Genesis 32:22-31; Mark 1:9-15
Ten days ago, Michael Lewis wrote in Bloomberg News about his brief experience in the White House Press Corps. He had a question that he was ready to ask, but as he listened to the other reporters, he began to realize that their questions were not like his. He writes: “They address only what’s happened in the last few hours: Trump’s attempt to intimidate FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the latest twist on the Russia investigation, another school shooting, a rumor that the first official state dinner will be with France.”
Did you catch that? “Another school shooting.” Just part of the daily mix of events along with a rumor about a state dinner. Something we simply take in stride. No big deal.
This was written before the many deaths in one afternoon in Parkland, Florida—an event that did shake us. But Lewis’s casual listing of “another school shooting” speaks volumes about how such events are usually regarded now. The shooting in Parkland was the eighth shooting in a school that resulted in injury or death in the seven weeks of this new year. Another school shooting—Have we become this inured to these events?
This year during Lent we will be exploring “brokenness.” Through art and conversation and sermons we will explore what is going on in the broken places of our lives and our world. Leonard Cohen sang: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” My hope is that in these days some light might shine through the cracks.
But I confess that this morning I sense the brokenness, I see lots of cracks, but not much light. My guess is that many of you have that same sense.
Let us then, turn to scripture and listen carefully and look closely for the good news as Jesus is driven out into the wilderness.
Scripture knows the wilderness to be what we ourselves have experienced it to be. The wilderness is a place of trial. The wilderness is the place where the heavens seem closed. The wilderness is the place we know the affliction of human beings and the barrenness of the earth. When you face difficult choices with no good options you are staring at the desert places of life. What we call the “broken places” the scriptures call “the wilderness.”
Those times when you pray and find no answer are times in the wilderness. Those times when you are numbed by tragedies great and small are times in the broken places. And such times do not have a set limit at which they are simply over and done. The ancient Hebrew people used the number forty to express a long, indeterminate time—forty days in the wilderness, forty years of Exodus wandering in the desert. It wasn’t meant to be literal. It was time that went on for as long as it took. You know that. Our times in the wilderness and broken places do not have easily determined boundaries.
Mark’s Gospel begins not with Jesus but with John the baptizer appearing in the wilderness around the Jordan River. In just this place, John dares to speak a word of good news. And in a sense good news can only be spoken and heard when we stand in the waste places and realize that life is not perfect, the we are not the good people we want to think we are, that there is such a thing as “sin” separating us from all that gives life and makes life good. Good news can only be heard when we go to those places where people are broken and seek to join with them in the struggle for life.
Now look. Just after his baptism, Jesus is sent into the unknown of the wilderness. Mark expresses the harsh and stark nature of this experience: “Immediately the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness.” Do you feel that sense of banishment, of being cast out?
The story of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness is traditionally read on this, the first Sunday in Lent. It fits with the well-defined forty days of this season. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke each have long versions of those days, dramatic stories in which the devil presents Jesus with specific temptations: turn stones into bread, seize political power, show yourself as invincible.
The genius of the Gospel of Mark is in its brevity. With just one chilling sentence we are told: “Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Mark isn’t concerned with the details. Yet those broad brush-strokes tell us much about Jesus and about ourselves.
We will understand Jesus and our own lives better if we get a better understanding of the other character in this one-sentence story—Satan.
The Hebrew word, satan, is not a proper name but a word that simply means “adversary.” Throughout the Hebrew Bible the word appears several times, referring to ordinary human beings. If you had an opponent, you had a satan.
Over time, the word took on the sense of “one who pleads a case against another person.” In a court, you would be faced with a satan. You might remember that the Book of Job begins in the heavenly courts where Satan, the accuser, the adversary has been patrolling the earth, and brings Job’s case before God.
Our word “devil” comes from the Greek word diablos, which means, literally, a slanderer. Now the adversary has become the one who not only accuses but who distorts the accusation and twists the evidence. Slowly, this one who was seen as opponent of human beings became the ultimate adversary, the one opposed even to God.
Satan becomes, as William Barclay said long ago, the “essence of everything that is against God.”[i] This is what Jesus is up against in the wilderness. This is what we are all up against.
We call this the “temptation” of Jesus. But the word might better be translated “trial” or “testing.” The broken wilderness places are places of testing.
In the anthem this morning, the choir sang the words of the old spiritual: “Jesus walked that lonesome valley…nobody else could walk it for him, he had to walk it by himself.”
I hope you were listening carefully, however, at the end. The choir warned us: “We have to walk that lonesome valley.,.by ourselves. Nobody can walk it for us. We—you and me alone—have to walk it by ourselves.”
By yourself.
Alone.
By faith we can affirm that Jesus walked this way before us. Even so, we find ourselves alone in the broken places.
And this is where scripture and our lives each become difficult in their own ways. We know that to be alive is to face times of trial. And many have said that the wilderness is that place where, through testing, we become new people.
Certainly, this was the case for Jesus. He emerged from the wilderness sure of his calling, filled with a sense that his time—God’s time—had arrived.
Perhaps you can recall your own times of trial, times when light came through the cracks as you moved through broken places and you emerged to find yourself stronger. If so, you can be thankful.
Even so, we must never be glib about being alone in the broken places. We must never be glib in asserting the possibility for growth in such places. For we know those who have faced times of trial and who did not make it through, those who could not stand in the time of trial. We know those who have wrestled through the night and did not win the battle. We know those who have struggled with demons alone in the wilderness of their broken places and did not prevail.
This, I think is yet another tragic aspect in last week’s shooting—in addition to the great loss of life, and the wounds and memories that will endure for lifetimes. The Washington Post profiled nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz: “He had been getting treatment at a mental health clinic, but he had stopped. He had been expelled from school for disciplinary problems. Many of his acquaintances had cut ties with him. He owned an AR-15 assault-style rifle. His father died a few years ago, and his mother, among the only people with whom he was close, died around Thanksgiving. He was living at a friend’s house. He was showing signs of depression.”
What resources do we have when we find ourselves alone in the broken places?
Angels. Angels, we are told by Mark’s Gospel, angels ministered to Jesus as he dwelt among the wild beasts in the wilderness.
Where were the angels in Nikolas Cruz’s broken place of trial?
Where were the angels when once again the bullets flew in the valley of the shadow of death?
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Those who seem to oppose any kind of further, more effective gun control measures have begun to say after events such as last week’s shootings that the real problem is mental health. Our own Senator Grassley said Wednesday the government has “not done a good job” of preventing those with mental health issues from acquiring guns.
But as the psychologist, Lawrence Siegel, asked: “If the government needs to do a better job, why has funding of mental health services been severely decreased in recent years?”
Consider: The overwhelming majority of schools in America do not have a professionally trained social worker or psychologist on staff. The proposed federal budget for 2018 includes a 26% cut to community health services and states across the nation have responded by slashing their allocations to community based mental health service providers because of these cuts. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott, who has just vowed to stop the mentally ill from getting guns, vetoed a bill that would have all psychologists and psychiatrists who see children in their practice to provide gun-safety education.[ii]
As a nation we choose more and more to leave broken people alone in the broken places to fend for themselves. As a nation we simply hope—in the worst sense of that word—that the angels will be there among the wild beasts. And all too often they are not.
None of us is exempt from being alone in the broken places.
You know that. Pain, illness, shame, poverty, depression can isolate people, driving them out further into the wilderness. There are times when life is not merciful.
Leonard Cohen points toward the hope that might be found even when we find ourselves alone in the broken places: “This situation does not admit a solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where …the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.”
I’m sorry. I’m not seeing a lot of light through the cracks in our broken world this morning.
I wish I had something more to offer you this morning.
I wish I had a solution to the gun violence that plagues our nation and to the indifference of so many in power. I wish I had a stirring call to action or an appeal to address mental health issues in our country.
I have none of that for you this morning.
I have nothing more to offer you this morning than the hope—in the best sense of that word—the hope that resurrection might still be found and the caution that we will most likely find resurrection when we enter the broken places of our lives and of our world.
I have nothing more to offer you this morning than Jesus Christ—which, really, is all I ever have to offer you when I stand in this place. And all I can do is encourage you to continue to follow in ways of Jesus Christ, known and to be made known to you.
It is a way, yes, that will lead you at times into the wild and broken places of this world, for that is the way that Jesus went and the way we must go if we are to follow. We do not need to rush into our own broken places—even Jesus did not go freely but was driven into the wilderness. We do not need to rush into our broken places—for if we haven’t yet, we will come to them soon enough.
But there are broken people out in this broken world. And they need something—something like what those of us who follow the broken and resurrected Christ might be able to offer: a faith that even when we are alone, we are loved and valued by God; a hope that even among the wild beasts and the brokenness around us, each person still bears the image of God; and a love that will not give up, that will in all things seek the good.
If, by the power of the risen Christ, we would go into the broken places, perhaps we ourselves might become the angels—the very messengers of the God of mercy and compassion—who are so desperately needed among the wild beasts.
[i] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, pg. 12-14.
[ii] http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trump-gop-huge-hypocrisy-mental-health-care-article-1.3822890