Healing, Temptation, and the Lenten Journey

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

[Image:  Tall glass vases filled with stones, branches stripped of foliage and painted white]

First of all, I would like to express my thanks to Shirlanie and Jacques and Nancy N. and Tana for coordinating the Lenten decorations for our worship space.  I walked in Friday and thought, ‘now that is a really good illustration for Lent, and especially for today’s Gospel:  you can really see the wilderness in these stones and branches.’  And the funny thing is, they are both stark, and beautiful. 

Wandering Alone

Today we hear about wandering in the wilderness of Egypt; as well as wandering in the wilderness of Holy Land--granted, both places have lots of areas which are flowing with milk and honey, or at least water and green plants; yet others are unending miles of rocks and desert.  I learned to appreciate both when I was living in the Middle East.  The desert wilderness, in which it is difficult to sustain life, tends to be empty of people.  After a while, I realized that emptiness is a sojourn; the emptiness gives you a blank slate to start reflecting on the things that are going on in your mind and in your life.  There’s a reason the desert fathers, the mystic monastics, and Jesus, head out to the wilderness for long periods of time; it’s a good place to get clarity.

Now, this could also seem to be a lonely time--and we usually start out the season of Lent with this gospel passage of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.   We might feel like we are expected to make Lent an extremely personal and lonely, somber journey.  However, I’m going to recommend for this year, that perhaps we don’t think of it quite as such.  After all, we are most easily tempted when we’re alone.

And Jesus was tempted out there, alone--separated from his family and friends, perhaps even feeling separated from God.  He was just at that point of gaining real fame and notoriety in his social circles.  People knew that he possessed some gifts and power, even if they didn’t quite understand it all.  And, indeed, the temptations the devil presented him with are temptations to exploit that power.  

We know every time we see the news that people in power are always succumbing to temptation to exploit power, to exploit others, to get wrapped up in one scandal or another.  It seems almost inevitable.  I think part of the reason is reflected in the saying, that it’s lonely at the top.  When you are put on a pedestal, it’s easy to lose perspective; it’s easy to lose touch with the people who help keep you grounded.  And then, it’s all too easy to fall off that pedestal, be put to shame and public ridicule, and have to figure out how to put your life back together again.

Wrestling With The Devil

Now, today is Health and Healing Sunday in the PCUSA--and I think there are so many things from which we need healing, that cause us to feel isolated and cut off from our circles of support, whether family and friends, or even feeling that we have been separated from God.  

Yesterday at the presbytery gathering, we talked a little about the devil--and, how we don’t talk about the devil that much in Presbyterian circles.  However, we know that sometimes people who struggle with addictions, or mental illness, find that the image of wrestling with the devil is very poignant for their lives.  Other people may find it to be a good way to describe the shame they feel over something that happened in their lives a long time ago, whatever it might be.  Perhaps what Paul has to say about shame in today’s epistle speaks to that experience.  At any rate--these are all painfully isolating things in our lives, that lead us down a lonely journey.  And other situations too come to mind--such as any illness that has us homebound, or even keeps us in bed a couple of weeks, or even the grief we feel over losing our loved ones, even long after it might seem the world expects us to have moved on.

There is one more thing that I’d like to say about the devil this morning, that seems to be a theme in scripture when he shows up--whether it’s in the Garden of Eden, or in the heavenly courts while considering the righteousness of Job, or here in this Gospel story.  The devil is that one which brings all the questions:  Not the good, constructive, wise kind of questions to ask, mind you.  Instead, the devil seems to bring all those nagging, undermining questions inside your mind that never let you rest, never let you truly enjoy whatever is going on in your life, or being present in the moment.  The things that you know you’d be better off not asking, or not even considering, but which can bring you extremely low, make you terribly insecure, and tempt you to do everything in your power to protect yourself against the perceived dangers--whether by exploiting others in your life, or exploiting your privilege, or manipulating people and situations to your advantage, or drowning everything out in the oblivion of destructive behavior.

Hope For Deliverance

So what would it mean, in the face of any one of these situations, to be delivered or healed?

I think, it’s not always in ways we expect.  Sometimes, we want to be completely physically healed of our illnesses or disabilities, and medical science simply can’t do that for us.  Sometimes, we wish painful memories could simply be erased from our psyches, but even the best psychologists or even strong pharmaceuticals, can’t do that for us.  

Sometimes, the healing comes in the realization that we are more than whatever seems to be destroying us or consuming us at that point in our lives.  That our lives have more meaning and value than whatever is afflicting us.

And we might realize that both because of our connections with one another, or that the realization allows us to find community with others and be at least healed of our loneliness and isolation.  Support groups that meet to deal with particular kinds of illnesses, addictions, or other life situations recognize this, and many people find them helpful.  

In some ways, you could even speak of church congregations as places where we join together at the end of one long week in our individual lives, to find re-connection with God and one another, in order to be renewed and equipped to get back out there for another week of our lives.  How often do we find some kind of healing in scripture, or prayer, or in the words of a favorite hymn, or even afterwards in the coffee and a cookie and a chat with a friend? After all, it all matters.

And, how many people have found healing from life’s burdens by turning outward and helping others with their own difficulties, especially through volunteer service?  How many of us have been transformed through mission trips or group projects or the opportunity even to build relationships, short or long-term, with people in very different life circumstances from our own?  After all, we know that we may not be the greatest painter or house-builder on the planet, but we find ourselves transformed by the journey, and the traveling companions, and these very relationships, even as our presence gives encouragement to people facing such difficult challenges of their own.

Jesus took that time away in the desert.  You could say he took the time to contend with his demons out there.  Perhaps we all need a little time like that.  But he didn’t let the isolation and temptation overpower him.  He came back, and he used whatever gifts and power he had to help others, to bring healing to painful and broken lives.  His disciples were healed of the things in their lives, and became helpers and healers to others.  And the story goes on and on, even until today in our own congregations.

Our scriptures today speak of God being our refuge and strength, but what exactly does this do for us?  What is our refuge and strength?  I might say that this is whatever we find that does allow us to move out past our own isolation and fear, to re-connect with others, to get beyond our own difficulties so that we may even be a blessing to others through our own lives and the gifts which we have.  Maybe when we envision it, it is like a rock to us.  Maybe it is like a flowing river that gives us that life and growth back where we thought all was lost.  Maybe it is simply that place into which we duck when we don’t know how else to cope with whatever it is life throws at us.  But in all these things, we come back to God being our source of hope and comfort.  We are not alone, because we are always in God’s presence.  Who we are, and what we do, matters to God.  After all, this is a God who answers the loneliness of death, with the community of Resurrection.

My hope for you today, and always, is that you would not languish in isolation--whether due to illness or injury, or even anger, or shame, but that in all things you would know that trust in God as our rock and refuge, and from that place of safety, step forward in loving hope, as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

February 10, 2013--Transfiguration Sunday

February 10, 2013--Transfiguration Sunday
Luke 9:28-43a; Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

So, have you been to the mountaintop?  

Have you been to the mountaintop?  

It’s a question reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr., and relevant to our Scriptures today, stories of both Jesus and Moses having mountaintop encounters with the holy.  But, as you look back at your own lives, whether physically or spiritually, have you been to the mountaintop?

Some of us have.  This past summer, and many summers before, our youth group went up to the mountaintop at Montreat, and they still have photos on facebook of the beautiful and awe-inspiring views.  Others of us I know have been mountain-climbing either in this country or other places around the world.  I’ve been lucky enough to be on mountaintops from El Salvador to Greece to Germany to Lebanon to the Holy Land.  It’s difficult work, getting up a mountain, but it does do something good for your soul, I think.  You come back down having had an experience that not everybody can.

There’s a funny thing in the name Montreat, if we can go back there for a second, and maybe several folks in this room already know that it’s shortened for ‘Mountain Retreat,’ where some retired Presbyterian pastors thought it might make a nice resort community.  Or maybe they read their Bibles and thought of these Bible stories today and this came to mind.  Both points are true, and mountains are a pretty good place to get a retreat.
Whether on a mountain or not, times of retreat are helpful for us to re-connect with God--not because we believe that God lives on the mountain, but because it’s a place that is set apart, away from the rest of the world, where we can gain perspective, and maybe hear or see God a bit more clearly than we do in everyday life.

+We need times of retreat to help us come face to face in our relationship with God.  Time away from the routine gives us fresh perspective on which to view our other relationships and our work.

Recently I read that being in the presence of God is where everybody wants to be, and where everybody doesn’t want to be.  It’s both amazing to feel as though you’ve been in the presence of God, and a little uncomfortable.  One of the most intense retreat experiences I’ve had is being up at the monastery in Middleton, with my seminary classmates, for a 24 hour silent retreat.  Even though we were with each other physically, we were each left alone with our own thoughts.  It was clarifying for many of us, taking that break from term papers and internships and also social media; but it took us each a while to calm down and hand ourselves over to the experience and what it had to teach us.

(Most of us cannot go up a mountain too quickly; you’ll bash in the side of your van going up switchbacks, or run into problems with oxygen, or find out how out of shape you are, etc. Likewise, it takes time to adjust your pace to God's way of doing things).

Now, Moses had an incredibly intense experience up on that mountaintop; he was bringing down the tablets with the Ten Commandments.  Now, this was not Moses’ first time in the presence of the holy; you might remember that he also took off his shoes in front of the burning bush because God told him he was standing on holy ground.  That one came as a bit more of a shock to Moses.  But while he was reverent, he wasn’t scared away.  Then Moses was on the mountain to get the tablets more than once, since he’d been away maybe too long the first time, the people had a heck of a party while he was gone, and he smashed the first copy of the commandments out of anger and frustration.

But now Moses has some experience of how to handle himself in the presence of the Lord, as well as in the presence of the people.  He is gaining in understanding of both relationships.  And for some reason, this time when he comes down off the mountain, he is “positively glowing.”

And perhaps we can understand why the people are afraid.  The people have been in trouble before with Moses; they have also had some experience of the holy, through the angel of death which passed through Egypt during that first Passover, then the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day; the crossing through the Red Sea, and now this.  This really had added up to much more than the desert pilgrimage they’d bargained for.  Maybe they just didn’t know what else was going to happen next.  And maybe that encounter with the holy was simply too frightening and overwhelming for the average person.  But Moses had learned how to handle them by this point, and to calm their fears, and really had calmed his own, and he put the veil over his face, so that they could have some experience of the holy, without being totally overwhelmed.  And, as the story goes, this became an ongoing reality, by which the people had regular instruction from God through Moses’ encounters with the holy.  The people who were once slaves in Egypt, were now being formed into a renewed people, and eventually to return to the promised land.

The Gospel story that ties into this story of Moses’ transfiguration is Jesus with his disciples on the mountaintop.  And I often wonder, why did the disciples keep silent about what they had seen?  They had seen Jesus perhaps as God sees Jesus; they had been with this teacher for a little while, and now were learning something about him that was completely new and wonderful.  Did they think that nobody would believe them?  Did they think that they would never see something better in their entire lives?  Did they maybe just want to keep this experience to themselves?  We don’t really know.  But we do know that the moment of transfiguration ends; that Elijah and Moses depart, that the voice from the cloud tells the disciples to listen to Jesus, and Jesus takes them back down, off the mountain.

I do want to take a moment to talk about the demons in this story.  We have all sorts of ideas about what the demons Jesus heals might be in our world today.  Whether they truly are evil spirits, as was believed in the day, or if they are conditions such as schizophrenia, or epilepsy, or things we understand a little bit better today.  Although, often, the people with these conditions are treated little better by the rest of society than they were back then.

But why is Jesus angry before healing the boy?  The boy’s father says the disciples had already tried but couldn’t heal him.  Or perhaps because the crowd had gathered, gawking at the boy; perhaps because they were afraid of what “evil” the boy might represent; perhaps because the veils over their own eyes and understanding caused them to treat the boy as a freak, rather than regard him with compassion.  Jesus has some harsh words for the people gathered, but he turns and heals the boy.  The boy is restored to a place of dignity in the community.  Jesus moves on.

We shouldn’t give in to the temptation either to stay up on the mountaintop forever, retreating from the realities of the world, or to stay down in the valley, too heavily steeped in difficult realities, that we become hardened and lose touch with the holy.  (It happens all too often in the healing, helping professions--where people become burnt out, where they can no longer see the good in people, or in the system, because those blinders, those veils, have come down too thickly.)

And finally we have that letter from Paul to the Corinthians, where he is writing about the veils over Moses’ face, and how we too have veils over ours--ones that have been there from the time of Moses up until the present.  Paul is explaining why it’s difficult for faithful people to believe this experience of Jesus that the Corinthian community has had and how they have become a church congregation following Christ.  You may even hear in this second letter to the Corinthians a passage similar to the first, where we see in a mirror dimly and will then see face to face; now Paul is telling them they are seeing, and in the seeing, are being transformed in their own lives as well.  And even with everything going on in their lives, in their congregation, and their world--they have hope, hope which enables them to keep going.

We all have veils over our eyes with which we view other people, and with which we read the Scriptures.  We each bring the sum of our own prejudices and human brokenness to these encounters.  What veils do we carry today?

And yet, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there also is freedom.  God sees with eyes of grace-- whether God is looking at us and those uncomfortable places in our lives we’d rather have no one see; or whether God is looking at the people who make us uncomfortable and whom we would rather not see.  God’s eyes of grace are what give us the hope that we may be transformed in our own lives, to see others with eyes of love, and to practice that love as Christ’s disciples in the world.  It is not always easy work.  We will need times of rest and retreat, to re-connect with the holy in our lives.  We might be afraid to get back out there, but Jesus calls us down the mountain as much as he coaxes us up.  And we go--we get up tomorrow morning and go to that job, or that job interview, or that volunteer commitment or that tough family situation, or whatever it is, because we have hope, and hope gives us that boldness that we may not lose heart.

Thanks be to God!