Mirage

Mirage

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 28, 2016

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

1 Corinthians 10: 1-13

Isaiah 55: 1-9

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

For your eyes show the way

Your mind knows the truth

Your being is the life.

Amen.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

6 Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. 10 And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

This morning, as we continue on this theme of “the Desert” and our Lenten journey, into and through the desert,  I want to talk about the idea of a mirages. Now there are two different places associated with the desert that represent apparent relief. One is the Oasis, which is defined as a “fertile spot in the desert, where water can be found,” a place of real relief, and the other is the Mirage, which is defined as “the optical illusion caused by atmospheric conditions, causing the appearance of water in the desert.” So the big difference between the oasis and the mirage is that one actually exists and the other only appears to exist, one of them actually offers relief, and the other just looks like it does, one will leave you full and fulfilled, and the other one will leave you exactly where you were, except with all of your hopes dashed. Most of time a person is in the frame of mind to be able to tell the difference, but when you are starved, and dying of thirst, where your tongue and your throat are so dry that blisters are forming, and it hurts to even breathe, let alone eat or drink, when your skin is burned, and your lips are chapped, when sand has been cutting you as the wind whips by, when you have as it would seem, no other hope at all, the optical illusion pulls you into its deceptive magic.

Now there are many deserts in life. There is the desert where you feel ignored, lonely, disenfranchised, not listened to. There is the desert where you have been trying and trying, and you just get nowhere. There is the desert where you have been loving and loving, and no love seems to come back to you. There is the desert where you have given and given and none of it has made any difference. There is the desert where  you feel like everyone sees things the opposite from the way you do. There is the desert where your body is failing, and disease is ripping you apart. There is the desert where your finances just don’t add up. There is the desert where you feel that the system is flawed and oppressing you, the man is out to get you, the fat cats are bleeding you dry, or the government just doesn’t listen. There is the desert where you feel that everyone has lost their minds, and the bottom is about to all fall out. And quite possibly there is the desert where it seems all of these things are happening at once. You feel alone, you feel mad, you feel despondent, anger, hatred, like it would be better to just blow it all up, that any change would be better than it is now, even if that change is imaginary. The one word is “Desperate” Desperation. And you see a way it can be changed, fixed, solved, and you in your blindness dive all into that mirage.

I really think that this exactly is what idolatry is, within the life of discipleship. When you make something of your own to get you through, and that thing you make becomes your solution, becomes your change, becomes your salvation, but it isn’t real, only make believe, only man made, only artificial, and no real water ever flows from it, although it is deceptive enough like a mirage to make you think it just might. It is not alway just a golden statue like a calf, or like a graven image, but anything that can take the place of what you once knew in your heart was true. The Israelites made that golden calf, but they had already made idols before all that. They made one of Egypt, wishing to return there when the road got tough. Our bellies were full back then, why did we ever leave it to come out here. You see that’s an idol, it is an idol made of the past. Sometimes we do that. We find that something worked once, and we make an idol of that time, that process, we make and idol of the old days. . . wishing they would return, believing if they did, everything would work out, but those Old Days are an idol. Sometimes we make an idol even out of God, we do it anytime we limit God, to one concept, one idea, one event. God is the God who parts the Sea, now here we are stuck in the desert, should we go back there to the sea for help? Of course not, if you make an idol of one event, you miss the miracles of God working now.

The biggest problem of making an idol of God is that you limit God to one thing, and then find him lacking in that area. I loved Christina Rosetti’s poem about the Mirage, you know her from “IN the Bleak Midwinter” and her other poem about how “no one has seen the wind.” Here is “Mirage”

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,

Was but a dream; and now I wake

Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,

For a dream's sake.

I hang my harp upon a tree,

A weeping willow in a lake;

I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt

For a dream's sake.

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;

My silent heart, lie still and break:

Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed

For a dream's sake.

She is describing the moment after you have made the idol in  your desperation, when you grasp in that desperation, when you reach out for what was never there. The images are beautiful: “comfortless, worn, old, weeping willow, a silenced harp, wrung an snapt, silent heart, breaking, all for a dreams sake.” This is the picture of disillusion like I mentioned a few weeks back on Ash Wednesday. I’ve used this image before, but Huck Finn with the fish hooks, he prayed and prayed for fish hooks, but they never came. . . but he touched a rattlesnake skin and bad things happened, so he believed in the rattlesnake but not in God. His narrow view of what God is and could be, which is actually what he was taught, was found wanting. You see he was taught an idol version of God, and it was that he rejected. In Florence, Italy in 1347, the plague hit, and killed ⅔’s of the population. It was right after this tragedy that Boccaccio wrote his masterwork, “The Decameron” a collection of stories, but many if not all of these stories are rejecting the Church and Christianity because they were made promises about God and the way the world works that just weren’t accurate, they were making promises about why God does things, and why bad things happen, so when the bad thing happens, the mystery is gone, and the reality smacks the people in the face, and they know they’ve been lied to. . . like Huck, praying for the fish hooks, they prayed to be saved from tragedies like the disease, and it happened anyways, perhaps worse than they could have ever imagined.  The real tragedy was that in that horrible time, since the religion was built on lies, the people were not sustained through the trouble. They turned on each other. . . and so this great city of Christianity, in the depths of despair, in the middle of the desert, did not Love their neighbors, could not love their neighbors, instead ignored their neighbors, and tried to preserve themselves.

Paul writes, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” God isn’t and insurance policy. God isn’t about ensuring that nothing bad will happen, but instead strength when it does. We know that, when we are here in church. We can talk about it, but somewhere deep inside, we want that insurance policy, we want to avoid. . . and in the desert, when we are being tested, that little deep inside voice gets louder, and we seek that way out.

This is what happens in the desert. Desperation, Despair. But it only gets worse when you grasp at what isn’t there, if your mind seeks an escape route that doesn’t solve your problem. I like to teach Spenser’s story of the Red Cross Knight to my students at Blue Ridge, because it is the story of St. George and the dragon, and that is our mascot, but the story also is a great allegory about the way that life works. The hero, Red Cross, St. George, is on a quest to defeat the dragon. It is his chosen purpose, and everything that he is and wants to be is wrapped up in that very quest, but the real journey is about how easy he gets side tracked in that quest. The first thing you get is a rain storm, and the rainstorm sends him seeking shelter, it all seems like a great thing, seems nice, seems, comfortable, seems dry, but in the crisis of the storm, he makes decisions without thinking, and symbolically he gets lost. Everything seemed ok, but nothing was ok. He wasn’t really in danger, but he also was no longer on the quest. He was lost, and he had to face the an adversary called falsehood, the lie that was saying you are lost and you will never get through, once he did, he was back on the track, but only having beaten the lie. And its cool how the lie is depicted, because it is a mother monster who never shows her face, and a bunch of little monsters that are her children. One lie begets many, and the lies are not of other people, they are his own. This place seems nice, it all leads somewhere, what difference does it make, we’ll never get there anyway, why even bother, let’s stay here, these are the lies he must defeat. Here. And he does with faith. But his next adversaries get much more diabolical, he fights pride, he fights, despair, he fights against those who are trying to deceive  him. But all of these battles are just distractions from his quest, they are things that keep him lost, simply by delaying and distracting him, they are successful in what they are trying to do. He isn’t being what he was made to be. He has become different, he has made himself anew, instead of being what God made him to be, do you see the idolatry there: He has become his creator. . . mirage. Mirages are powerful. Seems.

Now this is what makes it difficult. There are mirages in the desert, but there is also an oasis. How are you ever to tell the difference? Moses told the people living in the land, once they got to the promised land, that they would face many problems. He said remember. Remember being led by the fire and the cloud, he said remember being led through the Red Sea, he said remember the water from the rock, and the manna from heaven. Remember that there are no exit ramps, easy exit ramps, rather that if you stand strong and face it all the Lord will provide. Remember and know, write it on your doorposts, put it in front of your eyes, remember at all cost. But even with all that it was still that they went astray because the mirage is strong, and even with memory and reminders it can happen that you miss the oasis and go after the mirage. Christ comes to set that memory, that covenant, that life giving water, directly on our hearts. With that Spirit within us if we are faithful, honest, and true, we can and will know the difference. Build that relationship with Christ, be tested in the desert, and the differences will be made known.

And this is the really interesting part. If you are honest with yourself about the mirage, and you choose the mirage instead of the oasis, in actuality you are no more worse off than you were before. You are still in the desert, you are still thirsty, you are still hungry, you’re still all those things, you are not any worse off than before, you just think you are because the hope that you had was robbed from you. But just because it was the mirage that you chose, doesn’t mean that the Oasis isn’t still there too, which is the simple amazing thing we call grace. That is the simple and amazing thing we call grace. Amen.

Writing Fireside in the Dark

Writing Fireside in the Dark

Writing fireside in the dark,

Waiting for inspiration,

Praying for a spark,

Wondering if some Angels will come singing, "Hark!"

Writing fireside in the dark.

The stars are still silent in the sky,

Flying above treetops,

Can't help but wonder why,

I ask as I sit here, waiting patiently for reply,

The stars are still silent in the sky.

The fire spreads in circles of light,

Fading every inch,

But still fighting the night,

Bright the light flickers but shadows make it hard to write

The fire spreads in circles of light.

Beyond the light I cannot see,

Wondering what's out there,

Looking back at me,

My imagination soars as I dream of what could be,

Beyond the light I cannot see.

I'd rather believe something is there,

I'd be somehow less lonely

If out there some where

Just because they're silent doesn't mean they don't care,

I'd rather believe something is there.

My face is warmed by the fire,

Though my back is cold, 

And my feet are tired,

Still I'm in silence waiting for that angel choir,

My face is warmed by the fire.

Writing fireside in the dark.

The stars are still silent in the sky.

The fire spreads in circles of light.

Beyond the light I cannot see.

I'd rather believe something is there.

My face is warmed by the fire.

Writing fireside in the dark.

Doors, Fences, Locks, and a Bridge

Doors, Fences, Locks, and a Bridge

Good fences make good neighbors,

And locked doors make them great,

But on the inside what does that make?

Safe inside away from the world,

We protect our things from them.

What do we have that they should take?

Who is my neighbor? I must ask—

What is my charge to them, my task?

Who am I to love? Who is us? Who is them?

The walls I build do good neighbors build,

Is that enough love from me, bettering them?

I protect them from stealing from me,

Did I not save them from their sin?

Of course I did, but that is not love,

For I never knew the face of them I saved.

I never once cared for the needs of them,

Only saved them in my way not theirs.

What is their way? What is their need?

It is surely captivated by sin and greed.

If they were us, they’d be saved like us,

Christ at work within their lives, instead

Of wallowing through life half dead,

Stealing from me, who tried to help

Those two weeks we served doors unlocked.

We graciously open our doors to them—

Is that the thanks we get for our act?

What is the problem? How is it made right?

Where do I look for Your answers, my God?

The book of your Word the Words of Your Son,

Love Your neighbor as yourself—can it be?

But my neighbor is none like myself at all.

My neighbor steals. My neighbor lies.

My neighbor must be locked outside.

How can I love my neighbor, like I do me?

“I did,” it said so simply through deeds.

“I did, though my world was heaven.

I did, though Your world was not

Open to what my actions say and do,

That there is no you or I, no us and them.

I the bridge where a fence once stood

Unlocked the doors to you and them.”

Us is all that is left when fences come down.

On All Sides

On All Sides

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 21 2016

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Philippians 3: 7-`4

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives      

For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.8 Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Last week I talked about the idea that Lent is about going into the desert, that place where there is nothing, but you and God, and you face your doubts, your faith, your reality, all of it on the line, that it all comes together. That without fear you go forward, without hesitation, without worry over outcome, you just go into the place that is difficult and you see. I want to continue that idea today. The specific challenge that I want to talk about is when you are faced with hardship on all sides, you are faced with people on all sides, people who want to attack you, surround you, hurt you, end you, when you are faced with challenges and choices and dilemmas and crises on all sides, and you feel like any direction you go, you can’t. There are consequences to every decision you could make and you are just plain stuck. And somehow in that situation we are to somehow, someway believe that it is all for good, that it is all part of a plan, that we are very much still in the hands of God.

The Call to Worship is taken from the Lectionary Psalm for today, Psalm 27, look at verses 2-3, it describes this very situation

When evildoers assail me,

    uttering slanders against me,

my adversaries and foes,

    they shall stumble and fall.

3 Though a host encamp against me,

That’s it the very feeling. Surrounded, enemies, slanderers, adversaries and foes. . . a host encamped, and enemies at the gate. But the Psalmist says the words of faith at that moment, the words of faith in the time of desperation:

    my heart shall not fear;

though war arise against me,

    yet I will be confident.

 Again that faith is hard in that moment. Have you ever been there? What was it like for you? What was it like to be surrounded, and have issues not just in front of you or behind you, but coming at you from all sides, that host, encamped, like a siege?

We have a bunch of Biblical examples. The first is probably Abram, from our Old Testament reading. He has gone out from Ur, taking that walk of faith, leaving behind everything that he knew, into what we might call the wilderness, or the dessert, armed with only a promise from a God he has never seen, a promise that somehow he was to become the legitimate father of a great Nation, through which a blessing would come to the entire Earth. But he’s had no son, and his wife has grown quite old, and is still quite barren. He has in his doubt, fathered a child with his slave Haggar, but the promise still remains. He is a stranger in the land, he’s been a stranger in other lands, in Egypt, again and again he seems to be surrounded with no hope, but eventually the promise comes to be. Joseph knew about Egypt, but he found about it after having his brother surrounding him on all sides, selling him from the pit, into slavery, and then with Potiphar, and his wife, then in jail, then with Pharaoh, against all odds saving everybody, even his brothers who betrayed and sold him from starving to death.

Moses was in Egypt too, and he has to deal with a hard hearted Pharaoh, with all the majesty and power and chariots, while in Egypt, but then the grumblings of his own people once he gets out of Egypt. Where are we going? Where are we going to get our food? Where are we going to get our water? Do you even know where we are going? This is crazy, you’ve never seen God, why can’t we see him, why would he lead us out here to die? He even has people wanting to go back to Egypt, back to the chains of Pharaoh, but Moses somehow faced it all. David, with Goliath, then Saul, then Absolom. Elijah, with Ahab and Jezebel. Daniel with Nebechudnezzar, in the fire, in the den of lions, and also in the court, with that brood Vipers whose jealousy, anger, and ambition wants to rid the court from that, yet another,  interpreter of dreams. But before Daniel even comes around, his ancestral homeland is surrounded, and falls, putting him in exile to begin with. For years, Israel and Judah themselves as a nation, a divided kingdom, the glory days of David and Solomon long behind them, and they have the Assyrians to the North, the Babylonians to East, and the Egyptians to the South and West, again only a promise of a Messiah to deliver them, but the bottom falls out first, and they are sent into exile. . . there in Babylon, only to be delivered by another empire, from Persia, and then the Hellenes, with Alexander, the Ptolemies, and finally the Romans, Jews spread in diaspora. . . strangers still, surrounded on all sides.

All of this, people waiver again and again, but it seems that somehow someway, here we are celebrating and believing that same promise, though we have seen in recent history some of the worst destruction human beings have ever been capable of: genocide, world war, Holocaust, Nuclear Weapons, terrorism, a world in turmoil, beset on all sides with major existential questions about faith, and life, and whether these ancient promises are true. It’s not easy, and many churches, many Christians, have avoided such topics because they are scary. . . the questions come flying, how could God let that happen? How could a good God let that happen? Is God not powerful enough to do anything? Is God not willing? Does he not feel our pain? Does he not care? What kind of God does that? Maybe there is no God. So many have asked and answered these questions definitively for themselves already, and are living their lives accordingly. Some have not preferring to ignore the questions, preferring to not enter the desert, possibly for fear that their faith will not persevere to the other side. We went there. We’ve gone there, at least in our minds, and Easter still approaches. We haven’t latched onto an answer, necessarily, but we did not shy away from the question.

I was inspired to write this sermon because I was thinking about Margaret, and her situation, and her strength. I was really inspired to think and feel empathy for her. She is loving on all sides. I heard a radio show this week about heaven on earth, and how human beings on one hand desire it,or seem to, to be completely free from pain, from care, for concern, but on the other feel the most alive, the most human when we are farthest from that peaceful place. He talked about Odysseus in Homer’s epic. That the story opens, at least his part in it, with Odysseus, safe in an Edenic paradise on Earth, safe secure, immortal, given immortality by the Goddess Calypso, out of her love and care for him. She is beautiful. . . literally a goddess, and is waiting on him completely, giving him all his heart desires, fulfilling his every need, but yet he longs for home, because he cares. To be human he must take part in his identity, and the thing that identifies him as a human being is what identifies us all, it is that he is the Son of Laertes, The Husband of Penelope, and the Father of Telemachus. Our identity, and our humanness he said is in our connection, or relations to others. The host on the radio didn’t include this, but possibility also you could include, King of Ithaca. . .then you have who you are from all sides, and what you are called to do as well. . . .  a child, a parent, a spouse. . . those are three directions of love that a person may have in life. Of course other relations can define us as well, but Margaret’s situation filled me with those. . . as she as a daughter takes care of her mother who needs her completely, as a wife, supports and takes care of her husband, who broke his foot on a fall on the ice, and then now at once as a mother is supporting her son in his fight for cancer. That is surrounded on all sides, and that is love being poured out on all sides. She is loving hard on all of the sides of love.  I stopped at this point and wrote this poem, and when I was finished I wasn’t sure where to go next. So much was expressed, that I had to stop. I decided that I would decide where this would go in the moment. So I’ll read the poem, and then see. . .

Have you ever been bleeding love on all sides,

Pouring out your heart in three directions at once,

Where all that makes you, you, needs all of you,

Completely, wholly, and there is no end in sight,

Where the immediacy of now is real, encompassing

Every corner of your body, flowing through every

Vein and leaking out, your fluid force of life, given,

Offered, none held back or hoarded, overflowing,

Breaking down walls and barriers, at once forever?

You should feel empty, but if you have, you get it:

There is nothing that could fill you so much. Perhaps,

This is living in the house of the Lord, a house

Where walls have long since come down, invisible,

But real, an embrace, where all that flowed out

Returns, as if it never left. There is no way to know

Such things, they must be experienced, felt, believed.

My prayer is not to deliver you from such things,

But to send you into their glorious center, so you

Can come to love like that and become fully human,

For this alone is the grace-filled image of God.

           

(taken from what I actually said on Sunday)

And here I am on the other side, and do not think that I have more to add to it still, but I do want us to take another look at the passage from Philippians because I think we will understand what Paul is saying a different way.

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.8 Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

The Three Sides of Love

The Three Sides of Love

Have you ever been bleeding love on all sides,

Pouring out your heart in three directions at once,

Where all that makes you, you, needs all of you,

Completely, wholly, and there is no end in sight,

Where the immediacy of now is real, encompassing

Every corner of your body, flowing through every

Vein and leaking out, your fluid force of life, given,

Offered, none held back or hoarded, overflowing,

Breaking down walls and barriers, at once forever?

You should feel empty, but if you have, you get it:

There is nothing that could fill you so much. Perhaps,

This is living in the house of the Lord, a house

Where walls have long since come down, invisible,

But real, an embrace, where all that flowed out

Returns, as if it never left. There is no way to know

Such things: they must be experienced, felt, believed.

My prayer is not to deliver you from such things,

But to send you into their glorious center, so you

Can come to love like that and become fully human,

For this alone is the grace-filled image of God.

Midweek Love Thoughts

Midweek Love Thoughts

Loving needs a face, a touch,

An energy, an embrace.

It cannot be done by proxy,

Nor vote, nor Act, nor decree.

A neighbor is a person,

But never a people.

Flesh, blood, and bone is

Always similar, never same.

There is no we in love,

Nor is there us or them.

We comes only after

You and I make a choice.

Love’s imposters thrive

On nameless faceless mobs

When the cold soulless shells

Replace each with all.

As a car’s color streaks,

Speeding swiftly by,

Faces blend together

When we don’t take the time.

We sort so we can grasp,

Wrap our minds around the whole.

It makes love efficient,

Sufficient, that’s progress.

Love cannot be finished

Nothing is ever done,

It lives as always now,

So it has been, and will still be.

A Desert Flowing with Milk and Honey

 A Desert Flowing with Milk and Honey

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

February 14, 2016

at Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia

Romans 10: 8-13

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives      

For your eyes show the way

            Your mind knows the truth

            Your being is the life.

Amen.

.⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”

¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

As we begin our Lenten season, this Sunday, our epistle reading is all about faith, salvation by faith, justification by belief, when it comes to being saved, everyone who simply calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It seems so easy and so simple: just “confessing with your mouth” just believing with your heart, just calling out with your voice. It seems easy, but it’s hard in real life. It is hard when the weight of the world falls on your shoulders, it is hard when things are not going well, it is hard when everything you see tells you that there is nothing more, nothing else, nothing to believe in, it is hard when darkness descends, and it’s cold, and fear creeps in, it is hard when everything goes wrong, it is hard when the ones you love are hurting, it is hard when you are faced with loss, it is hard when you are struggling against disease, sickness, injury, the politics of the world, when those you love don’t love you back, when you are waiting, powerless for a phone call, for a change of heart, for a word, or a smile, or just a glimpse of hope. . . it is hard when you are in the middle of the desert. And that is what we are called to do in Lent, to enter the desert, 40 days, a mirror to Christ’s own fasting in desert. . . . to embrace the fear, the doubt, the challenges, to face it all head on, standing against the wind, against the cold, against the darkness, open and naked, and real. That is difficult, but the Bible Story shows again and again that, that desert where doubt and faith meet, where hope and fear come together, where the lines between the visible and invisible world are blurred, is exactly where the fountain lies, exactly where the milk and honey flows, exactly where we find God, but many of us would rather stand on the safe side, and that safe side is on the outside of the desert. Our fear, or our fear of fear, our fear of doubt, keeps us from ever entering.

On Wednesday, many of us came together to mark our entrance into the desert with ashes. . . the words of that service, that traditional ritual alone, facing our sins, laying them bare in confession, it all evokes our greatest fears, especially those words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. . . “ That is facing it all head on, but they can be just words. Just like it is hard to have faith in the desert, it is easy to say the words in church, when everyone else is, when it’s safe and warm, when you can smell the coffee and the fellowship snacks wafting already through the door, when the candles are burning, when the music is playing, when that bell rings tolling, calling us into this safe space, out of the cold world from whence we come, but we must go back out there, and live, face the entire reality of the world, and live, face the entire reality of the world and believe and live.

In my brief homily on Wednesday I scratched the surface of what I want to call disillusionment, the idea that you leave here, strong in the faith, but something along the way, gets in your way, and that faith flees, and you’re faced again with what I’ve been calling the desert, this desert of doubts. I quoted of all places The Doors, Riders on the Storm, “into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown, like a dog without a bone.” How do you get to that place? Have you. . . have you ever had that thought, honestly? Who am I? Why am I here? Is there anything else? I seem to be helplessly unprepared, unprovided for, incapable of standing and doing what I need to do. There just is no way forward. I am lost. I’m lost and not only am I lost, but there was no way I could have not gotten lost, I was destined to be lost, I simply thrown into a  world, by accident, by mistake, at random. It is what it seems like. . . God are you there, or as the Psalmist of Psalm 22 wrote, and Jesus echoed from the cross, God, My God, why have you forsaken me. . . .? Why?

Have you ever been there? Those times when it’s hard. I have, and in the midst of them you just want to either fight or grasp, or hold on, or quit it all.

I talked about other descriptions of what that disilusionment desert is like. I quoted Wordsworth, the great Ode. . .

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
                 To me did seem
            Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
             Turn wheresoe’er I may,
              By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

            The rainbow comes and goes,
            And lovely is the rose;
            The moon doth with delight
     Look round her when the heavens are bare;
            Waters on a starry night
            Are beautiful and fair;
     The sunshine is a glorious birth;
     But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

I just love that poem, the sound of it, but he is describing something real and glorious that is now all of a sudden missing. . . the glory the majesty, God, he says that “glory has past away from the earth.” I love it because he is describing both beauty and the desert at once, as if he wants to believe, is trying to believe, still can see the shadows of faith, but can’t quite grasp it, the doubt is too strong. He goes on in that poem over many many stanzas going back and forth between images of great faith and beauty, and questions about why he just can’t see it any more. . . .

Both of them speak of something that is gone:
              The pansy at my feet
              Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
          Hath had elsewhere its setting
               And cometh from afar;
          Not in entire forgetfulness,
          And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
               From God, who is our home:

God is our home, we know God is our home, but there is this separation, this going to sleep and forgetting. Wordsworth is criticized often for writing this is manifestation of childhood and dreams and innocence, but I can see figuratively as more, not just childhood, but from faith, from that strong place we are here on Sunday morning, until we go back into the world, and forget and sleep because the world is too much with us. It is too much to bear in strong unwavering belief. We enter the desert.

This morning, this Lent, I don’t want to be your camel into the desert, the beast that is equipped more than you are for the journey, nor do I want you to stay safe on the path this Lenten season, but instead to let yourself go, because I know that on the other side of the desert is life. I know that on the other side of the desert is a land flowing with milk and honey, just as I know that on the other side of Lent is Easter. We’ll have time for that celebration, we’ll have time to be built back up. We’ll have time to be raised up, so let us first descend. Let us go down into depths of ourselves, our deepest darkest fears, and doubts, the real us, below the surface, behind the masks. Let’s bear our souls, and find that true and honest moment. . . and there pray. Tradition says that Kind David took himself on such a journey, and by doing so wrote Psalm 63:

¹ O God, you are my God, I seek you,

   my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,

   as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

² So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

   beholding your power and glory.

³ Because your steadfast love is better than life,

   my lips will praise you.

⁴ So I will bless you as long as I live;

   I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

⁵ My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,^*

   and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

⁶ when I think of you on my bed,

   and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

⁷ for you have been my help,

   and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

⁸ My soul clings to you;

   your right hand upholds me.

David goes into to the desert, and he finds God, and his soul clings, in the shadow of God’s wings he is protected and sings for joy! I don’t think you can sing with that kind of joy without feeling the thirst first. So we must head out into the desert.

I want to give one more image before I finish. . . I looked on Friday for just the right poem, the right prayer to put in the bulletin. I searched for deserts and darkness, and shadows, and doubts, and found many, but none quite right, and then just as I was about to quit, I stumbled across, this poem from C.S. Lewis, that said exactly what I was looking for. It is there in the bulletin in its entirety.

Arise my body, my small body, we have striven

Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.

Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,

White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,

Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,

And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,

-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup

Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,

Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness

By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.

Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent

To weariness' and pardon's watery element.

Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;

Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

That poem’s title is so powerful, maybe the most powerful of all the lines, “After Prayers, Lie Cold” It’s an important comma right. . . the prayers are not the subject, we are, we are to lie cold, bare, bearing, completely enfolded in the Father’s Hands, lying motionless, still, silent, that in that silence we will feel God’s presence, we will be filled, that is when we find the land flowing with Milk and Honey. . . but go to the desert first. . .  .