1st Lent Sermon (Feb 18)

Lord, let me hunger enough that I not forget the world’s hunger.

Lord, let me hunger enough that I may have bread to share.

Lord, let me hunger enough that I may long for the Bread of Heaven.

Lord, let me hunger enough that I may be filled.

But, O Lord, let me not hunger so much that I seek after that which is not bread,

nor try to live by bread alone. Amen. (Bread for the World)

Whenever I start to lose hope in humanity; when death and violence seem to cling to our world like it did this week, and I struggle to see goodness, I always read and think about this poem…

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief – to rest in the grace of the world. Such is the freedom we seek in these difficult days.

I think about Jesus. How his ministry began.   Right after his baptism, the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

I always thought of the wild beasts in a threatening way but maybe, they brought Jesus peace. He found in them companions on his journey in the wilderness, a place where angels also waited on him.

From that experience and whatever changes they wrought in him, Jesus goes and begins proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. So what might Jesus ask of us on the journey? What will our wilderness experience be?  I find this poem of Mary Oliver to be helpful…

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Jesus found his place in the family of things, after temptation, in the midst of wilderness.

We too this Lent can find our place. But it will require a change of heart – as Jesus proclaimed “the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Our repentance is a change of heart, to not let despair rule over us, but to face it and to fight back against temptation.

Temptation. For many of us, it's a quaint word from an outdated spirituality. But temptation is real for all of us, even Jesus, as Mark writes in today's Gospel. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness: whether to act like the divine for the common good of his beloved humanity - or act human, using his wisdom and gifts for his own adulation and profit. Clearly, Jesus does the right thing.  For you and me, it's tougher.

In The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, theologian and chaplain at Harvard University Peter Gomes calls temptation "older than sin and the mother of shame," "the single greatest source of human anxiety." And so Gomes offers four approaches to dealing with those things we know are wrong but have trouble resisting:

(1) Name the temptation: Identifying clearly what it is we are tempted to do. Be specific, Gomes advises, so that we can deal with this moral dilemma with a reality and focus.

(2) Name the tempter: Who or what is the force, the personality, the will outside and beyond us that is making such an illegitimate claim on us? Another way of putting this, Gomes writes, "is to unmask the delusion under which you are operating. You may justify your petty embezzlement from your thankless job because you are using the money to pay medical bills for your sick mother, or you are putting your child through college, or you are even contributing to charity. The delusion is your good end. To unmask it is to realize that you are stealing."

(3) Practice resistance. This seems obvious - so obvious that we overlook it. "Virtue is a practice; it is a habit, the accumulated and consisted practice of certain behaviors based upon certain beliefs." So what do we believe in the depth of our hearts? What do we want our lives to mean? What kind of a man or woman do we want to be? The imagination to ask and receive answers to these questions is the beginning of "resistance."

(4) Call for help. "Relying on one's own strength and understanding in the matter of temptation, no matter how spiritually alert one is, is a recipe for disaster," Gomes notes, and suggests that we confide in a pastor, friend, colleague, or a group like AA. And make time in our lives for prayer, Gomes says: let ourselves experience the grace that God constantly offers.

The grace & peace of wild things – at still water, in the wilderness, high in the clean blue air…

The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent challenges us to take on those temptations, the attitudes and acts that make us less than the people God made us to be. May this Lent be a wilderness experience like the one Jesus experienced, in which we refocus our lives on the things of God, finding our place in the family of things, using our imagination with the grace & peace of the wild things.

Let these 40 days be a time for seeing our lives as a gift from God, approaching life's challenges with a sense of gratitude for what we have & are rather than anger and despair for what our lives are not; a season for rediscovering the hope and goodness that leads us away from the temptations of Satan and toward that beautiful Easter resurrection.  Amen.