Desert, Snow & Tombs
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 21st February 2010 by Rt Rev Joseph Toal
Readings: Jeremiah 17: 5 – 8, Philippians 1: 27 – 30 and Luke 4: 1 - 13
I recently had opportunity to travel to New Zealand and Australia via Dubai, and on the journey back it was a very clear day after we left Dubai heading for Glasgow, so much so that from my window seat I was able to see the huge expanse of desert as we crossed over Iran, Iraq and Turkey. It looked for the most part a complete wilderness, but now and again you could see settlements far below us but with absolutely no sign of rivers or water. I reflected on this apparently inhospitable landscape and people for whom it is home. With water all around us here in Scotland and with such an abundance usually falling from the heavens it is difficult to understand how the hardy people of the desert can survive with such meagre supply. One may well agree with the Prophet Jeremiah then when he uses the barrenness, the aridity of the desert, as a simile for what he perceives as a dreadful lack in the human person who overly trusts in man and the things of the flesh, and whose hearts turns from the Lord. A desolate unappealing state to be in, especially in comparison with the verdant waterside location of the person who puts their trust in the Lord – there is safety, reassurance, the promise that the water will never dry up nor their fertility disappear. The prophet calls us to make the choice for God and godliness and to be reassured that it is far and away the better choice.
The desert in the Gospel though does not come across as so barren. For a start Jesus is led by the Spirit, and there he encounters life, perhaps a distorted and devious form, but still a real one in the person of the devil. Indeed Jesus is lead there by the Spirit to know of this person and to know, it seems, the attraction of what he has to offer, and indeed the power with which he makes his offer. It seems almost obligatory for Jesus to go and be tempted by this alluring alternative to the real God, and, in refusing to submit, to feel his own intense need and dependence on the God in whom he trusted and whose holy words shaped his life and guarded him in this time of trial and exposure. In pondering the intensity of this experience of Jesus in the desert we are invited in some way to go to the desert ourselves, or perhaps recognise the desert which we are often happy to inhabit, and face up to the attractions that can lead us away from the true God and beholden to the dark forces of evil. In Jesus’ experience in the desert there is a strong sense of hanging on, of being taken to the limit, but then his appeal to the revealed word of the true God, proves to be his shield and security:
“Man does not live on bread alone” and “You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone”.
Recognising Jesus’ trust in God’s words the devil uses them to try to turn him around and test his resolve that faith in God must prevail:
“He will put his angels in charge of you to guard you. They will hold you up on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone.”
But Jesus rebuts his deviousness and asserts God’s place of rule, the reign of his kingdom among men:
“You must not put the Lord your God to the test.”
The choice for God and godliness can therefore be tested and affirmed in the apparent wastelands of the desert – indeed it may be asserted that without the time of trial and temptation we do not truly know how strong our faith in God is, or, perhaps better, how much we wish to live truly and fully dependent on him and the Word he has given to us.
The next stage of my plane journey took us over what seemed a great frozen sea, probably The Black Sea, and then across the Ukraine, Poland and Denmark, still completely covered in snow, although the severe cold spell which we had endured in Britain had ended. I know that in some Church circles today we tend to view Europe as a cold, indifferent continent, in which the tide of secularisation has frozen out much of the practice of Christianity, and made many critical of, and sometimes hostile to, any attempt at applying what we call Gospel values or Christians morals in both the private and public spheres of modern life. I recently spent a week in Rome with the other Scottish Catholic Bishops, during which we had the privilege of meeting Pope Benedict individually and then listening to his message to us as a group. In this message he encouraged us to grapple firmly with the challenges presented by the increasing tide of secularism, and, as we often do in our tradition, he chose as the most pertinent example trends which strike at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life, citing in particular the growing support for euthanasia and the increasing level of experimentation on life in its embryonic stages. He encouraged us though to be positive in trying to encourage and convince our own faithful and those beyond our community of the proven value and truth of Christian teaching. Here are some of his words:
“The Church offers the world a positive and inspiring vision of human life, the beauty of marriage and the joy of parenthood. It is rooted in God’s infinite, transforming and ennobling love for all of us, which opens our eyes to recognize and love his image in our neighbour. Be sure to present this teaching in such a way that it is recognised for the message of hope that it is. All too often the Church’s doctrine is perceived as series of prohibitions and retrograde positions, whereas the reality, as we know, is that it is creative and life-giving, and it is directed towards the fullest possible realization of the great potential for good and for happiness that God has implanted within every one of us.”
In whatever situation in life where tragedy has struck, or failure and disgrace have resulted there can be a tendency to give up, to resign oneself to the inevitable, which would incline towards the bleakest possible outcome. It is very necessary therefore that we receive messages of hope, that console and reassure that life is still worth living, that failures can be put right, and that even disgrace can be surmounted through humility and forgiveness. The hardy survivors who were pulled out of rubble in Haiti many days after the earthquake remind us that life can continue and be resurrected as it were even in the most awful of circumstances; the failure of our banking system, although so costly and damaging, is not the end of our modern economies, but we have to brush ourselves down, learn the lessons and try again; the disgrace of those exposed as cheats and liars often requires a huge amount of forgiveness on part of those who are wronged and humble contrition by the perpetrators, but pardon can be sought and offered. As followers of Christ let us keep this spark of hope within us, so that we can bring the touch of his love to those who may be close to despair or ridden with guilt, and let us promote our faith as the best possible way for everyone to fulfil their potential for good and happiness through the love of God implanted within us.
One of the highlights of my recent visit to Rome was the celebration of the Eucharist at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. It is a great tribute to both these great men that despite the difficulties the early Christian community in Rome faced their bodies were buried and the place of burial remembered and visited until the opportunity arose to build shrines and later great churches over their resting places – today the Basilicas of St. Peter and St Paul Outside the Walls. I appreciate this concrete connection with these great disciples of the Lord and the sense of continuity in the line of Christian belief from them to today’s disciples. This is my first visit this weekend to St. Andrew’s and I am aware that this place also honours another of the Apostles and helps us here in Scotland to be aware of the succession of faith and ministry coming from those who shared so closely with the Lord Jesus here on earth and then began the tradition of bearing witness to him and calling others also to acclaim Him as the Risen Lord and Saviour. For St Paul there was always a sense of great privilege in being called to faith in Christ, but this often lead to disputes, fights even, and sometimes very real suffering – at times the opposition is from outside his young communities but not infrequently it is from within. To me he comes across as a very forthright and combative person, expecting his followers to leave behind all that is unworthy of the gospel of Christ, and to be ready like him to keep on fighting for the faith he loved even when the cost was great and pain and suffering a certainty. His death then as a martyr in Rome was predictable, and for himself surely not unexpected. Foolhardy or extremely brave? Desperado or Inspiring Leader? Religious fanatic or Living Icon of Christ? A bit of everything perhaps – complex but compelling, the one who first put into words the experience of being won by Christ and living life totally engrossed in the mystery of his life, death and resurrection, and in serving him completely with every ounce of physical strength and mental and spiritual energy he had within him. He is a hard act to follow, perhaps at times to understand, but his insight and wisdom, gifted as he understood by the Lord himself, places the Christian life and message at the centre of human history as the true and most rewarding path for every person to follow. To him making known the Crucified, now Risen, Lord Jesus was everything and worth every fight he endured and every obstacle he had to cross. Following the Lord’s own instruction, St Paul invites us to follow in his steps.
These meanderings through recent journeys and experiences bring me to conclude that the call to faith in God, and more explicitly to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a gift not gained all at once, but rather honed and formed by our own openness to God’s presence and life within us, and our awareness of God’s presence in others and in the experiences we have in life. The examples of others, whether ancient or modern, the wise words we hear, starting from the Lord himself and his earliest followers, the dilemmas thrown at us in moments of tragedy and temptation, all add to the possibility of maturing in faith, perhaps at times calling us to leave behind our own particular deserts where we have grown arid and disinterested. Different aspects of faith, different insights, different experiences touch each one of us in our own particular way, and lead us to find our place in Christ’s Body and hopefully to give our own particular and valuable example of living the way he invites us to follow. It is perhaps reassuring that St. Paul in all his combativeness finds words also to express our unity in Christ - “united by your love for the faith of the gospel” – and that this offers us a sense of shared commitment and mission in the name of the Lord Jesus, which hopefully can lift us above our own prejudices and fears and help us to continue to build together the real Kingdom of God’s reign among us, built on faith, hope and love, rather than power, control and selfish ambition. May the Lord be with us in our efforts to do this, and may our patron St Andrew bring us always back to listen anew to what the Lord says and how he calls us to respond today.