Into the Wilderness

Well, like you heard, we are in the

first Sunday of Lent. This is the 40

days that we travel between Ash

Wednesday and Resurrection Sunday. We

follow Jesus all the way from the his

his entrance into his ministry, his

baptism, all the way through to the

cross and to his resurrection. Um, we

journey intentionally

uh toward pain, toward the suffering

that we see our savior endure. um for

the work of our transformation. And so I

hope that you were able to enter Lent

this last Wednesday on Ash Wednesday. Uh

I hope you found time or space. Uh even

if you were snowed in to imagine that

that cross that's smudged on your

forehead in the shape of a cross uh

represents our frailty, our brokenness,

our mortality.

Uh and that as you travel these 40 days,

as you follow our savior into the

desert, into the wilderness, you would

be transformed.

Um you would be changed.

I don't know about you, but I think we

could all use a little transformation.

And I can promise you one thing. The

wilderness, walking through the desert,

it will change you.

It will transform your life, your soul.

You will go into the wilderness one way

and you will come out different. That's

what the wilderness does.

Um, like Halen said, you probably

noticed changes to our sanctuary during

the season of Lent. The lurggical color

is purple.

Uh, and David Danny created this

beautiful banner here in the middle to

remind us uh of our own wilderness

wandering.

Uh we stuck canairs all over the place

to help us remember that in our

wandering there are these signs of hope

and direction places we can look and go

oh that's the path home. Um, and I'll

encourage you over this Lenton season

as you're wandering through your life

outside this space. Uh, grab a rock and

bring it with you to church on one of

these Sundays and stack it up and let it

join the Kairens that are already here

just as a symbol of your prayers and

your hopes as you wander the wilderness

this season.

Uh but let us begin with a reading that

is often read on the first Sunday of

Lent. U we're going to turn to Matthew

3:es 16- 411 and hear the word of the

Lord of Jesus's temptation and wandering

in the wilderness.

And when Jesus had been baptized just as

he came up from the water, suddenly the

heavens were open to him and he saw

God's spirit descending like a dove and

a lighting on him. And a voice from the

heavens said, "This is my son, the

beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

And then Jesus was led up by the Spirit

into the wilderness to be tested by the

devil. He fasted 40 days and 40 nights.

And afterwards he was famished.

And the tempter came and said to him,

"If you are the son of God, command

these stones to become loaves of bread."

But Jesus answered, "It is written, one

does not live by bread alone, but by

every word that comes from the mouth of

God."

And then the devil took him up to the

holy city and placed him on the pinnacle

of the temple, saying to him, "Well, if

you're the son of God, throw yourself

down, for it is written, he will command

his angels concerning you, and on their

hands they will bear you up, so that you

will not dash your foot against the

stone."

And Jesus said to him, "Again, it's

written, do not put the Lord your God to

the test."

Again, the devil took him to a very high

mountain and showed him all the kingdoms

of the world and all their glory. And he

said to him, "All of this I will give

you if you fall down and worship me."

And then Jesus said to him, "Away with

you, Satan. For it is written, worship

the Lord your God and serve only him."

And then the devil left him. And

suddenly angels came and waited on him.

This is the word of the Lord.

>> Thanks be to God.

And so immediately

after Jesus comes up out of those

baptismal waters,

we notice he has this moment where he is

named and claimed as the beloved child

of God.

And then he turns right from that

baptismal moment and heads to the

wilderness,

heads to his own wandering desert.

I think it can be super tempting to want

to move Jesus right from those baptismal

waters, from this meaningful moment of

identity and declaration of who he is

right into his ministry where we read

about how he's teaching and preaching.

He's training his disciples. He's

renaming people. He's healing folks.

He's transforming lives.

But he doesn't jump from baptism to

ministry.

That is not the progression of the

gospels.

That's not what happens.

In every single account, he is taken

right out of those waters and right into

the wilderness where we are told that it

is God's spirit that leads him there

to wander,

to be tempted.

He has to experience hunger, fear,

loneliness,

and real genuine temptation.

He must be brought to the point where

all those offers of the enemy actually

sound more and more enticing in his

weakness.

promises that he can have it all and he

can do it all and he can control it all.

If he will just choose the easier path.

If he will just disregard his identity

as that beloved Messiah.

If he will be someone other than who God

has called him and made him to be.

This is something he has to experience

in the wilderness.

It's going to prepare him for his

ministry.

It's going to transform him and help him

root his identity as the beloved in

order to love and serve the world. In

order to actually walk all the way to

the cross and defeat death and sin and

darkness once and for all.

But he's got to head to the desert

first.

As writer Debbie Thomas puts it. She

says, "At his baptism, Jesus heard the

absolute truth about who he was." That

was the easy part. The much harder part

came in the wilderness when he had to

face down every vicious assault on that

truth. And when the memory of the

father's voice from heaven faded, he had

to learn how to be God's beloved in a

lonely wasteland.

Maybe we like Jesus need long stints in

the wilderness to learn what it really

means to be God's beloved.

Because the unnerving fact is this. We

can be beloved and uncomfortable at the

same time.

We can be beloved and unsafe at the same

time.

In the wilderness,

the love that survives is flinty, not

soft,

salvific, not sentimental.

And learning to trust it takes time.

This is what the wilderness offers us,

friends. It's an invitation to be

changed, to deepen our faith, and to

allow our identity to get sorted,

to remember that we are the beloved

child of God and root that deeply within

us. But it is not easy to wander around

in the desert. For in the wilderness, we

find ourselves, as Jesus did, in a

dangerous, desolate place, thirsty,

alone,

away from all the things we're used to

counting on.

It's a place where we often have to come

face to face with our frailty, our

limitations, our worst fears,

and all the tools that like work for us

in our normal life. They don't work in

the desert.

They don't serve us.

It's a place where we very quickly

realize

that we have been relying on all of

these things to tell us what to do and

tell us where to go and to prop us up

and make us feel safe and comfortable.

And they don't work in the wild.

We simply wander step by step hoping and

praying for some sign that we're going

to make it out of this alive.

And here's the truth. We will all find

ourselves wandering the wilderness,

struggling in the desert at some point

in our lives, probably many points in

our lives. If you have not found

yourself there, oh, I'm hate to be the

one to break it to you. It is only a

matter of time.

It's only a matter of time.

You will at some point land out there.

And for all sorts of reasons,

there's so many things that lead us to

wandering alone in the desert.

Places where we find ourselves scared

and confused, searching for direction,

desperate to hear the voice of God,

insecure and unsure of ourselves, and

hoping that we aren't going to have to

wander out here for too long.

Now, the wilderness, I think, looks

really different for many of us. It did

for the folks in scripture, too.

For some people, it might feel like a

very unwelcome intrusion, like you kind

of had to be forced out there. And for

others,

it's a longing. It's an invitation. It's

a call to follow the leading of the Holy

Spirit and just go.

Your desert might look like a hospital

waiting room

or an attorney's office

or a courtroom.

It might be about a season of crisis or

a life transition.

Might be when you lose a job or

something in your family falls apart.

Your kid has relapsed.

It might be a time of struggle with

severe depression or a season of grief

after losing someone you loved.

You might have ran out there in fact to

avoid your life.

Or maybe you got chased out there by

your enemies.

Or maybe you ran out there because of

something terrible you'd done.

Or maybe you just followed the leading

of the Holy Spirit to go.

But whatever led you out there, you will

know you're in the wilderness when you

look around and realize that the things

you normally count on

are no longer serving you. They're not

helping.

No matter what you try, you just feel

like you're coming up empty.

There's no food or protection or

relationships or coping skills or

rituals that seem to work.

and you're out in the wild and you are

forced to learn new skills to survive,

to feel like you're going to make it

through.

Now, thankfully, a scripture, I'm not

kidding, from Genesis to Revelation,

it's chocked full of folks who wander

out into the desert.

And that's what we'll talk about over

this six weeks in Lent.

How people end up out there, how they

survive, and what they learn.

It becomes important for us

to really grab hold of those folks

stories.

Uh so that when we find ourselves out

wandering in the wilderness, whatever

that might feel like for you today, uh

their example and their witness, they

serve like Kairens on a trail

showing us which direction to head.

The reason that this text ends up

getting read every Lent is to remind us

that as we face our own wilderness

wanderings, that we actually don't have

to go out there alone, that we follow a

savior who showed us what it was like to

wander around in the desert and make it

out

make it out. Okay? And so we can instead

of fighting against it, we can submit

ourselves to these seasons of

transformation and growth. Even though

they're hard, we don't go out there

alone. We follow our savior there. We

trust that even if we find ourselves

miserable out there, that the Holy

Spirit is actually leading us and

guiding us and sustaining us.

And as we wander, we too will find

ourselves like Christ did. Realizing

that all the distractions of this world,

they're not serving us.

That the things that are most important

will surface in our lives.

That our identity that we often really

struggle to grab onto and hold on to and

remember, it gets rooted more deeply in

us out there in the wild.

and the enemy's diverting words, all

those temptations that seem so easily to

hook us, they start to lose their power.

Now, it's not going to be easy out

there.

If you find yourself there right now,

you already know that. It doesn't mean

you're not going to fall short. It also

doesn't mean that you won't find

yourself on your hands and knees begging

for a way out.

It does mean that here at the beginning

of our own 40 days,

we remember that our savior has already

shown us how to make it in the wild.

And so, as we go over this series over

Lent,

we're going to learn a few things about

ourselves. Here are some key things. And

I maybe these these strike me as really

important things to learn again and

again in various seasons of our life.

The wilderness is where we learn who and

who's we are. It's where we learn where

strength and wisdom really come from

and what we're made

and called to do with these beautiful

lives we have

and what it means to live in right

relationship with other people.

When Jesus went into the desert, he went

with those baptismal waters of the

Jordan still clinging to him.

He went with the name beloved,

beloved, ringing in his ears.

And friends, I cannot imagine a better

way to head into the wilderness than

that. to cross into our own places of

struggle and temptation.

It wasn't easy, but he went into that

lonely and scary wilderness with the

knowledge of his own name. Beloved,

beloved.

And that truth rooted him. It

transformed him and it empowered him.

And so in this first week of of Lent, as

we invite you to get comfortable, as

comfortable as you can in your own

wilderness wandering, as you turn your

face toward whatever journey of

transformation you know you're on,

I think that we too would do well to

have that same name echoing in our ears.

beloved

that we would enter into the desolate

terrain of this season with the

knowledge that we too are the beloved

child of God.

And so I want to close by just offering

you this blessing. It was written by

poet Jan Richardson that reminds us of

our name

as you go with Christ into your Lenton

wilderness into the unknown that lies

ahead of you in this season. Whether you

are forced out there or you wander

willingly,

may we know at least this about

ourselves

that our name too is beloved.

So friends, hear this blessing.

If you would enter into the wilderness,

do not begin without a blessing.

Do not leave without hearing who you

are.

beloved named by the one who has

traveled this path before you.

Do not go without letting it echo in

your ears.

And if you find it is hard to let it

into your heart, do not despair.

This is what the journey is for.

I cannot promise this blessing will free

you from danger, from fear, from hunger

or thirst, from the scorching of sun or

the fall of the night.

But I can tell you that on this path

there will be help.

I can tell you that on this way there

will be rest.

I can tell you that you will know the

strange graces that come to our aid only

on a road such as this, that fly to meet

us, bearing comfort and strength, that

come alongside us for no other cause

than to lean themselves toward our ear

and with their curious insistence

whisper our name.

Beloved,

beloved,

beloved.

Amen.