A Rose Between Thorns Isaiah 50:4-9, Mark 14:1-11

In the thirteenth chapter of Mark, Jesus pronounces the final judgment
on the Jewish temple and the religious and political institutions of his day.
Though the storm clouds of conspiracy against him have been gathering for awhile,
as the fourteenth chapter of Mark opens, the bottom is about to fall out.

As the fourteenth chapter opens, the conspiracy against Jesus is full speed ahead.
The powerful temple elite have had enough of the Galilean whistle-blower
and are clear in their minds that they need to take him down,
they’re just not sure when they can do it and maintain maximum deniability.
They put out feelers, looking for an inside plant,
someone they can buy off who will provide the intelligence they need
to accomplish their end goal as efficiently as possible.
Judas gets wind and for reasons much debated but ultimately unknown
he volunteers to add his betrayal to their conspiracy.

If you were an artist, how would you paint Judas and the Chief Priests and Scribes
as they stand there negotiating their deal?
I think I would paint a distorted, angular, two-dimensional scene
all hard edges and harsh colors.
The faces would be blank or at least so dark as to be indistinguishable,
the shoulders hunched inward, the hands like claws… grasping…threatening….

Mark’s 14th chapter reminds us that, to some, the world IS two-dimensional -
harsh, unforgiving, calculating and cold.
It’s a view of the world that has no room for a decorative flourish
and no palette for emotional embellishment.

This two-dimensional, 14th-chapter-of-Mark perspective is, above all, mechanical.
It’s a mechanical way of viewing the world,
in which people are NOT individuals with wonderfully unique characteristics.
They’re stick figures, clones, automatons -
useful only as functioning cogs in a giant, impersonal wheel.
There’s no room for mystery in this mechanical view.
There’s no room for fantasy, or imagination, or unexpected grace.

It’s funny, people who have this view of the world can seem, on the surface,
to be very different.
On the one hand, some can be highly ideological,
fully and single-mindedly committed to the most noble of goals.
On the other hand, they can be highly cynical,
driven only by a lust for power or wealth no matter the consequences to others.
One thing they’re not is PATIENT with anyone who doesn’t see things their way.

It was this mechanical view of life that brought the Chief Priests and Judas together.
They started out on different sides of the fence,
but they adamantly agreed on one thing and it gave them a common cause.
They agreed that Jesus did not share their world-view.
Where they saw black and white, he saw the full spectrum of the rainbow.
Where they saw a rigid blueprint, a closed system full of “shoulds” and “oughts,”
Jesus saw the abundant, open-ended, mysterious power of God at work
not as a watch-maker but as an artist;
not as a puppet-master but as a lover.

The beauty of Mark’s gospel is that no matter how dark and two-dimensional it gets
as conspirators conspire and betrayers betray,
there are the occasional characters and vignettes Mark inserts to remind us
that the mechanistic view of the world is not the only way of seeing things.
In his characteristic style,
between the two gray, ugly scenarios
of the Chief Priests plotting and Judas turning traitor
Mark sticks in a scene of uncommon beauty and grace.
Between the two thorns of nasty intrigue and double-crossing
Mark inserts the rose of the unidentified woman and her alabaster jar of costly nard.

It’s a remarkable scene.
It looks at first as though Mark is just giving his reader a break from the action
inserting a little domestic relief from the political intrigue as things are heating up.
It IS a relief for some, a reminder of the deep devotion Jesus can inspire,
a gentle, beautiful touch to counteract what is about to get really ugly.
It’s a relief for some, but for others it is an indictment.
For some followers of Jesus in Mark’s community
who had heard the stories of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest for forty years
and had reveled in their hatred for Judas and the Chief Priests
suddenly there is this story of the woman with the costly perfume
that points the finger NOT at the bad guys but at them.
Suddenly this innocent story doesn’t seem quite so innocent after all.

It’s enough simply to realize that the setting of the story is the house of a leper,
a social outcast, and the protagonist of the story is a woman,
not a big step above a leper in Jewish society.
Mark is definitely up to something!

The woman is clearly a woman of wealth and, against all proper social custom,
she approaches Jesus, breaks a jar of expensive perfume
and begins to anoint his head.
The perfume is not just expensive. It costs the equivalent of a year’s wages,
which, this day and time, would be about $20,000.
And if she had put it on his feet that would be one thing
but on his HEAD – that was something else altogether.

Everyone in that room likely believed or suspected
that Jesus was the Messiah, the new King of Israel
who would lead his people to reclaim past glory.
What do you do to a new king in Jewish tradition, you anoint his head.
Who does the anointing? A holy prophet of God, NOT A WOMAN!!!

To everyone’s surprise, Jesus doesn’t get offended by her brashness.
He doesn’t grab her arm and push her away.
He commends her! He commends her for anointing his body for burial.
Again with the death talk!

It was clear to those who knew the story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest
that Judas and the Chief Priests were outsiders;
that they didn’t understand Jesus
that they were blind and deaf to what God was doing through Jesus.
But then suddenly, in this story of the woman with the costly perfume,
Mark breaks the news that even the insiders were outsiders.
In this seemingly innocuous story, Mark is telling his readers
that it isn’t enough to be a committed follower of Jesus
if you still have that two-dimensional, mechanical view of the world
with a closed system, and a rigid blueprint filled with “shoulds” and “oughts.”

It’s not enough just to say the right words or even champion the right causes
if there is no room in your world-view for the mystery of God or for unexpected grace.

When the woman broke the jar, some In the room ridiculed her for being so wasteful
when such fine perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.
It didn’t seem to occur to these advocates for the poor
that the woman had just given Jesus a gift worth $20,000!
She COULD have sold the perfume and bought herself a new donkey
and a month’s vacation in Morocco. But she didn’t.
She didn’t because her view of the world was anything but mechanical.

The woman with the costly perfume understood
that Jesus’ is about more than economic efficiency.
She understood that life is not a system of pistons and gears
but a complex organic web of relationships
that it doesn’t necessarily follow a set of instructions
where part A connects to part B and only to part B.

Back in the 1960’s psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a very mechanistic view
that identified what he called a hierarchy of needs.
Maslow predicted that people will attend to their physical needs before anything else;
that they will look first for food, then for safety, and only then to social needs.
But somehow Dr. Maslow failed to consider those Catholics in Nazi Germany
who were willing to risk even their own lives to hide Jewish neighbors.
He failed to consider prisoners of war
who willingly gave food to starving comrades when they themselves were starving.
He even failed to think about old Vincent van Gogh
who lived in abject poverty with no critical acclaim during his lifetime
because of his overpowering need to try to capture the beauty he saw around him.

A mechanical view of the world isn’t always bad.
On most days you can get along quite well thinking that part A connects to part B
and only to part B.
The main problem, though, is that when people are no more than a sum of their parts
and experiences are not to be enjoyed on their own merit
but simply to be predicted, managed, and manipulated
there is no room for grace.
There’s not even the capacity to know grace when you see it.

In a mechanical view of the world all issues have only two sides – right or wrong.
You argue until you win no matter how long it takes.
If you just CAN’T win, you leave.
An organic view, however, acknowledges that two different points of view
might both be right, and both wrong,
and the gracious thing to do is to agree to disagree
and hold the opposing opinions in tension, hanging in there together,
until you find a more excellent way.

In a mechanical view of the world, you operate from a perspective of scarcity.
There is only just enough to go around,
and the key is to find the one right procedure to follow
that will maximize efficiency and eliminate waste.
An organic view, however, operates from a perspective of abundance.
There is plenty to share and the only reason we don’t all have enough of what we need
is because some people, in their fear, begin to horde things.
Furthermore, sometimes a extravagant gesture is just what we need
to remind us that God has prepared us a table and our cup overflows.

The woman came to Jesus and broke the jar of expensive perfume
anointing his head and filling the room with fragrance.
She did it to remind those in the room, to remind us all,
that even though the storm clouds gather and the bottom falls out
the forces of darkness, the proponents of a limited, mechanical view of the world
do not have the final say.
In a most gracious act of devotion she anointed his body for burial
signifying that even a cross, a most efficient manner of execution,
isn’t where the story ends.

Birth Pangs Hebrews 10:19-25 Mark 13:1-13

Imagine that you have suddenly been seized by crippling abdominal cramps.
You’ve never felt such agony.
You panic. You imagine all sorts of internal calamities.
Between attacks of stabbing pain you run through a mental checklist:
• Is your insurance paid up?
• Is your will in order?
• Did you put on clean underwear this morning?
You wonder how anyone could possibly survive such pain.
In the distance you imagine you hear a bell begin to toll.
It signals the end – YOUR end. It is your death knell.

OK, imagine these same excruciating abdominal cramps,
but now imagine that you are nine months pregnant.
(Gentlemen, I know it’s a stretch, but work with me).
The pain is as violent as in the first scenario, but this time, somehow, it’s bearable,
not because it is any less, but because there is a context.
You are in labor.
The violent jabs with a hot poker are not your death knell – they are birth pangs.
Nothing is going to die here. Something is about to be born.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark’s gospel is not a passage for the faint hearted.
It’s full of ominous predictions and threatening signs.
Taken out of context it seems to point more to death than life;
more to inevitable torment and destruction than to new possibilities.
Some people seem to take unusual satisfaction in reading this passage OUT of context.
They read of “wars and rumors of wars”
and “nation rising up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,”
and they rub their hands together in eager anticipation
at what they assume will be an imminent and wholesale destruction
of everyone but them and those they love.
A whole cottage industry has grown up around the glib interpretation
of Mark’s gospel and other passages like the book of Revelation
that speak of the coming “Day of the Lord.

But if you are willing to consider that the Bible is not a Ouija Board;
that it is much more suitable for helping us live faithfully in the present
than it is for predicting the future,
then our passage today, taken IN it’s context, isn’t as frightening as it is instructive.
It is about change and change can be scary.
It is about the birth of something new
and every new birth brings birth pangs.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark is a kind of writing called “apocalyptic” literature.
The book of Revelation is this kind of writing. So is the book of Daniel.
Mark directly quotes Daniel four times in his thirteenth chapter.
Apocalyptic writing is, above all, political in nature.
It is popular among oppressed populations that can’t be openly critical
of the powers that be for fear of retaliation.
It’s a code, of sorts. There is a hidden message, but it’s not as mysterious as it seems.
The meaning may not be clear to us reading it two thousand years later,
but to Mark’s audience, it would have made perfect sense.

The thirteenth chapter of Mark is considered by many
to be the earliest and best example of a sermon preached to a Christian community
in the throes of a spiritual, physical and political crisis.
The crisis is the imminent destruction of the temple by the Romans
and the preacher is not really Jesus, but Mark.

Here’s the context.
In 66 AD, the Romans grew tired of Jewish rebellion and sent an army to quash it.
The Jewish rebels turned the Romans back, protecting the temple from destruction.
It seemed a miraculous defeat of a far superior force.
But the Romans weren’t through.
In 68 AD, the Roman general Vespasian marched on Jerusalem and laid siege to it.
but Nero’s death and subsequent civil war again called the general back to Rome.
To be spared a second time in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds
really did seem like God’s direct intervention,
but the rebel leaders knew the Romans weren’t finished – that they’d be back.

Many scholars believe that Mark wrote his gospel during this time,
when Jewish rebels were interpreting Rome’s inability to defeat them
as a sure sign of the advent of the Messianic age.
These rebel leaders were recruiting fighters,
calling all Jews to rise up to return Israel to her former glory under King David.
Having turned Rome away twice already, protecting the temple from desecration
or even destruction by the unclean Gentile hordes,
The rebel leaders wanted to rally the faithful around the concept
that the temple, the symbolic presence of God among them,
had to be protected at all costs.
That’s when Mark asked himself, “What would Jesus say if he was here?
How would he interpret these momentous current events?
What would he do?
More importantly, what would he have US do?”

You could say that the entirety of Mark’s gospel is an attempt
to deal with the political and spiritual upheaval of his time.
The Romans did in fact destroy the temple in 70 AD,
and the large stones that so impressed the disciples
to this day lie in a heap at the bottom of the temple mount
where the Romans pushed them over the edge of the high Western wall.
The rallying cry of the Jewish rebels was that they must sacrifice everything
to protect the temple, the locus of divine power.
But for Mark, God’s Kingdom had come near, not in the temple
but in the person, in the ministry, and in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus.
The temple had served its purpose as an institutional entity,
but it was already passing away.

So, the best guess is that Mark and his community felt caught –
caught between wanting to preserve what was familiar – the temple
and all it’s associated symbolism that had been the core of their identity as Jews –
and their belief that Jesus had been the herald of a new divine reality.
When rebel leaders called on them to join the battle against the Romans;
when their allegiance to the Jewish state – their PATRIOTISM – was questioned
because they would not buy into the national myth of a return to former glory,
they needed encouragement to stay true to Jesus message
that salvation lay beyond the old structures and mythology.

In this context the cryptic words of Mark 13 make sense.
“Beware that no one lead you astray.”
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don’t be alarmed.”
Like everyone else, Mark clearly saw that another war was with Rome was inevitable,
but his understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus came to do
told him that this battle with the Romans to save the temple was not their fight.
Still, Mark was smart enough to know that refusing to fight would be an unpopular stand;
that it would make them enemies in the synagogues and councils.
“Don’t worry what to say,” he tells his congregation.
“Just continue to tell them the good news, over and over like a broken record
that in Jesus the Kingdom of God has come near.”

When the Romans finally took the temple mount
profaning the Jews’ holy space, methodically destroying stone by stone
what had been assumed indestructible,
the children of Abraham must have thought the end had surely come.
That’s the way it is when institutions you’ve relied on begin to fall apart,
when unquestioned assumptions upon which you’ve built your life don’t hold up.
We know how that is.
For example, what a shock it must have been to the sixteenth century system
When Copernicus figured out that the earth revolved around the sun
and not vice versa.
Sixty years ago my Georgia grandparents would have fallen over in a faint
to consider the prospect of a black man as President.
Though Wall Street has crashed before, we managed, somehow, to forget all about it
and our heads are spinning these days at how quickly this emblem of U.S. superiority
has come crashing down around our ears.

You can make your own list.
Civic clubs, churches, government, schools –
None of these unassailable institutions are the same anymore,
and the collective feeling it gives is about as stable
as standing on one foot on a giant cube of Jello.
Still, as shaky as it all seems, let’s face it.
These are human institutions that only seemed eternal
because we told ourselves they were.
Even the church.
I believe that the church will endure in some form until the Day of the Lord arrives,
but it would be ludicrous to think it will always take THIS form.
We dare not dig in our heels too hard to preserve any particular form of our institution
lest we find ourselves like the Jewish rebels,
fighting to preserve something in which God no longer has a stake.

Still, there are things we can do during this time of institutional transition.
First, we can take Jesus’ advice to “be not alarmed.”
God is still in charge of things, nothing has changed that.
Second, we can remind ourselves of the essential element of the gospel.
Our hope is not based in the preservation
of any particular aspect of institutional glory.
Our hope is based in the simple declaration that the Kingdom of God is near.
Third, when it is so uncertain how it’s all going to shake out,
the author of Hebrews seems to have the best idea.
As we live in uncertainty and await the Day of the Lord, whenever it may come,
we can at least meet together on a regular basis,
encouraging one another and stirring one another up to love and good works.
If we do that, then one day it will become clear.
The pain we feel in this difficult time is no death knell,
merely birth pangs;
indications of the new thing God is doing that has yet to be born.

Pants Down Laughing Genesis 17:1-6, 9-10, 15-17 Mark 8:27-38

I wonder if every culture has the same kind of reoccurring dreams.
Does a Chinese farmer dream of wanting to run from an attacker
only to find that his legs are paralyzed?
Does an African tribal leader dream of standing before the elders of his tribe
only to look down and realize that he is absolutely naked?

That last one especially – what I call “The nekked dream….”
I’ve had that dream in one form or another as long as I can remember.
The consolation I have is that I’m not alone.
I don’t know about tribal chiefs, but everyone I’ve asked has had this dream.
You can go on-line and pay a dream interpreter big bucks to tell you what it means.
but don’t waste your money.
I’ll tell you what it means.
It means that you and I are two-faced. We’re big fakes.
We present one self to the world that is polite, industrious,
generous, kind and God-fearing,
when we know good and well there is hidden in us
a self that is petty, lazy, greedy, thoughtless, and profane.

Ever since Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to their nakedness
and they tried to hide from God,
part of the human condition has been to feel ashamed;
to fear being exposed;
to fear being identified
as someone less than capable or honorable or loveable.
The curious thing is that even though we have long chafed
under our liabilities as human beings,
God actually seems to have a preference for those who are less than perfect
when it comes time to raise up women and men to lead God’s people.

We know all about Jacob and his deceitfulness,
Moses and his speech impediment,
David and his roving eye for the ladies.
We don’t know that much about Abram or Abraham.
We know he was a nomad, originally from what is now modern day Iraq.
We know he was wealthy - in livestock, silver and gold.
And we also know that his only male heir in later life was Ishmael,
the son of his wife’s servant Hagar – an embarrassment to Abram
and a source of great vexation for Sarah.

In fact, that Abram had resorted to relations with Hagar in the first place
was a sign of his lack of faith in God.
Like a big NEON sign, Ishmael’s mere presence screamed of Abram’s unwillingness
to go all the way and trust the mysterious presence
who had come to him and made a solemn covenant with him
that his descendents would number more than the stars.

Three times God comes to Abram to enter into covenant with him,
promising each time that God would make Abram the father of a great nation.
The first time, when he was 75 and Sarai 65, it must have seemed
still in the realm of possibility.
Fifteen years later, when God came to him the second time,
Abram must have been still honored, but a bit exasperated with God’s inefficiency.
The third time, however, when Abraham was near 100 and Sarai near 90
it must have seemed a cruel hoax.
Who would blame Abram if he put a pillow over his head
refusing to listen until God went away.

Each successive time God came to Abram over those 25 years
God’s presence surely must have stirred up not only Abram’s awe, but also his shame,
that hidden embarrassment we all carry around inside
that we’re not good enough, not loveable enough, not capable enough.
Why else would God’s promises take so long to be realized?

But God persisted.
The third time God even declared a name change.
No longer would the southern nomad be called Abram – “Exalted Ancestor,”
but AbraHAM – “Ancestor of a multitude.”
Sarai’s name would be changed as well
to show that even though for ninety years she’d been unable to conceive
motherhood was just around the corner.

Was God just trying to rub it in?
Pour alcohol into an open wound?
And THEN, for the first time, God tells Abraham what God expects of this 99 year old.
Can’t you just see Abraham’s face…
“You want me to drop my pants, take a sharp knife and do WHAT???”
It’s no wonder Abraham’s demeanor changes from fear to incredulity.
At the beginning of our passage, he falls on his face in awe.
At the end, he falls on his face laughing.
But it’s not laughter born of glee or joy.
It’s the nervous laughter of one who stands in front of a packed audience,
his pants down around his ankles,
naked and exposed in all of his inadequacy.
* * *
When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am,”
He puts them on the spot. He calls them to the front of the class to report.
James shuffles up, hands in his pockets, “Uh, I dunno, John the Baptist, I guess.”
Andrew looks at a distant tree refusing to make eye contact.
“Uh, maybe Elijah or a prophet?”
Jesus rubs his temples trying to stem the “teacher’s headache” he feels coming on.
“But who do YOU say that I am?”
“Ooh, ooh, I know, I know!” It’s Peter stretching his hand up, always the eager one.
Jesus calls on him and Peter straightens his shoulders.
Proud of himself he speaks as though reciting the Gettysburg Address.
“You are the Messiah.”

Peter’s answer comes from his public persona –
the side he presents to Jesus and the rest –
his loyal, steadfast, confident self that’s ready to follow Jesus anywhere.
He’s done his homework. He’s read the text. He knows the answer.
“The Messiah is the one who will come in glory, overthrow the oppressor
and reestablish the throne of David from Dan to Beersheba.”
Look at that grin! He’s so proud of himself.

What Peter doesn’t understand is that Jesus isn’t really looking for AN ANSWER.
He’s not looking for students who can memorize class notes and ace every test.
He’s looking instead for those imperfect but determined followers
who can live WITH questions,
and who can live WITHOUT a detailed blueprint for success.

Jesus says, “The Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and then rise again.”
Huh?
“The Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and then rise again.”
That’s not the right answer! What’s Jesus up to?
“No, Jesus, don’t say that. You take that back!
You’re going to be our great leader, our hero.
You’re going to help us forget our national embarrassment,
you’re going to make everything alright.”
And then, right there, in front of everyone, Jesus pulls Peter’s pants down.
He says to his star pupil, his “A” student, “Get behind me, Satan.
You are setting your mind not on divine things but human things.”

Peter couldn’t accept what Jesus was saying
because what Jesus was saying did not allow him to lead with his strength.
It didn’t tap into Peter’s image of success, his hope for recognition.
Instead it stirred up his insecurity, his fear of embarrassment.
It gave credence to the little voice in his head that kept whispering,
“You’re just a big, dumb fisherman and Jesus is a fake like all the rest.”

This is the problem with following Jesus.
You and I cannot follow Jesus, cannot call ourselves Christian,
and still keep up the pretense of perfection.
The stereotype of Christians is that we think we’re better than everyone else,
But that’s not true.
To follow Jesus means we also understand just how inadequate we are.
It is to realize that we are complex human beings
with a side we show and a side we keep hidden,
a self we’re proud of and a side that makes us feel ashamed.

The fear that burdens every human being is that our public face will falter
and the ugly side, the REAL side, will be exposed,
But followers of Jesus know better.
Followers of Jesus know that the ugly side is no more the “real” side than the good side.
Both sides as we experience them are born from our limited imagination.

We imagine there is a formula for success
and if we follow it we will win someone’s approval .
But we’ve already won God’s approval. What else do we need?
We imagine there are depths to which we have sunk that put us beyond redemption.
but Jesus suffered the deepest shame one can suffer – public execution on a cross –
the ultimate disgrace.
Is there anything worse we could do, anything beyond that shame? No.
We have no trouble owning the successful and loveable part of ourselves.
But we’ve told ourselves the unattractive part, the part prone to failure
is something we should deny, something we should keep covered at all cost.

But Jesus tells us to take up our cross. He tells us to claim the shame as our own.
He tells us to take up our cross, own each part of ourselves, both good and bad,
because until we claim the shame we cannot embrace the grace.
So what if your pants fall down in Yankee stadium.
So what if you hit a wrong note in Carnegie Hall.
Go ahead and laugh. It’s all covered. Every bit.
Nothing is hidden. Nothing is beyond God’s redemptive power.
Go ahead and laugh. Laugh at life, laugh at yourself,
laugh at promises fulfilled and at promises delayed.
Don’t laugh a nervous laugh, not an embarrassed laugh,
but a good, big belly laugh, a laugh confident of God’s love, a laugh born of joy.

Transforming Wilderness Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15

What’s a nice man like him doing in a place like this?
The place is the unemployment office.
The man is sitting in one of the chairs waiting for his number to be called.
He has come as a condition of his unexpected unemployment.

You can tell he is unfamiliar to such a place.
He wears a crisply starched shirt
as though he still holds out hope that someone will see him
and will notice in his professional manner a man who does good work.

He is out of place in this office where others slouch and doze and clip their fingernails
It is a dangerous place, a place where the evil spirit of despair lurks.
It is a wilderness.

What’s a nice woman like her doing in a place like this?
The place is the dialysis clinic attached to a downtown hospital.
The woman is into the third hour of her four-hour session,
her first session of three scheduled for the week.

She’s already tired of reading.
The batteries in her CD player have run down so there’s no music.
The inane chatter of daytime TV talk shows drives her to distraction
so she just stares from her bed out the tiny window at the parking lot
wondering if she’s allowed to make plans
or if her unexpected kidney failure means
she can only focus on each tedious moment as it comes.

Known by her friends to be a woman of exceptional drive and insatiable curiosity
she is out of place in this room full of sick people.
It is a dangerous place, a place where the evil spirit of fear hovers.
It is a wilderness.

What’s a nice man like Jesus doing in the wilderness?
The wilderness seems an unlikely place for Jesus to be.
It’s an unexpected detour for a young man just beginning his life’s work.
Though the biblical account of Jesus’ childhood and youth is scanty,
my imagination tells me he has planned his ministerial debut for years,
going to school, reading his Torah,
practicing his “wise” looks in the mirror.
I imagine him waiting on a sign from God,
a clear sign to let him know without a doubt that his time has come.

When word comes to him one day that his cousin John
is dressed like Elijah and baptizing people in the Jordan river
Jesus takes it as God’s nudge to leave Nazareth behind and get on with it.

It must have been just as he had imagined.
John pinching his nose shut with one hand,
lowering him back into the water with the other.
Thirty seconds he stays under, maybe even a full minute
Just when his lungs are beginning to burn,
John abruptly pulls him back upright,
and with a shake of his head he slings his hair out of his face
sending a spray of a thousand tiny droplets of water reflecting the noonday sun.

When he’s out of the water Jesus’ five senses stand at attention
as he sees the sky torn apart and hears a whisper like a thousand angel wings,
“You are my Son, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.”
And the Holy Spirit, tangible, substantive, in bodily form like a gentle dove
descends upon him in a rush of power.
Yes, yes, THIS is what he had expected it to be like.

But before God’s affirming voice and the Spirit’s motivating power fully register,
the gentle dove morphs into a screeching crow
pecking him about the ears,
digging its claws into his neck,
driving him yelling and swatting away from the river,
away from cultivated fields and into the Judean wilderness.
This can’t be right! This wilderness experience is most unexpected!
Forty days? Are you kidding me?
Shouldn’t he be teaching already? Getting his team together?
Instead of starving in isolation,
instead of being subjected to the various and sundry evil spirits
that call wilderness home.

In stories we sometimes romanticize the wilderness,
view it as a convenient literary device
or even a welcome challenge to test the main character’s mettle.
But there’s nothing romantic about true wilderness; unredeemed wilderness.
It is not a geographic location we can find with a GPS,
but it is simply the place we confront Satan, the Accuser, face to face.
It is the circumstance where fear, and self-doubt, and despair
circle like hungry wolves looking for the unguarded moment,
the tiniest of openings to attack.

If there is nothing romantic about the wilderness,
there is without question something transformative about it.
One does not leave the wilderness unchanged.
Sometimes wilderness can leave a body – or a spirit – crippled.
I’ve never known the wilderness of war,
but I know that some who make it out of that wilderness physically,
never make it home in their mind or their spirit.
Some are born into the wilderness of poverty
but even later in life when the paycheck is more than enough for physical comfort
the corrosive cloud of shame and fear just won’t dissipate.

Though it was, perhaps, an unexpected detour for a young man on a mission,
Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness was just what he needed
to make his ministry ring with authenticity.
His forty days going toe to toe with old Scratch was necessary
to get him in tune with God’s symphony of salvation history.

You know there is in Scripture a rhythm to redemption
that always includes the forty-bar blues.
Forty days on Noah’s ark dreaming of a dry spot.
Forty years after leaving Egypt looking for promised land.
Forty days in mortal combat with the evil powers
to prove he had substance and wasn’t just for show.

That Jesus won – that he came out on top in his encounter with Satan –
defines for us what is possible in our own wilderness struggles
His victory means there is nothing, no matter how unexpected,
that can defeat those who look to him,
those who invite him into their own wilderness battles
with fear and doubt and despair.
That Jesus needed the ministrations of God’s angels after his struggle was over
shows that even he didn’t come out unmarked by the experience.

Our time in the wilderness always marks us.
One way or another it transforms us.
If we try to go it alone, if the unexpected detour into the wasteland
hits us unprepared – without an arsenal of faith,
without the strength of a community behind us,
then chances are our transformation will be for the worse.
But if we are prepared, if we are spiritually in tune with the rhythm of worship and prayer,
if we are deeply embedded in the fabric of a community of faith
then, as Paul writes, our suffering will produce character
and character will produce hope, and hope will not disappoint. (Romans 5)

The funny thing is that Jesus’ victory over the dark powers in the wilderness
makes wilderness a not-so-scary place.
Once we realize that even death holds no power over us,
then all the monsters that once made the wilderness seem so terrifying
lose their teeth.
It’s like turning on the lights in a Halloween haunted house
and realizing the bowl of brains is really just a bowl of spaghetti.
I think that’s why Mark includes that line at the end of Jesus time in the wilderness
“And he was with the wild beasts.”
Even wild beasts were no threat to him anymore.

Sure, there are unexpected hijackings into deep wilderness that nobody welcomes –
disease, financial ruin, betrayal.
But in a way, just by identifying ourselves as Christian
we are claiming for ourselves a wilderness identity.
Henry Nouwen writes that “The paradox of the Christian community
is that people are gathered together in voluntary displacement.”1
When we follow Christ, we leave what Nouwen calls our “ordinary and proper place”
where we blend in and share the values of the dominant culture
to pitch our tents in a less inhabited landscape.
Even something so ordinary as eating bread and drinking grape juice
becomes in this context something kind of edgy and a little dangerous.

This first Sunday of Lent we step voluntarily into the wilderness.
The only thing scary about it is that in the wilderness there are no hiding places.
Who we are, every mean thing we’ve done, every loving thing we’ve failed to do
is uncovered here.
But that’s why we’ve come.
We know that even in the wilderness, ESPECIALLY in the wilderness
we are covered by God’s grace.
We’re tired of hiding. Tired of being afraid. Tired of being alone.
In the wilderness we claim Jesus’ victory over Satan to be our victory.
And we claim an older promise still.
We claim the promise made to Noah
That God’s everlasting covenant is still in effect;
That in the spray of a thousand tiny droplets following a summer rain
we see reflected the full spectrum of God’s love.

1Nouwen, H, Donald P. McNeill, Douglas A. Morrison, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1981.

A Double Share 1 Kings 19:19-21, 2 Kings 2:1-12, Mark 9:2-9

Did Elisha know when he got up that morning?
Did he feel it in his bones?
Sense it in the way the first streaks of dawn painted the distant horizon?
As he pulled on his old work boots and splashed cold water in his face
did he know somehow that it would be his last day at home?
As he supervised the hitching of eleven teams of oxen
and then hitched up his own team
did he know that it would be his last morning ever behind a plow?

We read of the last day Elisha spent with his mentor Elijah,
but do you know how they first met?
The Prophet Elijah had just come down from Mt. Horeb where God had
spoken to him in a still, small voice
and had told him to anoint Elisha in his place.
Elisha was out in the field on his family farm plowing behind a team of oxen.
It was one of twelve teams in the field that day,
meaning it was a big field, a big farm.
Elijah knew who Elisha was, but did Elisha know who Elijah was?
Certainly he would have recognized the distinctive prophet’s mantle that Elijah wore.
But had news already traveled to Elisha’s farm about how Elijah
had called down fire from heaven to consume the altar he had built,
had, in a fit of religious ecstasy, slain 400 prophets of Baal?

Did the hairs on the back of Elisha’s neck stand up as Elijah came near?
as Elijah, without saying a word,
took the prophet’s mantle from around his own shoulders
and placed it around Elisha’s shoulders?

This simple exchange between two men
foreshadowed a similar exchange 900 years later
when Jesus, walking by the shore of Galilee, said to Simon and his brother Andrew
“Come, follow me.”
Simon and Andrew left their nets and followed.
Elisha kissed his parents, slaughtered all twelve teams of oxen,
and, after the Mother of All Farewell Feasts,
left the family farm without looking back.

Did Elisha know when he got up that morning that his time had come?
Did he somehow sense that come evening
his life would be on a different trajectory altogether –
an apprentice prophet to one complicated, intimidating, man of God?

When I read of Elisha’s first encounter with Elijah
I’m reminded how it can happen just that fast;
how you can be rolling along on cruise control,
the road before you all mapped out –
the eldest son of a wealthy farmer
fully expecting, when Daddy dies,
to inherit the customary “double share” of the family estate.
But blink once and all that’s changed.
Blink once and there you are, belly full, hands empty,
called by God to God-knows-what,
nagged by fear but dizzy with freedom
putting your future in the hands of someone you hardly even know
but somehow trust.

What this story of Elisha’s relationship with Elijah reminds me of
is how vital it is to have a mentor;
how important mentors are to our growth and development
and how mysterious is the relationship between a mentor and her charge.

When I first met my mentor Will Ormond I was green as hickory stick;
a first year seminary student in my second full day on campus.
The Dean of Students, Pete Carruthers,
who I happened to know from before, was showing me around.
Chapel had just let out and a small group was coming down the stairs.
In the middle of the group was a man in his early sixties.
He wore a hat and his face was all red with skin peeling off.
It looked like he’d slept ten hours on beach in the sun.
He was, frankly, pretty hideous to look at.
Pete pulled me over to the man and said,
“David, I want you to meet a good friend of mine, Will Ormond.”

I know now that Will was embarrassed by the way he looked.
He was undergoing treatment for skin cancer
and, by nature a shy man, he was mortified by his scaly appearance.
He spoke to me in a high tenor voice with a thick Alabama drawl
and then kept on walking.
That first meeting hardly registered with me,
but by the end of my time at Columbia seminary Will and I were very close.
I had slaughtered my oxen to follow him, and, I like to think,
I received at least a scrap of Dr. Ormond’s mantle that I wear to this day.

Mentors are important and they serve us in different ways
at different times in our lives.
If we are fortunate, our first mentors are our parents.
They are our earliest and most significant influencers
and, if they’ve been good mentors, we miss them when they’re gone.

A friend of mine whose father died last week wrote me an email.
His mother has been gone for some time and, at age 54,
he’s experiencing for the first time what it feels like to be orphaned.
He wrote, “It’s weird, but when I wanted to call somebody
to tell them my daughter got accepted to law school
the ones I most wanted to call no longer have a telephone.”
My own father has been dead fourteen years now,
but I still have the impulse to call him for advice.

Sometimes we very intentionally choose our mentors,
or sometimes mentors are assigned to us
identified as someone in a chosen field of study
from whom we can learn and by whom we can be introduced
to others in that field.
When a new, young minister comes onto the field in this presbytery
the presbytery tries to match that young minister with someone in the same area
who knows the ropes and can be a sounding board.

But the deepest mentoring relationships occur I think
when it’s the mentor who does the choosing,
when the mentor takes notice of someone coming along
and reaches out to take that person under wing.
There is an element of mystery to this process,
there has to be a chemistry for it to work well,
but what a difference it makes to a younger person
to have an older, more experienced person notice them, care about them,
LISTEN to them.

It’s arrogant to say that any one thing has the capacity to heal all wounds
or to right every wrong,
but if I had to say one thing I think could really make a difference
in the quality of our lives, in the satisfaction we get from each day,
I would say that we need to be more intentional
about entering into mentoring relationships.

Carol Howard Merit, a Presbyterian minister in Northern Virginia agrees with me.
Or, I guess I should say, I agree with her.
She’s written a book entitled, “Tribal Church,”
and she makes the case that what is missing from church
are mentoring relationships.1
She’s a fairly young adult herself, and she says that what young adults yearn for,
what they really need,
are relationships with older adults who aren’t telling them why they’re wrong
or even giving them advice,
but who are willing to be with them, listen to them,
offer support and encouragement and guidance when requested.

We who have been mentored need to step up and be mentors.
We who have benefited from a listening ear, a willing shoulder,
need to get out of our cocoons and find someone we can reach out to.
That’s what the exchange between Elijah and Elisha is all about
at the end of Elijah’s time on earth.
It’s a poignant story this last journey the two men take together -
the mentor and the mentee.
The story is wrapped in mystery with all the portentous predictions along the way
and the chariot of fire that finally sweeps Elijah up into heaven.
But at the heart of the story is the changing of the guard;
Elijah passing the baton to Elisha so Elisha can continue the race.
The two men have become very close
as is evidenced by Elisha’s refusal to leave Elijah.
But it’s Elisha’s request to Elijah that lets us know just how close they are.

The old mentor gives his charge one last request.
“Tell me one last thing I may do for you before I leave.”
Elisha says, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
For the longest time I thought this was Elisha being greedy.
I thought he was asking for a double espresso, a double dip ice cream cone.
Whatever you have I’ll have twice as much!
But then I realized that’s not it at all.
The “double share” is mentioned in Deuteronomy.
It’s the two-thirds portion of the estate given to the eldest son.
It sounds like a windfall, like a great deal,
until you understand that with a double share of the estate
comes the responsibility to caring for everyone else in the family.
What Elisha was saying to his mentor was, “I love you like a son loves his father,
and I am ready to shoulder the responsibility,
as you have been a mentor to me, I will be a mentor to someone else
and so on and so on, on down the line.

It reminds me of another mysterious moment –
a mentor and his followers together on a mountain top.
And a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”

1Merrit, Carol Howard, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, The Alban Institute, 2007.