Surviving the Desert

Scripture Ezekiel 37:1-14   (CEB). 

37 The Lord’s power overcame me, and while I was in the Lord’s spirit, he led me out and set me down in the middle of a certain valley. It was full of bones. 2 He led me through them all around, and I saw that there were a great many of them on the valley floor, and they were very dry.

3 He asked me, “Human one, can these bones live again?” 

I said, “Lord God, only you know.”

4 He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, Dry bones, hear the Lord’s word! 5 The Lord God proclaims to these bones: I am about to put breath in you, and you will live again. 6 I will put sinews on you, place flesh on you, and cover you with skin. When I put breath in you, and you come to life, you will know that I am the Lord.”

7 I prophesied just as I was commanded. There was a great noise as I was prophesying, then a great quaking, and the bones came together, bone by bone. 8 When I looked, suddenly there were sinews on them. The flesh appeared, and then they were covered over with skin. But there was still no breath in them.

9 He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, human one! Say to the breath, The Lord God proclaims: Come from the four winds, breath! Breathe into these dead bodies and let them live.”

10 I prophesied just as he commanded me. When the breath entered them, they came to life and stood on their feet, an extraordinarily large company.

11 He said to me, “Human one, these bones are the entire house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely finished.’ 12 So now, prophesy and say to them, The Lord God proclaims: I’m opening your graves! I will raise you up from your graves, my people, and I will bring you to Israel’s fertile land. 13 You will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you up from your graves, my people. 14 I will put my breath in you, and you will live. I will plant you on your fertile land, and you will know that I am the Lord. I’ve spoken, and I will do it. This is what the Lord says.”

***********************************************************

The title of today’s message is “Surviving the Desert.”  I selected the passage and the title in early February, long before we had any idea that we would be facing a pandemic, and attending worship from our homes.  At that time I was focused on the theme the Spiritual Growth Team selected for Lent - the Road Home.  As I planned each sermon for Lent I was thinking of road trips and the different roads I have taken to get home physically.  One of those roads runs through Death Valley, which can be a pretty stark landscape, and seems to go on forever.  The mountains in the distance don’t even look real.  They look like a painted backdrop in one of those old TV Westerns - Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid.   But the desert is not always that way.  Sometimes it blooms, and when it blooms it is astounding.  Life, abundant life, vibrant colorful life, springs forth miraculously from the desert floor and from the dunes and the hills.  Knowing that about Death Valley, I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted this message to go.

But then, stuff happened.   Covid19 happened.  We had to make difficult decisions about keeping the congregation, and everyone we are all connected with, healthy.  We are, most of us, now sheltering in place.  If you are seeing this, it is through the miracle of the Interwebz.  (I will make sure it is mailed to people who are not connected to the internet.). We are praying that we get this right the first time - the music and the message, candles and prayers - the Lord’s Supper.   We are pretty sure that won’t happen, cause technology, but we are praying for a good outcome with minimal glitches.  

So God took Ezekiel and set him in the middle of a Valley - this is where my Death Valley imagery came from - and that valley was full of bones, dry bones, entirely lifeless bones.  This sometimes happened in ancient days, that a piece of land would be full of bones.  After a great battle, the bodies of the common soldiers were left where they fell.  When God asked Ezekiel if those bones could come back to life, Ezekiel, a very wise man, said “I dunno. You know, but I don’t.” So Ezekiel spoke the words God gave him to speak and the skeletal remains became flesh.  But not yet living beings.  Because God had not yet put the breath of life into them.   But when Ezekiel, at God’s command, called the breath to come from the four winds and fill the bodies, they lived again and stood on their feet.  Ezekiel trusted the Lord, enough to follow directions, and when he did that, the people came to life again, and they knew that God was Lord.

Right this minute, we may feel like those dry bones in the desert.   We may feel alone, isolated, because we cannot leave our homes.  We cannot gather together for worship or Bible Study or any of the other ways we usually interact with other people.  We may be frightened.   We hear this thing and that thing and the things we hear contradict each other.  We don’t know who to listen to.  We don’t know who to trust.

And I say, Trust the Lord.  I chose this passage, this dry bones in the desert passage, in February!   I found the Lenten Candle Lighting meditation for today - in February!  Let’s hear that again:

God has proven trustworthy throughout history, but at times we question and doubt, and even deny, God’s presence in our lives. We worry and fret about what is happening and what will happen next, rather than trusting in our Savior.

Right now we have no idea what will happen next with this virus.  We have heard predictions and guesstimates, but really, no human knows for sure what will happen next.  We know only that we are on a road that is completely unfamiliar,  and the best way to travel on any road is one mile at a time, one step at a time.

To help each other on the Road Home through what might seem like a desert filled with dry bones, reach out.  Make phone calls.  Encourage one another.  Read the Bible and pray  together on the phone.   Pray for those who must continue to work and risk exposure - our first responders, health care providers, grocery workers, truckers, and all the others who are doing their best to get us all through this.   And as we breathe life and hope into each other’s hearts, the desert will bloom, and it will be glorious.  

We are halfway through Lent.   We may be looking ahead to Holy Week, specifically to Good Friday - to the passion of Christ - the arrest, the torture, the death on the cross.  We might be stuck in the idea that this road we are on, this Road Home, is the road to the Cross.   And it is.  But the Cross is not the end of the road. It is a stop on the way, not the destination. The Empty Tomb is.  The end of the Lenten Road, the Road Home, is the Resurrection.   And so we continue on our Road Home, through the desert and beyond, with trust in God. Amen.

***********************************************************

Because we were not meeting in person, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated online, as follows:

I don’t know whether we will be worshipping in person together on April 12 - the date of Easter Sunday this year - but I do know that whenever that happens, whenever we get back together, whenever we reach the end of this road of uncertainty we are currently traveling, we will celebrate the Resurrection. 

And we will do that now, as well.  Because when we come together, whenever we come together, we celebrate the Resurrection by sharing the Lord’s Supper.  We remember Jesus’ sacrifice, yes.  But the Lord’s Supper is not merely a memorial of Christ’s death. It is a celebration of his resurrection. And when we share this meal, we are breaking bread with the living and reigning Christ who is present in our midst. 

For on the night he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his disciples in the Upper Room for one final meal.  And at the beginning of the meal, he took the bread an after giving thanks to God for it, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is broken for you.”  When the meal had ended he took the cup, and again giving thanks, blessed it saying, “This cup is the new covenant, my blood poured out in love for the forgiveness of sin. Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me until I come again.”

I invite everyone “here” with us this morning to join me in this meal.   If you have bread (or cracker) and cup of juice (or water or wine)  - you may eat and drink when you are ready. If you don’t, please pray as you would during the Lord’s Supper if we were together.

Partake and Pray

We thank you Lord, for the gift of your love, the forgiveness of sin, witnessed in the sacrifice of your son, Jesus, and in the resurrection.  May the elements we have shared this day give us the strength to do your will, and spread the Good News, especially in these difficult days.  Amen.

Following Directions

Scripture Genesis 12:1-4   (CEB) 

12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

3  I will bless those who bless you,
    those who curse you I will curse;
        all the families of the earth
            will be blessed because of you.”

4 Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.

****************************************************

Many of you are well aware that I am directionally challenged. If I name a place  and point toward it, I will invariably have pointed in the opposite direction of where that place actually is.  And that includes the church parking lot while I am standing in my office.  Directions that include words like North or South or whatever are pretty much useless.  Left and right are good.  So are landmarks. Tell me something like “go 6.2 miles on that road and turn right at the orange house.”   So it should come as no surprise that I rely heavily on Siri to help me get from point A to point B and back again.  Yesterday as I was about to head home from Vacaville where I had been attending a mandatory anti-racism training, I stopped for gas near Interstate 80 and then told Siri “get directions home.”   I mean, I knew the directions were basically “take 80 to Sacramento, turn right at 99 and follow that to Selma.”  Easy Peasy.  But you know, I am perfectly capable of going the wrong direction on even a familiar freeway for miles and miles without noticing a problem, so it’s just safer to have Siri direct me.  Siri says, “Make a U-turn on Depot Street.” OK.  Then “In 2.6 miles turn right on Leisure Valley.”  And I’m all “But Siri, there’s the freeway right there.  Why are we going away from it?”  Siri didn’t respond to my question, so I just kept following his directions.  As we drove further and further in the “wrong” direction I kept asking Siri what on earth he was doing - he never did answer me! - but I kept following his directions. I did notice that the distance to home was getting smaller - as were the roads I was traveling in between crops and cattle and windmills - so I kept following his directions.  I had no idea where I was or even what direction I was traveling in, but hey, it was a pretty nice ride through the countryside.  I crossed 3 drawbridges over pretty rivers.  Nice.  Eventually I ended up on I5 South, found my way to 99S in Stockton, and came home.    

We first heard of Abram just a few verses earlier, at the end of the list of Noah’s descendants. All we really learn is that his father Terah was 70 when Abram was born, Abram was married to Sarai, and that Terah’s family had moved from Ur to Haran, including Abram, Sarai, and Lot.  On today’s maps that is like moving from just north of the Persian Gulf in Iraq, up along the Euphrates River through Syria to just barely over the Turkish border.   We are going to assume that his family still knew of the God who sent Noah out in the ark - the flood had only been 350 years or so earlier.  Of course, the whole Tower of Babel confusion of languages thing happened in between Noah’s story and Abram’s, and if we learn nothing else from the Old Testament it is that people are really good at forgetting about God . . but we are going to assume Abram knew about this particular God, because if we believe that these patriarchs really did live for centuries, then Abram was a toddler when Noah died, and Noah’s son Shem, who had been on the Ark, lived until Abram was about 150.  Abram would most likely have known Shem, and the stories about God’s relationship with their family.  So he would have, should have known about the power of this God who spoke to him.

So God, this particular God . . . the one we know today as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses, the one who had saved Abram’s ancestors from the flood . . . that God, came to Abram and told him to pick up his entire life and move to who knew where.  The rewards set out were pretty attractive.    . . . . “You will be a great nation and your name will be respected, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”  And did you notice that there were no threats at all - no “be obedient or I will smite thee!”  God expected that Abram would obey, and he did so, without question.  So in verse 5 “Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of their possessions, and those who became members of their household in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan.”  I realize that the reading today only went to verse 4, but verse 5 is important, because it tells us that , unlike Moses hundreds of years later, Abram knew where he was heading.  He was heading to the very place his father had been heading toward when he left Ur, but never got that far. Instead he stopped and settled in Haran.   But God’s plans for this family included the land.   So God came to Abram and said, “Pack up all your stuff and leave your comfortable life.  Leave your parents and all your other relatives.  I have something better in mind for you. Just do what I tell you and I will bless you in ways you cannot imagine.”  

Abram would have many adventures in the 100 years between leaving Haran and his death.  You can read about those adventures in Genesis.  He did some really smart things, and some not so smart things, but the one thing he always did, the one thing that Abram is best known for, is following directions. Obedience.  Beginning here, with this instruction to leave his family and all the familiar things, and go to a new place, from this time forward whenever God says, “Do this thing”, Abram does it.   Some of the things God insisted upon were incredibly difficult - but Abram trusted that if he did what God told him to do, all would be well. Leave home.  OK.  Change your name.  OK.  Sacrifice your child.  OK.  Wait, what?  Beginning here, with leaving home, Abram would prove over and over again that he was willing to follow God’s directions even when he was asked to do the unimaginable.  And yes, Abraham’s descendants became a great nation, and his name is still respected some 4,000 years later!  Three major world religions revere his name.   God’s promises to him have been fulfilled. 

Abram apparently knew exactly when God was talking to him.  I don’t know if he heard a voice in his head, or what.  The Bible doesn’t tell us how he recognized God’s voice.  But he knew God’s voice.  He could hear God’s instructions and follow them.  It’s often more difficult for us to figure out when God is talking to us.  Sometimes God speaks through our conscience. If you feel like something might be a little hinky, chances are good that it is and you shouldn’t do it.  Sometimes God speaks to us through other people, as when people recognize gifts that we don’t see in ourselves.  Sometimes there is a sign, or a series of signs. It usually takes me a while to hear it. I often have to be hit upside the head with a God by four.  And sometimes we do hear a voice that we know is God’s.   When I was one of the chaplain interns at the Indiana State Psychiatric Hospital the head Psychiatrist was mentioning various diagnoses and said, “if they think God is telling them to do things, they are schizophrenic.”  The five of us students looked each other and Hal said, “Uh, most of us in this room believe God has spoken to us.”  The doctor said, “And I believe he did.  The way to tell the difference is this - if the voice is telling you to do good things, it is God. If it is telling you to hurt people, you need medication.”  However God’s instructions come to us, it is important to follow directions.   

Just as I depend on Siri to keep me from getting lost between one place and another, so we should all depend upon God to guide us on our way.  We may not recognize we are being led or why we are being led that way, but the Good News is that if we let God lead us, if we follow God’s directions, we cannot go wrong.  We will always end up exactly where we need to be.  For we are God’s people, the adopted descendants of Abram, and we know that the promise God made to him, that “all the families of the earth will be blessed because of him" continue to be fulfilled among us.

The Journey Begins

Scripture. Matthew 4:1-11.  CEB. 

1 Then the Spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness so that the devil might tempt him. 2 After Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights, he was starving. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “Since you are God’s Son, command these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.”

5 After that the devil brought him into the holy city and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, 6 “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down; for it is written, I will command my angels concerning you, and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.” 

7 Jesus replied, “Again it’s written, Don’t test the Lord your God.”

8 Then the devil brought him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 He said, “I’ll give you all these if you bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written,You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”  11 The devil left him, and angels came and took care of him.

********************************************************

Lent began on Ash Wednesday.  Like other Christians all over the globe, people gathered here to mark the beginning of the Lenten journey, accepting the mark of repentance - a cross made of ashes on their foreheads.  Lent is a journey toward God, a road home.  Beginning with today’s worship, we are lighting a candle every Sunday during Lent to light the way.  

Fasting for forty days and forty nights.  Wow.  Mohandas Ghandi fasted for 21 days in his longest non-violent protest against British colonialism.   Muslims fast during daylight hours for the entire month of Ramadan.  Some friends of mine make fasting a regular part of their spiritual practices.  Pastor Josue is one.   Me, I think it’s a big deal to fast before a 9 am blood test. 

There are typically three reasons for a fast: as penance for a sin, as an act of submission or devotion to God, or as preparation for something to come.  Fasting in Lent is kind of all three.

 Many Christians engage in some kind of fast during Lent to mirror Jesus’s 40 day fast in the wilderness, as a sign of devotion to God.  For Catholics that means not eating meat or anything with meat in it, although fish is permitted. People often give up some luxury or other during these 40 days, (like Facebook) and in recent years there has been a concerted effort among my colleagues to encourage folks to add a spiritual practice of some sort. (And yes, going to the gym, recycling more intentionally, and so on can be spiritual practices.)   

Jesus’s baptism is the event that marks the start of his new journey.  Up to that day at the river with his cousin John, he was just Jesus, son of the carpenter in Nazareth.   Then he was baptized with the water of repentance, leaving his old life behind. And the Spirit led him into the wilderness, so he could prepare for everything that was to come. His mission and ministry will begin when he walks out of the wilderness.  The temptation he faced was part of that preparation.  For although the Spirit led Jesus there so that he could be tempted, you may have noticed that Satan, the Tempter, came to him at the very end of this wilderness period, when he was physically weakest.  It had been, after all, 40 days with the barest minimum to sustain life.   And there’s Satan, offering Jesus an easier, softer way, the world on a platter.

Have you noticed that this is the way it is when beginning a journey in your life? Students preparing for college or graduate school struggling with admissions paperwork and forms and financial aid stuff might hear the Tempter whispering. . . Why are you doing all this? Wouldn’t it be easier to just go get a job?  You don’t really need that degree, do you?  Do you know how many unemployed college grads there are?  And all those Student Loans?  

Or having made the decision in your later years to change careers, struggling with making all the changes that have to be made, there is the Tempter again, whispering . . . Why are you doing this?  You could stay where you are, just keep doing what you know how to do.  It’s comfortable. It’s easier.  Why work so hard?”  Starting a family . . . Moving to take a new job . . . any new thing will bring those whispers “Are you sure you are doing the right thing?”  If we have included God in our decision, we can resist those whispers, just as Jesus resisted Satan.

As with Jesus, the baptism of repentance was also a new beginning for us.  As we entered the baptismal waters we vowed to give up our sins, to avoid temptation, to become new people in Christ.  Baptism itself does not change us - baptism is our promise to God and to ourselves that we will change.  I remind you of this because of yesterday I happened to remember a young woman I baptized years ago.  Although I kept telling her that baptism would not miraculously change her, that she would have to do the work of change herself, she was so disappointed that being baptized did not immediately remove her desire to drink.  Temptation is part of life. It’s a constant - even after we are baptized - as we can see from Jesus’ experience.  How well we resist depends almost entirely on how our relationship with God is right that minute.  Jesus had just spent 40 days of of constant prayer and conversation with God.  Confirming through prayer and meditation that he was, indeed, on the right path.  Strengthening his faith, not just in God, but also in himself.  Thus he could face Satan at his very weakest moment and resist - because his real strength came, not from food but from God.   For many of us, the greatest temptation we face is to believe the lie that we are not good enough, not strong enough, not smart enough, that we are doomed to fail.  We may hear it from other people - when I was a student at Chapman my mother-in-law kept telling me there was always a place for us in her home when I inevitably failed at college. Or we may hear it inside our own heads.  Where ever we hear it, the temptation to give in and give up can be resisted, by staying in contact with God, by understanding that God will give us the strength we need to do whatever it is we need to do. 

Lent is a time for repentance, using these 40 days in much the same way as we will be using these candles - to shine light on ourselves, on our journey, to reveal to ourselves those things we would prefer not to examine.  We look back over our lives, acknowledging where we have sinned, repenting for those sins, making amends as necessary and possible, so that the light in us shines more brightly.   As it is told in Luke 11, “Therefore, see to it that the light in you isn’t darkness. 36 If your whole body is full of light—with no part darkened—then it will be as full of light as when a lamp shines brightly on you.” (Luke 11:35-36). 

If we use Lent for self examination, for bringing light more deeply into our hearts then, as it says in John 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”   Bringing more light into ourselves through repentance chases the darkness and strengthens, prepares us to resist temptation when it comes.  The light will overcome the darkness.

This is where the journey begins. The beginning of the road home is this wilderness time, when we fast, perhaps from food or some luxury, but certainly from temptation.  It is a time of preparation for what is to come.   It is a time to spend in devotion to God, submitting ourselves to God’s will.  As we continue along the road home in the next weeks we will strive to leave behind those things that weigh us down, slow us down, keep us in the pain of the past, and prevent us from living in the faith and hope of the resurrection.  For this road is not just the road to the cross, but also the road to the empty tomb, to the risen Christ, to that day when death was defeated forever.  This road is the road to new life, and new beginnings.