Crying in the Wilderness
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews, on Sunday 1st March 2009 by Rt Rev David Lunan
Readings: Ephesians 4: 11 ¿ 16 and Mark 1: 9 - 15
Sermon
Mark 1 ¿And a voice came from heaven, `You are my own dear son. I am pleased with you.¿ At once the Spirit made him go into the desert, where he stayed forty days, being tempted by Satan. Wild animals were there also, but angels came and helped him.¿
I feel singularly honoured to be invited to preach here in St Salvator¿s Chapel at the heart of Scotland¿s most ancient university. The first community in the land to recognise the need for education that would spread more widely the sum of human learning, and initiated that continuing endeavour to be the best, to strive for excellence in all things, not only academic but in life.
That remains a central purpose of a university, to see life as a whole, to pass on to succeeding generations what is already known and written, and to explore beyond the current horizons with research and experiment.
But it is not for information alone, or intellectual achievement, or institutional reputation, but for that most sought after gift, wisdom. Which requires intelligence, and experience, responsibility and perspective and sensitivity, and engagement and courtesy and an ability to self-critique. Wisdom which translates simply as skill in the art of living, for it depends `on seeing life as whole¿ as Saint Gregory the Great expressed it. Seeing life as a whole.
Today we remember and give thanks for the founders of the University of St Andrews, those who nearly 600 years ago had the wisdom and the vision to establish Scotland¿s first university. We give thanks to God for them, for the rich heritage they left our nation and the world, and we give thanks to God for all those benefactors and donors, personal and corporate, who have contributed to the capacity of the University to promote all that is best in academia and in life.
And I would also like to pay tribute to the staff, the faculties, who maintain that high tradition today.
And so I bring formally the greetings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to the University and to the Chaplaincy on its 50th anniversary; and thank you for the link which St Andrews University has always had with the National Church.
As you are kind enough to invite the Moderator from year to year, it must have happened before that this occasion fell on the first Sunday in Lent. It is the most sombre time of the Christian year, when we remember the forty days and nights our Lord spent in the Judean wilderness, blistering heat in the midday sun, freezing in the clear starlit night.
It¿s the time when the Church has as its rubric, `Remember, oh man, o woman thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.¿ The Latin adage, practise dying: prepare for life by preparing for death, prepare for death by preparing to live. Every religion teaches in some way that we have to, as it were, `die before we die¿.
Death ¿ not a subject to dwell on, you would become morbid, and so the church limits consideration to a tithe of its year. But if we never think about it, we¿re in a mild form of denial. It helps to give a certain perspective to our pre-occupation with the day to day and the mundane, and it helps to enhance our appreciation of this experience which is life on earth.
On this the first Sunday in Lent, the reading is about Jesus in the wilderness. It happens at the start of his ministry, just after he had you might say, gone public, and was baptised by his cousin John in the Jordan River: and words were heard from heaven, as the Spirit descended: `This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.¿
The words which, metaphorically speaking, we all hear at our baptism. `You are my beloved daughter, my beloved son, I am pleased with who you are.¿ We are adopted into the same family as our brother Christ, his God our God. Blessed are those who can hear that benediction, God `speaking well¿ of them.
But the same Spirit who descends on our Lord, then drives him to the desert. Let¿s not forget that temptations are not only conflicting, they are attractive. They have an appeal. And we are tempted not only in our weaknesses, but even more in our strengths.
There our Lord works out how he is going to carry out his mission. And though St Mark doesn¿t record the details, we know from the other gospels that he is tempted to take the populist route. Give people what they want: use your powers to turn stones into bread. It¿s a good thing to do, but it wouldn¿t change anything long term. It doesn¿t solve the underlying issues. The good can be the enemy of the best. Jesus answers, `People can¿t live on bread alone.¿ As universities well know, minds have to be fed, souls have to be nurtured, relationships and emotions need to be developed: no one of these is enough, we need to grow physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.
Bread alone is not enough. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength ¿ with all our intelligence and energy, all our prayer and passion.
The enemy then tests his principles. Compromise. Let¿s cut a deal. If you¿ll give me my place you can have anything you want. Power. Wealth. You name it.
In general terms, compromise is commendable. If we are too high-minded, purist, inflexible, sanctimoniously trying to hold the moral high ground, we can find ourselves in self-inflicted isolation, unable to move forward to the common good.
But we need to beware of compromise too. Especially where money is involved. It can easily distort all other values until we find all our real decisions are actually financial ones.
Jesus ¿ who later warned us we can¿t serve God and Mammon ¿ replies to the tempter, `Worship and serve God alone¿. What does it profit you to gain the whole world, and lose your soul, lose your integrity, lose your reputation, lose your good name? It¿s not worth it.
And his third temptation is to impress. Aristotle: `Those who are not loved seek to be admired.¿
The devil cites Scripture to his purpose, `Jump from the steeple and God¿s angels will catch you¿ ¿ it¿s in the Psalms. Jesus replies, `Don¿t put God to the test. Don¿t push your luck¿. He¿s asked about bread, now it¿s circuses. Dazzle the crowd, impress the masses, be a nine-days wonder. But that doesn¿t change anything either. Not long term, not root and branch, not the problem behind the problem.
It is good to have a season in the year when we allow ourselves to be asked the difficult questions, meaning and purpose, means and ends, life and death, sacrifice and suffering. Who am I? What is life? Who is God?
And we allow ourselves to be challenged by our Lord about what it might mean to repent: change our minds: change our lifestyle: how we handle our temptations: challenged to forgive, and be reconciled, and about what it might mean to see things from the point of view of people we regard as enemies: and how we embrace the shadow side of our own character, and find it¿s the key to our growing.
The problem with Lent is that it can become dilettante: we measure the amount of discomfort we are prepared to handle, and dip into the concept of self-denial. But the Lents we choose to observe, are only in order to prepare us for the hard times we don¿t choose. For half the world Lent is a permanent state, but for everyone at some time comes a Lent which is not voluntary, but is enforced: a Lent over which we have no control, and we discover the original meaning of suffering. When nothing works, everyone seems against us, life is a struggle, friends don¿t understand, we don¿t understand, and we are overtaken with grief, or disappointment, or pain, or loneliness, or betrayal, or loss. And we¿re helpless.
What is the place of these bitter seasons, for we spend a lot of time avoiding them. A great mystery is suffering. Our Lord spent half his ministry relieving suffering, but we know him to be the suffering servant. The one who became the victim, the sacrifice: who takes the sin of the world and nails it to the cross, that we might be free.
We should not speak lightly of suffering, for it is holy ground: in which silence alone is appropriate.
`Suffering,¿ said John Wimber, `makes us bitter or better.¿
`Unmerited suffering,¿ said Martin Luther King, `is redemptive.¿ He believed that suffering is what God uses to change things. From the personal to the global: to change, and make better, and indeed make the best.
Sir Thomas Beecham is supposed to have heard a young student soprano singing, and he was impressed. `She has a good voice, a very good voice: and if someone breaks her heart she will have a great voice.¿
We should never seek suffering, we should always alleviate it: but when it comes, we can learn to make something of it. To draw closer to God: to identify with Christ: Solidarity. To grow to maturity, to move from the superficial, to let deep speak to deep, to be stretched and refined, to become more than we were before, in St Paul¿s language to grow into the full stature of Christ.
And we move from what might be described as a first life Christianity to a second life Christianity. The first is about knowing the rules, the stories, the practices, the expectations of the Christian life. It¿s about building a container.
Second life is what you put in the container. Is it first life stuff, the rules and the traditions, the outward observance or is it openness, compassion, mystery.
There is no simple linear transition from first life to second life: I¿m not saying I¿m in second life, but I think I¿ve glimpsed it. You reach a point where your faith doesn¿t work any more: in your heart you know you¿ve lost it, or you face a life-crisis, a loss, a disappointment, suffering of body, mind or soul, ¿ something over which you have no control. Or you suddenly realise that all this church stuff was really an ego-trip, it wasn¿t about God at all, it was about me.
And you have the choice to go back, or go forward.
You don¿t get to second life Christianity without suffering: or sacrifice: or much prayer.
The story which in Scripture illustrates first life Christianity is the boy Jesus in the temple, `I must be about my Father¿s business.¿ `I need to know this stuff.¿
The story which enshrines the move into second life Christianity is the reading for today: Jesus is crying in the wilderness, where it¿s hot, it¿s hard, there¿s lots of questions, it¿s very uncomfortable, and he¿s under pressure, outwardly and inwardly.
But because he stayed the course, because he was willing to suffer, because he didn¿t give in, because he made the right decisions, because he lived the life he did, and died the death he did, the world became a different world; and human beings became a new being.
There are some lessons in life that can only be learned in the wilderness, when we are crying in the wilderness. We do not wish it to be so: every fibre of our being rebels against it: we long to avoid and deny and escape the wilderness.It does not seem to be a holy place, where we¿re tempted to be less than we might be; and tested to the limit ¿ and beyond.
The story of Jesus is the story of our soul: and we find that our wilderness experience, our involuntary dismantling turns out to be a sacred wounding, we stand on holy ground. We are brought to a new place, with a new wisdom about life, and a new vision of God. The Spirit is still with us, and angels minister to us and we can still hear God saying, `You are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son, and I am pleased with you.¿
And in God¿s hands even the bad is made good, and the good is made the best.
Gloria
Rt Rev David Lunan
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland