Packing for the Wilderness

Rev. Cathlin Baker

“Packing for the Wilderness”

The Rev. Cathlin Baker

February 21, 2010

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

Over the past few days when my family has gathered together we’ve discussed what we are going to pack for our vacation.  Mostly we’ve focused on the kids – what favorite bedtime items must come along, what baby gear, what books and toys to help us pass the time on the plane. I asked my husband, Bill, what he planned to pack and he said all he needed was his toothbrush. I suspect my list is somewhere in between. But what I really want to pack are those things that will launch me on my Lenten journey. Getting away from work and from my daily routine presents an opportunity for me to dip my toe into the wilderness of my soul. Surely, Florida is not the wilderness, an alien land, perhaps, and seven days is not forty days and forty nights, but might this be a time for me to find some time for just God and me.

But then again, what constitutes the wilderness anyway. I suspect it is different for all of us, and different in extreme. We have each known wilderness times – the death of a child, spouse, or parent, a diagnosis of a dreaded disease, losing a job and facing an uncertain future. These are times that take our breath away with their devastating impact, leaving a hole in our heart, or drowning us in anxiety. The wilderness need not be so extreme as to knock us upside the head, in fact, often it is a subtle awareness that we are estranged from God, that we are fighting boredom despite the precious gift of walking on this planet, that we are captive to our ego needs for affection, success or validation. We spend much of each day avoiding the everyday wilderness of our soul.

Some of us seek to escape the boredom and the anxiety through creature comforts like food, the bottle, or online shopping or we fill up our time with busyness by working harder, volunteering, jogging, or cleaning house. Now all of these things are fine in moderation, but even in moderation they can be used to take away the ache of estrangement. And this inner ache or longing is not necessarily a bad thing, for it can be a door to deeper awareness.

Barbara Brown Taylor captures this wonderfully. She writes, “That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying. Whenever we start feeling too empty inside, we stick our pacifiers into our mouths and suck for all we are worth. They do not nourish us, but at least they plug the hole.”

Taylor explains, that you will not find the word Lent in the Bible, it is a later invention of the Christian tradition, and it refers to a period of forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Lent comes from the Old English word “lenten”  meaning spring. The idea was to create a period of forty days in remembrance of the Israelites’ forty days in the wilderness learning to trust God, Moses’ forty days on the mountaintop receiving the law, Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness enduring tests from the devil, and so on. In every case, this period of time was one of challenge and deprivation and at the same time a period of closeness to God. Might we experience a springtime or renewal for our soul if we were to recreate such a time, including the challenge and deprivation? And perhaps this is how we reached the point of giving things up for Lent. But does giving up chocolate or online shopping actually result in a closeness to God. Probably not.  But maybe it would if we were to listen closely to the aching and longing inside of us that we momentarily “plug” with our pacifiers of chocolate or shopping.

What I find so fascinating about Jesus’ time in the wilderness is that he could hear the devil or the temptations speaking to him so clearly, because he had taken that time apart from the world. Indeed, Jesus would take time away from his ministry of healing and feeding many times. Heading up a mountain to pray, Jesus would find the space to listen, listen carefully to the temptations of the world and to the voice of his creator.

And Jesus had to listen very hard to distinguish the voice of temptation from the voice of creation. He had to test the spirits as my seminary professor, Christopher Morse, used to say. For the temptations presented to Jesus are so closely aligned to the demands of his calling and ministry. The devil encourages Jesus to turn a stone into bread. And surely this must have tempted Jesus who longed to feed his people. The devil shows him all the kingdoms of the world and offers him power and authority over them, if only he worshipped the devil. What an opportunity, for Jesus’ ministry was in direct resistance to the Roman Empire. Jesus could have overthrown the Empire and avoided crucifixion right then and there. And finally, the devil offers Jesus the chance at a fantastic display, the ability to throw himself from the top of the temple and have a host of angels lift him up to safety. Such a show would surely attract followers and Jesus could skip over the conflicts with scribes and Pharisees, being chased out of his hometown, and the hard work of his teaching ministry. But Jesus knew that there were no quick fixes, he had to go through the wilderness, through the challenges and deprivations in order to prevail on the other side.

So Lent offers each of us an opportunity to pack some tools and head out on a spiritual journey. A trip into the wilderness of the soul, where if we set ourselves apart, we might be able to listen to the voices of temptation and the voice of our creator. We might grow to hear the tone and timbre of each voice and learn how to test the spirits.

I myself now know what I need to pack this week. Like the instruction in our first scripture text today, I will pack my memories of all the wonderful things God has done for me and given to me. I will pack my listening ears, something I am often training Hardy to use, but can use myself when testing the spirits. And like Jesus, I will pack my knowledge of scripture and the teachings of our tradition, so that I can lift them up in the sunlight and let their glow stare down all the voices inside me that make me less than who I am, a blessed child of God.

I am ever so grateful that I get to jumpstart my Lenten journey with an actual trip, for surely leaving home offers an opportunity to take stock of where I am, who I am and whose I am. But Lent, of course, is just a construct, and we are offered the chance at rebirth each and everyday. Over the next forty days, I hope that you may find some time or find some spiritual practice that will enable you to hear your temptations, to shake hands with the longing of your soul, and then awaken to the God who is always with you, even and especially when we forget.