Mini-deserts

Brad Sullivan

1st Sunday in Lent, Year C
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Emmanuel, Houston
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

In our reading from Deuteronomy today, Moses was preparing the Israelites for their entry into the land of Canaan. God had freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and then, for forty years, the Israelites had been largely isolated, wandering in the desert, learning how to live as God’s people, and being totally provided for by God. They were fed each day with Manna from heaven which they simply had to collect. The Manna appeared every morning, they collected it, and it was gone. The Israelites were living in the desert and were therefore very obviously dependent on God for survival. Therefore, remembering God and staying faithful to him was right there at the forefront of their thoughts. Every day just getting breakfast, they had an obvious reminder of God and their covenant with God.

Moses was speaking to them in our reading today as they were about to enter the promised land of Canaan. This was a wonderful delight for the Israelites. They were finally going to have a permanent home. They were going to be able to grow crops and work the ground, and provide for themselves. This was a good thing, something God wanted for the Israelites, and yet God knows how forgetful we can sometimes be. Once the Israelites started living on their own, without God’s obvious, daily intervention, providing for their very survival, you could bet that they might start to forget God a little bit.

Any of us who have gone on a religious or spiritual retreat for a short time may understand something of what the Israelites experienced. When we’re on retreat, we may find faith in God and focusing on God to be quite easy. Then, when we return to the daily grind with school, or work, or home life, we may find focusing on God to be somewhat more difficult. Daily life can often help us to forget God, to feel that we’re going it alone. We likely find the practices of our faith which help us to stay connected to God to be more difficult during regular life than when we’re on retreat. The more time we spend on retreat or the more time we spend intentionally searching for God in our daily lives, however, can help us to remember God and to see God more easily.

I think this is part of why Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil before truly beginning his ministry. Now, unlike the weekend retreats we may take, Jesus’ temptations in the desert likely not very easy. Jesus really was tempted by what the devil offered, and Jesus had obviously done a good amount of preparation before entering the desert. Notice that each time the devil offered something to Jesus, that Jesus countered with scripture. Jesus knew scripture backwards and forwards and so he was able to see the world through the lens of scripture. He had spent his life preparing, learning, searching after God, drawing near to God so when his temptations came in the desert, he was prepared. Even so, having prepared himself so thoroughly, Jesus still, was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to prepare even more for his ministry.

Now, I was asked a few weeks ago why 40 was such an important number in scripture. Rain pored for 40 days when Noah and his family were on the ark. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days in night. The Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days. Why 40? What’s the significance? On the one hand, as I said a few weeks ago, I don’t know.

On the other hand, I was talking to a colleague and psychologist recently who said that for people overcoming addiction, 40 days is something of a milestone. He said that after 40 days of recovering from an addiction, something happens in the brain such that chances for continued recovery increase exponentially after that point. We don’t know why exactly, but there is something significant about 40 days in our biological makeup.

After 40 days continued recovery from addiction become much more likely. Also, after 40 days of starting some new habit, keeping that new habit becomes more likely. Why was Jesus in the wilderness 40 days? Maybe there is something mystical about the number 40, and maybe 40 days was a helpful number because Jesus was a human being with human biology. How cool is that, the mystical and the biological converging to produce the same result?

I love the idea that 40 days, in the wilderness, on the mountain, or in the ark, that 40 days is not a random number nor is it only a number of mythic or unknown Godly significance, but 40 days is also a number that God used, knowing that 40 days fits with our brain chemistry and development. This convergence of the mystical and the biological give me the feeling that God really does care for our well-being. 40 days in the wilderness is not in temptation out of punishment or meanness, rather, God has folks spend 40 days in the wilderness because God knows those people are going to have a better chance of sticking with God and continuing to see and know God in their daily lives after 40 days in the wilderness than after fewer days in the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days out of love for Jesus. Notice also that the Holy Spirit did not leave Jesus alone in the wilderness. When Jesus was driven into the wilderness, he was full of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus left the wilderness, he was filled with the power of the Spirit.

There are times for us too when we seem to be in the wilderness, times when we seem to be in a desert of our lives. During these times, we might be tempted to blame to God or to be upset with God for putting us there. That’s a fairly natural thing to do. I can imagine Jesus thinking, “wait a minute, God, Father, I’ve followed you my whole life, I’ve been baptized, just to fulfill all righteousness, and now you drive me out into the wilderness? Thanks a lot!”

I’m not sure that Jesus actually thought that, but I’m guessing he was thankful at least after the fact that the Spirit had driven him into the wilderness for 40 days. We may not love and certainly may not look forward to the desert times in our lives, but if we stick with God during those times, we might look back and recognize that the Holy Spirit was with us, and we might give thanks to God for giving us that time and for helping us to grow more dependent on him and more aware of God’s presence in our lives.

There is an old worship song, probably about 30 or 40 years old which we were about to sing at a worship service at the campus ministry where I was working, years ago, and the song was addressing the idea of God strengthening us during the desert periods of our lives and us finding our dependence on God through difficulty in our lives. One part of the song went, “Brokenness, brokenness is what I long for; brokenness is what I need.” Fortunately, the priest at the campus ministry tore the music up, threw it away, and said, “we’re never singing that again; what a stupid song!”

We don’t want brokenness. We want God. We’re rather bull headed at times and so it sometimes takes brokenness for us to wake up and realize our desire for God and our need for God, but God doesn’t need for us to be broken for us draw near to him, and we certainly don’t desire brokenness, we want to be with God. Hopefully during those times of brokenness, we might be able to listen to God and he might be able to reach us through those times, but we don’t pray for brokenness. We pray for God.

When brokenness comes, as it will, we pray that God will be with us and help us through these times. We also realize that with God’s help, these desert times can help strengthen us for the rest of our lives, like during Jesus 40 days in the wilderness, and this is why I love Lent.

As I say year after year, I love Lent. It’s my favorite season of the church year, and it isn’t because I’m a masochist.

I look forward to Lent every year because rather than pray for brokenness or for a desert time in our lives, we take the 40 days of lent to create a kind of mini-desert. We fast or give something up to try to create a desert or wilderness time.

Now, giving up chocolate for 40 days, which is my fallback example of a Lenten discipline, giving up chocolate for 40 days is not a very vast, deep, arid, desolate desert, but it’s something, and it’s a safe kind of desert experience so that we might learn to become more dependent on God, so that we might come to see God as more present and active in our lives, so that at the end of these 40 days, something might shift in our brain. We create these little 40 day mini-desert times in our lives during Lent so that seeing God in our lives and being aware of his presence with us and our dependence on him might continue throughout the rest of our lives.

We also create these little mini-deserts so that when true desert periods of our lives come, we might be prepared to get through them. We observe Lent so that when true deserts come, we will have practiced, and we will know that God will remain with us, that we will have the strength to remain with God, to be aware of God’s presence with us because we’ve done so before; we’ve practiced before. We practice so that with God’s help, we will make it through the desert times of our lives.

So again, Lent is not a burdensome time or a time of self loathing. Lent is a time of when we get to be intentional about drawing near to God, practicing the desert times in our lives so that, like Jesus, we can emerge strengthened. We practice Lent so that we can gain a greater awareness of God’s presence with us, a greater dependence upon God, and like Jesus, emerge from the desert filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.