"God So Loves." A sermon on John 3:16 from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

Sculpture depicting Numbers 21, on Mt Nebo in Jordan. Photo: Fran Hayes

"God So Loves"

Numbers 21; John 3:11-21

John 3:16 is one of the most quoted and most memorized verses in the Bible.  We may see it displayed for the cameras at sporting events, on banners or signs. In some parts of the country you might see it painted on big rocks by the roadside. It reads simply: “John 3:16.” 

            Depending on where you’re coming from, it’s a verse that can be used both to assure-- or to threaten.  Some invoke it to emphasize the extravagance and universality of God’s love.  Others invoke it to drive a wedge between believers and unbelievers… the “saved” from the “unsaved.” 

            “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” This is one of the most iconic verses of the Christian faith. It expresses the wondrous love of God, who reaches out to the world in self-emptying reconciliation. And all we have to do is “believe.”

            Some of us memorized this verse, if we when we grew up in the church. It’s a beautiful and simple expression of our Christian faith, of a God who loves and a people who respond in belief.
            And yet, it’s only when we read the verse in its context in the Gospel of John that we can understand it more fully and be transformed by it.

            James Kay, who was my preaching professor at Princeton Seminary, says that when the Christian message is reduced to a sentence, instead of heard as a story, it’s a problem.  When the sentence becomes a magic formula or a mantra or a slogan instead of a story, when the verse is so engraved in our memory and so familiar—the temptation is that we may think we already know what it means.  The gospel of God’s love has become so familiar that we are no longer amazed by its majesty or its mercy.[1]

            And so, Professor Kay says, we need startling images, obscure, bizarre metaphors—like snakes—to wake us up.  We need “strange stories” instead of “safe slogans,” to help us comprehend what’s happening in these verses.

            John 3:16 isn’t meant to stand alone. It opens with a word we translate as “for.”  In the original Greek, it has a sense of “in this manner” or “in this way,” which means that God’s loving gift of the Christ for the salvation of the world needs to be understood in light of what comes before.
            “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

            The allusion is to one of the strangest stories in all of Scripture, from the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers. 

The Israelites on the move from Egypt to the land of promise were their own worst enemies-- but then, who of us is not?  Of all of the harm inflicted upon us in life, some of it self-inflicted. Of all the judgment we encounter in life, a lot of it is self-imposed.  The people were complaining again. This is the sixth “murmuring” incident.  The people are grumbling: why had Moses brought them out into the wilderness to die?

Isn’t it also just like us humans –-- then, as now?  God brings us out of trouble… gets us safely through a time of danger.  Yet we grumble because the place God led us to isn’t as nice as we’d hoped.  What good is it to be God’s own people, if all it gets us is wandering on and on through the wilderness with nothing to eat except manna?

Then what happens next in the story?  Poisonous serpents-- lots of them, biting the people, so that many of them were dying. 

Now, I know the text says that the Lord sent the serpents.  But I have to confess that I have a hard time with that.  I don’t want to believe that the God of steadfast loving-kindness would kill people for whining.

Yes.  God gets frustrated with us.  But given the situation described, I wonder if at least some of the “serpents” could have arisen from within.  I think we poison ourselves sometimes if we get locked into complaining… selective remembering…or useless longing for good old days that weren’t really all that great.

Without even trying very hard, we can poison ourselves or one another-- with anger… bitterness…blaming…  or despair.  So, I think there may be more than one way to understand the serpents.

Now, whether the serpents are literal or metaphorical doesn’t end up mattering very much, because the people come to their senses and come to see that they themselves are responsible for the serpents coming into their midst.  They see that it was their own sinfulness that brought the serpents into their midst and caused their pain.  They repent and pray to be rescued: “Lord, the serpents are biting us!  We’re dying!  Save us!”

God hears them and makes it possible for them to survive.  Rather than making the serpents disappear, God provides an antidote to their venom.  Rebellion and sin have their consequences. God told Moses to make a serpent and set it on a pole, “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”  God saved them by requiring them to gaze upon a symbolic representation of the very serpents that endangered them.

            "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...   For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world-- but that the world might be saved through him."

            God loved the world...   loved so much that God gave.  Not to condemn...  but to save, John says.

            But what does this mean?  What does it mean to be saved?  There are different ideas about what words like “savior,” “save,” and “salvation” are supposed to mean.  

            The Greek word that we often translate as “save” can mean to save, to keep safe, to rescue from danger or destruction, or it can be saving someone who is suffering from disease… to heal… to restore to health and wholeness.

           

            “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son be lifted up.” The image of the Son of Man lifted up like the serpent on a pole points to the crucifixion.
            In the Roman Empire, the cross was an instrument of state-sanctioned violence that was used to execute those who destabilized the imperial order.  As Robert Williamson suggests, Christ lifted up on the cross serves as a symbolic representation of the very real violence of the Empire, threatening death for any who refused to submit to its authority.[2]

            In John, “lifting up” has a double meaning.  In a literal sense, it’s about the physical lifting up of Jesus on the cross. But in a metaphorical sense, it’s about how Jesus is glorified on the cross, so that the whole world can see God’s great act of redemption and healing.

            Did you notice? There’s no mention of punishment or payment for sin here. The cross is the sign that reveals God’s love for the world.

            God loves this world.  God chooses not to condemn this world. God desires salvation and life eternal and abundance for this world. And if we love the light more than the darkness, we are called to desire those very things for this world, too.

            That's the call for all who have received the gift of God's Son:  to love the world God so loves, to reflect the light of Christ, and be the light that both exposes evil and reveals truth.

            The Israelites in the wilderness were told to gaze upon the serpent in order to be saved.  I think Robert Williamson is right when he says the way to salvation for us is to gaze upon the crucified Christ--to recognize the violence that has undergirded the prosperity of our own Empire. It is to remember the genocide of native peoples that accompanied the founding of our nation and to face the facts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the inhumane exploitation of life and labor that built the wealth of our nation.
            To gaze upon the Christ is to see the Christ Child among those gunned down in Columbine and Newtown and Parkland. To gaze upon the Christ is to acknowledge how much pain has been inflicted on innocents like Jesus in the name of enriching the few and securing our own privilege.
            If we believe that salvation comes through believing in the Christ who is lifted up on the cross to save us from a life that is complicit with the violence of the Empire of our time, the claim in John 3:16 takes on a much more radical meaning. 
            Gazing upon the crucified Christ means repenting of ways in which we are complicit in systemic injustice and violence and turning away from the politics of fear.
            Believing in Christ means choosing to turn away from the violence of the Empire and to commit ourselves to the reconciling power of God’s love.  

            God loves the world so much, that God comes not to condemn or judge us, but to love and save us.  God labors constantly to give us new birth-- to push us into abundant life-- if we are willing to trust God enough to know God in a new way...to live in a new way that reflects God’s love and justice.

            And that, my friends, is good news!

            Thanks be to God!  Amen!    

---

[1] James F. Kay, Seasons of Grace: Reflections from the Christian Year (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 50.

[2] Robert Williamson Jr, “Justice for Lent: Overcoming Violence (John 3:14-21), at https://robertwilliamsonjr.com/justice-lent-overcoming-violence-john-314-21/

"Commandments of Freedom." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Third Sunday in Lent.

"Commandments of Freedom"

Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-20

In 2001, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore had a Ten Commandments monument installed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, without the knowledge of the other justices. This resulted in a legal battle over establishment of a particular religion in a government building and eventually to his being removed from office over his refusal to comply to the federal court injunction. Eventually, the monument was placed in a storage room, and later it was taken on a flatbed trailer on tour by a group called “America for Jesus.”. There was controversy between a those who thought that was a good idea and those who saw it as worshiping a graven image, a form of idolatry.

            What I hadn’t thought a lot about at the time is how much this monument weighed:   5,280 pounds. That’s just over 500 pounds per commandment.[1]

            As Tom Long suggests, in the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have come to represent, for some, weights and heavy obligations.  Most people in our society would have a hard time naming all ten commandments, but they may still think that the Ten Commandments are about finger-wagging “thou shalt not’s.” For some others, the commandments are heavy yokes placed on the necks of a rebellious society. As Tom suggests, a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on the bed of a truck is a perfect symbol of this.[2]

            The gods of ancient Babylon were heavy idols that had to be carted around. The prophet Isaiah was referring to them when he said, “These things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary animals.”

           

            Those who see the Ten Commandments as a series of burdensome rules overlook something essential.  The Ten Commandments begin not by an order to obey a set of rules, but by an announcement of freedom.  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”[3]

            This was God’s direct address to the people of Israel: “God spoke all these words.”  “Words” -- not commandments.  So, it is really more accurate to speak of them as “the Decalogue” -- the ten words.

            “Because the Lord is your God,” the Decalogue affirms, “you are free not to need any other gods.  You are free:  free to rest on the seventh day…free from the tyranny of lifeless idols… free from stealing and covetousness as ways to establish yourself.  

            The Decalogue begins with the good news of what the liberating God has done and then describes the life of freedom that God desires for people.

           

            “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Although this introductory sentence of freedom and redemption is often left out of printed versions of the Ten Commandments, in Judaism it is recognized as the first word. 

            “You shall have no other gods before me” is the second word.[4] Idolatry is the focus in this second word. Idolatry commonly refers to worshipping graven images, such as the golden calf.[5]  Idolatry, the worship of “other gods” could include any person place, or thing that we hold to be more important than God. These other gods could also be money, property, fame, power-- anything in which we place our ultimate loyalty and trust or worship. So, this second word is a call to love and trust in God above all things. This is the grounding for all other commandments or “words.”

            The Ten Words we heard in today’s lesson were not new for Israel, but they were a good listing for their time and situation, when the newly liberated people of Israel were wandering around in the wilderness, learning how to be free people.   The Ten Words were adapted at different times and places. That’s why when we compare the Ten Commandments in Exodus and the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, we see some differences that reflect some changes, such as a changing role for women in the culture.

            “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Ten Words had been given to the people to celebrate and maintain their emancipation from Egypt and the Pharaoh.

            In the Pharaoh, the ruler of ancient Egypt, was a brutal concentration of power and wealth.  Walter Brueggemann has often pointed out how every time a “Pharaoh” turns up in history, it turns out that this empire is propelled by a sense of not having enough, a system designed to accumulate more and more--more money, more power, more land, more food, more cheap labor for the ruler.[6].  

            When Pharaohs--or tyrannical emperors or kings or dictators-- rise up in history, they act in violence against vulnerable, disadvantaged people. The Exodus from Egypt and the celebration of Passover is a powerful demonstration of how God broke in to liberate the people from their oppression, and to give them a life of freedom. 

            But it becomes clear that we don’t always know what to do with freedom.  There were times in the wilderness when the people of Israel when they grumbled and wished they could go back to slavery in Egypt.

            So, Brueggemann says the Ten Commandments “are nothing less than strategies for staying emancipated in the new life that the God of Sinai governs.” These strategies are urgent, he says, because Pharaoh, in a variety of forms, always wants to coerce us back into Pharaoh’s domain of exploitation.

            This new strategy for living as free people is to honor God to the exclusion of every other idol…to honor God’s name and God’s purpose for our lives.  I love and am challenged by the way Brueggemann points to the scripture’s truth, as he says this strategy for freedom means to “refuse every other ultimate loyalty, every idolatry in our lives among all the ‘isms’ including racism, sexism, and nationalism. It means not to worship stuff, not stuff that is rare, precious, attractive, beautiful or empowering. It means not to recruit God’s name for our pet projects of religion, morality, economics or politics, because the only God is no party to our proximate causes.”

            The season of Lent calls us to a reality check.  Moses, through the Ten Commandments, or Ten Words, at Sinai, declared new possibilities for a life of freedom, outside the oppression, anxiety, fearfulness, and scarcity under Pharaoh-- a new life that honors God’s holiness, that loves the neighbor in concrete ways, and that honors the Sabbath and makes time to be holy.

            Lent invites us to look honestly at the ways in which we have failed at living freely. We’ve heard Pharaoh say, “Be very afraid,” and lived anxious lives. We’ve believed what those in power tell us about scarcity, so we’re afraid we won’t have enough and accept that the poor can’t have what they need for lives of dignity. We hurry to try to keep even, and are over-extended and exhausted.

            The season of Lent is a time for us to ponder the gospel life to which Jesus calls us: an alternative life that is unafraid…a life of abundance Jesus showed us when he multiplied loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes. Jesus calls us to a life of healing and forgiveness and generosity to neighbors.

             The season of Lent reminds re-presents the outrage Jesus demonstrated at what he saw in the Temple and how he challenged the status quo. It reminds us how determined the empire and the keepers of the status quo were to maintain their power and privilege and control, to the point of executing Jesus on the cross where his followers and other would see him being tortured.

            “You destroy this temple… in three days I will raise it up.” Even the disciples couldn’t understand Jesus’ words until after the resurrection.  The story of Jesus doesn’t end at the cross.  Only after the resurrection can we reflect on what the cross of Jesus means for a life of faith.

            In these last weeks of Lent, we are invited to ponder what the apostle Paul wrote: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”[7]  

            The powers of this world will tell us that it is foolish to think we have enough to feed a crowd… and that it is a sign of weakness to practice mercy, justice, and faithfulness. But we can trust that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

            Thanks be to God!

            Amen!

            .

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[1] Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in “Living by the Word,” in The Christian Century.

[2] Tom Long, in “Dancing with the Decalogue.”

[3] Exodus 20:2

[4] Rolf Jacobson, Commentary on Exodus 19:1-6 and Exodus 20:1-17. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2113

[5] Bull worship was common in some cultures in the ancient world, including Egypt. The golden calf is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4

[6] Walter Brueggemann, “Strategies for Staying Emancipated.”  http://day1.org/8145-walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated

[7] 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

"Cross of Resistance." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Second Sunday in Lent.

A Christian pilgrim carries a cross on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem

"Cross of Resistance"

Mark 8:31-38

            “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

            This command has interpreted--or misinterpreted in a variety of ways over the years. “This is your cross to bear” has been used too often to keep those suffering persecution, oppression, domestic violence, abuse, and economic injustice from breaking free. People have been told to endure patiently, to forgive as Jesus forgave his executioners, and wait for things to be all right when we get to heaven, “in the sweet bye and bye.”

            But this is contrary to everything Jesus did during his ministry. In his inaugural speech in the synagogue in Nazareth, he proclaimed what his spirit-given mission was to be: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to free the oppressed. [1]   And that’s what he did. He liberated people, spiritually and physically. He took away their blindness, set them free, spoke up for the voiceless, dined with marginalized and outcast people, and fed the hungry. So, to take up our crosses like Jesus can never mean being silent in the face of oppression.[2]  

            Jesus told his disciples to “take up their cross and follow me” a year before his trial and execution. His disciples at that time would have heard it very differently from the way we hear it today. To the disciples, a cross was a method of torture and execution, by the Roman empire’s occupying forces. It was an instrument of terror.  So, this isn’t an easy teaching.

            Peter hears all this talk of suffering and death, and he knows this is no way to be the Messiah or to successfully build the kind of organization he had in mind, so he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. 

            Imagine it.   Peter is trying to set Jesus straight about what it means to be the messiah.   “Suffering, rejection, and death are not on the agenda.  The Messiah is supposed to come to rule the nations with power and might. We signed on for a crown, not a cross!” 

But Jesus turns and looks at his disciples, and he rebukes Peter and says, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

That’s when he called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” 

            What does that mean? What does it look like?  

            Many of the leaders of the movements to abolish the slave trade and the institution of slavery in Great Britain and the United States were Christians who felt called to speak truth to power, to work for the cause of God’s justice for all.

            During the most terrible years of World War II, when the Nazi domination of Europe seemed irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon. There, quietly, peacefully, and in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby division of the Nazi SS, Le Chambon's villagers and their clergy organized to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death.  The story of “how goodness happened” there is told in a beautiful book entitled “Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed.”[3]

            Also during World War II, ordinary Danish Christians who saw their Jewish neighbors being rounded up by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps… and responded by ferrying many of them by night to safety in Sweden.

           

            Sophia Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist. A Christian, she had been brought up in the Lutheran church. Sophie and her older brother Hans were part of the White Rose, a small non-violent, intellectual resistance group that conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign which called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their pamphlets used both Biblical and philosophical support for an intellectual argument of resistance. Sophie and her brother and another student were caught and convicted of high treason and were executed by guillotine.

            On May 2, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, the first day of the Birmingham children’s crusade, some 800 students, first graders through high schoolers, skipped classes. They gathered at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and marched holding hand-made picket signs reading “Segregation is a sin” and “I’ll die to make this land my home.” By the end of the day, under Bull Connor’s orders, more than 500 kids were behind bars charged with parading without a permit.

            Over the next two days, young protesters hit the streets in masse, confronting police armed with snarling German shepherds and water cannons. When people around the country saw these images, it changed things. It was then that President Kennedy and the attorney general began considering a path toward comprehensive civil rights legislation.[4] 

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            Jesus said, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

            As I was working on this sermon, I found a reference in my notes to the theme song from the movie “Selma,” in which the song writers John Legend and Common describe the march to Selma, Alabama, in terms of “glory.”

            When the movie “Selma” was first out three years ago, David Lose wrote, “Think about that for a moment.  That march, along with the larger struggle for civil rights, was filled with confrontation and suffering and sacrifice.  And yet they sing of glory.  Why?  Precisely because we find glory—and for that matter power and strength and security—only in those moments when we surrender our claims to power and strength and security in order to serve others.”[5]

            We know this—though sometimes we forget and need to be reminded.  I love the way David puts this hard saying of Jesus into perspective, this saying about what it means to take up his cross and follow him.   Every time we let ourselves be vulnerable to the needs of those around us… every time we give ourselves in love to another… every time we get out of our own way and seek not what we want but what the world needs, we come alive, we are lifted up, we experience the glory of God made manifest. 

            On some level, in some ways, we know this is true.  We do it most naturally as parents, sacrificing all kinds of things in the hope of providing for our children.  But we also do it as friends, partners, and neighbors. 

            But sometimes it’s hard for us to believe.  It’s counter-cultural.  So much in our culture wants to make us think that we’ll only have security and happiness if we gratify our immediate desires.  The world of advertising exists to make us feel incomplete in order to convince us to buy something that promises to make us feel better about ourselves.  But so much of what’s in those commercials and so much in the popular culture are lies. 

            Nothing that we can buy or build has the power to make us feel more complete or accepted or loved or safe.  The only thing that does is connection to others, in community, and a purpose beyond ourselves.   And this requires sacrifice.

            The good news is that—when we move beyond being preoccupied with ourselves and look to the needs around us, and others begin to do the same, we discover more life and joy and acceptance and love than we could have imagined.

            Christians from the United States and around the world go to the Holy Land as part of Ecumenical Accompaniment, to accompany Palestinian farmers to their olive groves during harvest… or to help school children get to school safely in Hebron.  Others work through organizations like Pal Craftaid and fair trade olive oil producers, to partner with Palestinians to sell their products, to help people living under occupation support their families and meet educational and humanitarian needs. 

            Closer to home, people take time out of their busy lives to stand in support of people who are being torn apart from their families and deported.  We write letters or make phone calls to elected officials to advocate for those who are hungry or oppressed or to support gun safety.

            We work to feed the hungry at home and throughout the world… we support Habitat for Humanity and Heifer Project and One Great Hour of Sharing.  We do these things because the needs are great.  But we also do these things because we need to do them, as we follow Jesus on the way of the cross… as we set our minds, not on human things, but on divine things.

            When we follow Jesus on the way of the cross, we begin to comprehend that God’s ways are not our ways:  that faith is not certainty, hope is not optimism, and love is not painless.

            On my pilgrimages to the Holy Land, we walked the Via Dolorosa-- the way of the cross.  Near the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, I saw a group of crosses propped up against a wall, where pilgrims could take up a cross and carry it as they walked the Via Dolorosa.

            Paul Shupe suggests that perhaps what we need is a multitude of crosses, one for each of us, at the doors of our sanctuaries, to be taken up as we return to the world of home and family, work and commerce, service and play—symbols of the call to discipleship that we have heard-- for us to accept anew.[6]

           

            We believe in a God who is powerful to overcome sin and death in the Resurrection.  We believe in a God who keeps promises.  We believe that, in the fullness of time, Christ will return.

            When we pick up the cross and follow Christ, there may be darkness and death on the road.  But we know that the darkness does not overcome the world, because we have God's promises.         

            The cost of discipleship seems high.  And it is. 

            But we have Jesus' promise:  Those who lose their lives for his sake-- will save their lives.           

            Thanks be to God!

            Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

February 25, 2018

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[1] Luke 4:18-19

[2] Kelly Palmer, “A ‘Cross to Bear’ Means Actively Embracing the Cost of Following Jesus.” https://sojo.net/articles/cross-bear-means-actively-embracing-cost-following-jesus

[3] Philip Halle, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed,” 2008.

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/20/children-have-changed-america-before-braving-fire-hoses-and-police-dogs-for-civil-rights/?utm_term=.e01b8b580aa6

[5] David Lose, in “The Theory of Everything,” at www.davidlose.net

[6]  David L. Bartlett; Barbara Brown Taylor (2011-05-31). Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide (Kindle Locations 2623-2625). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

"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.