Exodus 17:1-7
We’ve been to the desert before during this Lent. It was just two weeks ago, in fact at the start of Lent, that we encountered Jesus in the desert during his 40 days there. Why would I choose to bring you back to it again through our Hebrew Bible reading this morning? Haven’t we had enough of this dry, arid land? Can’t we move on to oases and life?
That’s a tempting proposition. Let’s just ignore the desert and the wilderness experience. Let’s spend our time talking about life and refreshment. But we too often ignore the desert and the desert experiences we may encounter in our lives. And so, once again, we trek back to the desert. This time though with Moses and the Hebrew people.
We all know the story of the exodus. How the Hebrew people had become slaves in Egypt and Moses was called by God to lead them out. How Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff, allowing the Hebrew people to escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army followed close at their heals. How they came to be a wandering, nomadic people as they waited to find themselves in the land promised to them by God.
You know, we’ve all heard how dense Jesus’ disciples can be at times. I’ve even preached on it myself on occasion. Well, I think that they’re not the only group in the Bible who are portrayed as not getting it. As a whole, the wandering Hebrew people are often just as dense and just as often don’t get it.
Today’s reading from Exodus is the third time that the Hebrew people complain to Moses and to God about their conditions. They complain first, in chapter 15, about water. At that point, Moses turns bitter water into sweet drinkable water. Then, in chapter 16, God provides quail and manna for the hungry hoard. Finally, here in chapter 17, they’re once again thirsty.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m really on their side. I understand that water is essential to life as much as they did. I’ve been in the physical desert myself. I lived for a time on the driest continent on the earth, Australia. In the desert there, there are rivers that run less than once a year; sometimes only a few times in a century. The Aboriginal people who inhabited that parched, dry land passed from generation to generation songs that told where water could be found, so that their people could continue to survive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving land, that, though beautiful, can kill easily, all for the lack of water. Without water, life ends. It’s that simple.
We all hate to be thirsty. It’s a simple fact. Our bodies are set up to remind us that it needs a drink. In the outback of Australia, where conditions are drier than anywhere else on earth, the need for water is essential. And so it was for the Hebrew people. Knowing that death would come quickly without it, they cried out for water.
But they did more than cry out. They quarreled. They fought against Moses. They quarreled against God. They were a quarreling, bickering lot. Even with the past two times that Moses and God had taken care of them, even with the miraculous exit from Egypt behind them, even though the chains of slavery had been removed from them, they bickered and quarreled. Because they were thirsty and didn’t want their children and themselves to die.
And once again, through Moses, God provided. There in front of the elders of Israel, Moses did as he was told. We went to the rock at Horeb and struck it with his staff; the very same staff with which he struck the Red Sea previously. And there, in front of the gathered elders, water came forth. In that dry, arid, dusty place, water poured forth. And once again the Hebrew people were cared for; once again they drank deeply and revived their strength.
So why is it that we are in the desert again this week? Why do we return here for a word that will spur us to go on? Why do we have to be cognizant of our thirsting, aching souls in the midst of spiritual aridness?
I would bet that most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a spiritual desert in our lives. Times when prayer seemed like a joke and God was distant, if that close. There may be some who never experience that. For them, their faith is a lovely picnic beside an ever-flowing stream. There may be people like that, for sure.
They may make you feel a little jealous perhaps; a little less than faithful, in your desert experience. They, who don’t know the parched feeling of needing a drink, may wonder what you’re talking with your desert experience.
Those of us who do have these desert experiences in our soul, know them too well. They may go on for days, or weeks, or months, or even years. We feel disconnected and empty. And we wonder how we can go on.
The same may be true for our church at the moment. We are thirsty and needing a drink of water, perhaps. We are in a desert experience. We’ve left Egypt, sometimes known as First Christian Church of San Mateo, and we find ourselves wandering toward something promised. But along the way we become thirsty. We yearn for some refreshment. We need water. Perhaps for us, that water takes the form of someone who will take on an empty leadership position. Perhaps, it’s someone who brings special skills that we need. Perhaps, the drink of refreshing water is not a someone but a something; an idea or a plan or a thought.
But we are yearning, gasping, aching for that drink. We wonder if God has really brought us out of our particular land of oppression, simply to die. We find it hard to believe that, but the aridness which surrounds us tells us otherwise. And so we feel like quarreling; quarreling with God. Wondering what sort of God it is that would do this to us. Even challenging God; defying God.
We want results and we want them, oh so badly, now, if not sooner. We want our thirst quenched and our souls revived.
You know, if I were in the desert, and I were searching for water, I would probably bypass tons of rocks. I know that water doesn’t come out of a rock. It wouldn’t make sense. So I would just pass them by; rock after rock. I wouldn’t even try striking them with a stick. I would sensibly be searching for a water hole, or an oasis, or a well, or something. Something that looks like water.
But that’s not God’s way. And we have to remember that. We have to keep in mind that the water that’s going to refresh us may come from the most unexpected of places; the most unlikely of sources. We can’t think about this logically or normally, perhaps. We have to try to find the way that God thinks about this and act like that’s going to happen.
10 February 2008
Matthew 4:1-11
I‘m going to begin this sermon by quoting two somewhat longish paragraphs from a website I visit frequently when preparing sermons. They’re from the United Church of Christ website one page of which gives some starting points or ideas for sermons based on the lectionary. I felt they were so appropriate for today that I would just quote them directly.
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was hard to pick them out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
The church dug deep into its faith story, recalling the time (always with the number forty involved) that Israel, Elijah, and Jesus each spent in the desert, wandering and suffering, longing and learning: hungry. "So the church announced a season of Lent…an invitation to a springtime of the soul," Taylor writes, "Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone…to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves." Then as now, folks had their "pacifiers," as Taylor calls them, all the things and ways that we keep ourselves from feeling what it means to be human, even if that means being in pain or being afraid. Our pacifiers can convince us that we don't really need God. In fact, Taylor believes that just about all of us struggle with an addiction, "anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying" (Home by Another Way). (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-10-2008-first.html)
So here we are, friends. At the beginning of another Lent; the start of another wilderness experience in the spiritual seasons of our lives. Of course Lent began last Wednesday and some of us began our observances at the Ash Wednesday service at which we were marked with ashes and reminded that we have come from dust and to dust we shall return. We face our very mortality this time of year. We face the desert. We face the dry empty feeling inside us that, as Barbara Brown Taylor observed, only God can fill.
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, we’re told in today’s gospel. Sometimes we hear that he was driven there by the Spirit. What comes directly before this event is his baptism in the Jordan. Combined, it’s a narrative of contrasts: the wetness of the river with the arid dryness of the wilderness to which he was led; the crowds who witnessed his baptism versus the solitude in which he found himself there; the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son against the deafening quiet of the desert.
For forty days, we’re told, he was there in the wilderness; alone and fasting. Certainly by the end of that time he would be famished, as our translation puts it; famished not only for food but for companionship; for relief from the unending landscape of the barren land in which he secluded himself. And that’s, of course, when temptation enters in. That’s when we find Satan coming to him. The devil seeks out Jesus and tempts him three times. Jesus resists these pulls, even in the midst of his emptiness and hunger.
So here we are at the start of our 40 days of Lent this year, 2008. What wilderness experience do we expect to be driven into? It’s easy to ignore it, what with the busy lives we each lead: I’ll get to the wilderness later, you might think. I’ll face the deprivation of being mortal later.
But we lose out if we take that attitude. We miss something valuable. Because, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, there is an emptiness within each of us that is there just for God. We seek to fill it, and thus avoid the wilderness, with worldly things: money, tv, the internet…things. But it is God-shaped and only God will fill it. It’s a God-shaped emptiness that each of us carries around. And Lent is a time to discover that emptiness; to go to that emptiness, that wilderness which is within each of us sitting here.
Avoiding the wilderness won’t hurt you. You’ll be comfortable, after all. You won’t know the emptiness. But you’ll be foiled if you try to fill it with anything but God. The world will seduce you into thinking that it can fill it. Our culture is good at finding things that look like they will fill that emptiness. But it’s all chimera; fantasies that may work for a while and then will disappear and eventually leave us with that empty feeling again.
We as a congregation observe Lent together, which is good. For Chalice is entering its own period of Lent. Our congregation finds itself in the wilderness experience right now. We find ourselves, much like our spiritual ancestors the Hebrew people, in the desert, wandering, unsure of home, not certain to where we’re headed.
What is the emptiness within us corporately that we are trying to fill? With what are we being enticed? How are we being seduced? Who or what is extending a long slender arm and slowly crooking its finger at us, luring us to try to fill our empty place?
The desert is an interesting place. Its beauty is often hard to see; the dangers are hidden. But we are called there, both individually and corporately. We are called there to find those empty places; to seek out the emptiness within us. We are called there to be away from the inducements of our world, of our culture. We seek out God there in the deprivations we find all around us.
Empty yourself. Here at the start of Lent, empty yourself and find the place for God at the very center of your being. Turn away from the inducements that are lures. It’s not easy; no one ever said it was. Live your life, at least over the next six weeks, as though you were trying to fill that God-shaped emptiness within you with only God.
May God bless us all on this Lenten journey.
I‘m going to begin this sermon by quoting two somewhat longish paragraphs from a website I visit frequently when preparing sermons. They’re from the United Church of Christ website one page of which gives some starting points or ideas for sermons based on the lectionary. I felt they were so appropriate for today that I would just quote them directly.
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was hard to pick them out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
The church dug deep into its faith story, recalling the time (always with the number forty involved) that Israel, Elijah, and Jesus each spent in the desert, wandering and suffering, longing and learning: hungry. "So the church announced a season of Lent…an invitation to a springtime of the soul," Taylor writes, "Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone…to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves." Then as now, folks had their "pacifiers," as Taylor calls them, all the things and ways that we keep ourselves from feeling what it means to be human, even if that means being in pain or being afraid. Our pacifiers can convince us that we don't really need God. In fact, Taylor believes that just about all of us struggle with an addiction, "anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying" (Home by Another Way). (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-10-2008-first.html)
So here we are, friends. At the beginning of another Lent; the start of another wilderness experience in the spiritual seasons of our lives. Of course Lent began last Wednesday and some of us began our observances at the Ash Wednesday service at which we were marked with ashes and reminded that we have come from dust and to dust we shall return. We face our very mortality this time of year. We face the desert. We face the dry empty feeling inside us that, as Barbara Brown Taylor observed, only God can fill.
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, we’re told in today’s gospel. Sometimes we hear that he was driven there by the Spirit. What comes directly before this event is his baptism in the Jordan. Combined, it’s a narrative of contrasts: the wetness of the river with the arid dryness of the wilderness to which he was led; the crowds who witnessed his baptism versus the solitude in which he found himself there; the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son against the deafening quiet of the desert.
For forty days, we’re told, he was there in the wilderness; alone and fasting. Certainly by the end of that time he would be famished, as our translation puts it; famished not only for food but for companionship; for relief from the unending landscape of the barren land in which he secluded himself. And that’s, of course, when temptation enters in. That’s when we find Satan coming to him. The devil seeks out Jesus and tempts him three times. Jesus resists these pulls, even in the midst of his emptiness and hunger.
So here we are at the start of our 40 days of Lent this year, 2008. What wilderness experience do we expect to be driven into? It’s easy to ignore it, what with the busy lives we each lead: I’ll get to the wilderness later, you might think. I’ll face the deprivation of being mortal later.
But we lose out if we take that attitude. We miss something valuable. Because, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, there is an emptiness within each of us that is there just for God. We seek to fill it, and thus avoid the wilderness, with worldly things: money, tv, the internet…things. But it is God-shaped and only God will fill it. It’s a God-shaped emptiness that each of us carries around. And Lent is a time to discover that emptiness; to go to that emptiness, that wilderness which is within each of us sitting here.
Avoiding the wilderness won’t hurt you. You’ll be comfortable, after all. You won’t know the emptiness. But you’ll be foiled if you try to fill it with anything but God. The world will seduce you into thinking that it can fill it. Our culture is good at finding things that look like they will fill that emptiness. But it’s all chimera; fantasies that may work for a while and then will disappear and eventually leave us with that empty feeling again.
We as a congregation observe Lent together, which is good. For Chalice is entering its own period of Lent. Our congregation finds itself in the wilderness experience right now. We find ourselves, much like our spiritual ancestors the Hebrew people, in the desert, wandering, unsure of home, not certain to where we’re headed.
What is the emptiness within us corporately that we are trying to fill? With what are we being enticed? How are we being seduced? Who or what is extending a long slender arm and slowly crooking its finger at us, luring us to try to fill our empty place?
The desert is an interesting place. Its beauty is often hard to see; the dangers are hidden. But we are called there, both individually and corporately. We are called there to find those empty places; to seek out the emptiness within us. We are called there to be away from the inducements of our world, of our culture. We seek out God there in the deprivations we find all around us.
Empty yourself. Here at the start of Lent, empty yourself and find the place for God at the very center of your being. Turn away from the inducements that are lures. It’s not easy; no one ever said it was. Live your life, at least over the next six weeks, as though you were trying to fill that God-shaped emptiness within you with only God.
May God bless us all on this Lenten journey.
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