Wilderness - T'shuvah Part 1 (Lent 1)
On any given day, something
like this happens at my house:
I walk into the bathroom
where I discover the hand towel is missing, and I realize that there are clean
towels in the laundry room that need to be brought upstairs.
As I walk out of the
bathroom, I spot an empty glass that needs taken to the kitchen to be
washed.
I pick up the glass, head down
the stairs, find a few dishes in the sink that haven’t made it into the
dishwasher.
I rinse dishes, stack them in
the dishwasher and look at the clock – 11:50 (and my wrist buzzes, because at 10
minutes before the hour, my Fitbit must remind me that I’m trying to get a
minimum of 250 steps that hour – 138 to go!)
and so I walk to the mailbox,
because the mail is usually delivered around 11 and that will burn up some
steps.
I pick up the mail, sift
through the pile, sort out the junk mail that goes right to the recycling bin
and open a note from a friend…
which reminds me that on my
to do list is the task of writing a thank you note to someone.
So I head upstairs, pull out
a notecard and write a quick note.
Hmm. There are no stamps in
my drawer…so I walk downstairs and find my wallet, which generally has a stash
of stamps.
But also in my wallet is a
receipt from a recent expense for the seminary.
So I run upstairs to put in
on my desk in the right pile.
And then I grab my glass of
water which is empty and head to the bathroom to fill it because I’m thirsty.
Where I notice there is still
no clean hand towel.
And so…I head back to the
laundry room.
That, my friends, is a pretty
common thing at my house.
How about yours?
I think that kind of
resembles what it looks like at times to try follow God – you know…that Way we
just spent five weeks talking about?
It seems to have a lot of
moments when we’ve gotten off-track and we’ve forgotten our why. We’ve
forgotten our ultimate destination.
We’ve forgotten that it’s all about God.
This Sunday is the first
Sunday in Lent. Often in Lent we focus on the things we do wrong. The things we
are not doing. The church has
historically focused on sin and repentance during these forty days.
We’re still focusing on an
idea related to repentance, but it is even more ancient. And I think it’s more
helpful.
We’re focused on the idea of
t’shuvah. Which is an ancient Hebrew
word. When we think of repentance, we
often think of turning away from sin.
But the word t’shuvah is just a wee bit more nuanced than that. T’shuvah really focuses on turning…toward
what is Good. Turning toward God.
To fully embrace the idea of t’shuvah, I think we also have to be clear about what sin is. Sin is that which separates us from God. Sometimes we want to be able to come up with an itemized list of what sin is and what sin isn’t. I am sorry to tell you – it’s not quite that simple.
Sin is that which separates
us from God. And then, t’shuvah is the
work of mending that separation -- of moving back toward our relationship with
God.
And for me, that connects to
the discussion we’ve had over the previous five weeks – about The Way – The Way
as the path we have with and toward our relationship with God. The way to God. The Way that Jesus showed us in his
lifetime.
So…it’s almost as if we’ve
talked about the map of this journey we’re on. We’ve talked about the
path. And now, we’re talking about the
times we find ourselves “off the map” or straying from the path. The times we’re distracted from relentlessly
pursuing God. The times we get metaphorically
distracted by the dirty glass, and the Fitbit and the mail and our thirst,
forgetting the original plan.
Let’s start with something very
important... t’shuvah – returning to the good – is rooted in our beginnings –
our beginnings created by God, in which God said, “it is very good.” So we’re not beginning as sinful beings. We’re beginning in the beginning, when we
were created in all of God’s goodness.
So let’s turn to our
scriptures for this week that point us to the wilderness.
I’m a big fan of
“wilderness.” It’s one of those recurring
themes in the Bible – folks get lost in the wilderness, folks wander in the
wilderness, folks wrestle in the wilderness.
Ishmael, son of Hagar and
Abram, grows up in the wilderness after he’s driven out of Abram’s household. Jacob wrestles with God while sleeping beside
a river in the wilderness. Moses leads the Hebrews through the wilderness over
40 years with God’s guidance. Jesus is
driven out into the wilderness after being baptized by John in the Jordan.
Wilderness seems to be a
place of “lostness,”
Lostness has its place, I
think, in keeping us turning toward goodness.
Lostness has a place, I
think, in helping us know where we are and where we are NOT. Lostness can be a place where we are keenly
aware that we’re not on the right path.
In our lostness, I think that
the stuff of wilderness turns on all of the warning sirens for us, it fires all
the endorphins. I think about the scenes
of Snow White running through the scary woods where tree branches seem to reach
out for her and tree roots slow her down. I think about all that the students
of Hogwarts learned in the Forbidden Forest – sometimes you make friends in the
wilderness places, friends who will help you out of a pinch.
And yet, the wildness
referenced in the Bible was generally NOT a big dark forest. It was a wide expanse of dessert where no
landmark could be seen, where the sun beat down and the night were probably
quite cold. Where the place where the sky met the earth was blurred…
Wilderness is also a place of
discovery. It is a place that causes us
to have to slow down, think about what we’re doing. It can feel dark and
isolating, and so we might feel great motivation to move along…to find our way
out. We can learn things in the
wilderness…
Look at all the Hebrews
learned – they learned that God could and would provide – day-by-day enough
manna to eat. They learned to trust
Moses’ leadership.
This wilderness…it has
something to do with t’shuvah! It has something to do with the way we are
called to turn back to goodness.
In the text from Deuteronomy
is a reminder and instruction. When you
finally come into the Promised Land, remember all that has happened to you and
your people over generations. Remember
what God has done for you, and make an appropriate tithe in the Temple.
Israel’s faith in God is
rooted in a story of God’s faithfulness, even when the people failed to keep
covenant. God just kept showing up. God was revealed in wilderness times again
and again.
God is with us in our wilderness times. God is with us in those times when we cannot quite remember where the path is. Even in our lostness, there is God. Can we remember in those moments, even if we cannot see our hands before our faces for the darkness that surrounds us, that God has been with us in the past and is with us now and will be with us….and not just with us but for us?
When Jesus comes up out of
the waters of the Jordan after John’s baptism, he is filled with the power of
the Holy Spirit and immediately drive into the…
WILDERNESS.
At the beginning of LENT we
read this story often dramatically entitled The Temptation of Christ... And yes, it is a story about temptation. But I want us to hold on to the thing that
bears Jesus through this wilderness time.
Jesus relies on obedience to
God.
For every temptation set
before him, he cites a key piece of the Law – a key tenet in Jewish
faithfulness to God.
One does not live by bread
alone.
Worship the Lord your God and
serve only him.
Do not put the Lord your God
to the text.
I have this image – a steely
eyed Jesus looking temptation in the eye and just saying….
Only God.
And the devil shows up with
the next alluring thing.
And Jesus looks temptation in
the eye and says,
Only God.
Only God.
Let’s remember too that
detail about Jesus’ state of being when he was driven into the wilderness. He was filled with the Holy Spirit.
He was prayed up, you could
say.
He was full of assurance that
he was beloved of God.
He had just heard from God –
this is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.
He was full of the Holy
Spirit.
And like the instructions
given in Deuteronomy…
He was able to remember that
God was with him.
That Deuteronomy passage
offers some guidance.
Remember:
What has God done for me in
the past?
What can I ask God to do for
me now?
Who can walk with me in this
Wilderness?
Can I remember how I was
created for goodness?
Can I remember that I bear
the image of God?
Can I give thanks for what
God has done?
Sometimes our journey toward
God with God as we follow The Way looks suspiciously like me trying to put a
clean hand towel in the bathroom.
Except the distractions are
bigger.
We’re distracted by
self-reliance. We’re distracted by money
and stuff. We’re distracted by Facebook
and the evening news and gossip. We’re
distracted by a drive to be right. We’re
distracted by putting ourselves first. We’re distracted by judgment.
It’s a wild place in the
wilderness. But wilderness is where we get our loudest reminders that it is
time to turn back toward God.
T’shuvah!
In this season of Lent, while
we are watching for how we are or are not on The Way that leads us back to God,
we can take our cues from the lostness of the wilderness.
We can remember what God has
done, is doing, will do.
We remember that we are
beloved.
We remember God is with us.
And…
T’shuvah!
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