Into the Woods

Mark 1:9-15   In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

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Typical Mark, stingy with the details.  He only tells us the bare facts here – and barely that.  We already know, if we have read Matthew and Luke, that there is more to the story of the wilderness.  But Mark has decided that what he has said is enough.  The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.  He was there 40 days.  Satan tempted him.  There were wild beasts – but there were also angels.

We know enough about wilderness to know what that might have felt like.  We know that wilderness is a God forsaken place where anything can happen.  It’s a scary place.

Israel was in the wilderness with Moses for forty YEARS after they escaped from Egypt.  Forty years they sojourned in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land.  It wasn’t that they were lost, physically – it was just that God kept them in a holding pattern.  They weren’t going back to Egypt but they weren’t quite ready for Canaan.  They were spiritually lost, in a sense.

Elijah was in the wilderness forty days and nights waiting on a word from God. When he was being pursued by Jezebel and Ahab he waited on the mountain, which is a kind of wilderness too, for God to speak. The people of God sometimes have to wait a long time.  Things don’t happen in a timeframe for our convenience, and the wilderness is sort of like the waiting room.

But it’s a waiting room where a lot can happen.  Wilderness is a place rich with possibilities, both bad and good.

Most of us were raised on wilderness stories.  Think of the fairy tales you learned as a child.  Little Red Riding Hood set off through the woods to see her grandmother.  Her mother strictly told her not to stray from the path.  But the wolf she encountered was cunning and deceitful; he lured her off the path to pick flowers. Then he used that opportunity to get ahead of her and eat Granny before the girl got there.  Then he ate her too.  The wolf is a force of evil, which will devour us if we are not vigilant.

There were Hansel and Gretel, who were sent off into the woods by their parents.  They made a trail of breadcrumbs in hopes of finding their way back home, but the birds ate them and the way home was lost.  Which is an important detail, symbolically, because when you go out in the wilderness you never return home the same way you left.  Hansel and Gretel were left wandering, trying to find their way out of the woods.  Starving, they encountered a gingerbread house in the woods that looked like a delightful safe haven, but we know it was anything but that.

The story of Beauty and the Beast is a bit more complex.  In the story, Belle’s father is lost in the woods and stumbles into the castle of the beast.  In the original, non-Disney-fied version, there is more to his problem than that he can’t find his way home.  He is a man who has lost everything – his fortune, his vocation, his sense of purpose.  Stumbling through the woods he is merely acting out the manifold ways he is lost.  His daughter Belle tries to save him and ends up being a captive too.  You know how it ends. Love will set them free.

Wilderness is a place where evil lurks.  There always were and always will be dangers in the wilderness.  In the ancient world, the wilderness was a place where anything could happen to you, and in contrast, the villages and cities were places of relative safety. In Revelation the return of Christ is envisioned as the coming of a great city.  We read over and over again about the beautiful city, the great city, the holy city. 

We think differently about cities now – we tend to see the big city as a place of potential danger.  But it used to be a place of safety, law and order, with walls and gates to keep out the disorder of the natural world.  When you left this place of order and safety, you were, to some degree, taking your life in your hands.  You would be unprotected out there in the wilds.  There are always dangers in the wild places.

But strangely, these are also the places where good things can happen.  In Red Riding Hood, the hunter comes to the rescue and cuts open the wolf’s belly and Granny and Little Red emerge – like being born anew.  In Hansel and Gretel, the innocent children discover they are clever enough to outwit the witch; that they have the resources to save themselves.  And in Beauty and the Beast, Belle discovers over time that the beast has a soft side and she loves him.  Then magic takes over.

Yes, in the fairy tales, magic happens in the wilderness.  I put no stock in magic, but in real life, things happen in the wilderness that can’t quite be explained.  I will call it mystery. 

When Jesus goes into the wilderness he encounters something mysterious – it’s a battle between the forces of good and evil.  How he manages this will determine everything that comes after. 

You know that saying – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?  Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.  Sometimes, what doesn’t kill leaves you broken.  But even in the brokenness there is the chance to heal and become whole again, stronger than before.

There is a story called Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko about a Native American man who went to war and came home broken, like so many have.  But back on the reservation his community had rituals of healing available to them, to help this young man return to them.  They go out into the wilderness to begin the path of restoring him to health and wholeness – something the psychiatric hospital couldn’t do, the wilderness could do.

For us, going into the wilderness is a way to find our way back to Christ.  There are many ways we get lost, lose our way, lose ourselves, lose our faith – our source of well-being.  We can go into the wilderness to find our way again.

When Jesus came out of the wilderness after forty days he called on us to repent – repent and believe the good news.  Today, and during this season of Lent consider this word in a new way. 

Think of repentance as turning – turning around in a new direction.  Think of it as being changed, and changing direction.  Coming through and out of the wilderness.  Think of it as turning away from what is harmful to us and turning toward Christ. 

There are forces for evil in the world all around us, wanting to have their way with us, wanting to reshape us in their image.  We can deny their existence but that won’t mean they cease to exist or infect our world and our lives, pulling us away from the goodness of God.  Sometimes we need to go into the wilderness because that’s where we come face-to-face with the demons.

The problem, though, is it’s getting harder and harder to find wilderness anymore. 

We can enter the wilderness in a spiritual sense when we enter the silence.  When we are willing to sit alone with ourselves, to invite God in.  When we cease to make excuses about how busy our lives are.  When we don’t back away from the experience too quickly as it becomes uncomfortable.  We enter the wilderness when we sit in that discomfort. 

I said last week that our God only means good for us and invites us into God’s presence.  It is helpful to remember that when you are in the wilderness.  It may feel like you are alone, but you are not.  Like Elijah in the mountain cave, who had to wait for the storms to pass before he could hear God speak, we often have to wait … attentively … for God’s direction.

In the coming weeks, may you take time to repent, to turn your face toward God, to wait for God’s direction.

Being There

2 Kings 2:1-12           Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.” Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they came to Jericho. The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know; be silent.” Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Mark 9:2-9     Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

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If the transfiguration had happened today, I think it might have gone something like this.

Peter, James, and John follow Jesus up the mountain, way out of town, and they see something that totally defies description.  Jesus is somehow lit up, glowing.  The only words they can find to describe it are to say that his clothes are white-white; whiter than Clorox white; like those headlights some cars have that are so bright they hurt your eyes.  That’s how white his clothes are – they hurt the eyes.  But it’s really more than that; Jesus is transformed.

And not only that; there even was more.  The two towering pillars of Israel, appeared beside him: Elijah, the great prophet of Israel during the days of King Ahab; Moses, who led Israel out of slavery and delivered the law; and Jesus, their friend.  They all stood on the mountain talking to one another.  How they recognized Moses and Elijah, I’m not sure.  They might have known their faces from the pictures in the history books they’d studied in school.  Or they might have been wearing those “Hello, my name is …” tags – but probably not.  It was probably some more intuitive way of knowing.

So then Peter pulls out his phone and snaps a picture.  He turns around and takes a selfie, too, with Jesus, Elijah, and Moses in the background.  He then shoots it off in a text to twenty or so good friends.  Instantly the replies start coming in.

OMG!  Dude is that Elijah?

I know! Right?

And Moses?  So cool!

Just for good measure, he uploads the picture to Facebook and adds a caption.  He tags Jesus in it, but he can’t tag Elijah and Moses because they don’t have Facebook pages.  They actually lived before Facebook was invented, if you can imagine such a thing.

Peter wants to do more to memorialize this event up on the mountain, so he quick sets up a GoFundMe webpage for donations to help build the little houses he has in mind.

Meanwhile, a voice from heaven speaks and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!”  But Peter has been too busy with his projects to hear it.  Then – snap – Elijah is gone, Moses is gone, and Jesus appears normal again. 

Well. It’s a good thing Peter got that picture.

That’s the way I think it would happen, because that’s what we do when we find ourselves in a big moment.  We try to capture it and make it even bigger.  But it doesn’t work when we try to seize it and shape it into something we can hold.  We are actually letting it slip away from us.

When Peter started babbling about dwellings and such, I wish someone would have taken hold of him and looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Peter, do you know what you are looking at here?  Do you know what you are experiencing right now?”

He couldn’t really know, none of them could.  The transfiguration was something that defied human comprehension and description.  To say that Jesus’ clothes were dazzling white, hardly suffices.  To say that Elijah and Moses appeared seems odd and incomprehensible, and can only be understood to mean that in this place and this moment they have entered a different realm, where the veil is parted and the glory of God is glimpsed.  Peter couldn’t understand it, but he could be there for it.

The key is in just being there.  That’s how you accept this kind of gift.

Peter, James, and John were given a gift.  Jesus chose them to go up to the mountaintop with him, away from everyone and everything, where something glorious would be revealed to them.  The gift they were given was a glimpse, an insight to something divine.  The only way to receive the gift was to simply be present for it in the moment it was given. 

It was great that Peter wanted to share this gift with others, by erecting some kind of shrine or museum.  But the gift couldn’t be domesticated.  The gift couldn’t be held, or shared by putting it in a box – or three boxes.  The only way Peter could share this gift was to embody it himself.

This was not all that different from the dynamic between Elijah and his partner-in-prophecy, Elisha that we hear about in the book of Kings.  On God’s command, during the days of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, Elijah had sought out Elisha and anointed him as prophet.  He did it without a word – he simply draped his mantle over Elisha’s shoulders.  From that day on, Elisha accompanied Elijah everywhere. 

He accompanied Elijah to the Jordan River on the day he knew Elijah would be taken from him.  Three times Elijah paused and offered Elisha the opportunity to stay behind, and three times Elisha replied, “I will not leave you.”  When they finally reached the end of the journey, and Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire, Elisha remained there still, his eyes not leaving his friend until he was gone from sight. 

Elisha never turned away.  He stayed there in the moment, and as a result he received a double share of Elijah’s spirit – the legacy of the firstborn son.  And Elisha, who was an unproven commodity as yet, would go on to become a great prophet in his own right.  The gift had been passed on.

He just needed to be there.

Peter would also receive the gift of the spirit and become a great apostle of Jesus Christ. He would need to learn the art of being there, however, like all of us do.  It would be a hard lesson for Peter to learn, just as it is for most of us.  He would learn it in his errors; in all the ways he missed the mark.  The night Jesus was taken from him, arrested and tried, and Peter denied knowing him three times; this was the moment he hit rock bottom. 

Peter was a work in progress throughout the gospel story, but Jesus never gave up on him.  He saw something in Peter; glimmers of leadership potential, even if he was using that potential in misguided ways (like trying to organize a building party up on the mountain.) 

I know Peter was afraid.  I am sure Elisha was afraid too.  It is a frightening thing to witness the power and glory of God.  But our God only means good for us, and invites us to be there too.

The glimpse of glory that Peter and the others were given that day was a piece they could add to their understanding of who Jesus was and what God was doing in the world.  And perhaps when the dark days came – when he was condemned and nailed to the cross, when he was no longer with them – they could hold on to the shining gift they had been given that day on the mountain and it would give them power and strength.

We have the dark days of Lent ahead of us, but we also have the glory of this day to fortify us.  Even if we didn’t know what lay after Good Friday, we would know that God’s glory shone through Jesus on the mountain. 

May you know the power and glory of God in our Lord Jesus Christ during the coming days of Lent. 

May you hold out your hand to receive the good gifts of the Spirit.

May you seek to always be here now – wherever here and now maybe – because it’s precisely where Christ is.

The Powers

Mark 1:29-39.            As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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I have no desire to get into a political thing, but I just want to say that I am glad so many more people have access to health care now.  I am glad that we have these big health care systems in Dayton, with so many hospitals and emergency centers and acute care centers.  I am glad that there are specialty hospitals that provide the best treatment they can for particular types of illnesses.  I am glad that we live in a time when medical knowledge and diagnostic and treatment possibilities can seem downright miraculous.

I am glad that we have access to such great care and healing.  I spend a lot of time in hospitals and I see so many caring and compassionate people working in them.  I see systems trying (not always succeeding but trying) to create the most organized system to offer the best environment for wellness.  At Soin Medical Center there is soothing music playing on loudspeakers in the parking lot, so as soon as I step out of my car and begin to walk toward the entrance I am already feeling my soul restored.  At Miami Valley Hospital the first person I speak to when I walk in through the parking garage is always a calm, caring, and helpful person giving me directions to whatever place I am going.  I have spoken to many very smart and compassionate nurses all over the place.  I know some of us have our horror stories of health care gone bad, but I do believe overall we are living in a good time and place, and there is a multitude of opportunities for wellness.

So when we read the stories of miraculous healings in the scriptures, I think it’s safe to assume that some of the things Jesus was treating were the kinds of things we now treat pretty well with modern medicine.  Antibiotics might have taken care of Simon’s mother-in-law’s needs.  Remember the story of the woman who couldn’t stand up straight?  Sounds like osteoporosis.  Good nutrition would have gone a long way in preventing that, we know now.  And all the lepers Jesus healed? Leprosy was a catchall label and included all kinds of skin diseases, many of which would probably be easily treated now with certain kinds of creams and ointments. 

My point isn’t to downsize Jesus’ healing miracles, but simply to point out that these are real things we experience too.  The miracle of healing, for us, often comes in a bottle or a surgical procedure.  But when it does, I turn my eyes to heaven and say thank God for this.

At the same time he was healing diseases we are told he was also casting out demons.  And here is where I find my dilemma. We are sophisticated people; if I stand up here and preach about Jesus casting the demons out of you, you might start thinking about me differently.  We don’t believe in slimy green vaporous monsters that invade people’s lives and bodies.  We don’t believe such things are real.

But I do believe that demons are real.  Sometimes we call them mental illness; sometimes they are called depression; sometimes we know them as alcoholism.  Their name is legion, as the demon once said to Jesus, for they are many.  These demons are real and the worst part of them is that they fight as hard as they do.  In some of the stories, when Jesus approached the demons screamed for him to leave them alone.  I can tell you that is exactly what demons do; they fight for their lives, they overpower the will of their host.  It’s not easy to cast out a demon.

But, again, we live in a time and place where such things are better understood than ever before.  We have a long way to go, but we live in a time when there is growing understanding and compassion for those who are afflicted with the demons.  Demons frequently can be cast out, as so many other diseases can be cast out in this age.

We live in a time of amazing health care possibilities.  Yet, we know that there are some kinds of wellness that elude the technology of CAT scans and surgeries, pharmacology and physical therapy or psychotherapy.  There are sicknesses of the spirit that require something more.

I think that’s what Jesus was trying to teach us.  And I think that’s why he had to move on when he did.

It would have been easy for him to stay in Capernaum where the crowds were wild for him, screaming for him.  He could have stayed there and continued as the local healer, set up a shop where people could come to have their warts removed, their conjunctivitis cured, their hearing restored.  He could have had a good life there.  But that wasn’t actually what he came to do.

What he came to do, he says to Simon, is to proclaim the message: the message of hope and healing; the message of freedom from all kinds of oppression; the message of salvation beginning right now. 

He had a message of power.  He brought with him a power that stood in stark contrast to the kinds of power the people saw themselves surrounded by.  It was a power that “brings princes to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing” as Isaiah proclaims.  It is a power that is stronger than the demons that clench their fists around the throats of their hosts.  It is a power that can raise up a very sick woman and empower her to serve the Lord with gladness.  Yes, it is a power that serves; a power that serves all of us.

And he brings this power for all who are weak and discouraged, tired and desperate, sick in body or soul.  So he couldn’t very well set up a storefront miracle mart in the little town of Capernaum, because there are tired and weak and sick and discouraged people everywhere.  He had a message and a certain amount of time, and places to go in that time.

And when he went, he brought his disciples along with him.  For they, also, were tasked with taking the message out far and wide.

There are two messages in this story for us today.  The first is that Jesus brings healing for all our needs, a balm for all our woes.  He brings power that can lift up those who have been brought low, and strength to reinvigorate those who are discouraged, and peace to soothe the sin-sick soul.  This is the first message – in Christ we are all healed. 

And the second message is this: you and I are charged with spreading the first message at every opportunity we have – in ways that we already know how to do.  We do it when we visit someone, when we hold a hand, when we share a prayer.  We share the good news whenever we practice compassion – especially with those people who need our compassion the way we need air – to live.

I am glad to be living in a time and place of such great healing possibilities.  I am glad to hear the word about all the ways Jesus and his disciples brought divine healing to people everywhere.  Now, to borrow a saying from Jesus, let us go and do likewise.