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If No Sound
Into the Wilderness©
February 21, 2010
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 (UMH
810)
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Amy DeWitte
You
have heard me joke before that in seminary they teach us to be ok with silence.
Its usually when I’ve asked you an open question and I’m waiting for a
response. I could wait here all day! Well not all day. The truth is
that I did learn to be more comfortable with silence while I was in seminary,
but it wasn’t because they say us down in a class and told us how long to wait
before asking a follow-up or answering our own questions. (Sometimes I wish we
had more of that mechanical, practical advice.) No, in seminary I learned to be
more comfortable with silence because I had the opportunity to experience
moments of really valuable silence.
Silence can feel like a wilderness to some people. And not the good
kind of wilderness. Not the take-a-hike-on-a-warm-sunny-day-through-the-woods
kind of wilderness. I’m talking about the dry, dusty, out-there-all-alone kind
of wilderness. I have to admit that standing up in front of people having to
fill the silence used to be that kind of wilderness for me. It was terrifying.
And I suspect that we have all had those kind of places that have felt like
wilderness to us.
Those are the times that so contrast to the mountaintop experience
we read about last week - the thin places where God is so apparently near.
Moses goes up the mountain to meet God and when he returns his face is aglow
from being in God’s presence. At his transfiguration, Jesus takes Peter, James,
and John to the mountaintop and they literally hear the voice of the Father and
witness the Son in all his glory as the Holy Spirit comes upon him.
One week we are right there on the mountain top with God, and the
next, we are cast out into the desert with no one and nothing by our side. Those
wilderness moments can feel that drastic and can happen just as quickly as the
seasons of the Christian year change from one to another. For on this First
Sunday of Lent, we meet Jesus in his own wilderness. For him it was forty days
and forty nights out in the dry, lifeless, literal dessert. It was a time of
temptation and trial. And Satan knew just where to hit him. Jesus was hungry -
not just the stomach-growling-between-one-and-six kind of hungry but the
haven’t-eaten-for-days kind of famished. And Satan chide him, “Why don’t you
just turn that rock over there into a piece of bread to hold you over. You know
you can do it.” “It is said, ‘man does not live on bread alone.’”
Satan knew that Jesus had given up the glory of heaven to come down
and take on flesh like ours. So He temps Jesus with power: “All the kingdoms of
the world could be yours if you would only bow down and worship me.” “It is
written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
By this point Jesus was so aware of his frailty. And Satan was
aware, too. “Don’t you just want to feel the protection of the Father? Why
don’t you go jump off a cliff? Surely his will send his angels to catch you
when you fall.” “It is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the
test.’”
Chances are your wilderness isn’t going to be much like that. Your
wilderness may be the emptiness of a room when someone you have loved has left,
or has died. Your wilderness may be the vast unknown out there - whether it’s
the future you can’t foresee or the present you can’t control. Your wilderness
may be in your righteous indignation when you put yourself out there on a limb
for something you really believed, and nobody was out there with you. Your
wilderness may be when someone who was supposed to be the one who loved you
neglected you or simply made you feel uncomfortably vulnerable.
I can’t possibly name your wilderness, but I bet if you thought
about it for just thirty seconds you could name the time in your life or the
place that was like that for you. It’s the kind of situation that you want to
get out of as soon as you can, the kind of thing that makes you want to forget
about it as much as you can, distract yourself as best you can so that you don’t
have to deal. And chances are the experiences of your wilderness have had
different distractions and temptations than Jesus did.
You don’t have to deny the possibility of turning stones into bread
because you are so hungry, but maybe you are so hungry for some positive
attention you have avoid the temptation to call attention to yourself, or to
cling to people or groups that are destructive. We do not live on bread, or even
attention, alone.
Maybe the devil doesn’t offer you rule over all the kingdoms int he
world in exchange for bowing down to worship him, but perhaps you are tempted to
be more loyal those who can offer you something or get you somewhere. It is
written, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
Maybe you don’t feel tempted to jump off the side of a cliff just to
see if god will send his angels to catch you in your fall, but maybe you do feel
a little resentful like God is testing you in this wilderness just to see what
you will do, and you’d rather put God to the test for a change. It is said, “Do
not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Yes the wilderness is often the last place you want to be, and the
wilderness is certainly the last place you would chose to go. But, then again,
why did the Holy Spirit cast Jesus out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40
nights before he began his earthly ministry? There must be something about the
wilderness…
There have been times when I’ve been really uncomfortable with
silence. I especially hate those awkward silences where you feel like you have
to say something to fill the void. And I suppose I am a typical city girl, in
that I feel more comfortable when I’m surrounded by noise. I can sleep through
the passing of a freight train. And what’s more, when I go to a very quiet
place away from the hustle and bustle, I need a fan or something going to make
some white noise so that I can sleep. It’s all a way to distract from the
silence.
Sometimes those distractions are the only ways we feel like we can
deal with the wilderness moments of our lives, whether they are big, vast
deserts, or those smaller, everyday wildernesses. When I am anxiously waiting in
the dentist office, I don’t have to just sit there - and I don’t even have to
share in the anxiety with another patient - because there are 46 magazines I can
make my way through and the tv is blasting talking heads and I could take some
time to check my email on my phone, and as a last resort, I could play a few
rounds of solitaire. By the time the hygienist calls my name, I’m still as
anxious as I ever was; I had just made myself forget for a while, and I had
given up those precious moments of just being able to sit with myself. What good
did that do me?
There was something to Jesus being in the wilderness, and maybe
something more to staying there for a good long while, and may even more than
that to not passing the time with a bunch of distractions. He had to come out of
the wilderness depending on the Holy Spirit because he didn’t let himself depend
on anything else. He didn’t get distracted by anything else. God was all he had,
and then he knew that God was all he needed. There’s something to that.
And there’s something to this wretched commemoration that we succumb
to year in and year out in Lent. And there’s something to disciplining ourselves
in a way that we don’t always discipline ourselves the rest of the year. There’s
something to letting ourselves live in this wilderness so that we can live in
God on the other side of it.
So, Lent and Lenten disciplines aren’t about willpower. If chocolate
or Facebook or buying certain things really are your biggest distractions, go
ahead and give those up. But don’t do it so that you can come back 40 days
later and say that you did it. Don’t do it so that you can have power over
those things.
And Lenten Discipline is not about suffering voluntarily. If you
really want to take up your cross and follow Jesus, it’s not going to be by
giving up dessert for 6 weeks.
Lenten discipline is about knowing that you don’t need any of that. Jesus got
to the other side of his 40 days famished, the Scripture says, and I imagine a
little tired, and maybe even sunburned - but he knew that he could depend on God
when nothing and no one else was there for him. On the other side of this 40
days when we have seen this same Jesus deny the temptation to come down from the
cross for our sake, may we also know that we can rest our very lives on God.
Copyright © 2009 Amy DeWitte. All Rights Reserved. No portion of
this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written
permission of the author.
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