ST George’s Ivanhoe Easy
LENT 1
18th February 2018
When I was a teenager a few years ago now I experienced Lent as a time of endurance, a sombre period that one had to “bare and grind ones teeth over” rather than as a time for reflection, recreation, repentance and preparation for the Feast of the Resurrection we celebrate on Easter Day, by the way not Easter Sunday. The themes of fasting, prayer and repentance were more of a hindrance than help. They were always framed in the negative and often sent me on a guilt trip. I know I was not alone and many people who have abandoned faith speak about a guilt psychosis bordering on spiritual abuse brought about by the way faith was presented and taught. AS we have been reading from Mark’s Gospel we learn that the teaching of Jesus embraced challenge, openness and listening not manipulation and pressure. Over the years my understanding of God has changed dramatically from my teenage years, and even further since ordination. I understand increasingly the message of the Gospels as good news seeking to liberate us from the shackles we bind around ourselves and the false senses of security we create for self-protection. As I said on Ash Wednesday Lent is a time to reaffirm that the God of the Christian faith is not some far off spectator, running the world on miracles, nor the old man and distant God of the views of Philip Adams, Christopher Hitchin Richard Dawkins and the like{ I would not believe in a God they describe} but rather the God who experienced the humiliation of rejection and death at the hands of those he loved and cared about, and came to be with. Lent is a time to remind ourselves that God is not a genie in a bottle that we let out from time to time to suit our own needs but the one who was the victim of those who plotted to kill him, experiencing a vile and excruciating death.
I am pleased that over the years the emphasis of the season of Lent has shifted and while the themes of prayer, fasting and repentance are still central to the churches observance, the wallowing, in guilt, in our sin, has shifted ground to an understanding that encourages and stimulates us to think about new opportunities for us to know the loving nature of God’s being and the ache God feels when we are separated from the experience of Divine love.
The first two Sundays in Lent call us to focus on God who answers our insecurity and anxiety if only we will embrace his offer. Where did the world come from
One of my favourite authors is Philip Yancey a Christian from the evangelical tradition in the United States who writes about his experiences as a Christian pastor. In his book titled “Soul Survivor, How my faith survived the Church” he tells the stories of some well known individual Christians and their early experiences of church life including those of Martin Luther King, GK Chesterton, Dr Paul Brand, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Ghandi, John Donne and Henry Nouwen. Each of them have been bruised and scared from their relationship with the Church and their involvement in the community of faith, yet each has sustained a search and journey with ”the hope “of gaining a “glimpse of God,” free of the paraphernalia and dogmas so often associated with Christian belief and practice.
The book is without doubt very much about Philip Yancey’s own bruising, faith journey and brokenness, recognised in part through the struggles of others. He speaks about the abuses hurled at Ghandi and his family, the struggles of Martin Luther King with his own church, his infidelity, his vulnerability, his long absences from home, and the threats to his life. He describes how King was “demonized” by large sections of the Church who believed that “whites were meant to rule over blacks”.
In the last Chapter of his book he tells the story of the life of Henry Nouwen, “the wounded healer”. Nouwen a distinguished theologian and teacher priest struggled throughout his life with the image of himself as the responsible and obedient older brother. He describes the expectations of others on him and the sense in which he is held in esteem for his theological insights, his skill and his personality-and he struggles with the responsibility of being the older obedient brother, an image I suspect lingers not far from the surface in may of us. Throughout his life Nouwen struggles with depression, a crisis of sexual identity and loneliness. People respond to him for what he can offer to them but few recognise his own needs and feelings. He loves the Church for its potential and hope, yet despairs of its lack of pastoral sensitivity and at times ignorance and arrogance.{I should add that during my own ministry I have often encountered similar stories }
During my time as CEO of Anglicare Victoria I was privy to stories of hurt and abuse that people spoke about in their relationship with the church. A refusal to marry, baptize and conduct funerals were common experiences, not to mention violence. Many spoke about their wilderness experiences of being lost, challenged and alienated when a marriage or relationship breakdown occurred and stopped attending Church.
All of those Yancey wrote about suggests that the temptation at times must have been great to leave the Church and faith yet they have all remained faithful during times of testing and doubt. They saw beyond the glitter and tinsel of life to what really counts. What I describe as the great Christian narrative of redemption.
Both Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness unlike mark with few details are rich in images and ideals. Places of wilderness have grown in significance and importance in recent years as the “Greenies” and other environmentalists have reminded us of the importance of wilderness space for the health of our community. In recent years the church itself has rethought the place of the environment in creating and sustaining God’s kingdom. In Australia we have rediscovered the devastation that we have caused to our forests, our deserts and our waterways in recent years with growing concern about the change in climate and the impact it has on communities.
We have also re-discovered the place of wilderness as a place of solace, a place of inspiration, a place for reflection and essential for the health of our community.
I think it not ironic then that Jesus goes into the wilderness, living off what nature provides, almost an idealistic paradisiacal picture ministered to by Angels, locusts and wild honey. But it is also a time of challenge to his purpose and mission.
Before suggesting as some may that this is naïve idealism (I hope you suppress that thought) let’s at least reflect on how the wilderness space in itself becomes an alternative place for Jesus to engage with his God and to accept his mission. Picture this engagement of Jesus as having this kind of alternative or protest element to it. His abandonment of home and possessions, his questioning of family, and the priorities he set for himself in his engagement with the outcasts and sinners challenges much of what we would regard as normal and acceptable in our community today.
Jesus then lives the lifestyle of an itinerant journeyman. Here from the very beginning of his mission, we gain a glimpse that Jesus is protesting against the norms of the day, including lifestyle questions and issues. Alone and in exile he wrestles with himself as we so often do and with the options available to him. Here as Jesus puts himself to the test, we can see the connection with the story of Moses and the testing of the Hebrew people. The outcome for both is food or manna from God. As the story infolds, Jesus rejects compromising the will of God by his refusal of seduction by the powers of darkness contrary to God’s dream.
Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggerman, in his works entitled, “The Prophetic Imagination” sees exile and wilderness as the place and voice of hope.
If we think for a moment so often what we see as barren has much potential. Exile, Bruggerman says, is a time for discovery or rediscovery of the great Christian noble vision and it may be that we in the church at this time are in a place of wilderness, as we grapple with the coming and building of the Kingdom of God. Bruggerman says:
that the loss of the authority and dynasty and temple in Jerusalem is analogous to the loss of certainty, dominance and legitimacy in or own time.
Like Jesus a wilderness experience can provide us with the space and opportunity to rethink and even test our faith. It provides us with the opportunity to move from the centre, one of safety to the edge. Jesus knew he was moving away from the centre when he declared his mission to be God’s mission discovering true power and authority not as the world defines it but in a ministry of servant hood and being for the other.
Lent is a time to sort out and evaluate our priorities, to reaffirm our discipleship and to imagine what life could be like without money, power and control. Matthew is making an important yet simple theological point about the identity of Jesus. It is that in Jesus we meet God, who is not remote from us but shares our life and in that sharing redeems it. Like Ghandi, King and Nouwen he experienced exposure to the brokenness of the creation and yet remained Faithfull and committed to building God’s Kingdom.
During this Lent we are invited to be more than spectators to the drama that is to unfold. We are invited, even challenged to be active participants and to remember to do the right thing we also are tempted. By our deeds the Kingdom of God is known.
May this Lent be a time of recreation in your spiritual and community life?
Amen
