Revd Mark Bonney
What bold, almost violent,
language was part of that gospel reading. “The spirit drove
Jesus into the wilderness.” The
Greek word is ekballo – literally to throw out, to eject. And rightly
so because the wilderness or the desert as it is also known, isn’t a jolly
place to be – its’ the place of wild beasts – here a pictorial phrase to
describe the inner battles that Jesus underwent and that in another tradition
are amplified in the accounts of Matthew and Luke – it’s the place of
struggle, or aloneness and of waiting on God.
The wilderness and the desert
are vital places in the Jewish and Christian tradition. In going into the
wilderness Jesus mirrors the emergence of Israel – it was there they learnt
the naked dependence upon God. Abraham was set free from the false Gods of his
past history in the desert; Moses and those who came with him in the Exodus
found the desert a place of revelation and spiritual struggle; the people moaned
and complained in the desert as the people of God have always moaned and
complained; it was in the wilderness that God spoke from Mount Sinai to Moses
and gave the commandments; the picture throughout is one in which murmuring and
groaning are mingled with refreshment and revelation.
Before his battle with the
prophets of Baal, Elijah ran into the desert and encountered God in the still
small voice. John the Baptist was a voice crying in the wilderness, Jesus was
driven there. For early Christian writers the desert is a symbol of being on the
move, of journeying towards God –of having no abiding city.
Those who were at the Solemn
Eucharist on Ash Wednesday will have heard me talk a little about the so called
Desert Fathers - a group of people
in the 4th century who reacted against the now politically OK form of
Christianity under Constantine and went in protest, and in seeking purity in the
desert. These Desert Fathers have left a quarry of writings and pithy sayings
– reminders that the desert is the place of truly facing up to who we are and
who God is. Here’s one example of what one of the fathers said to two visiting
monks who asked about his life in the desert.
“Come, let us each go and fill
a vessel with water; and after they had filled the vessel, he said to them,
‘Pour out some water into a basin, and look down to the bottom of it’, and
they did so: and he said to them, ‘What do you see?’ and they said, ‘We
see nothing’. And after the water in the basin had ceased to move, he said a
second time, ‘Look into the water’, and they looked, and he said again,
‘Whom do you see?’ And they said, ‘we see our faces distinctly’. And he
said to them, ‘ Thus it is with the man who dwells with men, for by reason of
the disturbance of the world he cannot see his sins; but if he lives the peace
and quiet of the desert, he is able to see God clearly.”
It would be silly to suggest
that we should all hurry off to the desert today – and there’s not much
desert around here anyway – at least not in literal terms. But there are some
aspects of desert spirituality that are important for all of us.
And I will mention just four
things.
Firstly simplicity. A
main theme of the desert spiritual tradition is detachment – not being
dependent on things and people – a letting go of everything and coming to an
utter reliance on God. So much of what we busy ourselves with, not least in
church and parish life obscures God – religion and its paraphernalia can get
in the way of God. The simplicity that we’re talking of isn’t grand or
dramatic, but humdrum, ordinary and hidden. The great spiritual writer Thomas
Merton said, “we need to be emptied. Otherwise prayer is only a game. And yet
it is pride to want to be stripped and humbled in the grand manner with thunder
and lightening. The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear
into the background of ordinary routine.”
I find that a very provocative thought.
The second thing about desert
spirituality is waiting. We British are great at waiting in queues, but
not so good at waiting in our praying. We feel that we have to do something –
silence is frightening – sometimes because we can find ourselves difficult to
be with. A desert spirituality is largely a praying without words – waiting
empty handed, open to the moving of the Spirit – away from the morass of words
that tells God what he should or shouldn’t do.
Thirdly desert spirituality is
about struggle. The wild beasts have to be grappled with. So much in our
conventional religious life is geared towards safety rather than sanctity. We
want to be happy when the call of Christ is to be holy, we ant to be comfortable
when the call of Christ is to be converted, we want to be secure when the call
of Christ is to be saved. The struggle of desert spirituality says it’s OK to
be conscious of loneliness, of the threat of meaningless and the emptiness of
life – its’ OK to have doubts and questions – and without them the
struggle doesn’t begin and we don’t move on in the journey of faith. It’s
not nice when it happens, but the God of the burning bush is a burning firs and
not a warm cosy glow (though the bush is not consumed).
And finally the heart of desert
spirituality is adoration. For many of us who will going again on
pilgrimage to Walsingham next weekend a most profound time is the service of
what is known as Benediction. At this service the consecrated host/bread is
placed in what’s called a monstrance – it’s displayed on the altar and we
kneel in silence and adore the presence of Christ in the sacrament. There’s a
profundity about silent adoration before the presence of Christ in the sacrament
of the altar that words aren’t capable of expressing. Like the manna in the
desert of the OT the bread and wine of the Eucharist is principally given as
food for our spiritual journey, but we shouldn’t cast aside the deep tradition
which also sees the reserved sacrament as a place of prayer and adoration.
Through the lowly form of bread Jesus graces certain places with his sacramental
presence – one such place is in what has been the Lady Chapel in this church.
It’s rather in danger of becoming a ‘nothing’ place and I hope that
planned changes at the other end of this building don’t lose sight of
reverence customarily accorded to the reserved sacrament.
As Jesus was driven into the
desert by the spirit I believe that the church today is being driven again in
that direction – driven to be simple, to wait, to struggle and to adore. May
we be given the grace this Lent to make our own deserts, our own space within
the turmoil of daily living so we can begin to follow the way of simplicity, of
waiting, of struggle and of adoration – adoration of the one and only living
God, father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.