Wilderness Sunday: Visions from the Wilderness

Romans 8 & Mark 1:12-13

It’s been hot. When it’s hot here in Minnesota, I think of moose. I’ve heard that moose don’t like the heat and keep having to move farther north all the time to escape our ever-changing climate. I imagine moose trudging through the morning mists through the bogs of the Boundary Waters to our north, moving deeper into ever-shrinking habitats. I imagine them groaning…

Then, I think of far-away Syria, beautiful land of hills and vineyards, grassy hills and olive groves. I think about how people I visited pointed over to a large reservoir, dammed in their lifetime, and told us the story of their childhood village buried in a watery grave at the bottom. And now, twenty years later, it’s not only that village and all its creatures that are gone… now towns and cities, grassy knolls and whole populations of birds cry out with inhabitants after many years of terrible suffering all over that small country. I remember reading a grandmother’s account that there are no children left in Syria anymore—because you can’t remain a child when your land is constantly under siege. Will war and destruction never end?

I think about the rainy day when a small circle of us were part of the Sacred Sites tour as part of the Healing Minnesota Storytelling project with Jim Bear Jacobs and Dakota elder, Bob. …We gazed for a long time at the fertile ground, wet and thick with life, where the Dakota women came for generations to give birth because their very first people were born there. This was their Genesis place. Also, we listened as we learned about bulldozers digging up the bones of ancestors without respect, without honor… as recently as 2009. Will the most longtime-people-of-this-land’s voices ever be heard? Will repentance ever come?

And then there’s Facebook—for those who don’t use it, this social media gathering can be a place for powerful good, beauty, encouragement, prayer (like any human gathering space, right?)… but also, maybe unlike some of our gathering spaces, it’s a place to hear and learn about other people’s wilderness moments because sometimes in people’s alone times in the social media cloud, they share with more vulnerability…

A friend of mine wrote this week, with periods after every word:

I. Will. Not. Succumb. To. Despair.

Others commented… I’m feeling like that, too. I’m glad I’m not alone. Here’s something I’m reading every day that’s helping me.

We cry out from the wilderness—untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching—dangerous, breathtaking, sought after, feared… wilderness is not just one thing, it is complex, and we are part of it… whether we’re far out in the wilds or whether we’re in the city, thistles and dandelions growing up from the cracks in the sidewalk.

Today, I’m also thinking about the Christ youth who are gathered with 30,000 others in Houston nearly ready to begin their journey back to us… I’m sure that there have been moments of wilderness in that unfamiliar territory in Texas, hours from our southern border. Moments when in the midst of a crowd, the metaphor of wilderness still fits. They are out of their usual paths, out of their comfort zone, having to be brave in the face of new experiences, having to learn how to trust ourselves and others.

They are hearing stories from others that have been through wilderness—difficult times , facing discrimination, injustice, identity struggles, chronic iillness, disaster, violence, mental illness, addiction and racism… and maybe as those stories are told, it’s touching their own stories, already full of wilderness.

They are also learning that La gracia de Dios lo cambia todo – God’s call, God’s love, God’s grace and God’s hope can change everything in our lives. God reaches out to us in the wilderness, to our places of deepest longing, and God reveals who God is…

In Romans, Paul describes this groaning, these complex wilderness experiences as birth pangs.  In the wilderness, something new is born in us.

This summer at Como, there is a powerful art exhibit by WashedAshore.org: Art to Save the Sea. “The Washed Ashore Traveling Exhibits feature beautifully designed and well-crafted giant sea life sculptures made entirely of marine debris collected from beaches to graphically illustrate the tragedy of plastic pollution in our oceans and waterways and to encourage conservation.”[1] It’s just incredible to look at these giant, beautiful sculptures of sea creatures and seascapes… and then to see the huge amount of plastic strips, beach shoes, bottle caps, netting, plastic toys… and then to consider all the material that these artists have to gather… what seems like infinite debris to work with… as the creation groans and whole species of birds become extinct.

We are all connected, and the wilderness and all the creatures of earth are some of the ways God reveals this to us. Whether wilderness is groaning or sighing, singing out or rustling by… we stand in the wilderness and can see a bigger picture.

Right after Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit drove this Beloved One of God into the wilderness. In Mark, this whole story is just two small sentences and only a few details. Jesus was out there 40 days—a number that might remind us of the 40 years God’s people spent learning how to trust God, sharing manna, receiving water from a rock... a number that might remind us of other ancient prophets… a number that might make us think of contemporary wisdom about learning new practices over a season, over a little more than a month, an amount of time that can make some habit “stick.” What happened in the wilderness? Well, Jesus was tempted by Satan (sometimes called “the adversary”), Jesus was with the wild animals, and angels waited on him.

In Mark, these are not described in deep detail as in other accounts… the details seem more mingled, and doesn’t that seem like real life in the wilderness? It is not just one thing—there are steep challenges, there are new encounters, there are moments of receiving exactly what we need to stay alive.

And from that wilderness time, Jesus’ ministry begins…

We. Will. Not. Succumb. To. Despair.

We hope for what we do not see… a world cool enough for the moose groaning in the wilderness; a world where children can grow up free of war, bombs, and violence of any kind;
a land where all our places of birth and death are honored, where all people have a homeland, where we live in deeply interconnected, loving, vulnerable and brave ways.

And we don’t know how to pray as we ought, but God’s Spirit intercedes for us… reminding us over and over again, that all things work together for good because of the deep love of God. With the whole creation, we groan, suffering with the earth and all its inhabitants… and we are called to be involved in the Spirit’s birthing work, to actively love and offer grace and keep hope in Christ’s life-giving wilderness visions alive.

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[1] washedashore.org