Simon says, Jesus, go to the desert!

You know the story, he has just been baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist and he is praying when a voice comes from the heavens saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Immediately he is compelled to go to the desert – where he fasts for 40 days and nights and is tempted. Barbara Brown Taylor, in a recent sermon, calls it his Wilderness Exam. You have heard of Upward Bound and similar programs such as Knolls, where young people are helped to set direction for their lives by going through an extreme wilderness experience, part of which is often done solo with no supplies so that the individual has to make due with their own wits and the hidden bounty of nature.

Jesus' wilderness exam – his upward bound experience is to spend some time in the Judean desert – a barren tract of land probably near the Dead Sea which is still so formidable that it remains barren even to this day. It is in this place that the Greek version of the scripture says he is literally blown or hurled by the Spirit so that he may come to grips with who is and who he is to become.

A wilderness place can be the waiting room of hospital emergency room, or the battlefield, or the kitchen table where you have to tell your spouse that you have been laid off, or that your medical test came back positive for Alzheimer’s or your teenager tells you that they have been caught with drugs in their back pack. The wilderness – the desert - is a place that forces you to make some decisions, quickly, carefully, decisions that you might never have contemplated ever having to address.

There in the desert, just as Jesus experienced, there are all kinds of voices speaking in your head – voices of calm and reason, voices of doubt, hysterical voices which are shrill and dominating.

For those of us who are of a religious bent – Sunday school trained, Bible owners, if not Bible readers, there is one most difficult voice in the wilderness places of decision. That is the voice of God. At the moment when we need help, we are pretty certain that one of the advisory voices is going to be the voice of our heavenly parent – the voice of the Lord. What is God telling us to do? What would Jesus do?

Most Biblical scholars don’t think Jesus was actually talking to an embodied figure of the devil.[1] Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond famously said, Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. The voices are all part of the whirling cacophony in our heads – in the wilderness they kick up the volume a notch or too. When you have to focus and be calm and every part of you wants to run the other way that is when those various internal advisors start trying to get our attention.

Now, wait a minute – the voice that seems to be the loudest in Jesus’ ear is one that keeps quoting scripture to him. Isn’t that the voice of God?

First he references the Exodus – that is the story of the escape from Egypt and “Pharaoh’s bitter yoke.” Then he references the image of David and all the kings of Israel and Judea who were in the glorious line of that hero King. David the mythic character who slew Goliath and grew up to build the great nation of Israel and its capital city of Jerusalem is the Messianic hope of the people of Judea – he is the one referenced by the Psalms and Prophets who would come, like the Son of Man riding on the clouds and reclaim the kingdom of God’s people – Isaiah even says, as the tempter does, that all nations will come to him, bow down.[2] Finally, it is Psalm 90 that the voice of temptation lifts up. If you want to call it the devil or Satan it is that voice which always sounds so reasonable and sensible and well grounded and it will get you what you want and think you need. It quite often quotes scripture.

“If you are hungry, do some magic, Jesus – turn these stones into bread.” After all, Moses did it in the wilderness of Sinai – his band of Hebrew slaves recently departed from Egypt, recently crossed the Reed Sea are starving and wailing about it. “Turn these stones into manna in the wilderness;” it is the godly thing to do.

“Simon says, take care of yourself first – you have to be strong to do what you have to do…” Is it God’s voice or is it the voice of the Evil One? That is one of the hardest decisions one has to make in the wilderness.

We are all on our own journey – and whether you have experienced it yet, or not, I think we will all find ourselves in the wilderness one time or another. Our lives are a pilgrimage, whether we know it or not, and the struggle to faith is one which leads us on some broad highways sometimes, but also takes us to the lonely places where we feel all but forgotten. The journey is a journey to find and know God – along the way we have to equip ourselves to understand that often the voice that is talking in easy religious language or soothing tones with helpful references is not the voice of God.

God needs to be looked for – examined – questioned – studied. And, that may be more God than you want. For many of us, with busy agendas and multiple interests and enthusiasms – just a little God is enough. There is time to fill in those God-gaps in our lives later. There is time for the Bible study and the meditations and the spiritual growth….later. The trouble is, the wilderness times don’t come upon us at our convenience. The moment of need is not a moment we can predict or schedule on our IPhone.

There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth, notes Frederick Buechner, an author and pastor. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us. [3]

This is what it means to live the questions.

Yesterday, the Presbytery of East Iowa had a special meeting – the full details of which are too much to include in this sermon. The issues being discussed revolved around the extensions of full and complete fellowship to people who are lesbian or gay – homosexuals. There could not be a more controversial issue monopolizing lots of time for the church – not just the Presbyterian Church, but many, many different denominations and traditions these days.

I am sure that there are a variety of feelings, opinions, and convictions about these issues among all of you this morning. I am sure that some of you wonder at the controversy – either a) because homosexuality is a sin – the Bible tells me so or b) it is clear that gay/lesbian people are as much God’s loved creatures as anyone else or c) any one of many, many variations of understanding in between.

This is one of those wilderness moments for the church. The voices are many and many are shrill – many quote scripture and many are angry and many reflect hurt and pain. So what do we do?

Can’t we just “move on” many say. That voice, above all others sounds to me like the voice of the Devil. It is the same sentiment and the same voice that said that slavery was not an issue that should occupy the energy and time of the Presbyterian Church back in the first part of the 19^th Century. But the issue kept coming back and the idea of “moving on” without doing anything to respond to the constant knock that was coming to the doors of the church and the conscience of the nation became more clearly understood as a sin.

Apartheid was a similar issue – Satan said this will never be solved without violence and yet the Spirit of God had other ideas and moved through two disparate people like Mr. DeKlerk and Mr. Mandela and the nation is struggling still, but all the people of South Africa are free.

Not ten generations ago, the Presbyterian Church and the Congregational church were up in arms about the issue of who should receive communion. Some said it could and should only be those who had an experience of conversion where the Holy Spirit had stepped into their lives and made them over as new people. Others said that Jesus spread the table for all his brothers and sisters – that the power of the sacrament was in its express invitation for all people whether converted or saved or born again or still seeking, still wandering still on the journey. It is an invitation to come and eat - to be fed and filled on the bread of life at whatever point one in their journey. This is the bread that feeds us when we are in the wilderness – this is the cup that slakes our thirst.

Jesus was always on the way – and so are we. Jesus was the man who answered a question with a question and encouraged us to ask, to knock, and to inquire of the Lord. That is why this Lenten season we will be looking at the word and will of God with inquisitive eyes.

How much God do you want? Jesus Christ has offered himself – all of himself for you and though you did not ask for it, he chose to love you. This table is for you and the feast is spread – this is the bread for the journey.

Simon says…Amen.