INTO THE SHADOWS Lent 1
February 21, 2010
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Luke 4:1-13
This is the first Sunday in Lent. It seems as if we just finished with Christmas and all the attendant celebrations. In fact, I just put away my Christmas decorations last week while I was on vacation!! But here we are at that time in the church year when we are asked to look at ourselves and our faith, our living and our life and see just how well we are fulfilling the unique calling that God has given each of us as individuals and as a community.
The liturgical season of Lent always begins with Jesus sitting in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil. His hair was still wet from his baptism by John. No sooner had he come out of the water than the dove that had lit on him turned into a guide bird, leading him away from the river and into the desert with the voice of God still ringing in his ears: “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” What remained to be seen was what that meant for Jesus. How would he choose to live out the promise of his baptism?
So for 40 days and nights, Jesus was on retreat, discerning his ministry. And it was a very rigorous retreat—no food, no companionship, no shelter. Only himself and God. And at the end of those days, Jesus was hungry and weak and probably none too alert. And along came the devil to test him. To test him when he was most vulnerable, most susceptible to making expedient decisions, tempted by Satan with food, false divinity and power—all of which Jesus resisted.
This account of Jesus in the wilderness and with Satan is a story of a time of preparation for his ministry, certainly, a time of finding out who he is and of preparing himself for his calling in life. But there’s also an additional way understanding this time. And that is to say that this is Jesus’ initiation into adulthood—much like the vision quest of many aboriginal cultures. This understanding that all heroes undergo a time of testing before they can reach the prize is as old as humanity. And has parallels in the legends and history of all cultures.
Even in the cultures of the imagined future, like the one on the planet of Pandora in the movie Avatar, which I saw Friday night, the hero must undergo an initiation which threatens his life, an initiation which he must face on his own, defeating the “enemy,” in the form of a flying dragon—an enemy which is really himself, as our enemies often are.
One of my most well-beloved books, actually three books, is R.R. Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy. A few years ago, the three movies based on the books were my way of celebrating New Year’s Eve.
As many, if not most, of you know, the story is about a magic Ring that gives whoever wears it the power to rule their world—Middle Earth. Through a number of circumstances, this Ring comes into the hands of a loveable creature known as a Hobbit, by name, Frodo. The problem is, this Ring, forged as the most powerful of nine rings, was made for the Dark Lord, Sauron, made, not for good power, but for evil.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
in the
Sauron, the Dark Lord, had been defeated a long time ago and lost the Ring. But Sauron is gaining power once more and is living in his stronghold in Mordor. For, as Tolkien says in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, “always, after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” And Sauron is sending out his emissaries, Ringwraiths, to find the Ring so that he might have ultimate power. If it is found and comes into Sauron’s possession, it will be used to snuff out the light of civilization and cover the world in darkness.
Sauron will stop at nothing to get the Ring and his power is immense and gathers to itself all creatures that find the lure of power irresistible. He already has amassed a huge army of orcs and renegade dwarves and men. And he knows in what area of Middle Earth the Ring is to be found. It is only a matter of time before the Ring is his.
The only way out of this dilemma is for the Ring to be destroyed in the fires that forged it—in Mordor, in
It is a terrifying prospect for a comfort-loving, gentle, peaceful and simple Hobbit. And the choice is his. But, in the end, there really is no choice. If he does not go, comfort, gentleness, peace, mercy and light will be lost and violence, hatred and darkness will rule.
And so, with eight companions, the Fellowship of the Ring, he goes. Into the Shadow. Into an unknown peril. And, as events transpire, he and his soul companion, Sam, are separated from the rest and only the two of them go on. They face danger after danger that threatens their lives.
And Frodo faces the greatest danger of them all—that he will succumb to the lure of the Ring and keep it and so become Evil himself. But, in the end, with Sam’s loyalty and persistent help, the Ring is destroyed in the fire and the world becomes light again—until the next darkness.
This story follows a pattern that we see in many heroic journeys, which are not just physical but also, and more importantly, spiritual journeys. No hero, no person, no community becomes whole without going through the shadows that they encounter. This morning we see Jesus facing his shadows.
Jesus was a full human being, just like you and me and part of the reason that he entered the wilderness after his baptism was to face his own shadows, his own very human weaknesses and to find, within the darkness, the strength and purpose and wisdom and courage to be the person God called him to be for the rest of his life. Without this facing of himself, he would have been totally unable to give himself to the life-work for which he was intended.
Jesus was tempted to serve himself and make life easy for himself—tempted to serve Evil. But he resisted. And it couldn’t have been easy. For the voice of Evil was strong and Jesus was physically very weak. “You’re starving, after 40 days of no food? No problem. Just turn these stones into bread.” “You’ve had moments of wondering whether God is with you or not? No problem. Just jump off the top of the temple and prove that God is with you.” “You want people to listen to you, have your job made easy? Just serve me and I will give you all the followers you desire—and then you can tell them about God’s love.” And all the while Evil was laughing up its sleeve, knowing that once Evil got control, Jesus was doomed.
But, even though the promises of Evil were seductive, very seductive, Jesus knew that following that path would bring only destruction. He needed to face Evil down, not give in, or run away.
It is a life truth that, if we do not turn and face our darknesses, the shadows, the evil that we find in ourselves, our culture, our churches, our circumstances, if we do not face those darknesses, then there can be no healing, no freedom, no redemption from everything that keeps us in cages—often cages we construct for ourselves by trying to find the light without the darkness.
But there is no light unless there is also darkness. Healing and freedom, wholeness and truth, come only from entering into the darkness and dealing with it. Running away from it, denying it, refusing to believe that there is anything wrong, ignoring it, leads only to the despair, confusion and hopelessness that ends in death—if not of the body, then certainly of the soul.
But we are going against our culture here. A culture that says that we do not have to experience pain. If something is painful—our body, our relationships, our church, our world—take a pill, leave it, deny it, close our eyes.
Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should put up with pain if we can find a way to deal with it. But so often we think in terms if escaping rather than going through and dealing with whatever is causing the pain of body, mind or spirit. And the trouble is, if we don’t deal with the root causes of the pain, it will return even worse than before. Each time we run away from the shadows in our lives, the darkness gains a little more foothold.
Lent is not a call to seek the shadows, to invite trouble into our lives. But it is a call to face the shadows that are there and not run away into some never-never-land of warm fuzzies that promises what it cannot deliver. Like Jesus, we must go into our own wildernesses and face our own temptations and shadows.
Moses, in our first reading this morning, knows that once the people of Israel cross the river and begin to settle in the new land, they will meet people of other faiths and cultures, they will experience abundance, and the temptation to forget all that God has done for them, to go their own way, to take the easy path, to avoid any darkness will be strong. And so Moses gives them a commemoration service to help the people recall that they called on God and God delivered them and made them a people, God’s people. That God will continue to do so. Because Moses knows what Jesus knows, that the people can trust God’s care, even in the deepest darkness.
And we can know and trust that, too, and, like Jesus, we can emerge from wrestling with the Evil that plagues our own lives stronger, wiser, more compassionate, more whole than we have ever been before.
Perhaps this Lent is a time for us to face our own particular demons, to stand up to the forces in our own lives that block our true humanity, the forces that keep us from being the people that God is calling us to be. For it is only from within the shadow, relying on God’s strength, compassion and grace that we will find, like Jesus, our way to the light—God’s light.
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