The Wilderness - time for silence

 

1^st Sunday of Lent – Eucharist – 26.ii.23

 

(Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7; Romans 5.12-19; Matthew 4.1-11)

 

I’m always grateful when people give me feedback on things I’ve done, said preached or written - especially if it’s positive feedback. Recently someone (not a regular churchgoer here) was telling me how she’d been intrigued  by an article I’d written in our Parish Magazine about going on retreat. I’ve just looked up again what I’d said:

One of the best things I have done recently is to have gone on retreat… Sometimes you just have to recognise what you shouldn’t do so that you can clear the decks and do nothing.

Actually not quite nothing. To go on retreat is to make a deliberate effort to make space. You might have ideas of how you’ll use your time, especially if you think you’re going to read lots of books or write down your most profound thoughts. But that’s not the point. The point is to find stillness and space - and let things happen within that space; let God have the chance to speak - which is a very good reason to stop talking ourselves!

Mine was a retreat specifically for clergy - but anyone can go on retreat. We knew that meals would be in silence, and we weren’t going to talk to each other, however interesting we might have been. No television, and there was a notice that we wouldn’t be given a WiFi code to access the internet. So four days of silence, joining in the regular prayers of the Friars in Alnmouth, walking, reading books I hadn’t expected - most of all making space for God. It might not be for everybody - but we all need time to stop, listen and be open for something beyond planning.  

 

Today, on this First Sunday of Lent we remember the time which Jesus gave to prayer and fasting in the desert right at the start of his public ministry. Before he goes about preaching and teaching, before he speaks, Jesus has to listen. The hymn we sing gets that:

            Forty days and forty nights,

            Thou wast fasting in the wild,

            Forty days and forty nights

                    Tempted, and yet undefiled. 

In Lent we remember those 40 days which Jesus spent, fasting in the desert, led by the Spirit, praying that he might discern God's will. We don’t read this Gospel just so that we can look back on Jesus’ time in the wilderness and seek for inspiration by recalling it. We don’t read it so that we can be encouraged by his resistance to temptation. St. Matthew and St. Luke go into quite a bit of detail about the three temptations resisted by Jesus - and his dialogue with Satan. But if instead we look at St. Mark’s account, probably the earliest telling of the story we find there’s no telling of the temptation to turn stones into bread, to chance God’s arm by leaping from the parapet of the Temple, nor to fall down and worship Satan in return for dominion over earthly kingdoms. That’s not to say that they don’t happen. But because Matthew and Luke take up so much space in telling their story, perhaps they lose the perspective that we need. Mark - on the other hand - is sparing in his telling of the story: merely that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, that he knew the reality of temptation - and that he found himself in the midst of wild beasts and angels.

So, having read St. Matthew’s Gospel account today, I want to direct you to St. Mark’s version, right at the beginning of his Gospel: Mark is saying that Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray and so that he could discern God’s will. He tells us that the Spirit drove him there. And Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus did once he got there. He was simply there. And stuff happened to him, like the temptations - and finding himself with beasts and angels. We make sense of this wilderness time by putting it in the context of what has already happened to Jesus at his Baptism, when he is acknowledged as God’s Son, and then what follows, as Jesus preaches the coming of the Kingdom and the urgency of responding to it. In between there’s simply that space of forty days - empty time in an empty place.

Wouldn’t you love to get away from it all? So many of us say that. But would we want something so extreme as that time spent by Jesus in the desert? I’ve just gone back to Sara Maitland’s book, which has the title, “A Book of Silence.” It’s a memoir of her experience in seeking silence - a journey which has taken her from “an unusually noisy childhood,” as she puts it, through gregarious years of challenge and excitement as a student, through family life in that least peaceful of places, a Vicarage, eventually to her establishment as a hermit, living at first not far from here in Weardale and now on a remote moor in Galloway. Her quest has been for silence. She writes:

We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, that we value privacy and that the solitary and silent person is somehow more ‘authentic’ than the same person in a social crowd, but we seldom seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticise silence on the one hand and on the other feel that it is terrifying, dangerous to our mental health, a threat to our liberties and something to be avoided at all costs.

I’m sure she’s right that the quest for silence requires real commitment, and we shouldn’t under-estimate the demands that silence can make upon us. Before I undertook an eight-day Individually Guided Retreat, I was required to fill in a questionnaire - and there was a warning that if you hadn’t had previous experience of at least four days of silence you should not sign up. It’s when you find yourself on your own and in silence that you find not merely the opportunity for peaceful reflection, but also all the disturbing voices speaking which otherwise you can ignore amid the frantic hurly-burly of life the way we normally live it. Those things that wake us up in the early hours and won’t let us get back to sleep. The things that we try to put off, shirk and shake off… they all crowd in on us. If we want to let the silence do its work we have to confront the darker parts of our life, the responsibilities which can never be escaped, the fears which need to be owned so that they can be effectively confronted. Is that what is happening as Jesus - 40 days in the desert - finds himself a prey to temptation and surrounded by “wild beasts”?

Sara Maitland writes:

I am convinced that as a whole society we are losing something precious in our increasingly silence-avoiding culture and that somehow, whatever this silence might be, it needs holding, nourishing and unpacking.

What can we do with this season we call Lent? The 40 days Jesus spends in the desert take him to the place of empty spaces, away from the distractions of life's busy-ness, to seek God, to listen to his heart, to learn what truly is to be God's will for his life's work. They’re a space which will prepare him for his public ministry. That’s the point of Lent for us. It is not a time simply for deeper devotion or spiritual refreshment so that - once Lent is over - we can go back to our old ways. It’s a time to explore what it means to be Christ's disciple, to learn more about our Christian calling and more about ourselves, so that Easter may find us changed, ready to meet the risen Jesus, discovering that he has already found us.  We need to look at ourselves to ask where we are going and why. We need to recognise again that ours is a journey worth making.

Fr. Gerard Hughes – author of the book God of Surprises, which we once used for a Lent course - suggests that,

"It is a very useful exercise to take a piece of paper, divide it into two columns, one headed 'Events which bring me to life', and the other 'Events which deaden me', then scribble down whatever comes to mind. Keep the list, and add to it whenever another item occurs to you. If you persist, the list will lengthen, and you may discover that you give more time and attention to the things which deaden you than to those which enliven you."  

We need to look into our hearts. What are the things which drag us down? What are the things that can move us on? Do we just try to get by, holding on to what we have got, but seeing it inevitably decay? Or do we take risks in living and loving so that we might grow?

Sara Maitland writes that in her quest for silence,

I wanted to explore my own spirituality and deepen my growing sense of the reality of God, and the possibility of that reality. Within all the major religious traditions… there is a shared recognition that silence is one very effective tool for spiritual development.

If only we’ll take the chance and the opportunity… It’s after his forty days in the wilderness that Jesus finds angels ministering to him. And he emerges from the desert able to declare, "the kingdom of God has come!" The Christian task is to share that proclamation. Let’s use this season of Lent to look into our hearts to find God at work. Let’s use our opportunities for silence to recognise more clearly what is really real.

Transfiguration - and Humanity

 Sunday next before Lent      Year A         Eucharist – 19.ii.2023

 (Exodus 24.12-18; 2 Peter 1.16-21; Matthew 17.1-9)

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 

In the presence of the disciples who are closest to him, Jesus is transfigured in their midst; the appearance of his face changes and his clothes become dazzling white; Moses and Elijah appear, talking with him - their appearance bears witness to the glory of God revealed in Christ.

What do words like “transfigured” or “transfiguration” and “glory” mean to you? Writing in the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons declared: 

The glory of God is a man fully alive. 

You can see it in our Gospel reading. Not only Jesus, but Moses and Elijah themselves, appear before the disciples in “glory.” It’s a dazzling vision which contrasts with the state of the disciples, Peter, James and John. Today we read St. Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration. In St. Luke’s version he tells us that the disciples were “weighed down with sleep.” In all the accounts there’s that strange offer by Peter to build three dwellings, “one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” It’s an inadequate response, an attempt to deal with something beyond their understanding. St. Luke’s Gospel actually makes that point: “Peter did not know what he had said.” It might make us think of our own inadequacy when we say that we are simply lost for words. And then the disciples find themselves reduced to terror as a cloud covers them. The cloud signifies the presence of God - and the disciples hear God speak: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.” If you read on to find out what happens next, you discover that when the disciples go down the hill from the Mount of the Transfiguration they are asked to heal a young boy - and they fail. Where is the effect of God’s glory on them?

We need to go back to those words of St. Irenaeus which I quoted: “The glory of God is a man fully alive.” That’s what we see in Jesus - the Son of God, but at the same time fully human. The glory of his Transfiguration is not something alien coming upon him. The Transfiguration of Christ reveals the true glory, the real nature of a man who some want to write off as “all too human.” Our humanity is a calling to share the glory of God. Our weakness is something to be transfigured. God can use us because we are human.

“Glory” is not something to escape into from our human condition. Glory is revealed because we are human with all the frailty and frustrations of being what we are. But we wrestle with the frailty and the frustration.

So much going that’s on in our world reinforces our sense of frailty and frustration. While we might look for a brightness which speaks of the glory of God and the glory of humanity, instead we find a cloud of darkness. When I preached on this final Sunday before Lent last year, Russia had invaded its neighbour Ukraine just a few days earlier. Later this week we come to the anniversary of that terrible event - and the war goes on. Cruelties inflicted on one nation by another - a nation led by a capricious tyrant, who wears a cross given to him when he was baptised but who denies the image of God that is basic to our human being. The church of his nation in its public statements has given him support. Those of his own people who have dared to dissent have met with repression.

A year on and we have all felt the implications for our wider world: surrounding nations fearful for their own security; western nations which had been dependent so much on Russia for our energy needs now meeting the cost - and that is a cost which has been laid so heavily on the poorest and most needy in our own society as food and energy costs have soared; and as the countries of the world have been forced to take sides the real possibility that a still wider war might follow.

Last year at this time I found myself quoting the poet W H Auden’s words written from his experience of the Civil War in 1930s Spain. The hopes which we should all have of a bright tomorrow - of lives lived to the full, contrasting with the evil of war which denies our humanity in the darkness of today: 

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
the photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle. 

 Auden goes on:

But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

I had read those words and thought of the early days of the invasion of Ukraine: women making Molotov Cocktails in the streets of Kyiv and the volunteers queueing to be given weapons for use in resistance to the Russian tanks. What is their hope? I had asked. A year on, the resistance still holds - but at such a huge cost. While we try to keep our heating costs down and complain about the price of food, the people of Ukraine have had lands stolen, homes and infrastructure destroyed, supply chains disrupted, and electricity and power supplies an often intermittent luxury. And how many hundreds of thousands have died or suffered injuries from which they will never recover?

Two questions have come back to me which I have found helpful to contemplate - they were first asked in a group meditation. The first, “Have you ever gone through a moment in your life of feeling totally overwhelmed by life?” and the second, “Have you ever gone through a period of life when you discovered the meaning of your life?”

So often we might feel overwhelmed by so many emotions, fears, anger or hopelessness. But we might look back on other occasions which are now behind us. And what about the times when we have discovered real meaning? Many in the group which first discussed these questions made their reply that, “It was at the moment of overwhelming that we discovered the meaning.”

Where do we discover meaning? What do we do with the sense of being overwhelmed?

The fourteenth century mystic, Julian of Norwich, suffered illness so grave that she was given the Last Rites to prepare her for death. She lived in a city which suffered the devastating effects of the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt and occasions of religious repression. But she found new hope in a vision of Christ now known as her Revelations of Divine Love. She wrote of her experience of Christ’s goodness - and his assurance: 

… take it; believe it; hold on to it; comfort yourself with it and trust it. You will not be overcome. 

And Julian goes on to affirm that this is a message for all her fellow Christians: 

This word, ‘You will not be overcome’ was said very distinctly and firmly to give us confidence and comfort for whatever troubles may come. He did not say, ‘You will never have a rough passage, you will never be over-strained, you will never feel uncomfortable,’ but he did say, ‘You will never be overcome.’ God wants us to pay attention to these words, so as to trust him always with strong confidence, through thick and thin. For he loves us, and delights in us; so he wills that we should love and delight in him in return, and trust him with all our strength. So all will be well. 

We can’t deny those times when we might feel quite overwhelmed by life, but even there we might find what we need to show us what is truly important, what lies deepest within us to give meaning to our lives.

The disciples will descend the Mount of Transfiguration immediately to be confronted by their own failures and failings. But they have had that experience of Christ’s glory and it cannot be taken away. They hear the voice of God, and the best they can do is themselves keep silent. Not to be able to put our feelings and our faith into words is not to be a failure - it is God who sustains us. We are called simply to be - but living as his children bearing his image.

 

Candlemas: Eucharist for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ

Candlemas: Eucharist for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple - the Revd. Martin Jackson presides at St Cuthbert’s Church, Shotley Bridge.