God is the infinity of the unforeseeable; so we know that [the unforeseeable] is trustworthy, because in everything, God is trying to move us into Christ consciousness. If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love. ~ James Finely

Ok do we have any English majors in the house? Wonderful! Help me out here. If I were to say that my commute to church is a dream thanks to the new rotary or love is a battlefield (thank you Pat Benetar) or our Harriet has a heart of gold: I would be speaking in what?

Metaphor. Yes, thank you. A metaphor, for those of you who skipped grammar because diagraming sentences is about as fun as fishing for monkeys in a barrel -  that’s a mixed metaphor for those of you keeping score at home - is simply a thing we use to represent another thing …especially something abstract like love or generosity or the mental block people have when it comes to crossing the river.

It’s a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that literally denotes one kind of thing - like a battlefield - is used in place of another thing - like love - to suggest a connection between the two.

In Terry Pratchett’s “Wintersmith,” I’m pretty sure it’s Granny Weatherwax who says, “A metaphor is a kind o' lie to help people understand what's true.”

And he himself once said that “just because something is a metaphor doesn’t mean it can’t be real.”

Clear as mud? Great. That’s actually more of a a simile, but we’ll save those for another sermon.

For now I just want to note that as we move into Lent we often talk about this season as a metaphorical wilderness because Lent always begins with a reading about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness,

it lasts for 40 days because that’s how long Jesus stayed in the wilderness, and traditionally people in the church have fasted and prayed in some way during this season because Jesus fasted and prayed for the entirety of his time in the wilderness.

So this a metaphor that we like to take rather literally.

During Lent we imitate Jesus in the wilderness and I will admit that from the moment I started observing Lent as a young adult, I loved it. I loved the challenge. I enjoyed playing with this metaphor and looking for creative ways to live into it.

I set up artificial challenges for myself like fasting from red meat or not multitasking or not buying anything new besides food, for 40 days and then observed when and how and why I hungered for more of the thing I was denying myself.

Lent, for me, was a spiritual thought experiment. It was all about learning and self discovery with goals to accomplish and insights to gather. But for all the discomfort or inconvenience I might have experienced, there was no real risk. The truth was, I could stop at any time. I could fudge it. I could lapse in my observance and re-commit the next morning without harm or consequence.

However, as time has passed, as I have aged and as the world around us has changed, the whole idea of the wilderness has started to hit closer and closer to home. Life has stopped feeling like a metaphorical wilderness experience for many of us and has started to feel more like a wilderness period.

I have watched as the bridge between the reality of life and the abstract idea of wilderness has collapsed for more and more people I care about even as I have come to see that there are plenty of people who never had the privilege of that bridge to begin with.

Which is to say that if you’re walking through the world literally afraid for your physical safety because of a contagion like covid or because you’re a woman, or trans, or an immigrant, or black, this isn’t a metaphorical wilderness you’re living in, but a real one.   

If you’re living with a terminal illness or chronic pain, you’re living in a wilderness.

If you are a person of color navigating a society built from the ground up to privilege whiteness, or a person with a disability trying to navigate a world built on the assumption that everyone is abled, you’re navigating in the wilderness.

If you’re deeply alarmed by the actions of our current administration - the incessant dissembling, dismantling, and deregulation - you’re in the wilderness.

If you are grieving the loss of a job, the loss of a community, the loss of a loved one, your grief isn’t like the wilderness, it is the wilderness, pure and simple…and it hurts… and it’s hard… and it takes a toll.

A few years ago, Barbara Brown Taylor gave a talk on the wilderness at the Evolving Faith conference that helped revise my whole concept of this metaphor:

Once in a meeting of teachers of religion, (she said) someone gave a… talk about how exciting his students had been with the wilderness rafting and camping trips he took them on. There was something about the riskiness of it, he said, that opened them up in ways the classroom never could. And even when they went back to the classroom, they seemed more willing to take risks with each other as well.

When he was done, another teacher raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, but were your students ever in real danger?” And the first teacher said, “Oh, no, I wouldn't let that happen.” And the second teacher said, “Well, if there wasn't any real danger, it wasn't a real wilderness. Because in a real wilderness, there has to be something that can kill you.

"I think that's the kind of wilderness that kicks faith into evolution,” says Barbara. “You know, one where the death of your identity, the death of your certainty, your old community, your life as you've known it—those deaths are all entirely possible. They're all in mortal danger. And though the dangerous thing doesn't have to kill you, it can. Otherwise, you're not in a wilderness; you're in a park. Where there are rangers to keep the trails clear and to keep dangerous things at a distance so you can take pictures without becoming anyone's food.

Aww, Park Rangers. Remember them? Little did Barbara know that by 2025, flags would be hanging upside down in national parks from here to Yosemite telegraphing distress because even our rangers have been cast out into the wilderness.

Which is to say: we really are in uncharted territory now, my friends. The danger is real. This time and place in which we find ourselves is no thought experiment. We are living in precarious times whether we like it or not.

And yet, we are not without hope. For all its challenges, I believe the wilderness still has gifts for us. And there are 3 gifts, in particular, that I want to focus in on this morning because I think we’re going to be out here for awhile. But first, a disclaimer: recognizing that everyone’s experience right now is unique and we are all hurting, please take what is useful and disregard anything that feels like it glosses over or bright-sides the very real angst you are feeling.

Ok?

Ok. The first gift I am trying to open myself up to out here is the gift of God’s presence. God is always with us, but God is especially present with us in the wilderness. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me…Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life ” (Psalm 23).  Actually a better translation is surely goodness and mercy shall “dog me” or “pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Friends, God is not against us or gone away from us when we enter the wilderness. God always, always, always goes with us. All throughout the scriptures, whenever someone enters the wilderness, God is with them.

God finds Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba and gives them water. God delivers the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt into the freedom of the wilderness and leads them as a cloud by day and fiery pillar by night for 40 years.

Elijah was hidden and nourished by God in the wilderness to keep him safe from a corrupt government… (just saying). And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness right after God declared him beloved and said, “with you I am well pleased.”

This bears emphasizing because all too often, when we find ourselves in the wilderness, our first thought is: “Why? Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Where is God when I need God the most?” We feel abandoned and alone, cut off and isolated.

But the first thing I want you to remember is that your wilderness, even if it feels punishing, is not a punishment. God wasn’t out to get Jesus or the Israelites or Hagar or Elijah, and God is not out to get you or me either. Not now. Not ever. God is not punishing us by making us go through this. God is with us even and especially in the midst of this because God loves us.

The wilderness is not a punishment. It is, rather, the place where you are most likely to find God because there is no place you will ever need God more. And friends, there is a gift in that. It is not an easy gift to receive, but it is a gift all the same.

God is with us in the wilderness because God always, always, always goes with us.

In fact, take a moment right now and open your heart, your mind to the loving presence of God… just breathe…God is right here…as close as your breath. God loves you and come what may, God is with you. Not to deliver you from this wilderness but still with you in this wilderness.

To paraphrase the Catholic monk James Finley, “God’s love protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things.”

That kind of sucks and that’s kind of beautiful, but that’s life, isn't it?

Which leads us to the second gift out here, the gift of acceptance. The wilderness is not a punishment but, you know what? It’s not an aberration either. I know we’re often shocked to find ourselves out here, but the truth is that life is full of beautiful and terrible things in equal measure.

Back in the 1980’s an astute theologian known as the… um…Dread Pirate Roberts observed that “Life is suffering…anyone who says differently is? …selling something.” Yeah.

Wilderness happens. (Somebody should put that on a bumper sticker!)

No one gets out of here without some measure of pain and heartache.

No one sails through life without ever feeling longing, grief, or fear.

Everyone, at some point, knows what it is to feel lost, exiled, condemned, or cast off.

We are all vulnerable. So rather than fight it, deny it, or worst of all, try to control it, I think there is wisdom in accepting our time in the wilderness when it comes and trusting that God will see us through.

That’s what I see in Jesus this time around. He allowed himself to be fully vulnerable, fully exposed, fully present to the hardships of the wilderness. He could have played God and avoided the hunger, the exposure, the isolation, the danger.

But he didn’t. He allowed it all to touch him, effect him, shape and form him. He allowed the wilderness to break him open to his need for God. He allowed the wilderness to break him open to his need for others.

Which is to say that he allowed himself to be human… fully human… and sometime being human hurts.

That hurt can drive us from God and others into self sufficiency, control, defensiveness, or it can drive us toward God and others, toward interdependence, acceptance, and compassion.

The whole point of this story is that Jesus used his time in the wilderness, not to override his limits but accept them. He leaned into the presence of God with him, even and especially in the wilderness, trusting that God would sustain him in all his hunger, his fear, his vulnerability…sustain him in all his humanity.

The gift of acceptance, then, is not in learning how to master the wilderness so nothing can hurt you - because that just isn’t possible - but rather learning how to live with God in the wilderness even when it hurts. The gift of acceptance is about letting go of how things should be and embracing things as they are. It’s about letting God be God and allowing yourself to be human. And, messiah or not, it’s hard.

It’s no accident that exactly 8 years ago, (I’ll let you do the mat) Elizabeth Gilbert posted this on Facebook. “Dear Ones,” she wrote:

Here's an encouraging reminder, for any of you out there who might still be suffering from the trauma-inducing misconception that you're supposed to be in charge …all the time. Relax," she says, “nothing is under control…. (HA!) Greater forces than us are running the show. The world doesn't turn because we personally turn it. Step back for a minute and see how the show still goes on, even when we release the white-knuckle grip we have on the imaginary steering wheel of destiny.”

My friends, maybe we’re not in charge. Maybe we can’t stop all this from happening. Maybe our job right now is to accept where we are and make the best of this place where we find ourselves right now…which brings me to the last gift I want to mention this morning, the gift of space.

It’s liminal space, so don’t get too excited, but liminal space isn’t all bad either. (She said, willing herself to believe it).

Ok, full disclosure, I don’t like liminal space any more than the next person. I want to know what is coming as much as you do, because we all want to be prepared. We don’t want to be caught off guard.

But the truth is we don’t ever really know what’s coming. We don’t. And as terrifying as that can be, it can also be liberating. Because you see, if we really don’t know what’s coming, we can create some space to imagine a better future. If we really don’t know what’s coming we can make space to dream.

If we really don’t know what’s coming, we can tell despair “to take five,” and focus our energy on creating a future we want to live into rather than resigning ourselves to the doom’s day scenarios our minds our so good at cooking up. No matter how dire things look right now for our democracy, for our planet, for human rights, the end of all we love and value is not a forgone conclusion.

Out in the wilderness there is space, space for silence, space to sit with our heart break, space to sit with an awareness of the gap between the world as it is and how we would have it be. Out in the wilderness there is space to take all the time we need to dream a new world into being and then begin, bit by bit, to work toward that world one small act of love at a time.

So maybe take hold of this space. Lay claim to it. Don’t fight it or try to get out of it too quickly. Settle into it. Use it and let it use you.

Friends, I know we didn’t ask for this. No one wanted to be here. And yet here we are all the same. Be it 40 days or for the next four years, I will be out here in the wilderness with God and with you.

Yes it is dark out here, but if you open your eyes, you may yet see that there are stars.

Yes it is cold out here, but if we open our arms, we can still keep each other warm.

Yes it is dangerous out here, it really is, but we are not alone.

So let’s open ourselves up to the beautiful and the terrible gift of this time; let go and let God meet us here in the sacred space of this wilderness and see if we can’t dream up something beautiful together.

Not a metaphorical heaven on earth, but plans for a real one, a new kind of kin(g)dom that you, me, and God can build together. Amen? Amen.