Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Wilderness

Maria had never been in the woods. There were so few trees in Queens; but she had never thought about it. She just thought that concrete and graffiti were the way the world looked.

Maria lived alone with her mom. Her mom had lots of boyfriends that would come and go. Sometimes Maria's mom would not come home. So when she didn't come home, Maria would find something to eat in the cold of the morning. One morning, she decided to steal her mother's favorite red heels and wear them to school, along with her tight jeans. Maria loved it when the boys shouted at her and whistled.

Her grandparents lived less than a mile away in a little townhouse. If her mother was not home by dinner, she always knew that she could walk over to their house, but lately she didn't want to. They were always asking her questions. When did her mom get home last night? Why was she wearing those shoes? Had she done her homework? Up until 5th grade or so, Maria had done well in school. But in middle school she began to care less and less. She almost failed eighth grade.

She got her mom's heels all dirty that day so she thought she'd go immediately to her grandparents house. Maybe she could borrow a pair from her grandmother. Then when her mom asked her where they were, she could just shrug and act all innocent.

Her grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table when she arrived. "How's my girl?" he asked. Maria shrugged and looked in the refrigerator. She seemed to be talking less and less.

"Honey, I have great news for you!" he said, and then proceeded to tell her about this crazy outdoor camp where kids slept in tents and fished and stuff.  He told her that she was going.

"Are you crazy?!" she yelled. "There is no way that I am going there. No way!!"

The next few weeks were crazy. Maria even tried to run away once and slept at her friend's. But she came back, and when she saw the look on her grandpa's face, she knew she would be going to this camp.

They took her, along with a bunch of high school kids she didn't know, in a school bus. They drove for three hours. When they pulled to a stop, Maria stepped out. There was nothing. No concrete. No buildings at all. Just huge trees and sky. And there were stars, when it was clear at night.  She could hardly believe it.

The first thing that she noticed was the total silence. She had never heard anything like it. It made her realize how noisy her world was, with the cars, the TV, and the constant talking or music or noise.  Now there was nothing but wind and sky.

Maria didn't fit in. Her clothes were all wrong. She felt cold all the time. When they went fishing, she was so grossed out by the slimy scales of the fish that she dropped it. People were kind, but Maria had never felt so alone.

The campers were given time alone in the afternoons, time to write in a journal or time to sleep.  Maria found herself sitting under a tree and she began to cry. She cried and cried; the tears would just not stop coming. She could hardly breathe. It was scary. She felt such pain. But some part of her knew that this was better than the kind of living she was doing back in the city. And as the days sped by, she began to tell the other campers about her mom, how she lived to please men, how they sometimes hit her, how she sometimes didn't come home. She told about her life around the camp fire. And she began to learn who she was. And she felt alive for the first time in many years. She felt truly alive.

Jesus was baptized at age 30 and that baptism began the most important part of his life. Something happened to him when he was baptized. It was a jumpstart, a catalyst to a life that God had planned for him. His baptism marked him and God spoke from the clouds. "This is my son," God said. "I am pleased with him."

The sentence that follows Jesus' baptism in the Gospel of Mark is a strange sentence.  So much happens in that one line that it is almost mind-boggling. Mark writes that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The ancient Greek means to throw someone or something out, to force it, chuck it, push it. It was like whoosh! And Jesus found himself in the wilderness. He was made to go, no questions asked, no stopping to see if this was the right decision. No directions. No explanations. He just did it.

What was the wilderness? The ancient Greek for that word gives us great insight. It means, literally, the wasteland, or the place of loneliness.

So Jesus was thrown out into the wasteland alone. That was the first thing that happened to him, to the Son of God, after his baptism. He was uncomfortable and hungry and lacking any kind of direction. He was driven to a place where he was lost and alone.

Why? Why would God drive Jesus to a wasteland, a place of loneliness? Wouldn't some kind of a party or luncheon have been more appropriate to celebrate the baptism? Why send Jesus out alone to a place where Satan could tempt him?

I believe that God knew something that you and I don't know. God knew that the best place to grow is in the wilderness. God knew that there is nothing like pain and loneliness and even temptation to form Jesus into the Christ himself. Jesus was to know himself so that he could minister to others. He needed the silence of loneliness, the place of pain and hunger, in which to hear himself.

Why do we fast in Lent? Why do we try to do something that is hard, giving up something that we love? Why do we think of hard things, like how many children are starving in the world or all the mistakes that we have made? We do this because the pain of it causes us to grow. We do it because we recognize that running from pain and suffering causes us to remain immature and frightened, that the only way to God is through the pain. The only way to grow is to look at your life straight in the face and see where it is that you hurt and invite God to join you there.

Even the temptations that Satan provides, all the distractions and even the darkness of your thoughts, these too are part of the journey to God, for at some point you must decide if you can and will say no to them. It is essential for all of us to realize that we are tempted, that we are not God, that we think bad thoughts and want things that are not good for us.  And when we see the truth about the battle that goes on even in the minds of the best of us, then we begin to understand how much we need God. We see that we cannot do this on our own.

What is your wilderness? What is the wasteland inside yourself that you want to run away from? Do you have feelings of despair, of loneliness? Let the Spirit drive you there, throw you there, don't think about it too much, just go - to the place where there is no noise, where it is just you and God and all your temptations. Stand there naked and alone.

There is a lot of pain in the world. But God does not run from that pain. God moves to it and through it in the cross. Do not be afraid to listen to your thoughts, your fears and insecurities. The darkest places are often where He waits for you, where you will find that all of a sudden, you are not alone.

After Maria's wilderness experience, she knew that she needed to confront her mother. She ended up moving out of her mother's apartment and in with her grandparents. She got back in the groove of school and is now in college. Without the pain of that time in which to step back and see her life for what it was, she might not have survived. And now, she is alive. 

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

God's Will

When my son Max was about two, we went for a walk. I pushed him in the stroller around a beautiful duck pond near our house in Kansas. We planned on feeding the ducks with some bread from the pantry. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and the sun was out. As usual in Kansas, there was also a nice breeze.

We came to the duck pond and one of the ducks was swimming near the shore. Max got out of the stroller and started throwing pieces of bread into the water. The duck moved closer and began to eat.  More ducks saw the action and began to move towards this new source of food.

Then Max saw a plastic wrapper on the ground right near the water. "Mom! Trash!" he yelled. We had talked before about how you don't throw trash on the ground.

"Yes, Max, let me pick that up so the ducks don't try to eat it."

"Yeah! So the ducks don't eat it!" he agreed.

We fed the ducks and began the walk around the pond. But now that Max had seen one piece of trash, he saw more.

A bottle. "Mom! Trash!!"
A can. "Mom! Trash!!"
A McDonalds bag. A cigarette box. A plastic bag. A beer bottle. A container.

I was picking up and picking up and picking up.  I had to put the trash in the only plastic bag I brought, and soon it was full.  But I was so glad Max wanted to do a good thing that I kept on picking up and picking up.  Soon the bottom of the stroller was full. 

Why had I never noticed how much garbage there was around our neighborhood? It always looked pretty well-kept to me. All of a sudden, it seemed more like a dump. I started getting mad. How could people be so careless, so polluting? With my anger came exhaustion and resentment. I realized that I was no longer enjoying myself, no longer happy to be outside. I just wanted to go home. But I felt trapped. I did not want Max to see me giving up.

When we got home, we both had to take a bath. I had to clean the stroller with bleach. And I was in a bad mood.

Trying to do good is hard. Once you begin to serve God and to help people, it seems like all the problems suddenly become visible to you. You give one person some money, and five more ask you.  You make a donation to a charity and they start calling you at home, sending you emails and publications. Your mailboxes are full of junk just because you sent ten bucks to NetsforLife or the Special Olympics. And I start feeling like I'm drowning in requests. I get mad and resentful.  These people don't care about me, they care about my money! They just want to drain me dry!!

Speaking of draining people dry, I give blood when the blood mobile comes to church. I have O positive blood, the universal donor. Well, that blood mobile has taken to leaving me messages at home. I will give blood and about a month later they are asking for more. Sometimes I get to worrying that I won't have any blood left to give.

Most practicing Christians understand that we are called by God to give. We know that, and Jesus was very clear about it.  But what we don't understand is that when Jesus gave, he had a plan. Jesus gave his life away. He healed people and taught people and cast out demons. But he also walked away and said no and took time to be alone. Jesus had a strategic plan. He knew exactly what God had called him here to do and he did it, no more and no less. He was focused on HIS JOB, the job that God gave him. And he stuck to the plan.

Look at the gospel for today. Jesus is teaching and healing and curing sick minds and the entire village turns out to be helped by him. Women with abdominal pain, children with fevers, men who could not walk - he heals them all. When darkness comes, he goes to sleep, probably exhausted after giving all his energy during the day.

But before the sun comes up, he gets up and goes away, alone, to a quiet place to pray. And there, in the presence of God, he gets clarity.  He remembers why God has brought him to this earth and what he is supposed to do.

When the disciples find Jesus, he tells them that they are to move on. Even though there were still people who were ill, still people who were hungry for his teaching. There was some woman hoping to become well, a sick child, an elderly man. There were real people with valid needs who were searching for Jesus that morning and Jesus decided to leave them.  He left them and moved on because he knew that God wanted him to make an initial impression in these villages and then move. He left without answering all their questions or solving all their problems, for he knew that God had a plan and it was his job to follow that plan and not to deviate from it.

Had Jesus stayed in that one village and fixed every problem there, cured every illness, tended to every need, had he done what the people wanted, he might never have died on the cross for us. We would not have known him.

God's plan is always the best plan. You see, when you follow God's plan, there is what I like to call the ripple effect. If you do what God has in mind for you and only what God has in mind for you, you may not fix every problem, but it is like a pebble hitting the water. The ripples will impact and influence people in ways that you cannot imagine.

After I had served in Kansas for seven years, I began to believe that God was calling me to serve somewhere larger. Our church in Kansas had five services and it was full on Sunday mornings. I felt God urging me to begin to look elsewhere. But I didn't want to go. I loved those people. We were doing wonderful work. I was planning a sabbatical to Costa Rica so we could begin a Spanish service. We were planning a great new ministry on the college campuses.

But I believed that God had something in mind and that it was my job to preach and worship with more people, to give people the tools to serve God in the world. When my family and I were called to come here, to the very Cathedral where I had preached my first sermon, I could not believe it.

But this call from God had a ripple effect. In fact, now that I look back, God was doing so many things. It was not just about me.

We moved into a rental home in Mandarin. The day that we moved in, a woman in her seventies came to the front door with her little grandson to welcome us to the neighborhood. Her grandson was exactly Max's age. They lived next door.

The woman told me that her daughter, her grandson's mother, had been battling cancer since he was born. So the little boy spent a lot of time at his grandparents house. He could not have brothers or sisters.

When the house next door came up for rent, the woman said a prayer to God. "Please," she said.  "Please help a five-year-old boy move in next door."

And who should move in but Max. And those two boys have become best friends, probably for life.

I thought that it was all about me. But I was just the beginning. God was calling Max to be a friend.

As you prepare to serve God, ground yourself in prayer. Worship regularly and find yourself a small group to give you support. And then ask God for guidance. Don't just give to everyone who asks without prayer or plan. Reacting to people's needs does not change the world. Ask God for your focus, your personal vocation, and then stick to the plan. Don't let the results of your efforts or the overwhelming needs of the world deter you from what you and God have in mind. And you must check in with God daily to stay on track.

Find your focus, your particular role in the world and God will bless you with the ripple effect. Your small acts of service will do more than you can imagine.

A wise woman said something beautiful to me this week. She said that when Jesus hung on the cross and he said, "It is finished," it was not that all the problems of the world had been solved. He said "It is finished," because the job that God had given him was over. He had done the tasks that God had given him to do. His job was done. The Holy Spirit would take care of the rest, and the ripples of Jesus' life would change the face of the earth.

It is not your job to save the world. That is God's job. All that we can do is find out what God asks of us and do that. That's all that God asks.