February 18, 2024: Clothed for the Journey

Old Testament Reading: Genesis 2:15-17 & 3:1-7
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11                        
      
Why is it that we always want the one thing that we can’t have or that we shouldn’t have too much of? Whether it’s tempting chocolate desserts, that juicy steak, that extra bottle of wine, that vacation we cannot afford, that rule that seems arbitrary or the person who inspires lust, humans have always been tempted and most of us at one time or another have acted on some type of temptation. In fact, some are guided simply by the desire to do something that is “forbidden” for some reason or another.
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Eve may have been the first, but she was certainly not the last. 

It didn’t have to be this way, God could have created robot-like humans who would have just stuck to tending the very beautiful Garden of Eden, living in balance with God’s creation. Why didn’t God do that? God CHOSE to give us free will knowing full well about the existence of the crafty serpent that God also created. God did not want Artificial intelligence but real people and creatures with all our faults. God created thinking, sentient beings with free will out of love, knowing that those beings would quite likely stray at times, as Eve and Adam quickly proved. 

However, God’s first and strongest impulse in creation was and is love. With the words “Let there be” God created day and night, earth, and sky, land and oceans, plants, animals and humans. “Let there be” not “there must be”. Within let is the inference of choice, of allowance. Creation comes into being by God but is allowed to continue to develop from there on its own. Adam and Eve were created by God but given both guidance in the form of a single rule “You may freely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die” and the freedom to follow it, or not. 

When those first humans gave into temptation, they did not die a physical death, but they did suffer a death of sorts: the loss of their innocence, a death of life that was just lived in the beauty of the garden, in harmony with the environment. They gained fear at their nakedness and would soon learn pain and other evils that were let out into the world Pandora’s box-style when they broke God’s rule. Yet, God still led with love. God did not destroy them. Instead, like a parent, I am sure God wept at their transgression and then followed it up with a loving punishment - banishment from this beautifully innocent life into one that had many more challenges God, like any parent, would have loved for them to avoid. Despite what they did, they were still clothed with God’s love. 

Many years later when people needed more guidance, God sent Jesus - a part of God’s self - to come in human form as a gift of love to the world. Being a part of the inheritance of Adam and Eve as a human, Jesus too would be tempted, but being God, Jesus would not succumb to the temptation. 

In her short story, “Marigolds,” Eugenia Collier unfolds a tale of a poor young black girl during the depression who is coming of age. In a fit of rage set off by her family’s poverty and sense of hopelessness inspired by her out-of-work father’s tears and frustration at not being able to support his family, 14-year old Lizabeth destroys the only spot of beauty in her neighborhood, old Miss Lottie’s marigolds. Reflecting later, she notes that despite her wild contrition, Miss Lottie never replanted the marigolds and that night marked the end of her innocence noting that “one cannot have both compassion and innocence”.

Human innocence died when Adam and Eve ate that forbidden fruit, but human compassion was also born at that time. Compassion then becomes a kind of salve helping to heal the wounds of pain and evil in the world. Because we have the ability to suffer, we also have empathy and compassion for those who suffer. While we humans no longer live in the perfect Garden of Eden, we can balance out the good and evil in the world through our compassion, our love of all God’s people, creatures, and creation helping when and where we can. 

Jesus was God’s gift of love and compassion to the world. As he gets ready to begin his ministry on earth, Jesus is baptized by John and God acknowledges him by saying, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Beloved. Loved. This blanket of love is what Jesus takes with him as he is then immediately sent out into the wilderness. Note that he has not even started his public ministry yet but, clothed in love, with the water of Baptism still glistening on him, he is sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit for this time of deprivation, fasting, and challenge: temptations by Satan. But Jesus was never alone, clothed in and nourished by God’s love, he endures the hunger and survives the temptations of power the devil puts before him. Hungry and likely mentally and physically exhausted from 40 days of trial, Jesus is waited on by angels when he emerges from this wilderness time. 

We, too, have our times in the wilderness: times of fear, pain, struggle and doubt. It could be from the loss of a relationship, a loved one, a job, or of control. It could be from a temptation so strong, we are not sure we have the power to fight it or the sorrow and regret that comes from giving into it. But we have to remember that we are not alone in the wilderness. We, too, are clothed in God’s love, God’s compassion. God is reaching into our barren wilderness moments whispering our names as if to say, “Come child, follow my voice and I will lead you out of this.” 

And sometimes, God may use us as God’s hands, God’s instruments of compassion. Think of the addiction counselor who is there at just the right moment to keep an addict from sinking back into the grip of drugs,alcohol or despair; or a school counselor who lends a listening ear just when a student needs it or a doctor who can restore the gift of health, a friend who shows up to be with us in our time of pain, or even a stranger who seeing someone on the edge of a bridge ready to jump, pulls the car over and gently talks them down. This is God’s compassion at work in the world. 

Jesus could not avoid the wilderness time and neither can we. But we can remember that God has equipped us with love to survive it even if we slip off the path at times. In fact, like Jesus, we can think of the wilderness as a place of beginnings. A place where we may have failures but in ways that allow us to learn and grow from them - some wrong turns that we trudge through and keep going before we emerge on the correct path. We may get dirty, we may need to ask directions, that is ok - God will send the angels to tend us. We just have to open our eyes and ears to see and hear them. 

Beloved Is Where We Begin by Jan Richardson from her book Circle of Grace
If you would enter into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.
Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.
Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.
I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.
But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.
I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.
I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:
Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.
—Jan Richardson, from Circle of Grace

​Pastor Michelle Fountain

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