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ALL IN THE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

3/30/2025

Sunday, March 30, 2025
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 15:11b-32

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

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A preaching professor once told me to never, ever tell a personal story in my sermons.  Apparently, I didn’t listen.  Because I regularly sprinkle my sermons with stories about the colorful characters who have inhabited my life, some of whom I’m related to.  But how much is too much?  When do sermons stop being sermons and become stand up routines?  Do you really want to know all the messy details about my extended family?

Somehow I doubt it.  Because I have stories that are too dark for sermons and too embarrassing for public revelation.  And I have those kinds of stories precisely because I have a family.

A wise person once said that you can trust the veracity of the Bible precisely because its characters are just as dysfunctional as we are.   And that means that God redeems human messiness and uses it for good.  As if to underscore that point, Jesus features the one of the world’s most dysfunctional families in one of his greatest hits.  We call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son but I call it the Parable of the Dysfunctional Family.

Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons.  One day, the baby of the family came to his father and had the audacity to demand a reading of the will before the old man was even dead.  Inexplicably, the father acquiesced, selling off part of the farm to give the proceeds to his son.  Now, this was never done, because land was seen as a covenant gift from God to that specific family.

Sonny Boy took the money got on the first bus out of Dodge. And he went to an exotic distant country where he could reinvent himself.  He gave lavish parties and made lots of trendy friends.  And everything was just as he dreamed it could be.  Until one fateful day, when the crops failed and the stock market crashed and the bottom fell out of everyone’s world.  The young man, who had been raised with great privilege, was suddenly homeless and hungry.  And then, worst of all, he had to look for a job.  And the only work he could find was slopping the hogs - about as low as a good Jewish boy could go.

But necessity is the mother of invention.  And so, he thought: “Wait a minute.  The servants at dad’s house are living much better than I am!  Maybe if I eat a little humble pie the old fool will forgive me.”  And so, he started home, rehearsing his apology along the way.  Some scholars suggest that there is no indication in this story that is he really sorry about anything.  He’s just hungry and desperate.

Now because his dad was a hopeful man, he used to sit in the tower all day long scanning the horizon, looking for his son.  One day, while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him.  And he jumped up and ran out to meet Sonny Boy, hugging and kissing him, while he wept with relief.  This annoyed the son, who had a speech all prepared that he couldn’t give because of his father carrying on.  Finally, he held the old man at arm’s length and said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  It was a fine speech, but dad didn’t hear a word of it.  He was too busy telling the servants to go fetch a new robe and a diamond ring and some shiny Italian loafers.  “And butcher the fattest calf we have,” he said, “because my son was lost and now he is found.”

Well, it was the biggest party the village had ever seen.  It had to be because the son had publically humiliated the family so there needed to be a public celebration to even the score.

The older brother had been out in the fields working all day.  And he was dirty and tired and hungry.  But when he got close to home, he heard the music and the laughter and smelled the barbeque.  “What’s up?” he asked a servant.  “Your brother is home,” came the reply.  But instead of relief or joy, he only felt rage.  He knew how much pain his younger brother had caused their father.  And he wasn’t going to pretend as if that were not so. So, he refused to step one foot inside that house, which was another public insult to his father.

When his father came out to see him, the older brother let loose: “You’ve never done anything like this for me.  And I have worked hard and been honest and respectful my whole life.  But my no-good brother, who spent our family fortune on prostitutes, I might add, decides to come home and what do you do?  You give him a party.”

And that’s how the story ends - with the family dispute unresolved. We have no idea if the younger son was ever truly sorry.  We don’t know if the older son ever reconciled with his brother.  All we know for sure is that they were a family!

The traditional way to interpret this parable is that the younger son is anyone who has ever really screwed up and selfishly hurt the ones you love.  And the older son is anyone who has ever seethed with resentment at the unfairness of grace.  And the father, well, the long-suffering father is God.

Perhaps.  But the father in this story is dysfunctional too.  And let me tell you why.  First of all, he gave in to what the youngest son demanded.  He turned his back on generations of tradition when he should have just said, “No!”  Second, the father pined away for his wayward son, something a grand patriarch in that culture would not have done.  He was far more likely to have this son declared dead.  There was even a ceremony for just such an occasion.  Third, the patriarch, upon seeing his returning son, hoisted up his robes and ran out to meet him.  Aristotle once said, “Great men never run in public.” And they didn’t.  It was below their station. Fourth, when the older son refused to come into the party, the father got up from his place at the head of the banquet table and left his guests alone – another big breech of the social contract. And then he pleaded with the older son to come in – something the head of the family would never do.  They never pleaded with anybody.  That was the mother’s job.

So, while the father is a sympathetic character for us, for the people in Jesus’s day, the father was just as dysfunctional as his sons.  He broke just as many rules as they did… but with one significant difference.  The younger son broke the rules out of selfishness.  The older son broke the rules out of pride.  But the old man broke the rules out of love.

We think of God as the rule-keeper.  But read the Bible carefully, and you will find, again and again, that God is the One who will break any rule and violate any social contract and upset any norm that stands in the way of compassion.

Some scholars suggest that another way to read this parable is that the father figure is the church.  And that means that we’re not primarily the rule-keepers either.  Law and order is not the ultimate name of the game.  And that upsets those who would co-opt the church in the name of Christian nationalism; who want the church to be another arm of the state.  But the church is here to remind the state that mercy is a sacrament, and justice for the oppressed is a commandment, and that the only thing that can ever truly bring us back home… is LOVE.

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REPENT OR PERISH

3/23/2025

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Sunday, March 24, 2025 – Lent 3
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The word “repent” is often used as a weapon.  And one I’ve had used against me more than once.  And so, knowing first-hand the pain and misunderstanding that this little word can cause, I have avoided its use for most of my ministry.

But lots of people seem to like it.  You can find preachers and lay people railing against one thing or another, one person or another, in pulpits and sidewalks and subway cars.

When we lived in New York, I took the subway everywhere, multiple times a day.  On the day in question, the train was exceedingly crowded.  But I was an expert at sliding into the smallest places.  And I knew that if I worked my way into the center of the car, there would be more room.  There always is.  You see, folks like to stand close to the doors so they can get off easily at their stop.

So, I pushed my way in and worked my way to the center where I could grab hold of a pole.  I was shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek to jowl with my fellow New Yorkers.  But never mind.  New Yorkers have a practiced way of being exceedingly close to someone else while still completely ignoring them.

But there was one man, holding the same pole as I was, who would prove to be very hard to ignore.  With one hand, he held the pole.  And with the other, he held a large Bible.  And I knew what was about to happen.

Suddenly, in a voice that could wake the dead, and only inches from my ears, he let loose.  And the more he preached, the louder he got.  And the louder he got, the more the people in the train ignored him.  And the more they ignored him, the more urgent and angry his message became.  And the one word he used over and over again was “Repent.”

Well, I was trapped like a rat, and that made me angry.  And there he was, using that word as a weapon, and that made me angry too.  The train rattled through station after station and still the man continued to bellow.  And it took every bit of self-control I had to not go at him preacher-to-preacher.  You see, I strenuously objected to his method and his style and his volume.  I wanted to shout in his face: “Jesus would never talk to people like this!”  And I don’t think Jesus ever did.  But that little word - well, Jesus did use it.  And in the case of today’s lesson, it wasn’t just “repent.”  It was “repent or perish.”

One day, some people told Jesus about an awful thing that had happened.  Pilate, the Roman governor, had slaughtered a group of Galilean Jews right inside the Temple of God.  And what’s more, in their assassinations, he had mixed their human blood with the sacrificial animal blood used in the Temple rituals.  When the people told Jesus this news, they likely hoped that he would answer the age-old question: why do bad things happen to good people?

Scholars refer to this as “theodicy” – a fancy word that means “the problem of evil.”  In other words, how are we to make sense of random suffering if God is indeed powerful and loving?  It’s an excellent question and one I’ve been seeking to answer for most of my life.  Let me know if you figure it out.

Jesus had the perfect opportunity to explain it all in response to this story about Pilate’s bloody brutality.  But he didn’t.  Instead, Jesus asked another question: “Do you think that they were worse sinners than anyone else and that this was a punishment?”  Most folks did think that then.  And lots of folks think it now.  It’s a way we try to make sense of suffering, by seeing it as cause and effect.  Until, of course, the bad thing happens to us.

But then Jesus answered his own question with a one-word response: “No,” he said.  And then he continued: “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

And then for good measure, Jesus brought up another example of random suffering.  A tower over in Siloam had suddenly collapsed.  And it killed eighteen people.  “What that their fault?” Jesus asked.  “No,” he replied.  “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Now at first glance, that second part does sound a little bit like cause and effect, right?  “Repent or you will likewise perish.”  Except that Jesus was really clear that random suffering is not some kind of divine punishment.   There is no cause and effect.  So then, what could he have meant when he said “Repent or you will likewise perish”?

Well, before we get there, let’s back up a bit and talk about repentance.  What is it?  To repent is not to collapse into a pool of self-recrimination.  And it’s not thinking that you are an awful person.  And we don’t repent in order to make God love us.  God adores us – warts and all.  To repent, from the Bible’s point of view, is simply this: to turn and walk in a new direction.  It’s a change of course, a change of mind, a change of life - that many time avoids needless suffering.

Repent or perish, Jesus said.  And then he told a story, that at first seems like a non-sequitur.  A landowner had a fig tree that for three years bore no fruit.  This frustrated the landowner because the tree wasn’t living up to its purpose or potential.  And so, the landowner said to the gardener, “Chop it down.  It’s wasting soil.”

But the gardener saw the potential in the little tree.  The gardener believed that, with enough time and attention, it could bear good fruit.  And so, he said to the landowner, “Sir, give it another year.  Let me dig around and fertilize and love and nurture this little tree.  I bet that with the right kind of care, it will live a better life and bear fruit.”

Well, maybe the landowner is God.  And maybe the gardener is Jesus.  And maybe the underperforming fig tree is me.  But the gardener sees my potential.  And so, the gardener asks for more time to love and care for me so that I might change and fulfill my potential.

Jesus did not answer the big question about why there is suffering.  He just seemed to assume its existence.  But he does ask another exceedingly important question.  And it’s simply this: in a world of random suffering, why do you want to add even more suffering to your life by the way you live?  Repent or that’s what will happen.

And that makes Jesus’s call to repentance, an act of love.  Because in this beautiful but broken world, there is the suffering that we cannot avoid.  And there is the suffering that we can avoid - the kind we bring on ourselves, by our unwillingness to change those things that hurtle us toward disaster.

For example, does anyone in this room actually believe that being dug in and refusing to compromise and seeing politics as a zero-sum game will actually save this country that we all love?  We must repent.  We must change our minds.  We must change our direction… or we will perish.

Does anyone in this room actually believe that the grudges and the anger and the vitriol that we nurse and feed will not in the end eat us alive?  Do we believe that cruelty and avarice and bold-face lies will not come back to haunt us?  Do we actually believe that this good earth will always recover from our abuses?  Repent or perish.  The choice is ours.

Grim, I know.  But then there’s the Gospel.  We have a gardener who is very patient and very skilled at making us bloom and grow.  We have a gardener who advocates for us to the landowner, asking, again and again, for more time for amendment of life.  We have a gardener who knows that we can bear fruit worthy of repentance.

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THE GOSPEL OF THE HEN

3/16/2025

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Sunday, March 16, 2025 – Lent 2
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

In many ways, I am a traditionalist when it comes to liturgy.  I believe it’s important to stay anchored to the ancient traditions of the church, while also being open to new ways of experiencing God.

This commitment of mine is on display most Sundays when I give the benediction.  Almost always, I invoke the Trinity, using the traditional formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But then I add this gloss: “One God, Mother of the whole creation.”
Now maybe you like that gloss; maybe you don’t.  But there was a time when those words would have never crossed my lips.  If fact, the first time I ever heard God referred to as Mother, it was quite a shock.

I was a college student in small town Indiana and periodically I attended the local United Methodist church.  The pastor was young and cool.  And I liked his sermons.  Back in the 80s, the hot topic in church was what we call “God language”, that is, how we refer to the Divinity.  The local United Methodist bishop had created quite a stir by referring to God as Mother.  This made the news back then.  And one Sunday, my cool, young pastor used his entire sermon to defend the bishop’s statement.  I could have lived with that, but it was what he did next that shook my foundations.  He led us in the Lord’s Prayer with these words: “Our Mother who art in heaven…”  Well, I didn’t like that very much.

About the same time, there was an article in Newsweek Magazine about a controversial crucifix on display in the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City.  It was called “Christa” and portrayed a naked woman hanging on a cross.  I remember I didn’t like that very much either.  In fact, I didn’t like it so much that I wrote a rather heated letter to the editor.  Thank God they never published it!

Of course, talking about God as Mother is less controversial than it used to be.  We understand language to be a product of one’s time.  We understand the evolution of theology.  But perhaps most importantly for me, we’ve also learned a lot about the Bible’s original languages and how those languages refer to the divine using both male and female imagery.  Here’s a poignant example: one Hebrew name for God “el Shaddai.”  This is often translated as “God Almighty.”  But remember that translations are editorial choices.  And “el Shaddai” can just as easily be translated as “the many breasted one” – a poetic way of saying that God, like a mother, gives nurture to her children.

OK.  But what about that crazy crucifix at St. John the Divine?  Jesus was a biological male, right?  Right.

Except that this idea of the motherhood of Jesus is also a very old one.  In the mystical theology of the High Middle Ages, Jesus as Mother was popularized by such monumental figures in Christian history as Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart.  They saw in Jesus the nurturing love of a mother.  And they got that wild idea, at least in part, from the passage we read today.

One day, the Pharisees came to warn Jesus that King Herod wanted to kill him. I would have headed for the hills, but not Jesus.  Instead, he replied rather provocatively: “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” – a reference, of course, to the Cross.

In calling Herod a fox, Jesus was using a common trope in order to implicate Herod in murder and mayhem.  You see, foxes were commonly thought of as bloodthirsty and always on the prowl for an easy kill in places like a henhouse.

And then Jesus ran with that fox and henhouse idea in what has become his famous lament over the city of Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing.”  So, there it is: Jesus in the role of a mother, spoken by the Lord himself, about himself.

Recently I watched a YouTube video of a hen protecting her chicks.  And it’s just as Jesus described it.  The mother lifts her wings and the little chicks run underneath them.  And then she folds her wings back into place with the babies safely underneath.  If a threat comes too close, she will peck and make noise and stand her ground.  But at the end of the day, if the aggressor is stronger than she, then all she really has to protect her chicks is her own body.  And that’s what she uses.  She places herself between the danger and the ones she loves. That’s just what mothers do.

The tragic history of our world is filled with the stories of self-sacrificing mothers.  Mothers stand in the way of bullets desperately trying to shield their children.  Mother lay over their children during earthquakes.  Mothers hoist their children to dry ground even while they themselves drown.  A mother will do anything to preserve the lives of her children, even sacrifice her own body.

That old fox named Herod, in order to keep his power, was determined to kill the mother hen and gobble up her chicks.   And the only thing between the fox and the chicks was the body of Jesus.

In the rising tide of Christian nationalism, which is a heresy of the first order, Jesus is often portrayed as some kind of macho superhero who could have killed his enemies, but instead, in complete superhero self-control, he chooses death.

But Luke tells another story about self-sacrificing love.  Jesus hurtles his own body against the systems of evil in order to protect the most vulnerable.

The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes beautifully of this passage, and here I quote “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story.  What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm.  She has no fangs, … no rippling muscles.  All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body.  If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.  Which he does, as it turns out.  He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep.  When her cries waken them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her – wings spread, breast exposed, without a single chick beneath her wings.”[1]

The Gospel’s power is so easily misunderstood, because it is not now, nor has it ever been, about brute strength or political power or the accumulation of riches.  The Gospel of the Hen is all about sacrificial love.  It’s about putting yourself between the slobbering foxes of this world and those least able to protect themselves.

That’s what Jesus did.  That’s what any mother would do.

[1] https://www.religion-online.org/article/as-a-hen-gathers-her-brood/

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DESERT BLESSINGS

3/9/2025

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Sunday, March 9, 2025 – Lent I
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Very early in my ministry, I had the chance to spend a month in the Holy Land.  But I wasn’t sure if I could afford it, or if the church would give me an extra week of vacation.  When I mentioned my hesitation to my boss, the Rev. George Bailey, he was incredulous.  “James P.,” he said.  “You have to go!  It will set the course of your whole ministry.” And true to form, George was right.

Going to the Holy Land was a transformative experience.  I walked the Via Dolorosa where tradition says that Jesus carried his cross.  I sailed on the Sea of Galilee.  I visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  I prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and climbed the Mount of Olives and floated on the saline Dead Sea and dipped my hands into the River Jordan.

But the most dramatic site that I visited was also the most foreboding.  One day we boarded an air-conditioned tour bus and headed out to the Wilderness; that place where Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days and forty nights.  I don’t know what I expected to experience that day, but nothing could have prepared me for what I got.

The bus climbed higher and higher into the mountains and eventually pulled over to the side of the road.  I remember that the winds were very strong that day and that it was about 110 degrees.  Our tour guide told us that it might be best to stay inside the bus and take our photos from there.  But I was 26 and I hadn’t traveled 6000 miles not to step foot on that storied landscape.

I was outside the bus for all of about sixty seconds before I was forced back inside.  You see, the sun was far more brutal than I imagined, and the air was hard to breathe, and the winds were full of grit and sand.  I did take some photos that day, but they were all snapped with my eyes closed, for fear of the sandblast that pummeled me.

It was an awful place – not fit for humans or beasts.  And yet it was here, where Jesus was tested and tempted by the devil.

I was lucky to see that place for myself.  But it isn’t necessary for you to actually go there in order to understand the setting.  Because the Wilderness is a metaphor for all the hostile and barren places of our lives, where it’s hard to breath and impossible to see what lies before us.  And that makes the Wilderness a universal human experience.

The story of Jesus in the Wilderness is always read on the First Sunday in Lent.  And in the details of this story, we find the rationale for some of our Lenten traditions.  For example, Jesus was in the desert for forty days and forty nights, and so Lent is forty days long - not including Sundays, which are always feast days for Christians.

And because Jesus fasted and prayed as he sought to draw closer to God and understand his call, some of us, seeking to draw closer to God and to understand how we are to live in this world, also fast and pray.  Or perhaps we take on some other spiritual discipline during Lent.

But without meaning to, our Lenten observances have become rather tame.  Coming to church more often or giving up chocolate until Easter rather domesticates an experience that was anything but.  Because Jesus’s time in the Wilderness was nothing less than one human’s struggle against the forces of evil.

And in this story, and many others in the Bible, that evil has a name: the devil, Satan, Lucifer.  It’s right there in our holy book, yet it is not a subject often raised in churches like ours.  It can seem rather primitive to even mention such a being.  And yet, the Gospel writers all gives credence to the idea that evil is personified; that it is organized, intelligent, crafty, and malevolent.

Now don’t get distracted by some notion of a little red man with horns and a pitchfork.  That’s far too easy to dismiss as nonsense.  Instead, if you want to see evil that is organized, intelligent, crafty, and malevolent, just take a good, long look at the state of the world.  Look at how people are abused and mistreated and lied to and manipulated and disdained.  Look at how “the powers that be” try to convince us that what we see is not really what we see; that up is down, and white is black, and 2+2 = whatever they say it is.

So, I do believe that evil is a force in the world.  And I do believe that it is out to do us harm.  But this evil, whatever name we give it, does not just influence people.  Evil can influence churches, and institutions, and governments, and movements.  As Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Ephesus: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.[1]

So, that’s what Jesus was up against: evil.  And it was not just some accident.  Instead, Luke tells us that the Spirit led Jesus to that place and to that confrontation.  Which make me wonder: does the Spirit do the same to me, to you?  Does the Spirit take us to those places we would rather not go; to those confrontations against cruelty and hatred that we would rather not have?

I suspect so.  And that’s a very stark thought.  But even in that idea, there is grace.  Lots and lots of grace.  And this is why I say that.

You see, the Spirit might have led Jesus into that wilderness.  But the Spirit didn’t just drop him off there.  The Spirit stayed with him in those moments of trial, in the howling winds and hunger pangs and longings to be anywhere else; in the temptations for power and fame and success at all costs – the Spirit was there, turning that foreboding place into a classroom; taking that desert and making it bloom with the possibility of transformation.

The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor talks about God’s presence in the wilderness like this: “even if no one wants to go there, and even if those of us who end up there want out again as soon as possible, the wilderness is still one of the most reality-based, spirit-filled, life-changing places a person can be.”

Lutheran theologian John Stendhal put it another way: “… the desert is not God-forsaken nor does it belong to the devil.  It is God’s home.  (Because) The Holy Spirit is there, within us and beside us.  And if we cannot feel the spirit inside of us or at our side, perhaps we can at least imagine Jesus there, not too far away, with enough in him to sustain us, enough to make us brave.”

The wilderness teaches us the most important lesson that we can ever learn.  And it’s simply this: there is no place that God is not.  There is no moment so bleak that it is devoid of hope.  Even when evil rages, it will not ultimately triumph.  Love wins, every time.  And the wilderness, while harsh, will not kill us.  In fact, it might even heal us.  And it will most certainly make us more like the One who walked this way before us.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Ephesians 6:2

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