looked like talons.

As Nadia said, “Yep.  It was as though the Holy Spirit was a raptor.”

“Man, someone said. We can’t use this one!   It makes The Holy Spirit look dangerous!”[1]

Well, the story we just heard from Acts is no sweet, sentimental birthday story.   At the so-called birth of the church, there was no organ.  There were no pews fastened to the floor.   There were no greeters handing out bulletins.  There was little resemblance to what the church has become in the early part of the 21^st century. 

On Pentecost, the disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost-- fifty days after Jesus was raised from the grave., waiting and hoping for the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.  And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

           

            What was it that happened on that Day of Pentecost?  Although this holy day is often called the birthday of the church, we’re not celebrating the birth of an organization today.  Pentecost is the story of how the church came alive by the power of the Holy Spirit.  On that day, followers of Jesus Christ received the power to take the gospel to the streets there in Jerusalem...  and eventually throughout the earth.

            What happened that day was such a powerful experience that the people who were there had to turn to dramatic metaphor to describe what happened.  They said it was like a fire falling on them.   A sense of community and understanding transcended all the differences of language of those who were gathered there.

            On that day, a mighty wind from heaven blew the fire of the Holy Spirit into those followers who were gathered together.  When something like tongues of fire danced over the heads of the apostles, they seemed to be quickened by unseen forces.  They were shouting...  preaching...  speaking in a variety of languages so people from a lot of different countries could understand each other...  and generally making such a commotion that the people of the city had to stop and wonder:  what on earth was going on?

            The Spirit blew into the apostles an awareness that-- just as Jesus had promised-- the presence of the Holy Spirit was with them… and was at work in and through them.

            The sound that came from heaven-- that rushing violent wind-- was the exciting sound of old barriers being broken and glass ceilings shattering.  The divisions within humanity were being overcome.   The church was empowered to take to the streets with the good news.

            On the day of Pentecost, the disciples acquired a holy boldness that they’d never had before.  The difference in them after Pentecost was as dramatic as those before-and-after pictures that weight loss programs use in their advertisements. 

            Before Pentecost, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter cowered away from a servant girl’s questions and refused to admit that he knew Jesus. After Pentecost, Peter preaches the first Pentecost sermon to the confused and questioning crowd, boldly proclaiming that Joel's prophecy is being fulfilled, as people are having dreams and visions.  The Spirit gives him the power to witness to the crowd.

            Before Pentecost, many of the disciples felt doubt and despair.  They may have felt, like their ancestors had, like “dry bones.”   After Pentecost, the apostles went out into the streets and into the community, and people’s lives were changed.  They touched the lame and they walked.  They were imprisoned and flogged...  yet they showed no signs of doubt or fear.  Prodded and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the once disheartened disciples moved out.

            Who would be in this new community of faith?  Jews, of course.  That's what the first disciples believed.        But, not long after the story of Pentecost in Acts 2, there are other stories.  Peter has a vision in which he sees a great sheet being lowered with all kinds of animals. He heard God's voice saying, “Don’t call anything I create unclean.” 

            Peter came to understand that the vision wasn’t about unclean food, but about unclean people.  He met the gentile Cornelius and baptized him.  The church could have become a sect within Judaism-- a gathering place for disgruntled Israelites.  But no-- the promise of God was sent even to Gentiles- to outsiders.  The early church struggled with the issue of who to include, just as we do today.  But the Holy Spirit prevailed.

            Fifteen hundred years later, the church that began at Pentecost languished.  There was widespread corruption...abuse of power by the church.  The church had become wealthy...  complacent.  Would the movement begun at Pentecost go the way of so many other organizations that mature and then die? 

            An Augustinian monk in Germany, Martin Luther, nailed a list of 95 theses on a church door and called the church back to its biblical roots.  You know the rest of the story of the reformation:  the Holy Spirit prevailed.

            Eighteenth-century England and the United States were going through the trauma of urbanization and the first industrial revolution. In this time of turmoil, people of faith-- especially Quakers and Evangelicals-- worked for decades for the abolition of slavery, as well as for some other basic human rights. Eventually, the Holy Spirit prevailed, as slavery was abolished and other progress was made, although there’s still a lot of work to be done and the Holy Spirit keeps prodding us. Through struggles for human rights and for justice, the Holy Spirit continues to work in and through God’s people.

Today we are living in a time of huge change:  technological, cultural, political, and religious. So, it’s no wonder if we feel bewildered… disoriented… and afraid.

But I think we’re in a time when God is trying to do amazing new things, through us. It’s a time when we need to open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit to help us discern what the good news is for our time and to empower us to proclaim it.  The Spirit is on the move!

The feast of Pentecost reminds us that the Holy Spirit-- still blows into our lives, to justify us by grace through faith, to set us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor.[2]

            The same Holy Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles and

gave birth to the church continues to prod, cajole, and urge us forward.    It’s been this way since the beginning of the church.  Just when we get settled down, comfortable with present arrangements, our pews bolted securely to the floor, all fixed and immobile-- there comes a rush of wind, or a still small voice...  a breath of fresh air...  tongues of fire-- and the Holy Spirit comes to us, to give us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.[3]

    

        Come, Holy Spirit!

           

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

June 4, 2017

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[1] Nadia Bolz Weber, “The Sermon I Preached at the Festival of Homiletics.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/05/the-pentecost-sermon-i-preached-at-the-festival-of-homiletics/

[2] This wording is excerpting from “The Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which was adopted and added to the Presbyterian Book of Confessions in 1990. https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/

[3] Ibid.

A Meditation on Ash Wednesday, from Littlefield Presbyterian Church

“Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.  

 Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.“

            Recently I got a Facebook message from someone who grew up Catholic, asking if we observe Ash Wednesday and have ashes.  That’s a good question.

            In much of the Protestant church, Ash Wednesday wasn’t really observed until the last thirty years or so.   For a lot of congregations, the imposition of ashes was a new thing.  But I think the practice has been growing, as people have recognized that it’s a gift to be reminded of our mortality.

            Thinking about this, I was reminded of an interview I heard with novelist Yan Martel.  In both The Life of Pi and his newest book, The High Mountains of Portugal, Martel explores faith, religion, and death and grieving, so the interviewer asked him about some of the influences in his life.  Martel mentioned that he has spent a lot of time volunteering in a palliative care unit, which has brought some things into focus for him. 

            That has a ring of truth for me and I imagine for those of you who have spent time in “walking people home.” 

            In her book Accidental Saints, Nadia Bolz-Weber reminds us  that “until the late nineteenth century, the front room in houses, called the parlor, was where one would receive guests, but it was also where the bodies of the dead would be laid out for visitation.              People used to die at home, at which point their loved ones would lovingly wash and prepare the body and lay it in the parlor.  Neighbors, friends, and family would come to see the body and perhaps stroke the hair or kiss the forehead of those who had gone to their rest.  Death was a part of life.  The advent of funeral parlors as businesses changed all that.[1]

            Nadia tells how she found herself doing a funeral, preaching about Jesus and suffering and love, a few days before Ash Wednesday a few years ago, and then going to the hospital on Ash Wednesday to visit new parents and their baby. 

            Nadia held baby Willa in her arms and thanked God for brand new life.  Then her parents asked for ashes.  For them and for baby Willa.    She pressed ever so gently into her forehead, onto this brand new skin that had only been exposed to air for a few precious hours and said that even she, full of beauty and hope and just hours from her mother’s womb, even she will return—return to dust and the very heart of God.

            And then, Nadia says, she knew.  She knew more than any other Ash Wednesday in her life, that the promises of baptism and funerals, the promises of birth and death are so totally wrapped up together.  For we come from God, and to God we shall go.  And that there is so much that gets in the way of that simple truth.   At times like funerals, we’re more aware that all that other stuff doesn’t matter any more. 

            Ash Wednesday and Lent aren’t about punishing ourselves for being human.  It’s about peeling away layers of insulation and anesthesia that keep us from the truth of God’s promises.  Lent is about looking at our lives in as bright a light as possible—the light of Christ.  It is during this time of self-reflection and sacrificial giving and prayer that we make our way through the over grown and tangled mess of our lives.  We let go of defending ourselves.  We let go of our self-loathing.  We cut through our arrogance and certainty and cynicism and ambivalence. 

            What’s so wonderful about Ash Wednesday and Lent is that through being marked with the cross and reminded of our own mortality, we are free.  We’re reminded that the God of our salvation, the same God who created us from the very earth to which we will return delights in the truth that you are God’s very own redeemed sinner, beloved, in all our broken beauty. 

            So, as we receive these ashes and hear the promise that you are dust and to dust you shall return, know that it is the truth, and that the truth will set you free.

            Thanks be to God!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan 

March 1, 2017

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[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.  Convergent Books, 2015.