1^st Sunday in LENT ST. DAVID’S FEB 2021

    My 12-year-old grandson in Quebec stayed home by himself on a professional day when both his parents had to work. They called him several times to check on him, but when my son got home, he was sitting by himself, with a teddy bear in tears. It was the first time he had ever experienced loneliness! Being completely alone for many people is a foreign occurrence. It can be like a wilderness ordeal or being out in the desert. I once got lost in the woods north of Fort St. John off the Alaska Highway. I was in the wilderness for several days with no food. I had a horse and eventually found my way across the Halfway River to a logging camp. The wilderness can be an extreme place. We are stripped of all our supports and the distractions that we normally surround ourselves with. We are exposed body and soul to chaos, fear and our own inner demons: hamburger hallucinations! Sometimes we end up in the wilderness by choice, or circumstance. It can also be a time of grace and a place of God’s closeness. Look what happened to Jesus.

“Immediately afterwards, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for 40 days, tempted by Satan and he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him.” (Mark 1:12-13) This happened at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, after his baptism, just before he would begin to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God. For him to go there was to make himself really vulnerable, to go through a test. It was a little like the classic pattern of male initiation. You come out with a new identity, a new sense of mission and call and you have a clear view of your destiny. So, Jesus was called to a destiny, but he had to go through the temptations first. Do you and I think of ourselves as having a destiny? Do you think we will actually, really live it out? Will we be a disappointment to God? Will we fail to be what we were meant to be? When do we ever think about stuff like this? In the wilderness. There, you can hear every little voice going on inside your being. What does the term “wilderness” mean? Sometimes we put ourselves there by making bad decisions and we end up lost and in dire straits. It can be brought on by an illness, a big change, a death, a separation, or some kind of loss that removes our normal securities. Sometimes we need to put ourselves in the wilderness, to take stock, to do some self assessment, or to ask ourselves some important questions about what is happening in our lives. It is like a time-out to get in touch with our deepest places. Who am I and where am I going and where is God in all of this? This requires lots of silence otherwise we can’t hear the voice of our inner being. During this time of COVID some of us are experiencing a form of enforced isolation, which can be like a wilderness, courtesy of Dr. Bonnie Henry!

Jesus needed to go to a place like that before he began his ministry. His baptism had been a religious experience for him. For us such an experience can be like an opening up of Heaven and a new vision. A new life begins. The Bible talks about being born again or being born from above. Jesus becomes real in our lives. We get new eyes and we become sons and daughters and have a new identity in God.

The first temptation starts out, “If you are the son of God…” It is the temptation to doubt that we really are God’s son or daughter. We have to start with this issue. That is the foundation and if we don’t get that figured out then we really don’t know who we are at a deep level. Until we know our identity in God, we don’t have much to say. Basic conversion is a completely changed sense of our identity, of who we are. It is no longer just me, myself and I all alone, but me-in, me-with, and me and Another. So, it makes sense that the voice of evil wants to challenge that idea: “If you are a son?” The test for us is that we get distracted and lured away from our spiritual centre. We lose the grip, the focus, the desire, we step out of the connection and lose the presence, the light and the fire go out. We lose our centre, our foundation and get out of sorts with ourselves, others and God. We run out of gas, going on empty, dry, and lose our power. We lose our call. We are all called, and it is the highest calling in the universe. It is our destiny as Christians. But we leave the Holy Place, and we abandon our destiny in God. How many people do we know who are almost like the walking dead? How does this happen? Evil power is real, and it can have a powerful effect on us. The wild beasts within us can plague us. We need to change our direction, we need to turn around, we need to change the way we are seeking our satisfaction. That is what repentance is. Jesus faced those demons and the wild animals which inhabit humans. I am talking about “inner wild animals” here. Modern psychology talks about “the shadow”. Some religious people try to repress their dark energies with self conscious control. Unfortunately, the dark side of our beings emerges like crab grass through the concrete. Repression doesn’t work.

If we are serious about the Kingdom that Jesus announced and want to live that reality, then we need to go to the wilderness and deal with our own deeply seated evil. Part of being a Christian means being willing to change. That’s why Christians go on retreats, take courses and seek spiritual direction. At a certain point in all of this we begin to realize the need for a spiritual practice. It is not enough to attend church from time to time. This is our personal work, and we need to take ownership of our own growth, otherwise we stay at a shallow level that can go on for years without any important growth at all. We get stuck. Some people think that once you become a Christian then you’re in. But that’s just the beginning. We have just gotten our driver’s license. Then what do we do? How do we move on and grow in this faith? Being in the wilderness can be hard work. It can be a place of spiritual warfare, encountering the places, those concerns where we are stuck and resistant. What are those issues for you and me?

One of my fellow clergy posed an important question that challenged me. He asked, “What is it that your soul needs in order for you to become closer to God?” We are now in the Lenten season and this is the time for us to wrestle with that question. The spaces in our lives that could be infused with the Divine Presence are occupied with many other things. What are they and how should we empty ourselves to make more room for the Lord?

The purpose of Lent is to come back to our destiny. But you and I each have a destiny, the purpose for which we exist. It is why God made us. There is a divine call on each one of us. We have to wake up to it…. We have to hear it…. We have to see it…. It names us…. It tells us who we are and why we are…. We are much more than we think. Many of us are stuck on some side-track somewhere, wasting ourselves away. So, today, I say: be reconciled to God, whatever it takes and ask the Lord to come into our lives to pick us up and hold us and give us that touch of his grace so that we can be all that we were meant to be, “more than we can ask or imagine”, fully human and alive!