"Tested in the Wilderness"
Scripture reading: Luke 4:1-13
Rev. Diane Hooge
Sermon on Sunday, February 29, 2004
Last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, I was headed back to church after a visit with Dorothy Anderson when I decided to take a chance and see if I could get a ticket for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ. By the time I got to my seat, the theater was pretty well filled. I offered a prayer that my heart would be open to what I needed to receive from this movie that has received so much hype.
Because the violence was so graphic and horrendous, I found I needed to briefly close my eyes at various points. I don’t think of myself as being squeamish, and yet I was surprised at the end of the movie that my stomach felt unsettled. I ended the film feeling numb. Being by myself, I didn’t have to talk about it. I went back to church where I carefully made my way through the building hoping that I wouldn’t have to break my silence. I went home and had no energy to do anything. Late that night as I attempted to discern what this film had tapped into at such a deep level, I had an image that I occasionally look at. It’s from when I was five years old. I used to have nightmares that I recall lasting for many nights – nights when I would wake up and see the flames of hell, and pray over and over that Jesus would come into my heart and be my savior so I wouldn’t end up in hell. My theater experience had tapped into my five-year-old dream theater experience. No matter how much healing we experience in life, we often still carry scar tissue. I still hold some of those scars from my earliest teachings about God and Jesus from both Sunday School and my parents.
On Thursday, I joined with a newly formed American Baptist clergy group that has received a portion of a Lily grant to support clergy study groups. Our focus is on transformation. We gathered around a library table – eight male clergy and me. The topic of Gibson’s Passion came up, and three of us in the group had seen it. The gentleman to my left felt it was a gift and that we could expect to see an influx of folks coming into our churches. Although I disagreed, I didn’t offer anything because I was still stuck in my own processing. I made a few comments and hoped the subject would change.
As I continued to struggle with the film, I spent time over the phone with my former Spiritual Director in Boston. I told him that I found that I needed to stay out of my head and get in touch with my visceral response to the film. It finally came to me what I was pushing away or walling myself off from. I named it - divine child abuse. The film had plunged me deeply back into the abusive world of my family of origin as well as the church of my family of origin.
Although there were back flashes provided for the viewer to review and witness pieces of Jesus life, they were extremely limited and sometimes felt like the only times I could get any relief from the grisly beatings.
Today’s text offers the familiar first Sunday of Lent story. It’s the beginning of our Journey Through the Wilderness. Jesus has left the site of his baptism and has entered into a 40-day retreat. The desert setting mirrors his interior wilderness journey – a journey that will test out his bottom line values as to how he will live out his ministry. He chose to get away from all distractions, except that even in the wilderness distractions find us. And, Jesus was no exception.
Although I haven’t personally experienced a lot about fasting, I know that after a few days, hunger dissipates and the mind becomes clear and focused. If one goes too long, one risks disorientation and warped judgment along with changes in personality. The text tells us that Jesus was famished. It is often our third world brothers and sisters who speak firsthand about being famished. Most importantly, Jesus experiences being tempted by Satan three times. In this season of listening to what his life and calling needed to be about Satan steps in and entices Jesus with food, and then with power. He wasn’t just offering real estate as he stood with Jesus on the mountain looking down on the townships and hamlets and the well-known city of Jericho. The devil was offering authority, human approval, votes of confidence, and popularity. Satan then took it up a notch, and tempted Jesus to cast himself down over the cliff, and let the angels rescue him.
We know what it is to reach for something in order to block out fear, and pain, because with eating, shopping, care taking, blaming, and projections, we fill up the empty place inside of us, rather than face listening to what that emptiness has to teach us. The feeding of our addictions keeps us under the illusion that we control life. To enter the wilderness is to risk living by the grace of God. We take a risk when we stay long enough to hear the truth – truth about our lives, and the truth about what God is seeking from us and for us.
Yesterday morning I woke up to the front-page headlines that stated, “Bishops failed to protect children,” 10,667 abuse claims filed since 1950, and those statistics were only for the Catholic Church. The temptation for me is to not hang on to the God of love and grace that I have sought so longingly for. The temptation is to go back into the old fears of a punitive God and not speak my truth about how my life was impacted. My childhood did not include the theater productions, because movies were considered sinful, except for one Billy Graham movie that we were encouraged by the church leadership to view. But even with the cutout pictures that were pressed upon a flannel-covered tri-pod, I got the message. God was to be feared, and therefore, in the hierarchy of power, I also learned to fear my parents who loved and believed in the God who discerned whether or not heaven would be granted as a reward or whether hell would be granted as one’s eternal life.
I found myself aching for all children of every church who have been the victims of abuse – especially those who found it in church- and who will venture out to see Gibson’s film. I can’t imagine them seeing this movie and not in some way being re-victimized.
Gibson portrays Satan as a black-cloaked figure with a grayed face who slithers through the crowd staying in sight of what is going on with Jesus. The figure reminded me of the comic books I received as a child designed to teach me that evil looking characters would attempt to entice me into their car with candy, but that I must not succumb to such tactics. It was an era that denied that abuse could happen by the very people that claimed to love us the most. It was an era that denied speaking the truth about abusive behavior and passed on to other churches priests, rectors, and pastors who “caused a stir” within congregations. Church leadership succumbed to the temptation to choose secrets over truth telling.
I woke up yesterday wishing that Jazz Sunday was this Sunday so I didn’t have to publicly wrestle with this sermon. And then I remembered the importance of Tuesday. I had received an email from Don Samuel’s office letting me know that an unknown person opened fire on a group of three people, wounding two and killing one. It was an invitation to once again join him in vigil at the scene of a homicide. It is easy for me to come up with things that this community would agree are important things to accomplish as pastor of this congregation. Those same important things can also become a temptation – a temptation to not get involved in a story that is already considered invisible by our society. There’s a temptation to say, “What does standing on a corner really accomplish?
I drove through an industrial part of town and finally came to the 200 block of 33rd Avenue North, a street with just a scattering of houses. There was a crude wooden cross, which had been placed in the front yard. On the cross was printed, Jason Barry. There were candles lining the sidewalk in front of the cross. Flowers were mounted around the cross as well as taped to a nearby tree. Each newly dropped off bouquet was added to the tree created a pillar of flowers. Several folding chairs sat on the sidewalk facing the house across the street where a huge bail bond sign stood high above the front yard. A table sat next to the chairs where Don had placed a couple of books to be given to the family of the deceased. Family, friends, and visitors, like me, were invited to write their thoughts as an offering to the Barry family.
I was reminded of all the times I have driven up to gravesides in either my car or the car of a funeral home and walked with a family up to the grave. However, in this case there had been no formal obituary. No hearse with an oak casket being carried to the site. All that was there were the scattered purse contents of the women who had been gunned down, and the scuffed up snow where a gunman took the life of a 31-year-old young man, leaving behind two sons.
The family arrived in groups of three’s and fours. They took time to tend to the cross bearing Jason’s name, and to add their flowers. They stared down at the sight where the killer had stepped into the snow and taken his shots. There were tears, anger, and the need by certain members of the family to clarify that he was not a member of any gang.
There was a collective keen interest shown in the small black books that held the writings by those who took the time to share their concerns, laments, pain, and hope with and for the family. I wrote that Judson Church would be praying for their family this Sunday. And, I wrote that I had made a commitment standing on that corner that I would be making some contacts with schools in our church neighborhood. I wrote that I wanted to listen to principals tell me about what is needed so that our children are more fully supported and can grow up without the fear of this kind of violence.
Jesus was a threat to the systems of his day. We have difficulty understanding how radical he was as a teacher. And unfortunately, if one does not have a good biblical background, I’m not sure that someone can get the interpretive nuances of Gibson’s film. The crucifixion was not the cure to the domination system. Jesus’ crucifixion was the result of a system of domination.
Yes, I know that the film was designed to depict the last 12 hours of Christ, but somehow, the life changing stories of Jesus that led to healing, transformation, new life, abundance, and most of all hope felt bypassed with the rawness of the brutality of death.
I noticed a website that was selling jewelry and gifts. Perhaps, just perhaps, the temptation is to hang a cross, or wear a nail bracelet and forget about the hard teachings of Jesus who called us not to worship him, but to follow his ways of taking the risks that come with loving one another. Love is the only way that leads to new life - and it is the only way to authentic hope.
Amen.