Lenten Bible Study Day 12; Luke 12

Luke, Chapter 12 (NRSV)

The middle section of this chapter has Jesus' teaching about our proper relationship to our material possessions. It's not terribly comfortable to read for those of us living in houses with full closets, stuffed basements and packed garages. Even if we try to live as "lightly" as possible, we still tend to accumulate more than we need. Why is that?

Whenever I travel abroad - whether it is in Europe, Latin America or Africa - I am struck by the lack of material possessions that people think of as normal when compared to my experience here in the U.S. In northern Europe, where the standard of living is at least as high as ours here in the U.S., people still don't seem to have acquired as much as we have. They live in smaller spaces and are more thoughtful about what they fill those smaller spaces with. Perhaps its the density of population, perhaps it's a leftover from a nearly a century of cold and hot wars - but whatever - it's quite striking when compared with our big box stores filled with inexpensive things that we really don't need but buy anyhow. I recall when I was in my Physics graduate program and my office mate from Turkey scolded me because I only used one side of the paper I was taking notes on. He just couldn't imagine wasting an entire blank side of paper because it was too much trouble to flip the pad over instead of flipping the page up. I had frankly not noticed that I was doing that.

But I'm more than struck, I'm convicted of my own unconscious hoarding behavior when I visit Africa or places of great poverty in Latin America. I remember learning in Swaziland that a single ball point pen was considered a generous gift - and how the recipient would carefully use the gift until the pen went dry. Which is something I never managed to do because I thoughtlessly misplace the pens I use after only a few days of use. I don't even get that angry at myself - they're so inexpensive and so common that I just grab a new one.

When I traveled to Swaziland on behalf of my parish in Bethlehem PA, I carried a few thousand pens with me in my baggage to give as thank you gifts for people I met while I was working there. I didn't manage to give as many of them away as I thought I would. At the end of my trip I gave the bulk of them to the bishop of the diocese to give away as he saw fit. He was so grateful. I was ashamed that I was giving them away mostly because I didn't want to carry them home in my luggage. I didn't have enough room after buying things for people back in the U.S. He was grateful for something that I was giving him because it was an inconvenience to me.

How odd to me that it was that experience in Swaziland that has kept bothering me, and not the much more overwhelming effects of poverty that I also saw on my visit. Perhaps the small issue surrounding the wasteful consumption of a pen was something I could manage to understand. I certainly saw many things much more deeply troubling. The fact that it's the pens that bother me still are a reminder of how far I have to go before I'm able to see the economic inequality of the world we live in with the same sort of horror that God must view it.

It was that time in Swaziland in particular that changed the way I look at the things I posses. I've not managed to fully keep my things in proper perspective, but I'm at least regularly wrestling with them. I keep hearing God's voice in my ear: "Fool. This very night your life is required of you. And the things you have prepared, who's will they be?" We carry nothing with us on our journey home except our souls.

How have I prepared the one thing I will be keeping with me on that final journey?

How have you?

Lenten Bible Study Day 11; Luke 11

 

Luke, Chapter 11 (NRSV)

In the 11th chapter of Luke we begin with a private conversation between Jesus and his disciples as he teaches them to pray and then promises that God will hear their prayers. And then the action turns to the growing external opposition from the religious authorities which Jesus is gaining as he teaches and heals - and critiques and condemns.

This opposition, recorded in all four of the Gospels has always, as a religious leader, given me pause. I'd like to think that I would - that we would - get right what Jesus' contemporaries got wrong, but there's not much in the Gospels upon which to base that hope. It's telling that Jesus quotes the scriptures to the people who are meant to be the leading students of the scriptures and they don't understand either his words or the scriptures. And worse than not understanding, they reject what they can't understand - attributing God's actions to Satan, rather than admitting that they need to rethink, repent of what they think they understand.

When people ask Jesus for a sign, a prophetic sign so that they will know that he is indeed a prophet sent from God, Jesus tells them that they will have a sign but they will not recognize it for what it is. He says specifically that the people of this particular generation will receive the sign of Jonah but that they will not receive it.

What does he mean by the sign of Jonah? Jesus doesn't get swallowed by a whale. What is his meaning?

Ephrem the Syrian, a deacon, hymn writer and theologian of the 4th century taught that the point Jesus was making that Jesus, like Jonah, was going to die and that death was going to be cause of the "rising and falling of many". Some people would believe in God as a result of Jesus' death and his subsequent resurrection (like Jonah's who burst forth from the whale). Some people would reject Jesus because of his death - I imagine arguing that the Messiah could not die. (Shades of yesterday's meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan.) In Ephrem's thinking, the Queen of the South, who signifies the Queen of Sheba who traveled to see Solomon and believed in God, represents the calling of the Gentile nations who see Jesus and also believe in God. (Ephrem's thinking is echoed in the writing of St. Ambrose by the way so it appears this was a widespread reading of this passage in the early Church.)

So what does that mean to you? What does Jonah signify for us?

Jonah, the reluctant prophet flees from God, is given up to death by being tossed into the stormy sea, lives for three days in the belly of the whale and is returned to life to call the fiercest enemy of the Israelites to repent, turn to God and live. In Jesus day, who are the enemies of the people of God? And who is it that ultimately turns?

Who would that be in our day? Because I think that's the point for us. We need to think about who it is that we believe is opposed to God's will in the world. How you and I might be asked, as Jesus' followers to be a sign for them - to show our own new life discovered in the teaching of the Messiah - so that they, the ones we imagine are God's enemies might turn and live too.

Who is it that God is calling us to give ourselves up for so that they might live? I don't think Jesus means for us to quote his words to them. I think Jesus means for us to take our own crosses and follow him so that by our actions, they might recognize Jesus too.

Lenten Bible Study Day 10; Luke 10

Luke, Chapter 10 (NRSV)

We are now in the large middle section of Luke's Gospel. Jesus has turned toward Jerusalem and the teaching and events we are reading are meant to be seen in light of what will happen during the events of Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Day.)

Late in this chapter we read the story of the Good Samaritan. After the story of the Prodigal Son this is probably the most well known parable, but there's more to it than first meets the eye. Actually, that's true of every parable that Jesus tells. Each is like one of those sets of Russian nesting dolls. You open one and find another one inside. Then you open that one and there's still another. Just when you think you understanding the meaning and intent of the story Jesus tells, you discover that by opening one meaning there's another one inside. Both are true. All of the meanings are true. The fact that the parables have multiple meanings and applications is part of their design.

As an aside, the medieval Church believed that this wasn't just true of parables. It was believed true of the entire Bible. There was the literal story that the biblical text was recounting. There was another layer of meaning that was a teaching about the nature of the Messiah, and then there was another layer of meaning that was a teaching about the pilgrimage of our souls as we journeyed to God. (And then, depending on who you were reading, there was a fourth and even a fifth layer of meaning.) The idea that the Bible had a simple, easily understood single meaning didn't arrive in the Church until later in the reformation - and that idea reached its full bloom in the latter part of the 19th century.

Take another look at the parable of the Good Samaritan. When I was a teenager our youth group put on a skit based on this story. The teen who acted out the part of the priest who passed by the bleeding, wounded samaritan acted as if he was too fussy to stop to offer aid. Then the teen who acted out the part of the Levite did the same. We in the audience did our part by booing the priest and the Levite and applauding the Samaritan who took action. But what if there's more to this story than we recognized?

A number of ancient readers pointed out that this all happened on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. The traveller is traveling away from Jerusalem. It's reasonable to think that the priest and the Levite were headed the other way along the road, which would mean they were heading toward Jerusalem and likely they were headed to the Temple to perform their required roles according the Law.

The Samaritan was bleeding. The commentators think that this explains the reason that the other two passed by on the other side of the road when they came upon the Samaritan. Contact with human blood would have defiled the priest and the Levite, making them ritually unclean and then unable to perform the saving sacrifices that the Law of Moses required of them. It wasn't (according to this view) that the two men were unwilling to render aid to the bleeding traveller, it was that they weren't allowed to by the Law of God.

It is the Samaritan who is outside of the Law, and even cursed according to the Law, who is able to save the person who is dying in the road.

There's a part of the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 21:22-23) that says anyone who is killed on a tree is cursed. Jesus was killed on a tree. Over the history of the Church this verse of the Law of Moses has been quoted to show that Jesus couldn't have been the Messiah - no one can save another person when the first is cursed in the eyes of God.

But this parable, understood in light of the ritual duties of the priest and the Levite, shows the opposite. It was only the person outside the Law of Moses who was able to save. In other words, God has used, and does use, people who are outside the gathered community of God to save the people of God. What might this mean in our day?

Lenten Bible Study Day 9; Luke 9

 

Luke, Chapter 9 (NRSV)

Today, just before Luke's account of the Confession of St. Peter that Jesus is the Messiah, we read of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness. There's a special feast day commemorating the Confession of St. Peter. And in Luke's version, the Transfiguration follows - and it has its own feast day. (Actually the Transfiguration is also the traditional gospel lesson for the last Sunday in Epiphany that many of us heard read aloud a couple of weeks ago.) With the Confession and the Transfiguration Jesus is completely revealed to the disciples and to the readers of the Gospel as the long awaited Messiah.

But Luke chooses to precede this total revelation with the feeding of the multitude. There's no special feast day on our calendar commemorating this event. But, if you read much literature from the time that Luke was writing, you would recognize that the style of the writers was to put the most important story first, and then follow it with additional stories that explain the importance of the first one. It seems clear that something like that is going on here. One could argue that the feeding of the multitude - neglected as it is in the church calendar - is the greatest event in this series of events. Why?

In a book called "The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist" Old Testament scholar Brant Pitre looks carefully at the role of bread and blood in the Old Testament in hopes of unlocking additional meaning in the Eucharist for the communities of the New Testament. As Pitre investigated the writing of the rabbis to discover what they were expecting in the long awaited Messiah, he learned that one of the primary signs of the Messiah's arrival was to be the return of the manna.

You remember the manna? It was the miraculous bread that sustained the people of Israel as they followed Moses at the time of their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It was given by God at the beginning of the forty years and ended as the people of Israel followed Joshua into the Promised Land. The sign that Messiah had come was to be the feeding of the people with the miraculous bread of the angels.

The feeding of the multitude in the wilderness is the first great sign in Luke that fulfills this specific expectation. While it seems to us to be a foreshadowing of the weekly Eucharistic feast, it was to the Jews of Jesus' day one of the primary signs that he was the Messiah. And now the two following stories of the Confession of St. Peter, and the revelation of the Transfiguration make much more sense. They are the exclamation points that underscore and emphasize what happens when Jesus feeds the multitudes with so much that there *12* baskets left over.

In essence then, the largest part of this chapter in Luke's Gospel is a clarion clear call that the Messiah has come. The prophecies are being fulfilled. The faithful remnant recognize and confess that this happening.

And the chapter ends with Jesus setting his face to go to Jerusalem. Just as the prophecies predict.

So what does it mean to you that Jesus is who Luke's Gospel says he is? What does it mean to you to participate in Peter's words that Jesus is Messiah of God? Has it made a difference in the way you live your life, in the choices you make about what you do or how you spend your money?

That's always been a key thing for me to look at in my own life - particularly when I go on retreat. I have confessed Jesus as Lord time and time again with my lips. How have I confessed him with my life?

Lenten Bible Study Day 8; Luke 8

 

Luke, Chapter 8 (NRSV)

A few years ago I was invited to take part in a radio show that intended to discuss science and faith. I didn't know much about the radio station, the host or the show. But the interview was scheduled for 1 AM, and I figured it would be an interesting experience so I agreed to participate.

It turned out to be a radio station that held to pretty literal and inerrant understanding of the Bible. That view isn't common in the Episcopal Church, so when I arrived and discovered that particular stance was going to frame our conversation, I was a little concerned about how I might participate. It turned out too that I wasn't the only clergy person there. There were two others. One was a young man who was a friend of the host. The young man had studied geology before he went on to Bible college. The other was, to my surprise and delight, a rabbi who was also a professor in the History of Science department at ASU. His particular speciality was the philosophy of science. (Any day I get to talk with a rabbi is a good day in my mind.)

The discussion went about as you'd expect. We all agreed during the first part of the conversation that there was no inherent conflict between science and faith. I did point out that such a stance didn't mean that conflict didn't arise - since it depended on what kind of science and what kind of faith we were talking about. The Rabbi agreed with me on that point.

But soon we three were challenged by a caller to the show who said that religious faith, particularly Christianity, must always trump scientific belief. "If science contradicted the Bible, then science was wrong because the Bible was clear and easy to understand and science wasn't. That clarity was a sign that the Bible was given directly by God." (According to the caller.)

The rabbi laughed.

There was a moment of silence from all of us. Then the rabbi said; "God does not make the Truth easy to find. God hides the Truth from us and expects us to use our Reason to uncover it. Why God does this I do not know. But this is what the Rabbis have always taught."

I was nodding my head yes to the rabbi's words. And I was doing so because I was remembering how Jesus would teach the crowd in parables like a traditional rabbi of his time, but that the meaning of the parables was often hidden. In today's chapter we read how the disciples privately approached Jesus after he had told a parable to ask the true meaning of his words. And he told them, reminding us as readers that he didn't tell the crowds the full meaning. Why didn't he? I do not know. But he didn't.

And this isn't the only case of this sort of thing. In a number of places in the New Testament, Jesus explicitly says that he is hiding the full meaning of his words from the crowds. Sometimes he tells the meaning to the disciples. Sometimes he doesn't. I don't know why. I've certainly wondered though.

I was remembering all of this as I read through the whole of Chapter 8. Jesus heals some, drives out the demons in some, stills some storms, but doesn't heal, exorcise or still others. Why? I don't know.

The Bible, like the rabbi said, takes the Truth and doesn't not present it in a simple way that it easy to understand. The Bible challenges us with contradictions, cryptic words and difficult to understand stories. Luke's Gospel has all of this.

Why does the Bible do this? I do not know. But as we begin our second week of readings in Lent, I hope that if this is the first time you've read a book of the Bible straight through, you're wondering the same thing. If it's not your first time, I hope you're still wondering why.

Lenten Bible Study Day 7; Luke 7

 

Luke, Chapter 7 (NRSV)

After having laid out a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus begins to move north in his ministry, out of the Jewish heartland and into the border regions.

He has an encounter with a Roman Centurion who asks that his slave be healed. Jesus heals the slave. Jesus encounters a woman in a village near Endor (where the famous seer lived during the time of Saul) who has lost her only son and Jesus raises the woman's son from the dead. He has emissaries from John the Baptizer who ask him if he really is the Messiah. Jesus tells the emissaries to report to John what they see happening with their own eyes and let John decide.

And then Jesus talks about the meaning of John's ministry and challenges those who would not receive it. Jesus uses an odd turn of phrase about how the generation he is speaking to is like children in the square - complaining that they played the flute but others refused to dance, or they wailed and the others would not weep.

An odd turn of phrase isn't it?

Essentially I've understood to this to mean that Jesus is taking people to task for trying to tell God how to be God. Playing the flute for people and expecting them to dance - perhaps while they are weeping is to try to force a group of people into a behavior that is exactly the opposite of what they need; or to weep and expect others to join in with you when they are celebrating and then be angry with them because they wouldn't do what you wanted is to try to force other people into your own mold.

Jesus' point appears to be that we do this with God. We want a certain kind of God all the while claiming that we are God's followers. What we're really doing though is only following God when God is taking us where we have decided we want to go.

We want a Messiah, but when the Messiah shows up doing all the things that prophets promised would the Messiah would do, our first response is not to follow, but to question.

There was a Saturday night live movie spoof based on the life of Jesus, that must have been shown recently (judging from the number of times I'm seeing it on my friend's Facebook feeds). It is a parody in the style of a Quentin Tarentino film . The parody is in the "historical revenge" genre and shows a resurrected Jesus taking revenge on the Jewish leaders, the Romans, and Judas; all in the bloodiest, most violent gun using way. The visual key is Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, carrying a backpack cross and using a very large assault weapon to extract his revenge and to even the score.

It's not as funny as I think the people who made the parody imagined. It's insulting - not so much to God (who seems to have a great deal of patience towards us and our sophomoric humor) as it is to any number of us who want a Messiah who will "kick butt and take the names of our enemies". Our enemies…

In the beginning of this chapter of Luke, Jesus is expanding the reach of his ministry and is starting to connect with people that the Jews of his time didn't expect the Messiah to connect with. And he's connecting by healing them, freeing them, releasing them from sin. He's not taking revenge for the slights that the gentile people have shown toward the chosen people of God. He's not acting like the Messiah of their dreams. He's acting like the Messiah of the prophets.

So here's something to meditate on today… how are you and I in our own day dreaming of a Messiah that responds to our dreams and not to those of the prophets?

Do you remember this quote?

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. — Anne Lamott

It's worth meditating on that today I think - especially in light of this seventh chapter.

Lenten Bible Study Day 6; Luke 6

Luke Chapter 6 (NRSV)

If this was yesterday, I would have focused today on the stories about keeping the Sabbath that are in the very beginning of this chapter. I worry that we have completely lost the point of the Sabbath in our own day - we don't unplug, we don't focus on family and friends we don't even focus on God once a week anymore. The Sabbath was one of the defining qualities of the Hebrew people and it was once that for us too. I wonder what we would regain if we each tried on own to recover the idea of Sabbath rest?

But it's Monday, not Sunday. So…

The majority of this Chapter contains the familiar words of the Sermon on the Plain. (As opposed to the Sermon on the Mount that we remember in Matthew's Gospel.) It, along with Matthew's version, is probably the most coherent presentation of Jesus' teaching anywhere in the gospels. It's not a verbatim report of course, but it does represent his longest direct teaching to his followers in Luke's Gospel. Much of it is familiar to you I hope. Certainly the beatitudes - the "blessed are the…" phrases that are found in verses 20 through 23. Perhaps you're familiar with the "woes" as well that follow in verses 24 through 26.

Which, oddly enough, reminds me of one particular wedding. The bride and the groom joined the Cathedral in Arizona where I was serving as dean and after a year as part of the community, asked me if I would do their wedding on Jan 1 a couple of years ago. (1/1/11 was a cool date for a wedding apparently. I hear Las Vegas was doing a lot of business that day.) For some reason I agreed.

The groom had a peculiar request (at least in my experience) and asked me in particular to preach on the beatitudes in Luke. The Prayer Book suggests that we use the version that appears in Matthew, but I'd never preached on that particular passage in the context of a wedding - much less the Lukan version. Having already agreed to do the wedding, I guessed there was nothing for it but to honor the preaching request too. So I spent most of the week between Christmas and New Year's Day (The Feast of the Holy Name) thinking about why the Prayer Book suggested the Beatitudes as a gospel for a wedding. There's nothing particularly matrimonial about them. The context and setting of the words in the respective Gospels has nothing to do with marriage either. So why are they assigned?

After a few days of noodling about, I stumbled across a writer who off-handedly mentioned that in Beatitudes, Jesus is sketching out description of what the Kingdom of God will be like when it arrives in its fullness. It will be a time of reversal, a time when we finally see where the arc of history has been taking us. It will be the time when we become God's people in truth and not just in promise.

And the words are used as one of the options for a wedding because at its best, the relationship between two people that truly reflects God's will for us, will look like the Kingdom of Heaven to the people who look at the relationship. The relationship becomes an icon of the Kingdom of God - a sign of the beginning of the breaking in of God's reign on Earth.

The Prayer Book makes the connection in the wedding liturgy, but looking at the Bible directly, perhaps we can see that all human relationships have the potential to become this sort of icon of the Kingdom. And even go so far as to suggest that we can use this idea to unlock the full teaching of the Sermon on the Plain.

Jesus is telling us that as we live into the characteristics that he is describing, we are drawing closer and closer to the reality of the Kingdom. And that we aren't just doing that for ourselves, we are becoming the sign of the Kingdom for the whole world. We become the proof of Jesus' teaching to people who are struggling with his words.

We become (to borrow a phrase from the Sermon on the Mount) a light that gives light to the whole world so that the whole world can find its way in the dark.

Isn't it interesting that Jesus ends the sermon he gives in the 6th chapter with a warning of what will happen to all of us if we don't heed his teaching?

So, here's something to think about today. What do you need to change in your most important relationship so that you might move toward becoming a living icon of God's Kingdom? What do you (y'all) need to take on? What needs to be let go?

And… are you willing to do that?

Church Service Snow Cancellations

Many prayers for safety! This page will be updated as often as we receive new info, so keep an eye on it. If you don't see your church here please also check your church's website and/or facebook page, as closing information may appear there first.

If your church is closed or if you are stuck at home, you can read Morning Prayer online with Episcopalians around the world at Mission St. Clare

Service Cancellations:

AS OF SUNDAY 9:00am

Holy Trinity, Tiverton: all Sunday services cancelled

Trinity, Pawtuxet Village: all Sunday services cancelled

Lenten Bible Study Day 5; Luke 5

Luke chapter 5 (NRSV)

Today, as I read the fifth chapter of Luke's Gospel, right off I'm reminded that our chapter divisions are almost totally arbitrary.

As a reminder, the present chapter divisions in our modern editions of the books in the Bible come from an Archbishop of Canterbury in the middle of the 13th century. I'm thinking of that today because the fifth chapter has a veritable potpourri of vignettes of the early days of Jesus' earthly ministry. There's the healing of the paralytic let down from the roof, the healing of a leper, the call of the disciples and a parable about the nature of the Kingdom of God.

When we read the Bible in worship we don't use the chapter divisions to order our readings for this very reason. We tend to read shorter parts of the chapter, parts that constitute a story or thought unit. The scholarly term for this sort of narrative unit is "pericope". (You'll hear clergy sometimes referring to that in their sermons.)

So what jumps out at me this snowy Sunday morning in first week of Lent? It's Jesus' words to his first disciples after the miraculous catch of fish. After sending the fisherman back out into the water to let down their nets again, he tells them "don't be afraid" (Luke 5:10) before the well known line "you will be fishers of people". It's after what is given as an order, in the imperative voice, that the new disciples leave everything and follow him.

"Do not be afraid". We've heard this phrase twice already. It was Gabriel's first words to Zechariah when Gabriel announced the coming birth of John the Baptizer. It was the first words the angelic host said to the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem the night of Jesus' birth. (Did you notice though that Gabriel didn't say that when he appeared to Mary? Isn't that interesting…?) Now today, Jesus uses the same words to the disciples. And I suppose by extension to us.

(By the way, this is not the last time we'll read these words in Luke's Gospel. Pay attention for them as we go forward together.)"Be not afraid."

In the story that Luke is relating, there's a sense that Jesus is using the angelic formula because he too is a messenger, a herald. Though he's not anything like an angel. He is both God and Human and fully present with us. There's something much greater than an angel here - as evidenced later by the healing of the leper, and even more so by Jesus' claiming God's own authority to forgive sins, and proving that he can by healing the paralytic.

But why this particular phrase? I've often thought that it is because it's fear that keeps us from doing what God asks of us. Fear that it won't work out. Fear that we'll do it wrong. Fear that we will fail. Fear that others will reject us, or that we'll lose something. In the case of the angelic messengers the phrase is a reminder that angels bring awe. They're beautiful, but it's a "terrible, awe-full and frightening" beauty. They are not at like the tame angels we see in popular art and culture. It makes sense that their first words - except in the case of Mary - are an order to "stop being afraid". But it's also interesting that, since angels are God's messengers, that these are God's words to us too. Just like we hear from Jesus to his disciples.

Here then is something to meditate on today. Jesus is telling us that, as his disciples, we must stop being afraid.

What are you afraid of? What would your life as a disciple be like if you were no longer afraid?

Lenten Bible Study Day 4; Luke 4

Luke Chapter 4 (NRSV)

Today, in chapter 4, we come across the story of how Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days of fasting and trial. As a preacher I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this particular story because it appears in one version or another every year on the first Sunday in Lent.

For the first few years that I was preaching I focused on the lesson, and on the struggle between Jesus and the adversary that it describes. Later on I started to focus more on the meaning of Lent and calling people to take this season as seriously as possible. I wonder if I did that in part because it was hard for me to understand the starkness of the story and the fullness of the language and scenery it describes.

A bit more than six years ago I accepted a call to serve as the dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Arizona. I had never been to Arizona before. I'd hardly ever been west of the Mississippi. I was deeply familiar with the intimate lush green landscape of the mid-Atlantic. The desert seemed like a grand adventure.

When I first got out to Phoenix and saw the vastness of the Sonoran desert from the airplane it was hard to see anything but jagged rocks and thorny plants. I remember when we were buying a house and looking all around the valley. The real estate agent would point out that a particular house had a mountain view. I didn't want a mountain view. The "mountain" was a pile of dark brown dirt and some very jagged rocks. I didn't want to look at that every morning.

It took me years to learn to see the beauty of the desert. But eventually I came to see the fragility that was hidden in the crags. My eye learned to see the colors of a new palette. I noticed the tiny flowers hidden behind the thorns.

But I also learned to respect the desert. I used to lead hikes into the wilderness on Saturday mornings with whoever wanted to come along. On a couple of occasions people on the hike weren't working hard enough at drinking water. Dehydration comes on fast. And it's very dangerous. We had a couple of moments that were a bit more exciting than I wanted them to be.

The idea of one person spending forty days in the desert without food or water is more than I can wrap my head around. I learned from my hikes that the only way to manage in the hostile environment of the desert was to cooperate with the people around you. Those exciting moments stayed merely "exciting" because we shared our water and food with the person who had run out. I think the nomadic people's "over-the-top" sense of hospitality must come out of this same recognition. Either you cooperate with each other or you are in danger of dying.

Jesus though goes into the wilderness on his own. He is in the wilderness by himself. And Jesus doesn't cooperate with his adversary when he appears. (The name "Satan" in Greek literally means "adversary".) And Jesus is not overcome. This time of testing in the desert is not the same thing as retreat or spiritual fast - at least not according to the accounts. This is a real and desperate struggle in the starkest and least forgiving place on Earth. And Jesus both endures it and overcomes it.
In Mark's Gospel, the picture of Jesus that is presented shows us a man of great power who does things that leave the people around him amazed and confused. This story in Luke, so close to the Markan version, is a close echo of that. There's something deep and powerful at work here.

I wonder that sometimes we tame our experience of God. We reduce God to a nice manageable idea that we can get our heads and hearts around. But this story is a reminder that there is more to God and God's work among us than we are comfortable with.