”Letting go of resentment. Cultivating grace.”

“Letting go of resentment. Cultivating grace.”

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

March 31, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Even Jesus couldn’t put God into a neat and tidy box. This God that our ancestors worshiped….that Jesus revealed to us through his very presence...that we still struggle to engage and encounter. This God will not be explicated, made palatable, contained.

We try, with words, to approximate our experiences of the Holy….but words fail, no matter how carefully we try to choose them. I think this is part of the reason that Jesus spoke in parables...even for Jesus, there were certain aspects of God that defied neat and tidy explanations. And so it made more sense to speak of them in stories. Stories that engage our senses. Stories that invite us to be participants, not merely observers, as we seek to understand and experience God. (As a side note, this is also why rituals, like gathering at the table for Holy Communion, are so powerful. They don’t explain God to us, they invite us to participate in the reality of God.)

Of all of the things that are difficult to understand about God, one of the most difficult, I think, is God’s grace. Words may only be approximations, but these words from the Rev. Paul Zahl resonate with me: “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is loving coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…” [1]

When Jesus tried to explain God’s grace to his followers, he often used parables. “The kingdom of God was like this:

...a sower went out to sow…

...a master went out early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his vineyard…

...there was a man who had two sons…

You know, I never liked this parable about the prodigal son when I was a child. Because, of course, I saw myself in the role of the older son: responsible, dependable, dutiful. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand if you identify, but I know I can’t be the only one here who TOTALLY understands why the older son was so grumpy and resentful when his younger brother came home and was warmly received. And so, for many years, I primarily thought this story was a cautionary tale. Just one more thing to check off on a long list of things to check off if I wanted to be a good person. “Don’t be resentful like the older son.” Check.

And that is one way to read the story, for sure. But to put the older son at the center of the story is to miss a lot of what is happening here. For starters, the older son is not the main character (as much as he might like to be). In fact, if you stopped the story after verse 24, it would feel very different. Because verses 11-24 are all about the younger son and his father. The younger son asks for his inheritance early, he goes off, wastes it, falls on hard times, finds himself shoulder to shoulder with pigs (actual pigs, eating out of the trough with them), and finally, at the end of his rope, decides he needs to go home, head hung down in shame, to beg his father to take him in as a servant.

He arrives home and before he can even apologize for his actions, his father runs to greet him, embracing him warmly, welcoming him back to the family, and throwing a party in his honor. “Let us eat and celebrate,” he says, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

If the story ended there, it would just be a warm, fuzzy, feel-good story about God’s grace and love, right? How sweet that God loves us even when we are unlovable. How nice to be held in God’s tender care even when we mess up big-time.

But then (but THEN!) we are reminded there is another character in this story. At the very beginning, Jesus said, “there was a man who had two sons.” And the older son is toiling in the fields, just as he’s been doing day-after-day, year-after-year. When he comes back after a long day’s work, he is surprised to discover a party. Music, dancing, the smell of a juicy steak roasting over the fire.

He is filled with anger.

The resentment of the older son is certainly easy to understand. And that cautionary aspect of the story, is a good teaching. Because when we allow ourselves to be cast in the role of the older son, we miss out on so much in life. When we constantly compare ourselves to others...when we work ourselves to the bone hoping to be recognized….when we hold onto anger and resentment because the people we are closest to don’t behave the way we think they should….well, when we do those things, we miss out on a lot of parties.

When we cling to resentment, we often miss out on joy. We often destroy relationships. We often find ourselves on the outside looking in, alone.

But the reaction of the older son does something else, too. It highlights what is, I think, the more important message of this story. The older son’s reaction invites us to grapple with the scandalous nature of God’s grace.

I imagine someone in the crowd as Jesus told this story sputtering at the end, “But that’s not fair! The father was wrong! He didn’t treat his sons fairly!” And then maybe Jesus smiled, answering only with his eyes.

God’s grace doesn’t seem fair to us humans. If there’s a force in the universe that loves us completely, no matter how messed up we are, well, then, where’s the incentive for good behavior? How is that fair to those who work hard to be decent human beings? Where’s the justice?

These are good questions.

(Lengthy pause.)

Oh, you thought I was going to answer them?

Jesus told stories to try and approximate the radical nature of God’s love and grace and care...which seemed as unfathomable to ancient ears as they are to us today.

I was listening to a podcast with Father Richard Rohr earlier this week where he talked about how we humans struggle to understand the depth of God’s care for us. Rohr said that he’s been told that human brains are actually unable to conceive of the infinite, so maybe it’s not our fault that we struggle to understand God’s scandalous grace and love. [2]

But again and again, Jesus invites us into the story. He doesn’t give pat answers. He simply weaves stories that seek to unveil just the tiniest bit of who God is….and what our life might be like if we were to live more fully aware of God’s presence around and in and through us.

When words fail, art sometimes steps in to fill the void. This is why all the great world religions are full of art. Music, visual arts, poetry, architecture. These are all ways that we try to enter the story.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to read Henri Nouwen’s classic book The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen was a famous pastor and theologian who was from the Netherlands and spent most of his adult years in North America (fun fact: as a young man he trained in psychology with Karl Menninger in Topeka). Nouwen was a prolific writer and often wrote about his personal and private struggles. He wrote about complex relationships, loneliness, depression….and the messiness of trying to live a faithful life.

A few years before he died, back in the 90s, he visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to spend time in contemplation with Rembrandt’s work from 1669, the Return of the Prodigal son. You may have noticed you have a reproduction of it in your bulletin this morning. From this encounter flowed an entire spiritual journey which Nouwen shares in his book.

One of the things you’ll notice as you look at the painting is that the focus is on the father and younger son. The older son stands alone, at a slight distance, receding into the shadows a bit. Our eyes are drawn to the place where the younger son encounters his father. Nestled into the father’s body, warm and strong hands grasping his shoulders, the son is welcomed home.

Nouwen notes that Rembrandt created this painting near the end of his life. The wisdom contained within was hard-borne from pain and suffering during his life. As a young man, he lost three children in their infancy. Only his fourth son survived, and his young wife died shortly after the child was born. Later in life, struggled immensely to make ends meet. One of the greatest painters Europe has ever known was buried in an unmarked paupers’ grave. This painting of the Prodigal Son was made shortly after his son died.

Nouwen says that Vincent Van Gogh once looked at this work and said, “You can only paint a painting like this when you have died so many deaths.” [3]

Rembrandt and Nouwen knew what it was like to have died many deaths. They knew the relief of falling in front of God, utterly destroyed, and trusting that God’s warm embrace would be there to catch them as they fell.

God’s scandalous grace may seem insufferable, unfair, inconceivable when we stand at a distance like the older son. But when we stumble, when we fall, when we die those many deaths that are ours to endure over the course of a lifetime….God’s scandalous grace feels like good news indeed.

Thanks be to God for all of the things about the Holy that make no sense at all.

Amen.

[1] Sprinkle, Preston. Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us, foreword

[2] Another Name for Every Thing podcast, season 1, episode 5.

[3] https://youtu.be/HapqzlVUkJM

“Letting Go of Expectations. Cultivating Space.”

Luke 1: 26-38

March 24, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

You may be scratching your head wondering, “Did the preacher get confused? Why are we hearing a Christmas text in the middle of March?” Tomorrow is the Christian holiday of the Annunciation. As in, the visit that the angel Gabriel made to Mary to announce to her that God had a plan to bring Jesus into the world through her. Now, we don’t really know when Jesus was born, but since the ancient Church selected December 25th...if you back up nine months from that you arrive at March 25th. In this way, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere also end up with the lovely symbolism of Jesus’s conception at the Sprint Equinox and his birth at the Winter Solstice. Neat, right?

The Annunciation doesn’t always fall during Lent, but this year it does. And although it may seem strange to think about Jesus’s birth just as we are preparing to remember the end of of his life, it seems to me that the image of Mary, surrendering fully to the Spirit to live is a perfect story for Lent.

Becoming a parent, no matter how you do it, is all about letting go of expectations. When I was pregnant with my first child, I tried desperately to wrap my head around all the changes we were about to experience...but I could hardly even imagine what it would be like to add a tiny human to our family.

When I read today’s text from Luke, I am struck by the way Mary so simply and elegantly lets go of expectations and creates space for the Holy to move. I don’t know about you, but if an angel showed up and gave me the same message Mary received, I would have a lot more questions. Mary is slightly incredulous in the beginning, “But how can this be?” But when the angel explains, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God…” Mary says, quite simply, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

No more questions. Just acceptance. It’s astounding, isn’t it?

No wonder Mary has been venerated by the Church for millennia. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of the role she plays in bearing Christ to the world. In the Eastern Church, she is called Theotokos - God-bearer. How’s that for a big title?

But rather than putting Mary on a pedestal as someone who lived long ago and far away...rather than seeing her as some kind of superhero...I’d like us to consider the ways we might also be called to be God-bearers, too.

In traditional Eastern Orthodox churches, there is a specific artistic portrayal of Mary that is prominent in many churches. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, describes this in his book, Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today. The Archbishop explains that traditional Orthodox churches have a dome as their most prominent feature. This is where we find the image of Christ - Pantokrator, “the one who contains and holds all” - representing our connection with the heavenly realm. Then there is the nave, which is rectangular in shape and represents the earth with its boundaries and structures. This is where the people are located during worship, accompanied by images of saints who seem to blend in with the gathered crowd. [1]

Finally, there is the apse, which is located above the altar. This is where you will typically find an image of Mary with her hands extended in prayer. Drawn onto her torso is an image of the Christ, contained within her very body. Bartholomew says that this specific kind of image is called the Platytera (“the one more spacious than all.”) In Orthodox understanding, Mary is holding within her body God and the entirety of creation. Spacious indeed. [2]

Bartholomew says that “the apse in the middle serves to hold together the upper and lower zones, belonging to both and yet pertaining to neither, uniting both the heavenly and the earthly realms, while at the same time inviting people to reconcile Creator and creation in their own bodies as well as in their surrounding world. The icon of the Mother of God, who is normally depicted in the apse, assumes both spherical and rectangular shape. She is the personification of this vocation and reconciliation.” [3]

Mary personifies for us the call to reconcile all of creation. She is a model for us, inviting us into the work of reconciliation...bringing all things together as one.

Lent can be a time when many of us get a little more goal-oriented about our faith. We might try a new spiritual discipline...and then beat ourselves up a bit if it doesn't stick. Or we might really stay with it, hoping that some kind of transformation will occur. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. The image of Mary towering high over those ancient churches, silently holding the entirety of creation within her body, making space for all things to be made new through the power of God’s reconciling love….well, it’s quite an image for Lent, isn’t it?

“Let it be with me according to your word,” she said to the angel. And with that simple acceptance...that opening of space, the world was transformed.

We are invited to join Mary in this work of creating space. Attuning ourselves to the Holy, trusting that God is still working through creation to make all things new. We are invited to spaciousness...trusting that God still lives in us and through us. “Let it be with me according to your word.”

(Piano begins. Invite people to join us in singing Let it Be by the Beatles)

[1] Bartholomew, 32.

[2] Ibid., 33.

[3] Ibid.

“Cultivating Courage. Letting Go of Fear.”

Luke 13: 31-35

March 17, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

A boy who appears to be about 12 stands up on a high dive. He’s never jumped off of one before and it didn’t look that tall before he climbed the ladder. But now that he’s up there looking down, down, down at the deep blue below him, things look different.

He knew, as soon as he climbed up, that he had made a mistake. Bravery isn’t his strong suit. In fact, those closest to him know that he’s a chronically anxious child. When he was three or four, his parents found him down in the basement one day with all of his stuffed animals hunkered down in the laundry room with his bike helmet on. When they asked him what he was doing down there he said he had seen some gray clouds outside and wanted to be ready if a tornado came.

No one would describe him as brave. Not in the least. In fact, you might describe him as cranky, exhausted, sad and angry. But when you’re a child that can effortlessly run 14 different kinds of worst-case-scenarios simultaneously, it turns out you have to be brave just to get through each day. So he is brave….just not in ways most of us would notice.

...back to the diving board. Because right now the boy is about to learn something new about bravery. His usual method of dealing with anxiety is to avoid all danger at all costs. But now, standing high on this board, avoidance isn’t really an option. There is no “chicken exit”.....there’s just down...one of two ways. Leaping off the board into the water. Or slowly backing back down the ladder, which is already full of other kids waiting for him to jump.

He quickly runs through all the worst-case-scenarios he can think of. Realizing there are no perfect options available, he jumps off of the board, feet first into the deep blue below.

When he lands in the water, his first thought isn’t “I did it!” Or “Wow! I am SO BRAVE! I can’t wait to do that again!” Nope. His first thought is, “Okay. That’s over. And I’m never doing that again!”

But somewhere in the back of his mind is a dawning awareness of something he wouldn’t hear put to words until a therapist says it to him several decades later: “Having courage isn’t about being fearless. It’s about doing the brave thing even when you’re scared.”

Courage isn’t bearing fearless. It’s about doing something brave….even if we’re terrified the whole time.

I think most people would look at the life of Jesus and say he lived a courageous life, don’t you? And although there aren’t a lot of places in the Gospels that tell us about the inner-workings of his mind, there are some hints that he may have struggled a bit with the work that was his to do. Jesus often seemed to be utterly exhausted and frustrated and sad and angry. Of course he was. He was pushing so hard against established norms. He had people criticizing him every step of the way. And he was constantly on the move from place to place.

Biblical scholars tell us that a key turning point in the Gospel of Luke comes in chapter 9, verse 51 as Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” That is to say, as Jesus turned toward the violence that awaited him there. Luke’s Jesus knows that his ministry will eventually end on the cross. He knows that he will be killed by the Romans.

And yet he is able to find the courage to set his face to go to Jerusalem, steadily walking towards violence and agony and pain.

What I want to know, when I’m studying Jesus’s life, is this: HOW did he do that?

Today’s brief passage from Luke is a bit of a puzzle. Scholars believe there may be two fragments smushed together here, making for an odd text. But there are two parts of this text that I want to pull out and turn over a bit this morning, because I think they help answer the question of just how Jesus was able to cultivate courage and let go of fear.

First, when the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus retorts, “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 will finish my work.’” In other words, Jesus knew was his work was….and he knew it was about something bigger than him. In the face of threats, he was clear that he was called to keep doing the word of healing….and his allusion to “the third day” seems to hint at an understanding that Herod couldn’t really touch his essence. Herod might kill the person of Jesus, but Jesus understood on a deep, cellular level that through the power of Resurrection-Love his Spirit was unbreakable, untouchable.

He took strength in those two things. First, a sense of clarity about his work. And second, the deep knowledge that his existence could not be muted...even by Herod. Even by death.

The other image that stands out to me is the mother hen. Jesus, mourning the mess of Jerusalem (“the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are send to it!”). Jesus says he wishes he could offer it some protection. He wishes he could gather the children of that city under his wings as a mother hen would do, keeping them safe and secure.

Preaching professor David Schnasa Jacobsen says that image that Jesus invokes, the image of a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings, is both fierce and vulnerable. [1] If you’ve ever reached under a broody hen as she protects eggs, trying to take one from her, you know the ferocity of a mother hen. She will throw her whole body at you, pecking your arm fiercely as she defends those eggs.

But a mother hen is also incredibly vulnerable. That beak can peck hard, but it’s little match for a fox or a hawk. If a predator comes near, the only real defense a mother hen can offer her chicks is her own fragile body. And so she courageously places herself between danger and her babies, putting her own body on the line to protect them. Puffed up and alert, she is the very image of fierce vulnerability.

Fierce vulnerability.

“Having courage isn’t about being fearless. It’s about doing the brave thing even when you’re scared.”

If we wish to cultivate courage and let go of fear, we need role models who can show us what it looks like to live the courageous life. People who exemplify Christ’s fierce vulnerability.

Our friend Stephanie Mott was one of those people. Each time Stephanie came to preach here she would lean over to me near the beginning of worship and whisper, “You know, every time I come here, I feel the Spirit moving. This place feels like home.”

When Stephanie passed away unexpectedly on March 4th we lost a strong and gentle warrior-leader. A woman who exemplified Christ’s fierce vulnerability.

A few years ago, Stephanie was the subject of a mini-documentary called “Authentic Woman.” [2] In fewer than ten minutes, she drops so much wisdom about life and love and what it looks like to courageously live as our authentic selves.

Stephanie talks about the first 42 years of her life, when the world only knew her as a man who was an alcoholic and a college drop out and homeless. Eventually, she ended up at the Topeka Rescue Mission and discovered a faith community that welcomed her and created space for the Spirit to help her imagine a new life.

In the documentary, she sits right about there in that pew, wearing a butterfly lapel pin. She speaks of going to church and meeting another transgender woman there. Stephanie said that through being in this other woman’s presence...seeing her, reaching out and feeling her presence...she began to understand there was a different future available to her.

When Stephanie first visiting that church in Topeka, the preacher preached on a text from 2 Corinthians 5, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation...see, everything has become new.” Like the butterfly who gives up its former form and is transformed into a new creation, Stephanie began to walk in her authenticity. She recalls receiving communion at church and the pastor putting her hands gently on her shoulders and saying, “God bless your daughter for the faith she has shown in you.”

Stephanie says that’s the moment when Stephanie was born.

All that came after….the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work, the books, the speaking tours, the countless miles crisscrossing Kansas, the newspaper interviews, the tweets, the creation of the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project, the service to so many city, state, and federal agencies….all of that was Stephanie’s fierce and vulnerable gift to the world.

Stephanie said she couldn’t have lived authentically if she hadn’t gotten sober...and she couldn’t have gotten sober without living authentically. And that neither of those things would have been possible without her faith.

There is something about being sheltered under the wing of a mother hen that can make us bold. There is something about knowing that we, like Christ, are a part of something much bigger than our own fragile lives that can give us courage and strength to do magnificent and mighty things. When we know our work and we are willing to commit our lives to that work boldly, as Stephanie and Jesus did, we become aware that God goes with us, giving us wells of courage deeper than we could imagine.

It’s not that we become fearless. The fears may still be with us. But as we walk in the strength of the Spirit...as we cultivate courage, the static and noise from our fears starts to recede.

We stand high on that diving board, looking at the deep blue stretching out below us and we take the leap, even as the butterflies rage in our bellies.

And we begin to trust that all things are made new through Christ. Even us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3990

[2] https://www.facebook.com/authenticwomanku/videos/1012472495522691?sfns=mo

“Get Lost. Get Found.”

Luke 4:1-13

March 10, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

It’s hard to get lost these days. Many of us carry tiny but powerful supercomputers in our pockets that are attached to data from satellites that invisibly fly over our heads day and night, insistently pinging our coordinates as we go about our daily lives. A few years ago now I was talking with someone who was on their way to a conference in a big city. They were a little nervous because they hadn’t spent a lot of time in big cities and were worried about how to navigate public transit or even figure out how to walk from place to place.

I explained to them that you can literally just hold your phone up to your face and say, “Siri, where can I grab dinner?” And your phone will just tell you! You can also get bus times, reload a transit card, or quickly summon a private driver to just drive you right up to the curb wherever you need to go.

Amazing, really.

It’s hard to get lost in other ways, too. I am old enough to remember a time when we scheduled long-distance phone calls.

Every Sunday night, my family would talk on the phone with my grandma, who lived four hours away from us. We would pass the corded phone from family member to family member, each taking our turn. I assume my mom didn’t talk to her mom throughout the week - just on Sunday evenings.

Nowadays, my mom and I talk or text almost daily. And I’m certain if we went more than a couple of days without connecting she would start to wonder why she hadn’t heard from me. We live in a time where many of us pretty much figure we’ll know where our loved ones are or at least be able to reach them quickly if the need arises.

We also live in a time where it’s hard to disconnect from the frantic pace of the world. And by “the world” I mean THE WORLD. News from all over the globe, much of it bad, arrives nonstop. Even if we do our best to unplug from time to time, we may still look up and discover the news is shouting us at us from a TV screen at the gym or the doctor’s office...or even while we’re just trying to put gas in our car!

So, yes, it can be awfully hard to get lost - at least in some ways - these days. But it can also be all too easy to get lost.

Nonstop demands on our time can create a frantic pace and sometimes we fall into bed at the end of the day wondering, “what did I do today?” We can make a series of small, seemingly-insignificant decisions over a long period of time and suddenly look in the mirror one day and realize we hardly recognize ourselves. We can all-too-easily let go of relationships that have value, values that give strength, stories that heal. We sometimes look at the world around us, coming in through that relentless news cycle, and say to ourselves, “How on earth did we wind up here???”

All of this is to say: we are not that different than Jesus or the people who lived in his time. It can be hard to find space….and sometimes we have to go to extremes to cultivate a sense of wilderness wandering. It can also be all-to-easy to lose ourselves in the daily grind of life.

Those of us who gathered this past Wednesday for Ash Wednesday participated in a ritual that reminds us of some of these complex tensions that we humans carry within ourselves. It’s can be challenging to get off the beaten path AND it can be easy to get lost. We are unique creations, not one of us the same AND we are all knit together in our common humanity. We burn brightly, full of vibrant life, imbued with the very image of the Divine AND we are dust and to dust we shall return.

The season of Lent is a time to lean into these complex tensions as we prepare for Easter, that season of impossible possibilities.

Our theme for Lent this year is “cultivating and letting go” and each week we will be talking with the children during worship about that theme as we build our community art installation. You are invited to make some space for art and reflection this season, stopping by the art station during Fellowship Hour or throughout the week to fold origami, using the papers we wrote on this morning during worship. In this way, we will come together to ponder what we can cultivate and let go of during this season.

The story about Jesus in Luke 4 that we heard just a few moments ago is often tied closely with Lent in our minds. Jesus’s time in the wilderness of 40 days correlates with the 40 days of Lent that come before Easter each year. And in case you’re doing the math on that and coming up with more than 40 days, it’s because Lent is technically the 40 days preceding Easter PLUS the Sundays, which are meant to be “little Easters” and don’t count as a part of the 40 days.

Often, when we look at this passage we focus on the temptation aspect of the story. The ways that the devil tempts Jesus to save himself, make himself great, prematurely entering his glory. We often think about the ways Lent can be a season of steadfastly resisting temptations - like chocolate or pizza - and a time of training ourselves to make our “no” our “no” so that our “yes” can be our “yes.” The Luke passage tells us that Jesus ate nothing during his time in the wilderness, and so the tradition of Lent as a time of fasting has ancient, biblical roots.

These are all rich, important ways to engage with this passage.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to see Jesus’s time in the wilderness from an Indigenous perspective. Kaitlin Curtice is a member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band, an author, and a Christian. She writes about hearing this story of Jesus in the wilderness anew as she notices its connections to the practice of the vision quest that is common in several Indigenous cultures. Each culture has its own name for a similar ritual, whereby a young person goes into the wilderness for a period of several days, typically alone, typically without any food or water. It’s a coming of age ritual and the Lakota call it Hanbleceya, which, in English, could be translated “crying for a vision.” [2]

Crying for a vision. Going to extremes to see anew.

Curtice says that in Indigenous cultures, young people “enter the wilderness because they know that on the other side they will come out a new version of themselves.”

When we go into the wilderness, we intentionally get lost so that we don’t accidentally get lost.

We let go of some of our familiar comforts and push ourselves into new and unfamiliar territory so that we are forced to pay attention and see our lives anew. We intentionally cultivate space and unfamiliarity so that we can remember who we are.

That’s what happens to Jesus when he is in the wilderness. Tempted by a force that the author of Luke calls “the devil,” Jesus could easily lose himself in a hall of mirrors. After all, the version of Jesus that the devil paints isn’t too far off base. There are kernels of truth buried within.

But in this wilderness place, Jesus is awake and aware enough to resist the temptation of taking the easy route. He is grounded firmly in the truth of who he is and he is ready and willing to walk in the strength of that truth.

It’s no accident that Jesus’s baptism and genealogy come just before this wilderness wandering. When Jesus is baptized, he is reminded who he is at a deep, cellular level. As he emerges from the waters, we are told that the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove and a voice extends from the heavens, “You are my son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased!”

Immediately after these words, the author of Luke shifts gears into a long genealogy of Jesus, going back some 75 generations. At the very end, the last words we hear just before Jesus goes into the wilderness are these, “son of God.”

“You are my child,” God says. I am within you, a part of your very essence. You are of me and I am of you. We can never be separated.

Armed with that foundational knowledge resounding deep in his body, Jesus walks into the wilderness - alone but never alone - crying for a vision. Ready to be reminded of who he is and what work is his to do. Jesus gets lost on purpose so he can avoid getting lost on accident. In letting go of familiar comforts and safety, he grows in wisdom and strength.

One of my favorite stories to return to is one by the Rev. Robert Fulghum. He writes about how he was at his window one day, watching the neighborhood kids play a game of hide and seek. One child has hidden under a big pile of leaves just under Fulghum’s window. He has hidden too well. No one can find him and the other kids comb the neighborhood, growing frustrated and about to give up. Fulghum ponders how to help, finally shouting “Get found, kid!” at the top of his lungs, probably terrifying the poor child. He says, “It’s real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.” [3]

When I think about Jesus out there in the wilderness, trying to find the vision...when I think about all of us in our wilderness wanderings, trying to be brave and carve out space when it can be so daunting to feel unmoored….I imagine God shouting at us, in a good-natured way, “Get found, kid!”

And when I think about us sleep-walking through out days on autopilot, bringing very little intentionality to our lives, I imagine God smiling and saying, “Get lost, kid!”

Get lost. Get found. Sometimes they seem to almost be the same thing.

[1] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kaitlinbcurtice/2017/05/08/jesus-us-a-shared-wilderness/

[2] http://sites.coloradocollege.edu/indigenoustraditions/6-%E2%80%A2-independent-projects/inikagapi-hanblecheyapi/

[3] Fulghum, Robert. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  http://mjglass.ca/metaphor/getfound.htm