Lent 1C
Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come
quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you
know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
How
many of you have ever whined, “When are we going to get there” on a long trip?
You’re strapped in a tiny airplane seat; or you’re cramped in the back of the
car with your annoying siblings; you’ve already played with all your toys or
listened to all of your podcasts. Your family is on your last nerve. And still the
trip goes on and on. We’ve all been there, right?
In the church, we often talk about Lent as a journey, a
trip through the wilderness on the way to Easter Day. In Lent, we clean out our
backpacks and fill them with study guides, or prayer practices, or loads of
good intentions. And we lumber down the aisle to the strains of the Great
Litany, later heading out the church door into the world’s wide wilderness,
searching for God. If you’re like me, after a few weeks or a few days of this
Lenten journey, you might start wondering, “When are we going to get there?”
The journey can start to feel like wandering, and God can feel like a country
far away.
That’s
why I’d like to propose a different view of Lent for us today. What if Lent isn’t
a long trek outward in search of God? Instead, what if God is already within
us, deep within our very bones? What if Lent is standing still and diving
inward? Instead of a road trip, imagine a cave: Not a tourist trap kind of
cave, but a real, untamed one: dark, silent, and full of wonders. Hidden way
down in the depths of the earth, underneath the weary roads that we travel, are
untold treasures. Who has been in a cave before? Caves are home to tiny,
resilient fish and insects that have learned to thrive in the harshest of
conditions. Caves are often filled with gorgeous crystals that shine like
silver and twinkle like diamonds when we shine a light on them. They contain
delicate rock formations of amazing beauty. Caves are also dark. I’ll never
forget the Mammoth Cave tour where they turn out all the lights, and you sit in
silence for a few minutes. It’s like being back in the womb. It’s so dark that
you can only see inside your own imagination. It’s so quiet that your own
thoughts ring clearly in your ears. It’s like the darkness and the silence hug
you with long, soft arms.
We human beings, too, are home to often unseen treasures,
gifts that God has carved into the bedrock our being. Like Jesus at the River Jordan, we have been
named as God’s Beloved Child. How we shine and sparkle with God’s love! How
strong and adaptive is the divine grace that shapes our bones! Deep down below,
in the darkness and in the silence, God’s love holds us in an embrace. There,
we can hear whispers of God’s true name for us; we can glimpse the Beloved that
we really are. One blogger published a Lenten letter to us from God. It reads:
“I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You
are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone. I
am every … [where] …You swim in me and I in you… I need you! You’re the only
you I created. So, please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be. Trust
yourself. Trust your heart. Trust me. I’ve got you.”[1]
All this talk of trusting the “God Within”
might sound like Oprah-style theology-light. Except that even St. Paul draws on
it in today’s lesson from Romans! Quoting
the Hebrew Scriptures, Paul explains that God’s word of Love is not far off
somewhere. Instead, it is near us,
“on [our] lips and in [our] heart.” For Paul, God’s word of Love is embedded
deep in the heart of each human being. In Greek, the heart isn’t the squishy
sentimental place that it is in English. In Greek, the heart is what we call our “gut.” It’s where we find
our deepest hungers, our instincts, our needs, our energies.[2]
It’s where we feel those “butterflies” when we’re afraid; it’s where we feel
those somersaults when we’re excited. It’s where we rumble when we’re hungry
and turn green when we’re filled with disgust. Paul is saying that God hangs out
in the dark cave of our desires. God plants the Good News of God’s love in
Christ there, in our inmost selves. When we trust in that love, we find healing.
When we speak of that newfound love to others, we join in the healing of the
world.
To get around in a cave, though, we
need special gear, including a flashlight of some kind, don’t we? For St. Paul,
and for all of us Christians, the light that we need is the Holy Scriptures.
Yes, that’s right, the Bible. You
might have heard the teens in youth group calling me “Bibbi.” I love that they
gave me that name! It stands for “Biblical Anne”—because in their eyes, I’m all
the time hauling out the bible. What you may not know is that I resisted the
bible as much as they do when I was their age. I really didn’t make friends
with it until my second time around
in seminary, about 15 years ago! I know how dry and confusing the bible can be.
I’ve been in the boring bible studies. I’ve winced at those who use scripture to
judge and to build walls. I know that in today’s Gospel, Satan uses scripture
to try to move even Jesus away from the One he knows himself to be.
From my half-century of wrestling with
the bible, here’s what I’ve finally learned. Yes, the bible does require some
regular study with our minds in order to make sense of it. But we can’t stop
there. If it’s going to speak to us, it has to shine light on the things that
matter. We have to take the bible down with us into the cave. We have to carry
it down into our gut. We have to open it to prayer, to imagination, to
conversation. Have you ever noticed what we priests do right before we read the
Gospel? It looks like we have a twitch or something: We make a tiny cross with
our thumb on our forehead, on our mouth, and on our heart. In that gesture, we are
asking God to speak the Good News of Jesus to our mind; to put it on our lips,
and to bring it deep down into our gut. Everyone try it out—practice with me.
We open our mind to God’s word of love; we place it on our lips so that we can
share its healing truth; and we push it down into our gut so that we may feel
it’s healing power.
This Lent, I invite each of us to take
the bible with us down into our Lenten cave. Don’t be afraid of it. Go to a
quiet place. Make the Gospel sign. Pick your favorite verse, or even better,
pick a verse that disturbs you. Enter into prayer with it. Martin Smith defines
prayer as “allowing ourselves to be loved, addressed and claimed by God.”[3]
So read the verse several times and listen deeply to the words that hit you in
the gut. Let the images lay claim to
you, let them work their way down into your very bones. Don’t ask God what you
can do for Him or where you have to go. Instead, ask God, “Who do You
want to be for me this Lent?”[4]
And listen in silence for the answer.
“When are we going to get there?”
We already are, O beloved children of
God.
[1]
Barb Morris, “A Letter from God,” found at http://www.barbmorris.com/a-letter-from-god-to-her-daughters-who-observe-lent/?fbclid=IwAR2B337wpeHGRLdZl2eM-0TTtDAzbxjbUqTkAPyA3ZxN9rWUZQn94r9tNC0.
[2]
Martin Smith, The Word is Very Near You (Cambridge,
MA: Cowley Publications, 1989), 41.
[3] Ibid., 20.
[4]
Credit goes to Martin Smith for this question, as well, in a lecture given at
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in March 2018.
