Wilderness Trust

 Mark 1:9-15

Blink and you’ll miss it.

Jesus’ month and a half in the Judean wilderness goes by in a single quick sentence in Mark’s story today.

I suspect Mark doesn’t give us much detail because he assumes that you and I already know what he knows about the wilderness:

It’s dangerous. 

It’s lonely. 

It’s far away from community. 

It’s empty of the resources we count on for day-to-day life.

The wilderness is a place of need, but it’s also a place of miracles, over and over in the history of God’s people.  Water from the rock, food raining from heaven like snow.  It’s a place of seeing and being seen by God. 

Many of us might long for a wilderness without Zoom and Webex and email, these days. 

But what we’ve been given – where we’ve found ourselves – instead, is a pandemic wilderness. 

Where danger lurks around us; we’re separated from our usual community; and many resources we’ve counted on are gone, or harder to get.  We may be lonely, may be struggling to survive.  It can be hard to see God, to expect to see God, in this wilderness.

But what if we knew we would? What if we actually believe that that is what we are here for – in this story, in this season, in the pandemic wilderness?  What happens when we enter the wilderness, as Jesus does, as beloved children of God? 

Mark tells us:

Jesus was tempted by Satan; he was with the wild beasts; and angels ministered to him.

Mark doesn’t need to spell out the details of temptation, of the encounter with Satan, because it’s a forgone conclusion. 

It simply doesn’t matter what Satan says or does or offers. 

Jesus, beloved child of God, can’t be teased or threatened into putting his personal needs first; can’t be made anxious or arrogant, can’t be tricked into denying God. 

Because he simply, completely relies on God. He expects and focuses on God’s presence, God’s care – and receives it, being with the wild beasts unharmed, and ministered to by angels.  

Jesus trusts God’s protection and provision as a beloved child, without reservation or hesitation. 

So Satan has nothing to grab on to; nothing to leverage.  Satan’s defeated before even trying.

Just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean it was easy.

Our fundamental human tendency is to hold on to control, not to trust so completely in someone else’s control. Even God’s. And Jesus was fully human, as well as fully divine.

That absolute trust in God’s faithfulness isn’t automatic, even if it’s essential.

And that’s why we have Lent. A season every year to practice wilderness and trust. We learn by doing.

Many years, we choose some kind of wilderness for ourselves by fasting: giving up some comfort or resource or certainty. 

Other years, we just use the wilderness we are in.  Even when the world’s not in a pandemic, many of us find ourselves in a season of illness or loss or change that’s wilderness for us.

And in that season of wilderness, we deliberately practice trusting in God.

We practice accepting failure. Acknowledging that we are not enough, and that we need help.

That’s confession, and apology. It makes room for us to depend more on God, and on God’s mercy, than on ourselves and our own success.

It’s also honesty, which builds trust in any relationship. Trust we need between ourselves and God.

If you need help with that this Lent, read and pray the Litany of Penitence from the Ash Wednesday service. (BCP page 267, and a version with reflection questions on the Lent page of our website)

We practice letting God supply our needs by fasting - giving up chocolate or beer or TV or makeup or coffee or meat or something else we usually depend on for comfort or satisfaction or a shield from distress or emptiness.

Letting someone else fill a need – even when we think we can do it ourselves – helps us trust more confidently and deeply.

There are several suggestions for things to do without in the Lenten Micropractices book we mailed to your home recently (also on our Facebook page and website).

We practice acts of kindness, of giving and service. When we act as God would act – to feed the hungry, clothe the shivering, shelter the neighbor or stranger, tend the sick – we build our trust that God would never forget or fail to nourish and shelter and tend us, in our own need.

  

We build intimacy and trust by spending time with God. Scripture reading and prayer can be like sitting with God on the couch, or working through a problem together.
There are suggestions for several ways of doing that in the Lenten booklet.  Or you might read the psalms, which tell the story of trust in God fulfilled in every possible human need.

And there’s one more thing I think we want to do this particular year, in this wilderness we share.

We need to practice receiving care. Being ministered to by angels.

We need to look for the ways that God is actively, right now, caring for you and me, in the daily wilderness.

Set a time – or a dozen times – each day to just notice one thing God provides that you need. 

We do this every time we say grace at meals and pay careful attention to the words. 

Or you can notice your breathing, the beating of your heart, the life-giving things your body does that you don’t usually think about and can’t entirely control. 

Notice, this Lent, what you already depend on God to provide; notice the needs you can’t fill for yourself that are already met, with God’s help. 

Practice thanksgiving, because that, too, builds up trust.

Which might mean, this year, that you have to eat more chocolate, instead of giving it up, if that is how you taste the goodness of God in this wilderness.

Let’s practice that trust – however you need to, however we can – here and now, this Lent. 

Practice that belovedness, until we rely on God without hesitation or reservation, so that Mark can say of you and me what we heard him say of Jesus:
These are God’s beloved children. Here they are in the wilderness, victorious over Satan, at peace with the wild, and angels are ministering to them.

Exhausted, Renewed

1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39; Isaiah 40:21-31

I’m exhausted. Are you?

It happens every time I read this part of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians: “I became all things to all people”, he says. I do everything, anything, for everyone, anyone, “so that I might by all means save some.”

I can’t do that. Can you?

None of us really can be all things to all people, and many of us have been feeling the strain of trying during this pandemic.  If not quite being all things to all people, many of us are trying to do too many jobs and tasks we’re not trained for, balancing too many people’s needs. Others of us have had to be all things to ourselves, thanks to lockdowns and changes that separate us from the services and the people we usually rely on.

A friend shared an article this week suggesting that a lot of people are hitting walls of exhaustion these days. (I’ve seen similar articles about every two months since last March, and they seem just as true every time.) 

[When the choir recorded our introit this morning, Vernon mentioned that he thought some of us might be feeling “heavy laden” at this point.]

Then on Friday, the Harvard Business Review emailed me an article about managing burnout. 

They’re all right. It’s a basic truth: extraordinary effort isn’t sustainable for human beings.

Except, apparently, for Paul.

And for Jesus, of course.

As Mark tells the story today, Jesus’ healing and teaching rush forward at an urgent pace.  In the four sentences that describe the arrival at Simon’s house and the healing of his mother-in-law, Mark uses the word “immediately” three times.  And when Jesus has cured a whole village worth of sick in one evening, he’s ready early the next morning to move on, and do it all over again in the next village, and the next, and the next.

It’s exciting that God can do all that healing and teaching. 

But Simon – Peter – can’t keep up. I can’t keep up. We can’t keep up.

We’re invited to join in God’s work, offered a share in Jesus’ power. It’s exciting. It’s wonderful what God can do, it’s flattering we’re invited to join in.

But, oh, sometimes it just looks way too hard.  

I can’t keep up with Jesus. Or Paul. Or even Peter.

And that makes it hard to want to try even a little.  

The problem is that if we step back; if we wave Paul and Jesus on ahead without us, waiting until we have energy to spare, we’ll miss most of the miracles. The ones that would heal us, as well as the miracles that help others.

Sometimes those are one and the same, after all.

A conversation with my friend Amber this week reminded me that when Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and she gets right up from her sickbed to “serve them,” that’s not a sign of subordination. It’s a sign of restored community. She takes up the things that connect her to her family, takes up her part in the divine work of this extraordinary teacher who’s staying in her house. And that heals the whole community, the community that’s been out of balance, broken, without her.

I don’t want to miss that. I need my community restored. 

I need the miracles more when I’m tired, when I can’t keep up. Maybe you do, too. And not just miracles at a distance, to watch. I need that healing and renewal and energy and wonder and hope in my own heart and legs and hands and soul.

And that’s part of the answer, right there.

Even the young, the strong, the athletes will “faint and be weary”, will be exhausted trying to keep up with God, Isaiah tells us. “But those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles…” says the prophet.

Isaiah isn’t talking about sitting back until God does the work. No, those who “wait for” God are those who focus expectantly on God, who lean in to readiness for God’s action, and are renewed and strengthened; lifted and energized.  

That’s how Jesus does it, by the way.

You noticed, maybe, that after healing all those people on Simon’s doorstep, he goes off to a place where he can pray. He’s “waiting for the Lord” there; focusing his attention and heart on what God is doing next. And then he’s ready for more. And more.

My smart friend Amber, the one who reminded me that healing one of us restores the whole community, also points out that healing and restoration are not exclusively hard work and heavy lifting. So I’ve realized that sometimes, healing and expelling demons actually feels like love, like creativity, like empathy, like laying down the burdens of hurt and expectations, impatience and shame.

[Jesus tells us – the choir sang it for us – that joining Jesus is about laying down those burdens.  That taking his “yoke” – absorbing his teaching, obeying his direction, and taking part in his work – will actually give rest to our souls.]

I suspect that this is what Paul is talking about, underneath that exhausting “all things to all people” language. 
About laying down the burden of expectation – what others expect of him, as a strong, righteous, Jew – to connect with people unlike him, however and where ever they are, to share the confidence of Jesus’ grace. And about getting to remove the burdens of expectations and shame from others, who know, who’ve been taught, that they aren’t good enough, can’t keep up with God. 

I think he’s actually describing that as…well, not restful, (Paul never seems restful) but energizing, renewing, freeing – as filling himself with those benefits of the gospel.

It’s what Jesus is doing, as he heals and teaches. He’s steeping himself in the will of God, and finding more and more miracles in his hands; God’s strength constantly renewed in him.

Over and over again, this year, I’ve prayed with one of you when my heart has had no more energy for someone else’s troubles that day.  And I’ve found myself refreshed, more hopeful, less tired. Healed, just a bit, by praying to heal someone else.

Or I’ve gone into meetings about our buildings, programs, or budget with the Vestry or staff or other leaders, feeling too tired to be creative. And come out energized and hopeful again, because someone in that meeting needed me to say what God has energy for. 

And hearing that, I could trust God again. 

I don’t know what that is for you. 

Maybe it’s taking up a giant jar of peanut butter, or a pile of deli meat, when you’re really tired of meal planning and meal prep and taking care of other people, and making sandwiches for Cathedral Kitchen, and discovering that you feel more energized when you drop off twenty or forty sandwiches than when you started making them.

Maybe it’s calling someone who has received bad news, even though you can’t take one more sadness, or loss, right now. And hanging up the phone ten minutes or an hour later with a soul refreshed from weeping together, or a stronger sense of love in the world from the stories and lousy jokes you shared.

In other seasons, it might have been the feeling of renewed hope and strength when you left a full day of Habitat house building you didn’t have time for.

The work that renews won’t be the same thing for all of us, but it’s important – it’s essential – in this pandemic, and always, to pay attention to where work renews you, to where taking on one task makes all the others lighter, to when an all-out effort fills you with restful joy, or a difficult, listening, stillness gives you energized peace.

Because those are the places where you or I become like Paul – renewed, strengthened, capable of so much; amazing to others.  Not necessarily all things to everyone, but so much more than we expect of ourselves.

Seek those things out, in the times of exhaustion. 

For those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, soar with the eagles, rest in the energy, hope, and wonder of the heart of God among us here and now.

Use Your Powers for Good

1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

“Use your powers for good.”

Does that sound familiar?

For me, it conjures up vague images of superheroes: cartoons and epic movies and panel-drawn stories. Buffy says it. StarWars, Superman, Spiderman and others teach it – sometimes to their friends, often in an attempt to get a supervillain to see the light:  Use your powers for good, not evil.

The internet tells me that that particular phrasing has been gaining popularity over the last twenty years, but you don’t need the internet to know that the idea has been around much longer. Just a couple minutes ago, we heard Paul tell it to the Corinthians of two thousand years ago: Use your power for good, he exhorts them. Not to harm.

Paul sees the motley collection of new Christians in Corinth as potential superheroes, filled with extraordinary power. The exact same power that we see today in the story of Jesus teaching and healing in the synagogue: the power of direct connection to God that can eliminate demons with a word, and astound a skeptical crowd.

These are ordinary people, very much like you and I, walking through their daily lives with a power that gives ordinary words and everyday actions the ability to create faith or destroy it. To connect other people directly to God’s healing, saving love, or to cut them off.

And some in Corinth are so full of their own faith and authority that they are using their confidence in God in a way that cuts off or damages the connection to God of their siblings in the church.

Because they’re eating meat.

Christianity does not require vegetarianism. But in Corinth, at that time, most of the meat available (and probably all of the food at the good parties) came from a temple of the Greek or Roman gods.  The meat in the market, and on society’s tables, belonged to, had been sacrificed to Apollo or Poseidon or another god. 

Of course, as Paul notes, the confident Christians of Corinth know that Apollo and Aphrodite and Poseidon aren’t really God, so there’s no power or danger in their meat to separate us from our true God.

Meat isn’t like that for you and me. But we might watch TV shows or read novels that contradict what we teach in Sunday School and pray in church. We might work on Saturday – the Sabbath – or play golf on Sunday, and find that it doesn’t harm our deep and life-giving relationship with Jesus, our faith in God.

Great. That’s power, Paul says. Power that comes from our knowledge of God, and makes us free.

But that is not true for everyone. And that’s what matters.

Some in the Corinthian church know that the Greek and Roman gods aren’t “real”, like the one true God we know in Jesus. But they still feel their connection with God eroding if they eat the meat – because the meat comes from someone honoring an unreal “god” that denies the reality of our true God.
And when the confident Christians they know are living it up at the Poseidon Diner, eating idolatrous meat publicly in the Corinth Town Square, it makes them doubt their own faith, their own closeness to God.  The holy community that builds up our trust in God is weakened, pulled down.

So stop, Paul says to the confident in Corinth.
Apollo’s meat might not hurt you, but if it hurts someone else – if there’s even a chance that someone else may lose their connection to this holy community, to the forgiveness, transformation, and salvation of Christ, or to the deeply rooted trust in God that enables us to act with love in this messy, selfish, dangerous world – 

cut out that meat right now and eat your vegetables.  

Don’t tell me what you know about idols. Show me how you love one another.

Imitate Jesus himself, limiting your freedom so that you can help other people receive more love, more healing, more hope and joy.

Use your power – your connection to God, in yourself and through your community – for good, not for harm.

Paul looks at his friends and fellows in Corinth – looks at us, you and me – and sees potential superheroes, infused by baptism with the Spirit of God, given authority to share Christ’s good news, equipped by the prayers and practices of our faith with the extraordinary – super – power of God which can absolutely heal and save the world.

Paul wants us to know that power, because if we don’t think of ourselves as powerful – if we just think of ourselves as free – it’s easy to hurt others by accident.

What you say out loud when the internet goes out, or impeachment’s on TV, may not hurt you – unless it hurts your kids or grandkids or friends who hear it, and doubt or disrespect gets into their relationship with you, or with others.

Maybe you and your boss or a client have a joke about company ethics or policy that’s funny because you know it isn’t true. But co-workers who respect you start to worry about where they work.

I know a lot of us don’t think of ourselves as powerful; very few of us think of ourselves as spiritual leaders.  I hear about that almost every time I invite one of you to take on a new ministry.  

I bet those “smart” people in Corinth didn’t think they were all that powerful, either.

But we are. 

We are all empowered by God to build one another up in love and generosity and fellowship and hope, starting right where and how we are.

We are in fact powerful, with the healing might of God.

That power is desperately needed right now.  We are apart physically or politically; we and the world are worn down with the losses and labors of a year that requires the impossible, and we need the power of God to build and heal.

Many of us feel our connection to God and community worn down by screens and distances and the people who aren’t here. So use your power for good: 

make a point to invite someone to participate in remote worship with you – watch at the same time, have chat open between you in worship or a little telephone coffee hour right after. 

Be a buddy, or ask for a buddy, for Bible reading or participating in a Trinity project like sandwich making for Cathedral Kitchen, or one of the Lent learning opportunities that will launch soon. 

Find or make a personal connection in online work or school that helps you want to be present, when all of us are so exhausted we want to check out. 

We may be feeling our national community worn down these days, too. So use your power for good and choose unity or hope in some small but visible way. Find something in common with that neighbor with all the awful lawn signs or the acquaintance who starts fights on your Facebook posts: and rescue puppies or pick up litter together. 
I expect Andy Kim didn’t think he was particularly powerful when he started picking up water bottles in the Capitol Rotunda on January 6, but he built up and strengthened the trust and hope of a lot of people whose faith in our nation was damaged by the division and disrespect and danger of the Capitol invaders.

We may be feeling torn and worn and distrustful about COVID restrictions that make no sense to some of us and aren’t even close to enough for others.

So use your power for good: Let friends see you being generous with people who can’t accept the same COVID risks that you do. See yourself doing that.

Because when we make the effort to be present and supportive to others in a way that does not trigger fear or danger, we build up hope, and help others find safe and strengthening ways to use their own power to love and bless and heal.

The power of God that Paul sees in Corinth, in us; the power of God that Jesus poured out on the world and invested in us, is love: the generous, self-giving love of Christ which comes into the world to heal and free and build us stronger. 
If we can love – if we will love – all the daily words and actions of our lives are infused with power beyond what we imagine.

So use that power for good.