Last week, as part of the Martha Stearns Marshall month of preaching, I was asked to preach at Crozet Baptist Church in honor of my dear friend Colleen. It was her final Sunday as Co-Pastor as she moves on to a small church in Charlottesville. Unfortunately, it snowed about 6 inches on Saturday. I was already on Colleen's farm..but church ended up being cancelled.
The following is my manuscript from this sermon.
The Wilderness
Mark 1:9-15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved;with you I am well pleased.” And 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. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Where do you go to
find yourself? When you’ve feel you’ve lost everything about who you are as a
person, as a student, as a husband or wife, mother or father… where do you go
to get YOU back? Where do you find peace? Is it sitting at the kitchen table sharing
a meal with your family? Is it fishing on the lake on an early morning when
you’re the first to touch the water? Is it hiking in these beautiful mountains
that surround us? We see Jesus in the wilderness a lot. I think that’s where he went to find himself. It’s where he was tempted by reality, but
it’s where he went to re-discover his mission and to listen to what God was
calling him to do.
There aren’t a lot
of places where I find peace. Being a
total type-A, and admittedly, a high-maintenance person (well, I call it
passion..other people call it high-maintenance), I get too caught up and too
stressed about the tiniest things. So
typically wherever I go, I’m thinking about what I‘m leaving behind..or what
I’ll be returning to. I take the baggage
of life with me. I’ve never been too
good about being present in the present.
But there’s one place. It happens
to me the moment I see any sign for the Blue Ridge Parkway. Growing up in the upstate area of SC, we were
only about an hour from the NC border.
We would spend weekends in Asheville (my parents are still there almost
every weekend). We would meet the
grandparents for a picnic near Pisgah, and then find new roads on the parkway,
new mountains to climb, and new trails to hike.
A few years ago, I
had accepted my first full-time position out of college. I was the program coordinator at a group home
for teenage mothers and their kids who are in foster care. We were under-staffed so there were days that
I would leave my house in the dark, return in the dark..only to go to sleep and
do it all over again the next day. The
group home was on the back lot of a camp.
The camp was on a beautiful lake, about an hour from Charleston. It wasn’t two months before I decided I
needed to be near the mountains. I
needed to breathe in the fresh air, remember who I was, and remember whose I
was. I was hating this adult-life that
reality had thrown in my face. So I
left. I went home for the weekend. I walked in the door, put my stuff down,
hugged my parents, and we jumped back in the car. We drove to Asheville. I saw the mountain range, and I immediately
felt at home. I took a big sigh of
relief. The wilderness was calling. It’s away from the city that I find
myself. It’s where this ADHD girl can
have silence- and listen to what God is calling me to do. After Jesus is baptized and about to begin
this beautiful ministry, he takes forty days to reflect. He listens to what God’s calling him to do- in
the middle of the reality that’s being thrown in his face.
Something that I
find interesting in this passage is that “the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Jesus didn’t voluntarily spend
40 days alone. He didn’t ask for
it. He was forced. He was driven into the unknown, into the darkness. This is where we see the humanity of
Jesus. We see temptation and how Jesus
may have felt lost or confused. This is
where we see the opposing view of the wilderness. You’re feeling lost and abandoned. You don’t know who’s around to help or guide
you- you don’t know how to read a compass or the moss on a tree trunk to try
and get out. You look at the sun to try
and determine what time it is. You don’t
know where you are, or how to get out. All you know is that you ended up here alone.
Maybe that’s how
you feel right now- lost and confused.
Maybe you’ve been forced in the darkness. You didn’t ask to go to the wilderness. You
were okay with the way things were going.
Life was comfortable. And then
all of a sudden, you’re driven into the wilderness. You’re forced to face things you didn’t
really want to face yet.
I
think what we need to learn is that the wilderness, the darkness, is okay. It’s
necessary. It allows you to appreciate
the light when it comes. My church in Richmond is reading Barbara Brown
Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark
during this Lenten season. As I was
reading through it- it’s clear how comfortable BBT feels in the dark. On her farm in Georgia, Taylor invites a
friend’s daughter to come spend time with her.
Taylor needs to move her chickens (and its easiest to do this at night
when the chickens are sleepy), so she invites Anna along. It’s pitch black and they’re walking down to
the chicken coop- Anna’s complaining the whole walk. It’s dark. It’s Taylor keeps telling her “be patient. Your eyes will get used to it.” Taylor gets
to the coop and realizes that Anna is nowhere to be seen…except walking back
into the house, back into the light.
Taylor says, “it was not her fault, it was mine, for forgetting that she
was a city girl and that walking in the
dark takes some practice. But it was
also the fault of everyone who taught her to fear the dark, convincing her that
it is dangerous- all of it, all the time, under every circumstance- that what
she cannot see will almost certainly hurt her and that the best way to protect
herself from such unseen maleficence is to stay inside after dark with the
doors locked and sleep with the lights on” (page 35). We’re taught that the darkness is bad. It’s time to come inside when the
streetlights come on. It’s dangerous! We
get hurt. What Taylor teaches us is that
walking in the dark takes practice.
Walking in the dark is good for the soul! Finding the wilderness and
immersing yourself into it is exactly what Jesus (kinda) did. It’s what we need
to do. It’s about courage. Taylor asks, “How do we develop the courage
to walk in the dark if we are never asked to practice”? (37) If we never set
out into the wilderness, how do we ever find the light? How do we ever listen
to what God’s calling us to do?
Yesterday
morning at breakfast, I was sitting with Max and Colleen and Paul. Max, the kid who hated getting dirty, didn’t
know how to eat his Heuvos Rancheros without getting his hands dirty. As a kid, he hated getting his feet dirty-
he’s grown since then…but, being the mom that Colleen is- she used to pull him
through the pudles. She drove him out of
his comfort zone, through the puddles of water.
Not that I’m connecting God to Colleen- but at what point do we get out
of our comfort zone? At what point do we allow the spirit to drive us into the
wilderness, to have reality thrown in our face? At one point do we allow God to
pull us through the puddles..into the light?
So, now what? Maybe this becomes a Lenten practice for
you. This is where we get our 40 days of
Lent after all. Maybe finding yourself in the wilderness is exactly what you
need. When you find yourself in the
wilderness, God will meet you there.
When you are thrown into the wilderness, God will meet you there. When reality slaps you in the face, causing
you to deal with things you didn’t want to deal with quite yet, God will meet
you there. When you find the courage to
practice walking in the dark, God will meet you there. May we all learn to walk
in the dark. May it be so. Amen.
