conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

sermon: gather in the desert

Sermon: The Third Sunday After the Epiphany
Community Church of Wilmette
January 27, 2007
The Feast of St. John, Chrysostom

Gather in the Desert

I think I have discovered my favorite north shore coffee shop. This is good news. It’s taken me most of my 18 months here, but I think I have finally found it. Now I don’t have to drive all the way into Andersonville for my coffee shop experience. I still love Kopi, my favorite place down there, but it’s a bit of a haul for a latte. And when I buy beans I go to Alchemy over by the Linden L station. No question. Get some!

The Brothers K, however, is the perfect coffee shop for me. There’s plenty of room to spread out and read. The guys who run the place are friendly. The customers are friendly, too. They smile and nod at one another. They chat about the weather or the news. There are counters around the perimeter of the space so you can sit in a high chair and look out the windows at the bustling streets. The coffee is great. The food is tasty. And best of all…and this is the perfect selling point for me…it has free (FREE!) wireless internet access. Yes, I can take the computer to the coffee shop and log on to check my email or research the ever-delinquent master’s thesis. It’s perfect. It’s lovely. It’s caffeinated community.

But I’ve noticed something kind of curious. Something else happens when I go to the coffee shop. Something happens when I log on to the internet in this friendly and warm place. I begin to feel isolated. I begin to sense myself as cut off somehow from the people around me. Yes, I e-mail my friends who are all across the globe. I instant-message other pastors about the upcoming Sunday’s scripture readings. Yes, I will even post a picture of the coffee shop on my facebook page. I’m a dork. It cannot be helped.

And yet, yet I feel isolation creep in as I spend time online in the coffee shop. In spite of the technology’s intention to connect me with the world around me, an intention I unhesitatingly embrace I might add, I find that it can just as easily isolate me from the world. I sit in the middle of a warm, gracious community of fellow coffee drinkers and I isolate myself from them. I isolate myself! It just makes no sense to me at all. But there it is. I cannot deny it.

The last couple of weeks I have been preaching about the nature of the Christian spiritual journey. We’ve talked about how it begins, what fuels it, and a possible purpose for such a journey in justice and mercy. Last week we spoke about Dr. King as an example of where a Christian spiritual journey might lead us. It can transform us. It can transform the world around us. There is one aspect to the Christian spiritual journey that we have yet to discuss, however, and that is the desert.

The desert (or the wilderness) is an archetypical reality of the Christian spiritual journey. Entire Christian movements owe their identification to the desert. For centuries, men and women mystics guided the spiritual life of the church from the deserts of Africa and the Middle East. Jesus himself will journey into the desert, the wilderness, to find solitude and the presence of God. Hear these words from Matthew’s gospel.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are 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 a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Christ’s retreat into the wilderness comes just after he is baptized and just before our reading from Matthew this morning where he proclaims that the Kingdom of God has come near and he calls Peter, Andrew, James and John. Somehow the desert gets skipped in the assigned readings. It gets put off until Lent where we often “pretty up” the desert somehow, making it pleasant. We want our spiritual journeys to be pleasant and warm. Of course we do. I know I do. But this omitted moment of Jesus’ life suggests that sometimes, sometimes our journeys simply aren’t easy. Sometimes we simply struggle and the voice of God goes silent. And the omission is an admission that we do not know what to do when the wilderness calls.

Jesus goes out into the desert to fast and pray for 40 days. He meets the Devil there. And the Devil offers up a variety of temptations. I can see isolation in each of these temptations. Isolation can drive us insane. Isolation causes us to forget our true purpose, our true nature, and the intention that God has placed upon each of our souls. So much can isolate us. So much can serve the purpose of the desert for us. So much can be the place of temptation in our lives.

I could list a bunch of -ism's here. Consumerism can be a desert. Capitalism is a desert. Racism, sexism, oppression of any kind can be a desert. I could say that our success-driven lives can be deserts. Addictions are signs of the desert as well. We isolate ourselves in these deserts. The desert is a dry place where little grows. The wilderness is the dry place of the spirit where God’s voice seems silent and all the alternatives to grace call to us.

Jesus fasts and prays in the desert. He went looking for solitude. What he found, however, was a mix of solitude and isolation. He found temptation and the restorative presence of God. The desert mystics also speak of the difficulties of solitude, the reality of the devils of our imaginations, our hearts, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. There is always a mix of both. It is unavoidable. So we have to choose. We have to choose between isolation and solitude.

The suburbs can be isolating places. "Bedroom communities" are barely communities at all and isolation is rampant. Suburban sprawl spreads us too thinly. And our technological solutions to such isolation can become traps. There I sit in a coffee shop, a place designed for community and yet I slip into isolation. I turn my back on the people around me and turn my eyes to a computer screen.

We always seem to slip into some way of forgetting one another and ourselves, of isolating ourselves from one another. Churches can help alleviate that difficulty by providing community. Certainly. Churches can provide fellowship, and they should. It's a wonderful ministry. And once we learn fellowship in the church, we can begin to create it on our own as well. Phone calls to and dinners with our friends can help break cycles of isolation.

Is it also possible that churches can teach solitude? Can churches teach us healthy ways of being alone so that we might begin to recognize when we have fallen into isolation? Because, honestly, I am not sure I can always tell the difference. Henri Nouwen writes:

I believe you can look at solitude, community, and ministry as three disciplines by which we create space for God. If we create space in which God can act and speak, something surprising will happen. You and I are called to these disciplines if we want to be disciples.

Solitude and isolation are two sides to the same coin. Isolation is akin to abandonment and rejection. Sometimes we choose it. Sometimes it is foisted upon us. Solitude, however, is an opportunity to recognize that we are, each of us, God’s own creation, beloved and free. Solitude, as Nouwen states, teaches us how to create space in our own lives for God.

It may be that when we try to find quiet times of solitude it’s simply inevitable that we slip into isolation. But why? Perhaps the answer is loneliness. Perhaps, we simply don’t know what to do with our own loneliness.

Loneliness is painful. It’s that simple. And we want to avoid pain. So we have choices. Like Christ in the desert we are given choices to alleviate our loneliness. We are offered quick fixes to our loneliness. We wall ourselves off in gated communities hoping this will alleviate the loneliness. We segregate ourselves. We separate ourselves crafting ghettos and enclaves, cliques and even facebook group pages all in the attempt to stave off the loneliness and in the process we create simply more isolation. Loneliness comes, brothers and sisters, but it does not have to drive us into isolation.

Most of the great spiritual witnesses within the Christian tradition speak of incredible loneliness. Once again, Mother Teresa comes to mind. We cannot deny the place of the desert in our spiritual journeys. And we cannot deny the power of loneliness. But if solitude teaches us anything, it teaches us to make room for God. Isolation does not make room for God. Isolation insists that we fill our lives with things, spiritual and physical detritus, junk, stuff or mess that does not allow for God to move in. Some how, some way, we have to move from isolation into solitude. Solitude teaches us about God. And from solitude we can proclaim the presence of God in the world. We can move into the world from the wilderness as Christ does, calling those who would serve God.

Glenn Hinson writes, “Loneliness is a crucible for grace.” Through loneliness we learn compassion. We learn what it means to be outcast. We can experience the solidarity of Christ who begs on the cross “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” We can hear the lonely voice of God who says in the words of the psalmist “O that my people would heed me, that Israel would walk in my ways!” (Ps. 80:14) God’s love is spurned. And Christ cries in anguish. Loneliness comes. But we cannot begin to understand this reality of the presence of God in loneliness until we understand the difference between solitude and isolation.

Cannot the church be a place, a community, where we learn about the grace that comes in the loneliness of solitude? This can be the root of compassion in places like a sprawling suburb. This kind of compassion can speak out against divisive competition, and an economics that teaches us how to sacrifice one another. The churches once spoke out against white flight, that movement of racial isolation. Now we have to speak out against the other forces that isolate us.

Christ comes out of the desert to meet us where we are. He calls us to cry out with him, “God is here!” We are a gathering, a community in the desert. Together we can proclaim the Kingdom of heaven, a way out of isolation, and a way that makes room in our lives for God.

Amen.

Posted by tripp at January 27, 2008 07:45 AM