Wilderness

 This homily was delivered as part of an ongoing Lenten Series around the themes and images of Lent.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, she planted a garden. And the story goes that from the dirt of that garden God formed two people. At first God and the people lived as friends, co-creator in the garden, but eventually this partnership doesn’t work out. We don’t really know why, the text says something about a snake and some fruit, which feels more like a mad-lib than an origin story, but we have a few guesses…

What seems to happen is that the people break God’s heart, which results in alienation and estrangement  between the two parties. But after some time God comes around and reaches out to humanity. Well, really just one guy — She wanted to take it slow after all. God tells this guy that She will lead he and his people into a new land, a promised land. A land where once again God will dwell among humanity and they can lives as partners, co-creators, and friends.

Luckily, this guy is cool with picking up and leaving on a moment’s notice, so he and his wife and a whole mess of other people leave their homeland in search of the place God had promised. But as their story unfolds we find out that instead of inheriting a nice new garden, they end up as slaves in Egypt for 500 years. For 500 years their lives become: wake up, make bricks, go to sleep, wake up, make more bricks, etc. In Egypt their became the sum total of what they could produce. If there is anything we can learn from Egypt, it is that slavery occurs when our lives can be reduced to what fits on a business card.

Wilderness

So the people are wasting away making bricks until one day God sends a shepherd to lead them out of Egypt. The shepherd challenges the Egyptian pharaoh, they go back and forth about precisely who God is and why Pharoah should even attend to this God’s demands, but eventually they get their stuff together and leave Egypt. Three days later they cross the Reed Sea leaving their enemies behind, which would make a nice ending to the story; but it’s not the end. It’s actually a beginning, because their journey from out of Egypt and into the Promised Land takes them through the wilderness.

It doesn’t take them long to realize that the wilderness is a place of scarcity and danger, a landscape full of unknowable’s. In the wilderness daily survival is a challenge. The fear and unknowing leads the people to doubt the God who brought them out of slavery, and who still promises to bring them into a land of security and abundance.

This is one side of wilderness. A side many of us have experienced at least once in our lives, and others of us, multiple times in a week. This side of wilderness is like a swipe to the legs; It’s the feeling of loosing control over lives and of the world around us. We feel helpless and lost and we begin to wonder why we even cared to take a step of faith in the first place.

But there is another side to wilderness, and it begins when these former slaves are lead to the foot of a mountain— a mountain called Sinai. What happens at Sinai is revolutionary; this is the first time God has spoken to a whole group of people since the garden. What happens on Sinai points to the gap deep in the soul of humanity. Sinai reveals that God is still listening, God still cares, and God is on their side.

Not only does God speak to the people directly in the wilderness, God is present with them through it. God in the form of a cloud, what the story calls shekinah —“the glory of God”— floats over the Israelite camp. The cloud serves as a tangible reminder that God will provide; God is present; God has plan.

In the wilderness, survival relies on daily provisions of manna, which fall from the shekinah. Not since the garden has our sustenance relied directly on God’s intervention. The wilderness tradition insists that God doesn’t wait for a favorable atmosphere, in the wilderness God hears the people’s cries, listens to them, and cares for them, every day.

The strangest part of this story is that it doesn’t work like a lot of other stories. In other stories the ‘trial period’ is a plot point that must be overcome in order for the character(s) to discover their meaning and purpose. In other words, the trial is a not the point, but rather a means to an end. But in this story, for these people, the wilderness period is where the people discover their meaning and purpose.

When faced with difficulty — be that illness, loss, and suffering— the temptation is to numb it; to push it down; to white knuckle our emotions until they go away. Lent offers us an alternative to this destructive pattern. Lent says: “Explore the wilderness for a while. Sit with those feelings. Feel your way around the sadness. Confront the unknowables, because God is with you; God is making a way for you; God will provide.”

Beneath the Shekinah

Today the Exodus story remains the central story of the Jewish faith and symbols of it show up everywhere. For instance, a Chuppa — that four cornered covering people like to get married under— is supposed to represent the shekinah: God’s abiding presence with the couple. I know this because I have been thinking about Chuppas a lot lately. My fiancé David and I are only five months away from getting married and we’re currently deciding on details for the ceremony. No decisions have been made as of yet, but as we’ve been talking about incorporating a Chuppa, I’ve realized what a powerful symbol it is for marriage. Marriage, much like the wilderness we speak of at Lent, is not a one sided experience; There are moments of sublime happiness, contentment, and intimacy, as well as, jealousy, disconnection, and in some cases, unbearable grief. It is, I assume, a kind of wilderness experience, a journey where heartbreak and incandescent joy hold hands. And from the very beginning of the marriage journey, the Chuppa reminds us that above it all the enduring presence of God remains, consoling and redeeming us.

If you are in the middle of a wilderness — a time when life as you know it appears to be unraveling— may the Holy One who meets us in the midst of our wandering bridge the primal gap between your soul’s longing, and the peace of our Lord, Christ Jesus. Amen.