Isaiah 35:1-10
Using a favorite phrase of my friend Nancy, we have heard from a veritable plethora of prophets this morning. There’s John the Baptist wondering if his prophecies about Jesus are true. We hear Mary singing that the world is going to be a better place because of the son she is carrying and if that’s not prophecy, I don’t know what is. And then we have Isaiah bringing hope to a captive people. With so many prophets at hand, how is a preacher supposed to choose? How do we focus our attention with so many working to grab that very attention we seek to focus?
Well, being a visual person, I went with the prophet who used visuals in his message and that of course is Isaiah. Right there in the first sentence, Isaiah had me: “the desert shall rejoice and blossom.” It didn’t take long for my imagination to get rolling. In fact, my imagination didn’t have to come into play; I had my own memories to draw on.
During my time in Australia, I ventured forth into the great center of that continent, to the huge red desert that makes up a large majority of the land mass. I went in winter, which meant that the temperatures were bearable. But it also meant that in some of the places there had been some rain, an extremely rare occurrence, which I didn’t experience myself but which had preceded me.
Thus I got to see the desert in bloom, which I was told only happens once every six or seven years. I counted myself lucky to see this rare event and it is permanently etched in my memory.
That’s what prophets do; they jog your imagination and stir up your memory and by bringing up the past show off the potential of the future. Isaiah does that in spades in this verse and it’s needed in this instance.
This portion of Isaiah was written after the great exile of the people from Jerusalem to Babylon. In fact, a generation or so had passed since that terrible event when the Babylonians had swept in, destroyed the holy city Jerusalem, and taken many of the city’s inhabitants as captives, transporting them to Babylon.
This prophet, whom we call Second Isaiah, came along and wanted to keep up the Jewish people’s interest in their land. Second Isaiah was a cheerleader of sorts for the old country. Memories were fading and Isaiah found it his job to remind the people what they had left behind. Some of the folks were getting too comfortable in Babylon: some were attaining positions of importance and marriages were occurring between the Jewish people and the Babylonians. Isaiah worked to remind them of the place they had left, which had long ago been promised to them.
Isaiah was stirring the people’s memories and inciting their imaginations so that they could envision a future in which they returned to their land. Between them and their home though lay a vast desert. A way had to be made there so that the return would be not only safe but also pleasant. So no wild animals will attack and yes, there will be blossoms to make the way agreeable.
Isaiah knew his audience. That vast desert between the exiles and home had to be made traversable. And it was God who was going to do just that; God would make the way back to Jerusalem available to all who wanted to return. Not only that, the lame wouldn’t just be able to walk, they’d be leaping. The speechless wouldn’t just talk: they’d be singing out in joy. All manner of miracles will take place when God gets involved. And God is definitely getting involved here. After the hardship of exile, God is ready to renew God’s relationship with the people of Judah. Isaiah was talking about restoration. Justice. Healing. Joy. Words that seem impossible to a people in exile. Are they impossible for us to hear though?
It is the sort of the thing we need to hear this Advent, isn’t it? Though we aren’t in exile, it feels like we might be in some sort of spiritual exile, doesn’t it? For instance, across the globe there are many who need a simple thing like water in order to survive, but who won’t get it. Our war in Afghanistan goes on without any resolution or completion in sight. The economy remains stubbornly lackluster leaving many un- or underemployed. And here in our dear community of Chalice, we are facing 2011 with many questions about our future and how we shall remake ourselves. If ever we needed God’s involvement and attention, as a church, as a nation, as a world, it is now.
God doesn’t create lush gardens in the desert however for people who don’t want to return. God doesn’t give sight to the blind who don’t want to see. That’s why the prophet, Isaiah, needed to get the Jewish people into a state where they wanted to return. Because if they were going to want to remain an exilic people, God wasn’t going to do those miraculous events for nothing.
Enough of us have to want to return home, to leave exile. Enough of us have to want to walk again or see again or speak again. Enough of us have to believe the prophecy that we will be able to go home again, believe it enough to pack our bags and have them waiting at the door, waiting for the desert to bloom and for God’s way to be made through the wilderness.
Yes, our veritable plethora of prophets, headed by Isaiah, all are saying about the same thing: this can be a different world but you need to allow God in and not rely only on yourselves. Then, when we’ve let God into our lives and allow God to act as God alone can act, will the miraculous happen. The desert blooming, for instance.
Showing posts with label desert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desert. Show all posts
Temptations in the Wilderness, sermon for 21 February 2010
Luke 4:1-13
When it came to preparing this sermon, I have to confess that I had more trouble than usual in just getting started with it. I felt stymied and uncomfortable and found all sorts of things to do to delay actually sitting down and having words appear on my computer screen. Part of it was certainly my energy level, which has been low lately but I’ve written sermons with low energy before so it felt like something else was going on.
In looking at the Luke passage, in which we find Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by the evil one, I began to wonder if I just wasn’t in a Lenten mood; maybe I just wasn’t prepared for that yearly retreat into the wilderness that Lent offers over and over each year.
So I decided to look more closely at the passage and see if anything in it made sense to creating my resistance. This passage comes quickly on the heels of Jesus’ baptism by John during which a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s son, the beloved. The Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove. Then we read “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness…” (4:1) and that’s where I get my aha moment.
Jesus is led into the wilderness. In fact, in Mark’s version of this story, Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. So Jesus is led into the deprivation and temptations that we hear about in the story that follows. And therein lies the rub, I realized; the Spirit, acting on God’s behalf presumably, leads Jesus into what I think of a quagmire of misery. It calls to mind the phrase that we repeat when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “lead us not into temptation.”
It all makes me wonder about a God who would lead us into all this. We don’t ask for it and it’s not clear that Jesus does either. My Sunday School understanding of Jesus’ experience is quite different, wherein Jesus, chest high, marches into the desert to face the foes before him. It’s an action figure Jesus who is able to handle whatever is thrown at him. But now, reading the passage more closely, in a post-Sunday School time of my life, I’m not certain it’s something that Jesus asks for. It just happens; or worse, it’s planned for by someone else. And that makes me uneasy and uncomfortable.
I realize though that in some ways, it’s the experience that many of us have already had. In my own instance, my ongoing struggle with depression and all that that entails feels like a wilderness into which I have been led. And I would guess that many who are mentally ill would find some resonance with that description.
But the question many of us ask is why we were led here in the first place and who did that leading? Was it God or God’s Spirit leading us here to test us? If so, what is that test? What temptations do we have to refuse to get out of this wilderness?
No one lately has offered me the opportunities for temptation that were presented to Jesus. I haven’t had the chance to turn stones into bread nor to rule over the realms of the earth. (I can’t even rule over my corner of the office in our apartment, none-the-less some realm somewhere!) And let’s not even mention the temptation to throw yourself off a building to see if angels will catch you. So my temptations in this wilderness must lie elsewhere, but where?
And that’s where I get stymied again. I don’t actually feel very tempted here in my own particular wilderness. I’m not sure what the temptations would look like. But that’s the thing about temptation--it sneaks up on you and doesn’t always say, “Hello, I’ll be your temptation for the evening.” All too often, we don’t realize we’ve been tempted until after the fact; after we’ve given into temptation and are happily scarfing it down we realize too late that we’ve been duped.
Of course, action figure Jesus sees the temptations for what they are and is able to resist them. But what about the rest of us? Don’t we believe that we are all God’s beloved? Isn’t God well pleased with us as God was with Jesus? If that’s true, does God really lead us into wildernesses in which we’re tested and tempted? Sounds like a recipe for failure if you ask me and is that what God is all about? I sure hope not.
Surely there are vast varieties of temptations out there. We are tempted each and every day to dispense with ethical behavior and take an easy route. We are tempted to worship false gods and give our allegiances over to deities that offer quick and simple answers. We can drown out our problems with any number of chemical aids, the most common of which is of course alcohol.
But I’m still left with that question about being led into the wilderness. And I am very uneasy with it hanging there. How do I worship a God that seems to take us into deprivation and temptation?
Could it be that the deprivation is there to remind me of what is really important? Could it be that the temptations are meant to be over and against the better choices in life? I don’t claim to have the answers to this one, but I hope you’ll join me in the struggle this Lent.
Lent developed, according to Barbara Brown Taylor, early in our faith’s history. As following Jesus became a bit “ho-hum” and the early Christians seemed to spend more time on their own comfort instead of their devotion to Christ and God, the need for some time away from the dominant culture emerged. According to her, "They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large….They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud." (from http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-21-2010.html)
So Lent and Lenten disciplines pulled our ancestors in the faith back to God, back to worship, back to right thinking. They faced the temptation of being like their culture rather than their faith, which sounds a bit too familiar, doesn’t it?
However you experience the desert and the wilderness into which you are led, know that the temptations are real for you to divert yourself from faith. Be watchful and on guard. Lent is a time to examine your life for the ways that you can return to faithful and faith-filled living, whatever temptations you may encounter.
When it came to preparing this sermon, I have to confess that I had more trouble than usual in just getting started with it. I felt stymied and uncomfortable and found all sorts of things to do to delay actually sitting down and having words appear on my computer screen. Part of it was certainly my energy level, which has been low lately but I’ve written sermons with low energy before so it felt like something else was going on.
In looking at the Luke passage, in which we find Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by the evil one, I began to wonder if I just wasn’t in a Lenten mood; maybe I just wasn’t prepared for that yearly retreat into the wilderness that Lent offers over and over each year.
So I decided to look more closely at the passage and see if anything in it made sense to creating my resistance. This passage comes quickly on the heels of Jesus’ baptism by John during which a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s son, the beloved. The Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove. Then we read “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness…” (4:1) and that’s where I get my aha moment.
Jesus is led into the wilderness. In fact, in Mark’s version of this story, Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. So Jesus is led into the deprivation and temptations that we hear about in the story that follows. And therein lies the rub, I realized; the Spirit, acting on God’s behalf presumably, leads Jesus into what I think of a quagmire of misery. It calls to mind the phrase that we repeat when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “lead us not into temptation.”
It all makes me wonder about a God who would lead us into all this. We don’t ask for it and it’s not clear that Jesus does either. My Sunday School understanding of Jesus’ experience is quite different, wherein Jesus, chest high, marches into the desert to face the foes before him. It’s an action figure Jesus who is able to handle whatever is thrown at him. But now, reading the passage more closely, in a post-Sunday School time of my life, I’m not certain it’s something that Jesus asks for. It just happens; or worse, it’s planned for by someone else. And that makes me uneasy and uncomfortable.
I realize though that in some ways, it’s the experience that many of us have already had. In my own instance, my ongoing struggle with depression and all that that entails feels like a wilderness into which I have been led. And I would guess that many who are mentally ill would find some resonance with that description.
But the question many of us ask is why we were led here in the first place and who did that leading? Was it God or God’s Spirit leading us here to test us? If so, what is that test? What temptations do we have to refuse to get out of this wilderness?
No one lately has offered me the opportunities for temptation that were presented to Jesus. I haven’t had the chance to turn stones into bread nor to rule over the realms of the earth. (I can’t even rule over my corner of the office in our apartment, none-the-less some realm somewhere!) And let’s not even mention the temptation to throw yourself off a building to see if angels will catch you. So my temptations in this wilderness must lie elsewhere, but where?
And that’s where I get stymied again. I don’t actually feel very tempted here in my own particular wilderness. I’m not sure what the temptations would look like. But that’s the thing about temptation--it sneaks up on you and doesn’t always say, “Hello, I’ll be your temptation for the evening.” All too often, we don’t realize we’ve been tempted until after the fact; after we’ve given into temptation and are happily scarfing it down we realize too late that we’ve been duped.
Of course, action figure Jesus sees the temptations for what they are and is able to resist them. But what about the rest of us? Don’t we believe that we are all God’s beloved? Isn’t God well pleased with us as God was with Jesus? If that’s true, does God really lead us into wildernesses in which we’re tested and tempted? Sounds like a recipe for failure if you ask me and is that what God is all about? I sure hope not.
Surely there are vast varieties of temptations out there. We are tempted each and every day to dispense with ethical behavior and take an easy route. We are tempted to worship false gods and give our allegiances over to deities that offer quick and simple answers. We can drown out our problems with any number of chemical aids, the most common of which is of course alcohol.
But I’m still left with that question about being led into the wilderness. And I am very uneasy with it hanging there. How do I worship a God that seems to take us into deprivation and temptation?
Could it be that the deprivation is there to remind me of what is really important? Could it be that the temptations are meant to be over and against the better choices in life? I don’t claim to have the answers to this one, but I hope you’ll join me in the struggle this Lent.
Lent developed, according to Barbara Brown Taylor, early in our faith’s history. As following Jesus became a bit “ho-hum” and the early Christians seemed to spend more time on their own comfort instead of their devotion to Christ and God, the need for some time away from the dominant culture emerged. According to her, "They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large….They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud." (from http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-21-2010.html)
So Lent and Lenten disciplines pulled our ancestors in the faith back to God, back to worship, back to right thinking. They faced the temptation of being like their culture rather than their faith, which sounds a bit too familiar, doesn’t it?
However you experience the desert and the wilderness into which you are led, know that the temptations are real for you to divert yourself from faith. Be watchful and on guard. Lent is a time to examine your life for the ways that you can return to faithful and faith-filled living, whatever temptations you may encounter.
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