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Contending with the PowersFebruary 25, 2007 First Sunday in Lent “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit…was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.”[1] I was just newly ordained – during my first season of Lent in my first church – when those words jumped off the page, indelibly imprinting themselves on my mind. As Luke tells the story, Jesus has just been baptized in the Jordan River; he says that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and a voice was heard to say, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” Then immediately, this spirit-filled, so-called beloved Jesus was led into the wilderness to be confronted by Satan with those famous temptations. Here’s what struck me then, and still strikes me now: I had thought that being spirit-filled should lead one to peace and comfort: health, wholeness, happiness. In part, I thought that’s what the church was offering to people by way of faith in Jesus. Positive faith thinking led to positive outcomes, right? Wasn’t faith a ticket to having my problems, concerns, sufferings and the like taken care of, as in, eliminated, or something very close to that? I had already done my seminary training, I knew the story well, but somehow I had missed this phrase which gave the idea of being “spirit-filled” and “beloved” a whole new set of meanings. As Jesus’ ministry unfolded, it became clear that health and peace and many other good things were certainly a part of God’s interest on our behalf, but maybe not quite as much as I had hoped. After all, as the story is told, Jesus didn’t heal everybody of everything, and we hear in his response to the first temptation, when Satan suggests Jesus could relieve his own – and by extrapolation, everyone else’s – hunger by turning stones into bread, that the elimination of all suffering was not Jesus’ immediate agenda. At least, not in the manner that might please the majority of the rest of us. No, I very quickly intuited that God’s intention and timetables on the matters I now was dealing with in congregational life were not only different than my own desire, but downright inscrutable. And then there was this matter of the beloved Jesus being led into the desert to confront his nemesis and all the astonishing things he offered. The one with whom God was well-pleased was led into the wilderness. That’s the way all three of the first gospelers put it. Being God’s beloved was no guarantee of a completely positive, uncomplicated life. In fact, it seemed that being God’s beloved might mean something very different than what I had first imagined. The ultimate ends of this spiritual endeavor were a different order of magnitude altogether. The trajectory of Jesus’ life confirmed this. In fact, once I got the meaning of Jesus being led into the desert, the trajectory of his life clarified. Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray. Emerging from the desert, he began his ministry. That’s how the story is told. It’s upon this spare structure that the season of Lent was built. Interestingly, the American Protestant church has tended to downplay, and even ignore this season. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most modern reason has to do with our well-fed desire to promote all things positive. This is why, on a percentage basis, there will be relatively few folks at a Good Friday service and the church will overflow on Easter. Easter is happy, up, hopeful. Good Friday’s a downer, depressing. If we were in synch with our culture, I suppose we’d let Good Friday slip away for good as any sort of serious remembrance and get on with the party. The problem with this has to do with the content of the basic story we tell in here. God’s Beloved was sent into the desert to contend with evil at the beginning of his ministry, and then again at the end as well, and at various points along the way. If we miss this, we’re going to miss the guts of the story, and if we miss the guts of the story, Easter has little to commend it except as a happy springtime celebration stripped of its potency to help us contend with our own sometimes involuntary desert excursions. Strip the guts out of the story and we should just as well leave Easter for only eggs and bunnies. Have you ever found yourself in a wasteland of one sort or another? A place of fear, loneliness, vulnerability? Have you ever been under attack from a dark force? As news from around the world has captured your attention of late, have you seen human wastelands that hold millions of people in the clutches of despair, terror, hunger and violence? Good Friday speaks to these matters. Deeply. Profoundly. Have you ever been called upon to do the right thing under very adverse conditions? Have you ever realized the necessity of expunging some dark behavior because you had said “yes” to God? Or, perhaps, confront the dark behavior in others? Have you ever come to realize that you are in fact a moral agent operating in the world under the thrall of great powers and principalities, some of which are evil at their core? I noticed this week that the state of Virginia has just issued an apology for its role in slavery. The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation's history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias, and racial misunderstanding."[2] From the time of Columbus’ so-called discovery of the New World to the year 1800 – roughly 300 years – approximately 1.2 to 1.5 million Europeans migrated to the Americas. During the same time frame, 10 to 13 million Africans were shipped across the ocean as slaves.[3 ] That’s material for a Lenten reflection. Especially when you consider that the vast majority of Europeans were Christians, who believed that certain economies were more important than human dignity. Consider the vast power embedded within such an evil system; consider the violence it fostered. Consider how each individual contended with Satan when offered its rewards. I commend a new film to you, conveniently released this past Thursday for the season of Lent. It’s the story of William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in Britain entitled, Amazing Grace. It tells his story of contending in the wilderness with seductive and coercive power. From the distance of another 200 years, it might help us consider the powers of our own day that hold us in thrall, coercive powers fueled in various measures of indifference, fear, greed, and arrogance. In other words, perhaps we might be willing to hear our own call to the wilderness, filled with the courage of God’s indwelling spirit. It’s said that Christmas is the season for children. If that’s so, we might also say that Lent is the season for adults – adults who want to take life seriously, purposefully, deeply. Adults who are realists in the best sense of the word, that is, committed to the truth, the whole of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly – about themselves, and about the world in which we live. Adults who also have a robust hope despite the shadow side of truth. A hope that is itself profoundly truthful because it has not flinched from taking the whole human story and found it all within the open hands of God. That’s what Jesus found confirmed in the desert. He said no to Satan because he had said yes to God. And that took him all the way through his death into his ultimate triumph. That’s the point of Lent. To help us find that “yes” on the flip side of life and then to follow the path Jesus set down with courage and conviction, recognizing that there are greater goods than shallow comforts and entertaining distractions. Speaking of which, do you not find it remarkable and disturbing that our so-called “hard” news has been captured by Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears? More air time and print is spent on them than any other matter facing our nation. How is it that their degradation is so compelling to so many? It would seem a near national addiction. On March 16, 1968, Thompson was a young helicopter pilot flying on patrol over the countryside of Vietnam. When he and his crew flew over the village of My Lai, they saw a nightmare taking place below them. United States Army troops in Charlie Company, under the constant pressure of danger and the madness of war, had lost control of their discipline, reason, and humanity and had begun slaughtering unarmed civilians in the village, most of them women, children and elderly men. 504 people had already been killed. Thompson set his helicopter down between the troops and the screaming villagers. At great risk to himself, he got out of the helicopter and confronted the officer in charge, William Calley. He then airlifted the few villagers still alive out of My Lai, and also radioed a report of the scene that resulted in a halt to the action, thus saving thousands of civilian lives. Standing on the platform at the university commencement, Thompson was given the microphone and he spoke to the question on everyone’s minds. How could he have found the moral courage and strength to do what he did that day? His answer surprised the audience of graduates, brought them to a thoughtful silence. “I’d like to thank my mother and father for trying to instill in me the difference between right and wrong,” he began. “We were country people, I was born and raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and we had very little. But one thing we did have was the Golden Rule. My parents taught me early, ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.’ That’s why I did what I did that day. It’s hard to put certain things into words. You’re going to have to make many decisions in your life. Please make the right decisions because we’re depending on you. God bless you all.”[4] It took the military 30 years before it acknowledged Thompson’s heroism. In 1998 he was awarded the Soldier’s Medal. In the meantime, he had repeated death threats, dead animals were routinely placed on his porch and for several decades, many considered him a pariah. I think of him as a man who contended with the powers and principalities, who had learned to quote scriptural wisdom the way Jesus did when he was out in the wilderness. Jesus said, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”[5] Hugh Thompson said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”[6] And so he did. And he paid dearly for it. He was just 24 years old when this decision point came to him. Friends, the season of Lent begins. How is it with your soul? Previous sermon: Holy Encounters • Next sermon: N-400 Application All past sermons |
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