Introspection: Do Something!

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Do Something!

I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9 (NRSV)

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
'Cause I'm being taken over by the fear

From "The Fear" by Lily Allen

I would like to share more introspective writing this year, but, as I noted previously, I don't really feel like I have anything especially good to share about my life at this time.  Furthermore, as I also noted previously, if I have grown weary of the disappointment, bitterness, and self-pity that tends to infect my personal writing, then I cannot help but think that you would not want to read it either.

All that said, lately I've started to wonder if those of you who have been reading my introspective posts for a while want to ask me, "If there's so much you don't like about your life, then why don't you just freakin' do something about it?"

It's a good question.  So why don't I just freakin' do something?

There's a simple answer: fear.

If I don't like my job as a computer programmer, then why don't I quit my job, go back to school, and become a teacher, which is what I think I really want to be?

The truth is that I'm afraid of making a big mistake.  Though I don't love my job, I don't hate it either - at least I don't hate it every day.  Even on the days I do hate my job, I still take pride in the fact that, because I work at a local technical college, I am using my programming skills to make a positive contribution to my community.  Also, I have a lot of benefits beyond a monthly paycheck, including health insurance, a lot of vacation time, and the possibility of retiring with a pension.  I fell into a pretty sweet deal, and I'm afraid of giving it all up for something I don't even know I'll find more fulfilling.

I'm also afraid of getting in over my head.  I didn't especially enjoy writing papers when I was in college, and I have no idea how I would ever write a master's thesis, much less a doctoral dissertation.  Also, though I've taught some ten-hour classes for my church district, I have no idea how I would ever plan and teach a semester-long class.

If I'm lonely, then why don't I reactivate my dating profile and start swiping right?

The truth is that I'm afraid of rejection.  I'm afraid that, if I start swiping right, no one will swipe right on me.  I'm afraid that, if someone, for some reason, does actually swipe right on me, she will inevitably get to know me too well and realize she can do a lot better.  Maybe, deep down, I'm also afraid of change.  Maybe I'm afraid that I really will meet someone who loves me and accepts me, that we'll actually hit it off, and that I'll eventually find myself in a life that is nothing like the crappy yet comfortably predictable life I've always known.

There is a lot I don't like about my life, but I'm hesitant to do anything about it because I'm afraid.  Unfortunately, there is no figurative silver bullet that kills fear.  The only way to defeat this monster is to confront it head-on and to overcome it.

There is an old nursery rhyme about some children who are "going on a bear hunt."  As the young hunters look for bears, they encounter a series of obstacles in their path, including tall grass, a river, and finally a dark bear cave.  Whenever they meet an obstacle, they realize that they "can't go over it," that they "can't go under it," that they "can't go around it," but that they "got to go through it."¹  All these things are especially true about the obstacle of fear.

I have a personality that makes me a lot more adept at longing for the things I think I want in life than actually working for them.  If I want a better life, then I will have to take action, and, to take action, I will have to overcome my fear.  I can't go over it.  I can't go under it.  I can't go around it.  I can't shoot it from a distance with a magic bullet.  I will have to go through it.


Notes:

1. https://allnurseryrhymes.com/going-on-a-bear-hunt/

The photograph of the animal cave is used courtesy of PickPic.com and is understood to be public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Perspective: The Meaning of a Miracle

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Meaning of a Miracle

Then Jesus did many other miraculous signs in his disciples' presence, signs that aren't recorded in this scroll.  But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God's Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.

John 20:30-31 (CEB)

I felt it first when I was younger
A strange connection to the light
I tried to satisfy the hunger
I never got it right

From "Your Love" by  Brandon Heath

In the Gospels, we read that one day Jesus and the Disciples head across the Sea of Galilee to a secluded location.  There, they are met by a crowd of nearly five thousand people.  At one point, the question arises of how Jesus and the Disciples can possibly feed so many people.  They know that they cannot afford to buy enough food for everyone, and they have only five loaves of bread and two fish on hand.  Jesus has all of the people sit down on the grass.  He then takes the bread and fish, gives thanks for them, breaks them up, and has the pieces distributed to the crowd.¹

Somehow everybody in the crowd has enough food to eat, and, when the Disciples gather up the leftovers, somehow they fill twelve baskets.²

The story of Jesus' feeding the multitude is one of the few stories that can be found in all four of the Gospels.³  Sometimes, in my personal Bible studies, I like to compare different versions of a single story from the Gospels so that I can see what the different writers want to emphasize.  When I recently encountered the story of Jesus' feeding the multitude as it is told in the Gospel of John, I wanted to compare it to a telling from one of the other Gospels, because John's Gospel is radically different from the other three.  I chose to compare it to the version in the Gospel of Mark, since Mark's Gospel is thought to be the first Gospel written.

In Mark's version of the story, after Jesus has been teaching the crowd all day, the Disciples become concerned that the people are growing hungry.  They urge Jesus to dismiss the crowd so that everyone can go to a nearby village and buy some food.  Jesus then says to the Disciples, "You give them something to eat."⁴  In John's version of the story, when Jesus sees the crowd, He asks the disciple Philip where they will buy food for so many people.  The writer tells us that, when Jesus asks this question, He is already planning to feed the crowd miraculously.⁵

In Mark's version of the story, when the Disciples remark about how expensive it would be to buy food for so many people, Jesus asks them how much bread they have on hand.  They check their provisions and reply that they have five loaves of bread and two fish.⁶  In John's version of the story, when Philip remarks that it would not be feasible to buy food for the crowd, the disciple Andrew reports that a young boy has offered them his five barley loaves and two fish.⁷

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' miraculously feeding the multitude seems to happen on the spur of the moment.  The Disciples are concerned that the people in the crowd are growing hungry, so Jesus helps them find a way to feed them.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus' actions are a lot more deliberate.  Jesus brings up the matter of feeding the crowd, because He already has a plan to feed the crowd miraculously.

Something else that differs between the two versions of the story is how the story ends.  In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the Disciples to go ahead of Him back across the Sea of Galilee, and, after He dismisses the crowd, He heads up a mountain to pray for a while.⁸  In the Gospel of John, Jesus can see that the people in the crowd want to revolt against the Roman Empire and make Him their king, so He heads up the mountain to escape from them.  When night falls, the Disciples decide to head back across the sea of Galilee without Jesus.⁹

I think that the key to understanding the differences between the two versions of the story is understanding the significance of a miracle means in the Gospel of John.  In John's Gospel, Jesus' miracles are called "signs."  They are not just good deeds supernaturally done or demonstrations of divine power.  They are meant to point beyond themselves to some truth about who Jesus is.

In John's Gospel, the tension between Jesus and the people who want to make Him their king leads into a greater discussion about who Jesus is and what people want from Him.  When the crowd catches up with Jesus, He points out that the only reason they are looking for Him is that He gave them all the food they wanted.  He notes that the food He gave them won't keep them filled forever and then urges them to seek what can truly satisfy them.¹⁰  Jesus goes on to tell the crowd, "I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."¹¹

In three of the Gospels, Jesus miraculously feeds a crowd of thousands of people simply because they are hungry.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus miraculously satisfies the physical hunger of thousands of people in order to teach them that they need more than literal bread in this life and that He is the Bread of Life that will satisfy the hunger of their souls.


Notes:

1. Mark 6:32-41, 44; John 6:1-11
2. Mark 6:42-43; John 6:11-13
3. Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–13
4. Mark 6:34-37 (CEB)
5. John 6:5-6
6. Mark 6:37-38
7. John 6:7-8
8. Mark 6:45-46
9. John 6:14-17
10. John 6:24-27
11. John 6:35 (CEB)

The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes was painted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in the late 1600s.

Sermon: A Light in the Darkness (2020)

Delivered at Salem United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on January 5, 2020, the Twelfth Day of Christmas

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

A Light in the Darkness

Audio Version

In the beginning was the Word

and the Word was with God

and the Word was God.

The Word was with God in the beginning.

Everything came into being through the Word,

and without the Word

nothing came into being.

What came into being

through the Word was life,

and the life was the light for all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

A man named John was sent from God.  He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light.  He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

The true light that shines on all people

was coming into the world.

The light was in the world,

and the world came into being through the light,

but the world didn’t recognize the light.

The light came to his own people,

and his own people didn’t welcome him.

But those who did welcome him,

those who believed in his name,

he authorized to become God’s children,

born not from blood

nor from human desire or passion,

but born from God.

The Word became flesh

and made his home among us.

We have seen his glory,

glory like that of a father’s only son,

full of grace and truth.

John testified about him, crying out, “This is the one of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is greater than me because he existed before me.’”

From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace;

as the Law was given through Moses,

so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.

God the only Son,

who is at the Father’s side,

has made God known.

John 1:1-18 (CEB)

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

From “Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It has been said that "Christmas comes earlier every year."  Christmas, of course, comes on December 25 every year, so I think it would be more accurate to say that establishments start playing Christmas music earlier every year.  Imagine my surprise, as I walked through Haywood Mall in the middle of October, seeing the visages of murderous clowns on advertisements for a local haunted attraction, when I heard Elton John's peppy invitation to “Step into Christmas.”  Minutes later, I heard about “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and “Jack Frost nipping at [my] nose.”  After that, I heard Colbie Caillat declare that "it's Christmas time in the city."  Two weeks later, at that same mall, costumed children walked past a sleigh and a giant Christmas tree in their search for candy.  Retailers reason that people associate Christmas music with Christmas shopping, so they play Christmas music long before Christmas in the hopes of getting people in the mood to spend some money.

Churches, especially those that are more liturgical, operate according to a timetable different from the rest of the world.  As you probably know, there are two major times for celebration in the Church: Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Christ, and Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ.  Today happens to be the twelfth and last day of Christmas.  On the Church calendar, both of these times of celebration are preceded by more somber seasons.  Before Easter, there is a roughly six-week season of self-denial, introspection, and repentance known as Lent, and, before Christmas, there is a roughly four-week season of waiting, hoping, and longing known as Advent.

During Advent, we hear the words of the ancient Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, and we remember that, in the same way that Jewish people longed for a Messiah to come and save them from oppression, we long for our Savior to come back to set the whole world to rights.  We sing hymns of hopeful longing like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.”  We light candles for hope, peace, joy, and love, not necessarily because we have these things but because we long for them.  In many churches, the liturgical color for Advent is purple, as it is in Lent, but at other churches, like the one I attend, the liturgical color for Advent is blue, the color of the sky just before the dawn breaks.  If Christmas is the time when, in the words of the priest Zechariah, “the dawn from on high [breaks] upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness,”¹ then Advent is the darkness before the dawn.

As the longing of Advent gives way to the joy of Christmas, everything changes – or at least everything is supposed to change.  After weeks of planning and preparation, we visit our families, exchange presents, and then sit down to feast on ham or turkey.  Eventually we have to go back home, put our Christmas decorations back into storage, and return to our jobs.  As children, we can barely fall asleep on Christmas Eve, full of anticipation for what awaits us in the morning.  When we grow up, we realize that we long for things that money cannot buy, things that Santa Claus cannot leave under the Christmas tree.  At Christmas we sing, “Joy to the world!  The Lord is come!” yet, once the celebration is over, it seems that very little has actually changed since the of beginning Advent.  The festivities end, and we are left with “the winter of our discontent.”

It is not uncommon for people to feel a bit let down after Christmas.  Linda Walter, a contributor to Psychology Today, lists a number of reasons we might feel a bit sad after the holidays: a suddenly clear schedule after a month of busyness, strained relationships with the family members we see over the holidays, memories of loved ones who are no longer with us, inclement winter weather that leaves us stuck at home, fatigue from traveling, having to return to work after time off, guilt from holiday overindulgence, and disappointment that our celebrations were not quite we hoped they would be.²  For me, the last ten years have brought a lot of pain and a lot of change, and there have times when, on the umpteenth day of Christmas, I felt like I was still sitting in the dark, waiting for the dawn to break.  This Christmas season, my mother and I were reminded that the hard parts of life, like grief, do not go on holiday around Christmas.  Beetle, one of my mother's beloved pet birds, who was also dear to me, died suddenly and unexpectedly just a few days after Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, our lives and our emotions rarely follow the Church calendar.  I would go so far as to say that, in some sense, life itself is one long season of Advent, one long season of waiting and longing.  The Germans have a word that might describe what some of us feel.  Weltschmerz means “world-weariness” or, more literally, “world-pain.”  It describes “a deep sadness about the inadequacy or imperfection of the world” or “a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.”³  In other words, weltschmerz is the pain of knowing that the world is not as it should be, that life is not as it should be, that we are not as we should be – basically, that nothing is as it should be.  Another German word that might describe how we feel is sehnsucht, which describes “thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.”⁴

---

During Advent and Christmas, the Church typically reads the birth narratives found at the beginning of two of the four Gospels.  The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Mary's point of view.  Mary and Joseph, who are expecting a child at any moment, are forced to travel far from home to Bethlehem.  When they are unable to find any place that will take them in, they end up delivering the baby in a stable.  There, they are visited by a group of nervous shepherds who have just seen an army of angels heralding the infant's birth.⁵  The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Joseph's perspective.  We read that the family is visited in Bethlehem by wealthy astrologers who have followed a star to their location.  These magi present the child with gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh shortly before the family has to flee from the violence of a paranoid king who is afraid of losing his power.⁶

At the beginning of the Gospel of John, we read not a birth narrative but rather a poem, which some have titled the Hymn to the Word.  It tells us that “in the beginning was the Word,” that “the Word was with God,” that “the Word was God,” and that “everything came into being through the Word.”  It tells us that “what came into being through the Word was life” and that “the life was the light for all people.”  It tells us that “the Word became flesh and made his home among us.”  In Eugene Peterson's words, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”⁷  The Hymn to the Word is very different from the birth narratives, but it tells us all we really need to know about the Christmas story.  It tells us that the creative force at work when God spoke those first words let there be became a flesh-and-blood human being and lived among us as Jesus of Nazareth, a man “full of grace and truth” who “has made God known” to us.

There is one part of the Hymn to the Word that reminds me to be hopeful amid my post-holiday malaise: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”

The season of Advent took on a new meaning for me several years ago when, during Christmas Eve services, a former pastor of mine started extinguishing the four candles on the Advent wreath representing hope, peace, joy, and love before lighting the Christ candle.  Christ came into dark world, a world in desperate need of hope, peace, joy, and love.  The world can be a very dark place, and the circumstances of our lives can be dark as well, but the message of Christmas is that the Light of Christ continues to shine in spite of the darkness.

The Hymn to the Word tells us that “the light was in the world,” and that “the world came into being through the light,” but that “the world didn't recognize the light.”  The Light of Christ shines in the darkness, but apparently it is a lot easier to miss the Light than we might think.

Splitting up the Hymn to the Word are words about someone who “wasn’t the light” but whose “mission was to testify concerning the light.”  During Advent, as the Church prepares for Christmas, congregations who follow the Revised Common Lectionary typically hear about the one who was called by God to prepare the way for Christ, namely John the Baptist – or, as Methodists sometimes call him, John the Baptizer.  At some point, around the time Jesus began His public ministry, John rubbed the wrong people the wrong way and landed himself in prison.  For those called to be prophets, this is a hazard of the job.  John, like many people of his day, expected a militant messiah who would start a revolution.  As he sat in prison, he began to second-guess himself and wonder if the One he had been supporting was actually going to do what He was supposed to do.  He sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”⁸  In Eugene Peterson's translation, they ask, “Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?”⁹

Jesus, who had already done a lot of wonderful things in His ministry, said to the messengers, “Go, report to John what you hear and see.”  Echoing the words of the ancient prophets, He continued, “Those who were blind are able to see.  Those who were crippled are walking.  People with skin diseases are cleansed.  Those who were deaf now hear.  Those who were dead are raised up.  The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”¹⁰  John could not see the light from his prison cell, but the Light of Christ was indeed shining.

After John's messengers left, Jesus said to those around Him, “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist.  Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”¹¹  If the greatest man to ever walk the face of the earth didn't fully understand Christ and the Kingdom He had come to establish, what does that say about the rest of us?  Though we may have certain information John did not have, are we really any more enlightened than he was?  If even the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” didn't fully understand why he was preparing people, then what might we fail to understand?  If even the one “sent from God” to be “a witness to testify concerning the light” could lose sight of the Light amid the darkness of his circumstances, then how easy it must be for us to miss the Light!

According to Shane Hipps, the commonly-held idea that light and darkness are opposites is a misconception.  To say that light and darkness are opposites is to imply that they are equal opposing forces.  Darkness is not the opposite of light but rather the mere absence of light.  “Darkness,” Hipps says, “is always at the mercy of light.”  If you enter a dark room and turn on the lights, the darkness will immediately flee, and it will not be able to return as long as the light is present.  Hipps says that, if you want to dispel the darkness in your life, you need to seek a source of light.  If you are in a place of despair, seek a source of hope.  If you are plagued with anxiety or anger, seek peace.  If you are dealing with sorrow, seek a source of joy.  If there is hatred in your life, invite love into your heart.  If you are tired of the darkness, then move toward the light.¹²

We don't usually notice light, because our attention is most often focused elsewhere, usually on whatever the light illuminates.  What we don't always realize is that light is the only thing our eyes can actually sense.  You aren't really seeing the objects in the room around you: you are seeing the light reflected by the objects.  Your sense of sight is totally dependent on light.  We don't typically notice light, but, at the same time, light is the only thing we can actually see.¹³  I wonder if, at times when the world seems devoid of light, we are actually walking around with our eyes closed, spiritually speaking.  Perhaps the light we seek is always hidden plain sight, and perhaps we only need to open our eyes to experience it.

There is a poem that was reportedly found at the end of the Second World War.  Some say that it was written on a wall in a Jewish ghetto.  Others say it was scratched into the wall of a concentration camp.  The poem read, “I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine.  I believe in love, even if I do not feel it.  I believe in God, even if I do not see Him.”  In the darkest of circumstances, the poet had chosen to believe in the Light.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”  When our Christmas celebrations are over, when the decorations are taken down put back in the attic, when all the leftovers are finished, when we return to our jobs, this is the message we must keep in our hearts, whatever lies ahead of us in the new year.  The world can be a very dark place, and our lives can seem dark at times, but the Light never stops shining.  The Light is always shining, no matter how dark life seems, but we must keep our eyes open if we want to see it.

May we all keep our focus on the Light.  Amen.


Notes:

1. Luke 1:78-79 (NRSV)
2. Linda Walter.  “The Holidays Are Over; Why Am I So Blue?”  Psychology Today, 01/12/2014.
3. Wikipedia: “Weltschmerz”
4. Wikipedia: “Sehnsucht”
5. Luke 1-2
6. Matthew 1-2
7. John 1:14 (The Message)
8. Matthew 11:2-3 (CEB)
9. Matthew 11:3 (The Message)
10. Matthew 11:4-5 (CEB)  (See also Isaiah 35:5-6; 61:1.)
11. Matthew 11:11 (CEB)
12. Shane Hipps.  “Spoiling the Illusion.”  Mars Hill Bible Church, 05/08/2011.
13. I don't have a specific source, but I have heard Peter Rollins say stuff like this.

The image featured in this blog post is part of a photograph taken by Jack Delano in the Union Station waiting room during World War II.

Introspection: Rethinking Destiny

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Rethinking Destiny

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NRSV)

If you want, then start to laugh

If you must, then start to cry

Be yourself; don't hide

Just believe in destiny

Don't care what people say

Just follow your own way

Don't give up, and use the chance

To return to innocence

From "Return to Innocence" by Enigma

This year, I've made it a point to read more fiction.  A few months ago, I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  In this novel, a young shepherd named Santiago has a recurring dream in which he is told that there is a treasure buried near the pyramids of Egypt.  One day, Santiago stops in a city on his way to sell his sheep's wool, and he meets Melchizedek, the immortal king of Salem, who tells him that finding the treasure mentioned in his dream is his "Personal Legend."  According to the king, your Personal Legend is "what you have always wanted to accomplish."¹  "God has prepared a path for everyone to follow," the king tells Santiago.  "You just have to read the omens that he left for you."²

What Coelho calls Personal Legend others might call destiny.  When I use the word destiny, I do not use it in a deterministic sense.  In other words, I am not referring to what will inevitably happen in a person's life.  As a good Methodist, I've never been a big fan of determinism or predestination.  Destiny, as I have come to understand it, is what a person was born to do - that is, if the person has the determination and the courage to do it.

In years past, I stopped believing in such things because I was afraid that God wanted for me something I did not want for myself.  One way I went wrong back then was that I was listening to other people too much and listening within too little.  Though it is true that other people can help us to see things we might not see in ourselves, people sometimes have hidden agendas.  People might want us to fill roles in their lives that were never ours to fill in the first place.  I've learned the hard way that, if we do not have a purpose in life, we will be given one.

Reading The Alchemist has caused me to reconsider the possibility that each of us has destiny, that each of us was born to fulfill a unique purpose in life.

Speaking to a crowd, Jesus once invited all who "are weary and are carrying heavy burdens" to come to Him and to trade their heavy burdens for the yoke He offers, promising, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  In a recent paraphrase of the Bible, The Voice, He says, regarding this yoke, "It might appear heavy at first, but it is perfectly fitted to your curves."³  In other words, the yoke He invites a person to take on is perfectly tailored for the person.  Maybe Jesus is inviting us to lay down the burdens we were never meant to carry and to embrace the purposes that were actually meant for us.

Once, for a sermon illustration, Shane Hipps used a guitar to hit wiffle balls to the people in his congregation, effectively demonstrating that a guitar can serve as an adequate wiffle ball bat.  He then gave the guitar to someone who started playing a song with it, making it obvious that the guitar was meant not for playing wiffle ball but for making music.  Similarly, though there are many things a person could do, maybe there is something specific a person is meant to do.⁴

It seems to me that, if God did create me for a specific purpose, then I must have been designed with that purpose in mind.  My purpose must be written into my programming in some way.  If this is the case, then my purpose in life is not something other people can tell me.  It is instead something I must look inward to discover.  I imagine that, if I was indeed created for a purpose, then living out my purpose would seem right to me and make me feel alive.

Melchizedek tells Santiago that "everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is."  The king goes on to say that most people eventually convince themselves that their Personal Legends are impossible and then choose paths in life that are more practical.  He then points out a baker in the city who, like Santiago, wanted to travel when he was young but played it safe and bought a bakery instead.⁵

I tried to remember what I wanted to do with my life before I decided in college that it would be a good idea to become a computer programmer.  When I was a child I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I probably came up with a new idea whenever someone with a particular profession came to speak at my school or whenever a particular occupation was featured on a show on PBS.  Had I followed my heart in college, I probably would have majored in either religion or philosophy, neither of which are especially practical fields of study.

A few things stand out in my memory.  I remember that, when I was a little boy, my grandfather built a tiny podium for me.  Apparently I envisioned myself as someone who spoke in front of large crowds - a teacher, a preacher, or maybe a game show host.  I also remember playing school a lot.  Incidentally, when I realized that computer programming is not all it's cracked up to be, I started teaching Sunday School and preaching occasionally at my church.  I think that such things draw me because I love sharing knowledge with people and inviting people to look at things in new ways.  I later learned that my spiritual gifts are knowledge and teaching.

A song by Switchfoot suggests that "the shadow proves the sunshine."  In other words, sometimes a noticeable absence of something is evidence of its existence.⁶  I'm still wrestling with the idea that there is one particular thing I'm meant to do with my life, but I've reached the conclusion that there are things I was not put on this planet to do.  Perhaps the latter is evidence of the former.  Furthermore, the restlessness I sometimes feel would seem to suggest that, if there is something I'm meant to do, I'm not doing it.  The fact I still feel it at times also suggests that, if I have a destiny, I haven't lost it yet.

I enjoyed reading The Alchemist, and I would recommend it to anyone wrestling with his or her purpose in life or to anyone who simply enjoys a good story.  It challenged me to reconsider the possibility that there is something I was born to do; it reminded me that the journey is at least as important as the destination; and it warned me that pursuing my destiny, if I indeed have one, will mean turning my back on what is safe, comfortable, and predictable.


Notes:

1. Paulo Coelho.  The Alchemist (25th Anniversary Edition).  2014, Harper One.  p. 23
2. Coelho, pp. 31-32
3. Matthew 11:29 (The Voice)
4. Shane Hipps.  "Wiffle Guitar."  Mars Hill Bible Church, 06/27/2010.
5. Coelho, pp. 23-25
6. C.S. Lewis makes such an argument at the beginning of Mere Christianity.

The photograph of the Pyramids of Giza has been released to the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Sermon: The Bread of Life

Delivered at Monaghan United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on August 5, 2018

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Bread of Life

Audio Version

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.  When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus replied, “I assure you that you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate all the food you wanted.  Don’t work for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Human One will give you.  God the Father has confirmed him as his agent to give life.”

They asked, “What must we do in order to accomplish what God requires?”

Jesus replied, “This is what God requires, that you believe in him whom God sent.”

They asked, “What miraculous sign will you do, that we can see and believe you?  What will you do?  Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus told them, “I assure you, it wasn’t Moses who gave the bread from heaven to you, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  The bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They said, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!”

Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

John 6:24-35 (CEB)

I felt it first when I was younger

A strange connection to the light

I tried to satisfy the hunger

I never got it right

From “Your Love” by  Brandon Heath

When President Calvin Coolidge announced in 1927 that he would not seek reelection, the secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover quickly became the front-runner to receive the Republican nomination.  The next year, Hoover became the Republican presidential candidate and ran against the Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith.  Campaign literature from the GOP suggested that, because Herbert Hoover was a brilliant businessman, his administration would bring such economic prosperity that there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”  This promise of prosperity evidently appealed to the masses, for Hoover won the presidential election in a landslide victory.¹

Nearly eight months after Hoover took office, on October 29, 1929, a day that is remembered as “Black Tuesday,” the stock market crashed, and the nation was thrown into what has been dubbed the Great Depression.  The American voters' hopes for economic prosperity were rewarded with economic hardship, and President Hoover received the lion's share of the blame.  Shack towns built during the Depression became known as “Hoovervilles,” and empty out-turned pockets became known as “Hoover flags.”²

I highly doubt that Herbert Hoover deserved the full blame for the Great Depression, for such matters are rarely ever so simple.  Still, I think that this history lesson reminds us that that we should not invest too much of our hope in political leaders.  Perhaps it can also serve as a reminder that, at the end of the day, “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” is not all we need in life.

---

One day, Jesus and the Disciples cross the Sea of Galilee and climb a mountain so that they can spend some time to themselves.  A large crowd of about five thousand people follows them to the other side of the lake, and when Jesus sees the crowd approaching, He asks Philip, one of the Disciples, how they are going to feed so many people.  Philip remarks that, if they spent half a year's wages on food, they would not have enough for everyone to eat just a couple of bites.  Andrew, another Disciple, finds a boy who has five loaves of bread and two fish, but he notes that these provisions would not go very far in such a large crowd.  Jesus takes the loaves, gives thanks, breaks the loaves, and starts distributing the bread to the people in the crowd, and He does the same with the fish.  Miraculously everybody in the crowd has enough food to eat, and somehow the Disciples gather twelve baskets of leftovers.³

If you have read the four Gospels, then you've probably noticed that the Gospel of John is very different from the others.  The fourth Gospel presents a different sequence of events, and Jesus says many things in it that He does not say in the other three.  The reason that the Gospel of John is so different is, I think, that the writer often cares more about who Jesus is than what Jesus did.  A case in point is that John refers to Jesus' miracles as “signs,” implying that they are meant to point beyond themselves.  For example, Jesus restores sight to the blind in all of the Gospels, but, to John, Jesus' giving sight to a blind man is a sign that Jesus is “the light of the world” and that “whoever follows [Him] won't walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”⁴  Jesus raises the dead in all of the Gospels, but, to John, Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead is a sign that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” and that “whoever believes in [Him] will live, even though they die.”⁵

Likewise, the story of Jesus' feeding the multitude is found in all four of the Gospels, but John offers us some details that we do not read in the other three, because he wants to dive deeper into the spiritual implications of the miracle and to explore what the miracle tells us about who Jesus is.  For some reason, John is the only writer who tells us that it is a boy who shares his provisions with Jesus and the Disciples.  More striking is the fact that John also happens to be the only writer who tells us that the people whom Jesus feeds want to make Him king.

It is important to realize that, when Jesus miraculously feeds the five thousand, they are reminded of another instance in which many people were miraculously provided bread in the wilderness.  In the Book of Exodus, we read that, after the Israelites were liberated from slavery in Egypt, they began to fear that they wouldn't be able to find sustenance in the desert.  They were so afraid of starving to death that they actually started feeling nostalgic about their time in Egypt.  God said to their leader Moses, “I'm going to make bread rain down from the sky for you.”  In the morning, there was a layer of dew on the ground, and, when the dew evaporated, the Israelites saw thin white flakes on the ground.  They named this substance manna, a Hebrew word meaning What is it?  One theologian suggests that manna was like “cereal snowflakes.”⁶  Every morning, the Israelites were able to gather enough manna to eat for the day – no more and no less – and this “bread from heaven” sustained them for the forty years they were in the wilderness.⁷

When the Israelites neared the end of their journey through the wilderness, Moses said, “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from your community, from your fellow Israelites.  He's the one you must listen to.”⁸  Moses' words were sometimes understood to be a prophecy about the Messiah, a leader like Moses who would once again deliver the Jewish people from their oppressors.  John tells us that when Jesus feeds the multitude, the people begin saying among themselves, “This is truly the prophet who is coming into the world.”  In other words, they begin to think that Jesus is the Messiah.  They are so excited that they want to make Jesus their king right then and there.  Apparently they are ready to take on Herod, the current king of the Jews, and even the Roman Empire, who is currently occupying the land.  Jesus has no interest in what the crowd wants to do, so He withdraws from them and goes back up the mountain.⁹

The crowd waits for Jesus to come back down the mountain.  At one point, they watch His disciples board a boat and head back across the Sea of Galilee, but they do not see Him board the boat with them.¹⁰  Eventually they realize that Jesus is nowhere nearby, so they head across the lake to look for Him.  When they find Him on the other side, they ask Him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”  What they do not know is that Jesus decided to cross the sea on foot.¹¹

Jesus says to the crowd, “I assure you that you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate all the food you wanted.”  In other words, the people are so caught up in the fact that Jesus miraculously provided them a feast in the wilderness, that they cannot see that the miracle is merely a sign.  They care less about who Jesus is and more about what He could do for them.  Like their ancestors, who also demanded a king, they want a worldly ruler with a worldly agenda.¹²  The crowd wants a new Moses who will liberate them from their oppressors, a new Joshua who will reclaim the land from Roman Empire, and a new David who will reign amid a new golden age of peace and prosperity.  One might say that they want a leader who will make Israel great again, a ruler who will make sure that there is a loaf of bread in every basket.

Jesus is indeed a King, but He is not the kind of king the crowd wants Him to be.  He tries to direct them to greater truths, saying, “Don't work for the food that doesn't last but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Human One will give you.  God the Father has confirmed him as his agent to give life.”  The people then ask Jesus what God wants them to do, and Jesus replies, “This is what God requires, that you believe in him whom God sent.”

When Jesus suggests to the crowd that He was sent by God and that God wants them to believe in Him, they take His words as a claim that He is indeed the Messiah.  They want Jesus to substantiate His claim, so they say to Him, “What miraculous sign will you do, that we can see and believe you?  What will you do?  Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”  Providing manna in the wilderness was considered Moses' greatest miracle, and it was a common belief that the Messiah would not only replicate this miracle but even surpass it.¹³

Once again, Jesus tries to get the crowd to see the bigger picture.  He says, “I assure you, it wasn’t Moses who gave the bread from heaven to you, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  The bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  God has once again sent a hungry people in the wilderness bread from heaven, but what they do not realize is that this bread from heaven is God's own Son.

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says to the crowd.  “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

---

There is a hunger within us that has nothing to do with our stomachs, a hunger that cannot be satisfied with literal bread.  This hunger is, I think, a longing for transcendence.  In other words, we want more than what this life has to offer.  We long for what Jesus calls “eternal life” or  “abundant life,” a life that is, in the words of one writer, characterized by “the experience of deep joy, boundless love, and indestructible peace.”¹⁴  This, I think, is the hunger of which Jesus speaks.

We feel this hunger deeply, so we try to fill our lives with things like materialism, romance, careers, hobbies, and entertainment.  Such things might make our lives seem full for a while, but they do not truly satisfy our deep hunger because they do not last.  The stuff we buy wears out and breaks; our relationships cool down; our careers take downturns; our hobbies become boring; and our favorite television shows are inevitably canceled.¹⁵  Such things give us only a fleeting sense of satisfaction, in the same way that literal bread leaves us feeling hungry again within only a few hours.  They do not stick to our ribs, in a spiritual sense.  Perhaps this is why Jesus says, “Don’t work for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Great Christian thinkers have been contemplating this ineffable longing for nearly two thousand years.  C.S. Lewis, in his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” speaks of “a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.”  It is, he suggests, a desire for something outside of our earthly experience, a desire for something infinite and eternal.  Since the object of our desire is something we do not truly know or understand, we naturally try to fix our desire on things that are actually familiar to us, things that are, at most, merely symbolic of the true object of our desire.¹⁶  That said, it is totally understandable that we would attempt to satisfy our deep longing with things that give us no lasting satisfaction.  The good news, Lewis claims, is that the very fact that we experience this hunger means that this hunger can somehow be satisfied.¹⁷

In Bruce Marshall's novel The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, the titular character gets into an argument with an author over clerical celibacy.  When the author suggests that “religion is only a substitute for sex,” the priest replies, “I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”¹⁸  Perhaps, beneath all of our longings and all of our efforts to satisfy those longings, no matter how misguided, is a longing for God.

The seventeenth century French theologian Blaise Pascal suggests in his work Pensées, that the motive behind every action of every person, be it constructive or destructive, is the desire for happiness.  He goes so far as to say that “the will never takes the least step but to this object.”  Despite our best efforts, the happiness we seek seems to remain hopelessly out of reach.  Pascal asserts that true happiness is something we cannot attain without faith, for “the infinite abyss,” which some have named the “God-shaped hole,” “can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”¹⁹  Perhaps St. Augustine best expressed this thought over one thousand years earlier in his Confessions, in which he prays, “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”²⁰

Jesus tells the crowd that He is the “bread of life” who “gives life to the world.”  Why would Jesus compare Himself to bread?  What is it about bread that makes it life-giving?  And how exactly is Jesus like bread?

Prominent Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton once asked a master baker about the history of bread, and the baker made the following comment:
Bread has always been the center of meals throughout history.  It's something that I don't think anything could take the place of.  It's a food source, it's a nutrient, but I think in a larger sense that it is a way to bring the community together.  I guess in a way that other foods aren't shared, bread is usually something that is broken and shared.²¹
Basically, bread is life-giving because it sustains us and brings us together.

In the other Gospels, we read that, on the evening before Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He took a loaf of bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the Disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”²²  For nearly two thousand years, Christians have remembered this act by participating in the sacrament we call Holy Communion.

It has been said that we are what we eat.  In other words, if we eat nutritious foods, we will become healthy and strong, but, if we eat food with no nutritional value besides empty calories, we will become unhealthy and weak.  We come to the Communion table and partake of the body and blood of Christ, represented in the bread and the wine, because we are what we eat.  Consider the prayer that pastors pray over the Communion elements: “Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine.  Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.”²³  We pray that the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ and then take the bread and wine into ourselves so that we may become like Jesus and do the kinds of things He did.

So often, we Christians like to claim that God is all we need, but the truth is that we need each other as well.  Remember that it is God who first observed that it is not good for people to be alone.²⁴  Like bread, Christ gives us the spiritual nutrients to make us who we are meant to be, and, like bread, Christ brings us together.  Consider again, the prayer prayed by pastors during the Communion service: “By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world, until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”²⁵  It is the broken body of our Savior, represented by broken bread, that brings a broken people to the table together.

In Christ, we find the things that satisfy our spiritual hungers.  In Christ, we find our identity, for He teaches us that we too are beloved children of God.  In Christ, we find our destiny, for He shows us what we can become as human beings.  In Christ, we find our purpose, for He calls us to follow Him as His disciples.  In Christ, we find our community, for He gathers us together into this community called the Church.

So how do we, in Jesus' words, “work... for the food that endures for eternal life”?  How do we seek the Bread of Life so that we may experience the abundant life Jesus offers?

In another Gospel, Jesus announces, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”²⁶  Bread is meant for the hungry, and the Bread of Life is meant for those who hunger for abundant life.  If we want the Bread of Life, then we must be hungry for it, for the ones who hunger are the ones who are filled.  If you don't feel spiritually hungry, then I would encourage you to consider fasting.  Abstaining from some of the things with which you try to fill your life might help you to get back in touch with your spiritual hunger.

If you want the Bread of Life, feel your spiritual hunger, and then offer that hunger to God.²⁷  When Jesus tells the crowd about the “true bread from heaven” that “gives life to the world,” they say to Him, “Sir, Give us this bread all the time!”  N.T. Wright suggests that, though the crowd does not truly understand what Jesus means when He speaks of the Bread of Life, they do set a good example for us when it comes to praying for it.²⁸

Jesus is indeed a king, but He is not the kind of king the crowd wants Him to be.  The crowd will soon find that He is not the great political leader who will drive the Romans out of the land and restore autonomy to Israel.  Some will find that Jesus is greater than that, for He reigns over a Kingdom not of this world, a Kingdom that has outlasted the Roman Empire.  The Roman Empire has crumbled, but Christ still reigns, and, in His Kingdom, people still find the nourishment they need.  Remember that, in the words of D.T. Niles, “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”

Thanks be to God.


Notes:

1. https://millercenter.org/president/hoover
2. ibid
3. John 6:1-13
4. John 8:12 (CEB)
5. John 11:25 (CEB)
6. Barbara Brown Taylor referenced by Jonathan Merritt.  Jesus Is Better than You Imagined.  2014, Faith Words.  p. 55
7. Exodus 16 (CEB)
8. Deuteronomy 18:15 (CEB)
9. John 6:14-15 (CEB)
10. John 6:22-23
11. John 6:16-21
12. N.T. Wright.  John for Everyone, Part 1.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  pp. 78-79
13. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John, Volume One.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 251
14. Shane Hipps.  Selling Water by the River: A Book about the Life Jesus Promised and the Religion That Gets in the Way.  2012, Jericho Books.  p. 7
15. Hipps, pp. 3-4
16. C.S. Lewis.  “The Weight of Glory.”
17. ibid
18. Bruce Marshall.  The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith.  1945, Houghton Mifflin Company.  ch. 16
19. Blaise Pascal.  Pensées.  Translation by W.F. Trotter.  1958, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.  Section VII, #425
20. St. Augustine of Hippo.  Confessions.  Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey.
21. Adam Hamilton.  John: The Gospel of Light and Life.  2015, Abingdon Press.  ch. 3
22. Luke 22:19 (NRSV)
23. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/a-service-of-word-and-table-i-and-introductions-to-the-other-forms
24. Genesis 2:18
25. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/a-service-of-word-and-table-i-and-introductions-to-the-other-forms
26. Luke 6:21a (NRSV)
27. Shane Hipps.  “Off Menu.”  Trinity Mennonite Church, 06/07/2009.
28. N.T. Wright, p. 81

The painting featured above was painted by Juan de Espinal in the mid 1700s.  The photograph of the sourdough bread was taken by Flickr user Steph and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Perspective: The Deep Hunger

The following perspective is an excerpt from a sermon I'm currently writing.  The entire sermon, tentatively titled "The Bread of Life," will be posted on August 5, 2018.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Deep Hunger

Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

Luke 6:21a (NRSV)

Can you take me higher

To the place where blind men see?

Can you take me higher

To the place with golden streets?

From “Higher” by Creed

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says.  “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”¹

There is a hunger within us that has nothing to do with our stomachs, a hunger that cannot be satisfied with literal bread.  This hunger is, I think, a longing for transcendence.  In other words, we want more than what this life has to offer.  We long for what Jesus calls “eternal life” or  “abundant life,” a life that is, in the words of one writer, characterized by “the experience of deep joy, boundless love, and indestructible peace.”²  This is the hunger of which Jesus speaks.

We feel this hunger deeply, so we try to fill our lives with things like materialism, romance, careers, hobbies, and entertainment.  Such things might make our lives seem full for a while, but they do not truly satisfy our deep hunger because they do not last.  The stuff we buy wears out and breaks; our relationships cool down; our careers take downturns; our hobbies become boring; and our favorite television shows are inevitably canceled.³  Such things give us only a fleeting sense of satisfaction, in the same way that literal bread leaves us feeling hungry again within only a few hours.  They do not stick to our ribs, spiritually speaking.  Perhaps this is why Jesus says, “Don’t work for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life.”⁴

Great Christian thinkers have been contemplating this ineffable longing for thousands of years.

C.S. Lewis, in his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” speaks of “a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.”  It is, he suggests, a desire for something outside of our earthly experience, a desire for something infinite and eternal.  Since the object of our desire is something we do not truly know or understand, we naturally try to fix our desire on things that are actually familiar to us, things that are, at most, merely symbolic of the true object of our desire.⁵  That said, it is totally understandable that we would attempt to satisfy our deep longing with things that give us no lasting satisfaction.  The good news, Lewis claims, is that the very fact that we experience this hunger means that this hunger can somehow be satisfied.⁶

In Bruce Marshall's novel The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, the titular character gets into an argument with an author over clerical celibacy.  When the author suggests that “religion is only a substitute for sex,” the priest replies, “I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”⁷  Perhaps, beneath all of our longings and all of our efforts to satisfy those longings is a longing for God.

The seventeenth century French theologian Blaise Pascal suggests in his work Pensées, that the motive behind every action of every person, be it constructive or destructive, is the desire for happiness.  He goes so far as to say that “the will never takes the least step but to this object.”  Despite our best efforts, the happiness we seek seems to remain hopelessly out of reach.  Pascal asserts that true happiness is something we cannot attain without faith, for “the infinite abyss,” which some have named the “God-shaped hole,” “can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”⁸

Perhaps St. Augustine expressed this thought the best over one thousand years earlier in his Confessions, in which he prays, “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”⁹


Notes:

1. John 6:35 (CEB)
2. Shane Hipps.  Selling Water by the River: A Book about the Life Jesus Promised and the Religion That Gets in the Way.  2012, Jericho Books.  p. 7
3. Hipps, pp. 3-4
4. John 6:27 (CEB)
5. C.S. Lewis.  “The Weight of Glory.”
6. ibid
7. Bruce Marshall.  The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith.  1945, Houghton Mifflin Company.
8. Blaise Pascal.  Pensées.  Translation by W.F. Trotter.  1958, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.  Section VII, #425
9. St. Augustine of Hippo.  Confessions.  Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey.

The photograph of the sourdough bread was taken by Flickr user Steph and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Sermon: Into the Wilderness

Delivered at McBee Chapel United Methodist Church in Conestee, South Carolina on February 18, 2018, the first Sunday in Lent

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Into the Wilderness

Audio Version

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice

From “The Journey” by Mary Oliver

Have you ever felt that you were meant for more than the life you were living?  Have you ever felt that your nine-to-five job was not your calling, that what you did to pay the bills was not what you were put on this planet to do?  Have you ever sensed a purpose that was too far away to see clearly that still somehow tugged at your heart from a distance?  If you have ever felt that way, you are not alone.  I suspect that most, if not all, of us have longed to live for a higher purpose at some point in our lives.  Lately I've wondered if maybe Jesus felt this way in the first thirty years of His life, before He began His ministry.  I've wondered if He always knew who He was and what He was born to do or if maybe He had to discover these things, like the rest of us.

---

Biblical scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest of the four Gospels, written sometime between AD 60 and AD 70, and that it served as the main source of material for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  Church tradition tells us that St. Mark, the author, was someone close to St. Peter, perhaps an interpreter.¹  Mark's Gospel is the shortest of the four.  It does not contain the lengthy discourses we read in Matthew's Gospel or the fleshed-out narratives we read in Luke's Gospel.  There is a recurring theme of secrecy throughout Mark's Gospel: Jesus constantly tells people not to tell anyone what He did for them or who they believe He is.  The Gospel of Mark is probably the most fast-paced of the four Gospels.  The word immediately occurs twenty-seven times in the New Revised Standard Version, and Jesus always seems to be on the move.  Consider how much action is packed into the passage we just heard, which consists of a mere seven verses.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, we read about a prophet named John.  He was a rather eccentric man, to say the least: he lived in the Judean wilderness, away from civilization, foraging for food and making his own clothes.²  He challenged the people of Judea to repent of their sins and offered them the ritual of baptism as a means of expressing their repentance.  The people flocked to John in the wilderness to listen to his message, to confess their sins, and to be baptized by him in the Jordan River.  Mark describes John, using the words of an ancient prophet, as a messenger, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'”  John spoke of someone who would come after him, someone greater and more powerful, whose sandals he was not worthy to untie, someone who would baptize the people not with water but with the Holy Spirit.³

Meanwhile, Jesus had been working as a carpenter in the town of Nazareth.⁴  Justin Martyr, an early church historian, reported that Jesus constructed farm equipment like plows and yokes.⁵  Jesus realized that what He had been doing to make a living was not what He was born to do: He knew that He was meant for something more in life than building farm equipment.  Scholar William Barclay suggests that the emergence of John the Baptist and the Godward movement he represented was perhaps a signal to Jesus that the time had come for Him to do what He had been put on the earth to do.  It was the kind of movement with which He wanted to identify Himself.⁶

Jesus traveled from His hometown of Nazareth to the Judean wilderness to be baptized by John.  He had no sins of which He needed to repent, but His baptism was still for Him a turning point and a symbol of a new beginning.⁷  As Jesus descended into the water, His life as a carpenter came to an end, and, as He ascended from the water, His new life with His new calling began.

So what exactly was Jesus being called to do?

As Jesus ascended from the waters of baptism, He looked up and saw the heavens ripped open.  He saw the Spirit of God descend upon Him in the form of a dove.  What Jesus was being called to do would require power from Heaven.  Up to this point in the Biblical narrative, the Spirit of God was endowed to the leaders and prophets who had been entrusted by God with a special task.  The Spirit's descending upon Jesus meant that He was being equipped by God to do what He was called to do.⁸

Jesus then heard a Voice from Heaven call out to Him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  On the surface, the message from Heaven contained three affirmations that every child needs to hear from her parents.  Every child need to know that she is claimed by her parents, that her parents love her dearly, and that her parents are proud of her.  Jesus heard these three affirmations directly from God, but, as someone who was familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, He would also have heard a couple of additional revelations.

The first part of the message from Heaven - “You are my Son, the Beloved” - calls to mind the second Psalm, in which God's anointed one hears from God, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.”⁹  This Psalm was thought to point to the Messiah, the long-awaited leader who would deliver the Jewish people from oppression and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.  The second part of the message - “With you I am well pleased” - calls to mind particular sections of the Book of Isaiah which describe a certain servant of God.¹⁰  The first of these “Servant Songs” begins, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”  This servant of God would be empowered by the Spirit to “bring forth justice to the nations” and to show mercy to the weak and the broken.¹¹  A subsequent Servant Song tells us that this servant of God will suffer greatly on behalf of his people.¹²

In short, Jesus was told by God that He was the Son of God, the Messiah, and the Suffering Servant.

Having received both the power of the Spirit and the approval of the Father,¹³ Jesus was immediately driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, where He remained for forty days.  Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark leaves almost everything about Jesus' journey through the wilderness to the reader's imagination.  Given that Jesus had just heard that He was the beloved Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, and the Suffering Servant of God, I think it is safe to say that He had a lot to process and ponder during those forty days.

The author does offer us a few details about Jesus' wilderness experience.  He writes that, in the wilderness, Jesus was “tempted by Satan.”  John Wesley writes in his notes on the Gospel of Mark that “in all the children of God, extraordinary manifestations of his favour are wont to be followed by extraordinary temptations.”¹⁴  The author does not tell us the specific nature of the temptations Jesus faced, but we can logically assume that they somehow concerned how He would carry out His mission as the Messiah and how He would use the power and authority He was given.  I suspect that remembering the voice of the Father helped Jesus to withstand the voices of temptation.

The wilderness, figuratively speaking, is a dry, desolate, difficult, lonely place in life, far from anything familiar.  We rarely go into the wilderness willingly; rather, we are driven into it, as Jesus was driven.¹⁵  The wilderness experience teaches us who we really are, for it strips us of everything we are not.  It is quite often where were are unknowingly prepared for whatever comes next in our lives.  The author tells us that, in the wilderness, Jesus “was with the wild beasts” and that “the angels waited on him” there.  The wilderness is a place of peril, symbolized by the wild beasts, but it is also a place of Providence, symbolized by the angels.  Jesus was never alone in the wilderness, for the same Spirit who drove Him into the wilderness remained with Him as He journeyed through it.¹⁶

By the time Jesus returned to civilization, John had caught the attention of the wrong people and had been arrested and thrown into prison.  It was now up to Jesus to come after John and to take up the task of calling people to repentance, or else the movement John represented would begin to lose momentum.  Unlike John, who taught the people who came to him in the wilderness, Jesus took His message directly to the people.¹⁷  He traveled throughout the region of Galilee, proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  It was this very message and the urgency it warranted that kept Jesus constantly on the move throughout His ministry.

The word Jesus used to describe His message, which is translated into English as either “good news” or “gospel,” is the Greek word euangelion, from which we get the word evangelical.  The word was originally used to describe a proclamation from the Jewish people's Roman oppressors, perhaps news of some imperial victory.¹⁸  Jesus' royal proclamation was that God was doing something new in the world.  In the eloquent words of scholar N.T. Wright,
This was what all Israel had been waiting for.  It wasn't a new piece of good advice.  It wasn't a new political agenda.  It wasn't a new type of spirituality.  It might eventually lead to advice, agendas and certainly to prayer, but it was itself something more than all of these.  It was the good (and extremely dangerous) news that the living God was on the move, was indeed now coming into his kingdom.¹⁹

The Kingdom of God is what God had in mind for humanity since the very beginning.  It is, one might say, a Kingdom “not of this world,”²⁰ a Kingdom fundamentally different from any earthly kingdom that has ever existed.  It is a Kingdom different from the Roman Empire, which maintained peace by crucifying anyone perceived as a threat.  Everything Jesus went on to do throughout His ministry – teaching the crowds, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, cleansing lepers, casting out demons, feeding multitudes, and calming storms – was a manifestation of the reign of God.²¹

Wright points out that Jesus' good news “demanded a definite response,”²² and this response, according to Jesus, was to repent and believe.  The Greek word translated into English as “repentance” is metanoia, which literally means a change of mind.  It is used to describe a change of mind and heart that works itself out as a change of conduct.²³  Jesus' royal proclamation demands a change of mind, for if God is indeed doing something new – something the world has never known – then we must be willing to reconsider everything we think we know.

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A poem by Mary Oliver titled “The Journey” begins, “One day you finally knew / what you had to do, and began, / though the voices around you / kept shouting / their bad advice...”  After years of working as a carpenter, Jesus knew what He finally had to do, and He took the first steps of His journey when He stepped into the waters of baptism.  As He emerged from the water, He received the power of the Holy Spirit and the approval of the Father, both of which He would need on His journey ahead.  The Spirit then drove Jesus into the wilderness, where He faced voices of temptation that attempted to sway Him from doing what He had to do.  He did not heed the voices or their bad advice, for He had already heard the voice of the Father, the only voice He needed to hear.  In the end, the temptations He faced only strengthened His resolve, and, when He returned from the wilderness, He began to make His own voice heard.

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the season on the Church calendar marked by self-denial, soul-searching, and repentance, during which we follow Jesus into the wilderness, figuratively speaking.  During Lent, many chose to give things up – especially those things they tend to use as a crutch – so that they can grow in their reliance on God as they fight temptation.  Some take up new spiritual practices so that they may grow closer to God as they become more disciplined.

I think that this wilderness season is a good time to ponder some of the questions that the story of Jesus' baptism, wilderness experience, and return to civilization might present to us.

What is God calling you to do right now?

What journey do you need to take?

What voices do you need to heed?

What voices do you need to tell to be quiet?

What new thing is God doing in your life or in the world around you?

What changes do you need to make in light of what God is doing?

Consider what you are learning as you journey through the wilderness and what you will do with it when you return.

All of us will journey into the wilderness at various times in our lives, whether it is the wilderness of Lent or a particularly dry and difficult season of life.  When you find yourself in the wilderness, may you listen to the voice telling you that you are a beloved child of God, and may you block out any voice telling you otherwise.  May you know that you are not alone in the wilderness, for God journeys with you.  May you emerge from the wilderness, strengthened in your faith, ready to serve God, as you are equipped by the Spirit.

Amen.


Notes:

1. Adam Hamilton.  Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.  2014, Harper One.  pp. 97-99
2. Brian Zahnd.  “A Burning and Shining Lamp.”  Word of Life Church Podcast, 12/10/2017.
3. Mark 1:2-8 (NRSV)
4. Mark 6:3
5. Justin Martyr.  Dialogue with Trypho.  ch. 88
6. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 20
7. Barclay (Mark), p. 21
8. Barclay (Mark), p. 22
9. Psalm 2:7 (NRSV)
10. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 46
11. Isaiah 42:1-4 (NRSV)
12. Isaiah 53
13. Barclay (Mark), p. 22
14. http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/notes-on-the-gospel-according-to-st-mark/
15. Shane Hipps.  “Driven into Wilderness.”  Trinity Mennonite Church, 03/05/2006.
16. ibid.
17. N.T Wright.  Mark for Everyone.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 9
18. Rob Bell.  NOOMA You | 015.  2007, Zondervan/Flannel.
19. Wright, p. 8
20. John 18:36
21. Richard Byrd Wilke and Julia Kitchens Wilke.  Disciple Fast Track: New Testament Study Manual.  2016, Abingdon Press.  p. 19
22. Wright, p. 8
23. Wikipedia: “Metanoia (theology)”

Christ in the Wilderness was painted by Ivan Kramskoi in 1872.