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Is
The Desert Calling You? Gospel: Mark 1:9-15 . I was meditating one day and Jesus said to me "the desert will sometimes be your home." While that has proved to be true in a literal sense, it has an even deeper truth for me spiritually. It has become crucial to my spiritual life to re-enter that desert when my life has crowded out my intimacy with God. There in the raw emptiness of the desert wilderness temptations abound. The temptations are not the seductions of everyday life in our culture. Rather they are the temptations that are within. The temptation to want to leave, the temptation to be better than others, the temptation to be more than I am, the temptation to be isolated and self-sufficient. The grace and the terror of the desert is that in that place superficiality is stripped away, along with the clever defenses I build up around myself to hide myself from myself. I need that wake-up call, that reality check, that 'home' sometimes. I need that harsh struggle so that I can regain a sense of divine order in my life.
Jesus had gotten up that day and decided to do what his soul and his tradition told him to do. He went to the Jordan to place himself not only in the hands of John for baptism, but simply, humbly and obediently put himself into the presence of God. He could have chosen to stay and worship in what someone this week referred to as St. Mattress of the Holy Pillow, but instead he made the conscious decision to get up and go toward God. As he went down into the water he was offering himself, but as he came up out of the water, God was offered to him. The heavens parted and the Spirit descended upon him and the voice said, "You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." Jesus had the incredible experience of being so 'in the presence of God' that the heavens were parted as he came up out of the baptismal waters of the Jordan. But that incredible experience turned very quickly to something else. He was driven into the wilderness where he spent the next forty days. (Forty days is a common number used in Scriptural accounts, what it really means is that it was a time of serious struggle.) It was not just a brush with difficulty. In that desert wilderness he was faced with the temptations that could draw him from he love of God he had known so clearly when those heavens had been parted. He, too, struggled with the temptations that live within. The Scripture
says he was with wild beasts and I can tell you that what was most fearful
(and what is always most fearful about being in the desert) was not the
physical desert creatures that can bite and kill. Rather, it was those
insidious beasts within that demand that we realize how important we are,
that we have a right to claim power and control, that we are self-sufficient
and have no need for God. These were the wily creatures that Satan used
to tempt Jesus--to lure him not only from the work he had been called
to do, but to lure him away from his intimacy with God. For the most part, we live our lives trying to avoid the wilderness. We know intuitively that the wilderness will not offer peace and gentleness. Instead it will offer truth we would rather not face. We know that the wilderness will not let us off the hook--we will need to face ourselves squarely. Rather than being stripped bare, being left defenseless, raw and vulnerable, we choose instead to fill our lives with everything that has the potential of making us dead in the midst of life. And what is most tragic is that, most often, we are completely unaware that this is what we are doing. We fill our lives with busy-ness--television, surfing the net, friendships, shopping, reading, sex, eating and drinking. These are not bad in themselves, but they have an underbelly. They too easily become the dull routine of our days, our weeks, our months, our years. And then we wonder why our spiritual life feels flat, why we lack hopefulness, why we sense a 'dry as cardboard' callous over our souls. We wonder why we have no real compelling story to tell others. We wonder why our faith doesn't seem to touch our daily lives, and why holiness seems distant and even, unwelcome. We wonder why there's a disconnect between what we say and what we do, what we believe, and how we behave, what we judge in others and want forgiven in ourselves. We wonder why life seems so routine, so regular, so restless. We wonder why we feel a lack of true meaning and purpose. We wonder why we're tired and stressed. We wonder why we are unable to know God, hear God, feel God's Spirit pulsing loudly and clearly in our souls. It is because we have allowed life to crowd out our intimacy with God. We have avoided being courageous and bold in grappling with those inner demons that threaten to squeeze life right out of us. We have avoided the desert. We might wonder how we would even know if we were being driven to the desert and what we would do if we were being driven? I can tell you that if you are experiencing any of the symptoms I just spoke about, you are being driven into the desert. If you are longing to know God, longing to be made whole by God, longing to belong to God, longing to find what seems to be missing in the daily round of the rigors, rituals, routines, and responsibilities of life, then that is the spirit of God calling you to the desert. There's a lovely verse--one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture, since I'm such a 'desert spirit' --from Hosea. God says, "I will allure her, and bring her into the desert wilderness, and there I will speak tenderly to her heart." The desert is fearful to be sure, but it is filled with grace. I once did an 8-day silent private retreat and the design of the retreat included praying with Scripture passages for 5 hours every day. I had been feeling that my routines and constant stress were sapping my life away and leading me further and further away from God, and so I thought this intense kind of retreat would help me re-focus, and I could say at the end that I had done it. Kind of like someone who makes it through an Outward Bound experience! But I'm a person of high-energy, and I like being in control of my own life. I like to know the when, where, how and with whom of what I'm doing. The thought of silence was not daunting to me. But the thought that I was going to have to sit still with Bible passages for five hours every day was so beyond my comfort zone that I decided to cancel the retreat. I also knew the verse from Hebrews that says that "the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart." In other words, I knew that five hours a day with Scripture was going to strip my heart and soul and I wasn't sure I was actually ready for that! So, I called the person who was to be my director for the retreat and explained that I simply couldn't do the retreat. After being questioned about why I thought I had to cancel, I said, "Well, truthfully, it's the praying with Scripture for five hours every day. How am I possibly going to be able to do it? The director said to me, "You're not going to do it. God is." I went on the retreat. And though I was in a retreat center in the middle of Chicago, it was a desert wilderness for me. I was exposed to myself in a way that I had never been before. In that silent and isolated place in the middle of the city, I struggled, I rebelled, I prayed, I wept, and I came out of that retreat a changed woman. I had been lured to the desert and there God had spoken tenderly to my heart. So when you are being driven into the desert - go. Go where you can be alone with God in the huge silence. Stop trying to fill your life with yet one more self-help technique to make life meaningful or bring sense into the chaos and stress. Instead, take yourself to that place of terror where you are exposed to yourself, where you must face the reality of your desire to be important, to have power and control, to be self-sufficient. Go to the desert to hear the Voice of God that brings you life again. Go to the desert so that you can be prepared for life outside the desert.
Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church Gospel:Mark 1:9-15 |
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