Playing with the Wild Things - Lent 1 2012

“Playing with the Wild Things”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, February 26, 2012 at St. Mark’s, Newark, NY

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mark 1:12-13)

When my children were little one of their favorite books for me to read to them was Maurice Sendak’s classic tale, “Where the Wild Things Are.” In that story, a little boy named Max is sent to his room without his supper by his mother who loses patience one day with his “wild” behavior. As Max sits alone in his room, cut off from family and friends, with no supper to eat, his room becomes at first a forest and then the walls become “the world all around.” Then “an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.” When Max gets to the place where the wild things are he is confronted with strange creatures who “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.” At first Max is frightened by these creatures, but then he shouts at them “BE STILL” and he tames them with a “magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.” I could not help but think of Sendak’s wild things when I read Mark’s gospel account of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. “He was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him.”

In Mark’s gospel, the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness follows immediately after the story of his baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, where, upon coming up out of the water, Jesus sees the Holy Spirit descending like a dove upon him and hears the heavenly voice proclaim, “You are my son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Mark tells us that “immediately” after that voice came from heaven the Spirit “drove” him out to the wilderness where for forty days he was tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Mark’s rendition of this story is spare yet powerful. Where Matthew and Luke tell us that the Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness, Mark says he was driven there. Where Matthew and Luke tell us specifically how Satan tempted Jesus Mark tells us only that he was in the wilderness forty days with the wild beasts and angels. We have no idea what that experience was like for Jesus but we do know that he was alone, in a place filled with wild things. Mark gives us a different angle on the wilderness experience and one that bears reflection as we begin another Lent.

Our Old Testament reading today from Genesis takes us again to the place of chaos and wild things. When the waters of the great flood covered the earth, Noah and his family survived that watery holocaust closed in the ark along with the wild beasts of every kind, clean and unclean. One can only imagine what that voyage must have felt like to its human passengers, encased in that ark, tossed about on the stormy waters of the flood accompanied by all the beasts, birds and creatures of every kind. Talk about confronting wild things! Noah and family had no choice but to look into the eyes of the wild beasts of creation and learn to live with them. Somehow they managed to survive living cheek to jowl with mountain lions and grizzly bears, rabbits and iguanas. And when that perilous journey was over, they emerged into the open air to the resplendence of the rainbow in the sky, the sign of God’s covenant with them.

We begin our Lenten observance with two powerful stories that offer us a vivid metaphor for our Lenten journey. Learning to live with the chaos and to befriend the “wild things” in our culture and our own personal lives is a worthy endeavor for this special season. With Mark’s version of the wilderness sojourn and the story of Noah and the ark as models for our Lenten observance we could take these forty days of Lent to go alone into our own personal wildernesses and spend time with the wild beasts and the angels that await us there. Perhaps life has already driven you to the wilderness, in which case your Lenten observance is right at your fingertips. If you’re not in a personal desert time right now, Lent is an opportunity to make the time for some serious introspection and self-examination, to go deep and find the wild beasts who challenge you in your life so that you can befriend them and go to Easter strengthened by the serenity that befriending the wild things brings with it.

In our comfortable middle class American way of life, we rarely allow the chaos and wildness of God’s creation to invade our reality. We live in heated and air conditioned homes, with electric lights to see by, and refrigerators to keep food cool and stoves to cook it on without serious effort on our part. We live in a well ordered society and those of us in this area have the luxury of being able to live in a place that is safe and where we can walk streets and neighborhoods without fear. We don’t really want to confront “wild things” whether they be in the form of external realities that are scary like people who are different from us or who challenge us, or diseases that grip our mortal bodies and do their relentless destruction, or whether they be internal wild things like our own fears, frustrations, anger, grief, loneliness or even despair. During Lent, however, we are invited to walk into the wilderness and live with the wild things for awhile.

What is compelling about the two Biblical stories of spending time with the wild things is that both Noah and his family, and Jesus appear to have been able to somehow befriend and co-exist with the wild beasts. Noah and his family were living through a time of complete destruction and chaos as the entire world was awash in the raging waters of the flood, and somehow in the midst of that chaos, they managed to survive along with the wild things God had also created and wanted to save. Notice that God did not want the wild things to be destroyed – indeed God went to great lengths to be sure they survived. In the wilderness, Jesus had to survive in a place without shelter, subjected to the intense heat of the day and the deep cold of desert nights, where flash floods and winds can erupt at any time, with no warning. This is not a climate hospitable to human habitation, so Jesus had to survive using his own inner resources and, presumably learning from the wild beasts how to weather the desert climate. There is no suggestion in Mark’s account that the wild beasts were necessarily dangerous for Jesus, simply that he had to co-exist with them.

Lent is a time for us to go to the wilderness of our own lives and live with the wild beasts that reside there. Each of us has a different version of the wilderness. For some it is depression, for some grief, for others anxiety or stress, still others fear for themselves or loved ones. For some the wilderness is a place where they are trying desperately to keep the wind and elements from blowing away the precariously built sand castle of their lives. These are folks who have so denied the pain and struggles of their own existence that they have completely shut themselves off emotionally from their families, friends, and neighbors and their own inner selves. For some the wilderness is loneliness, for others the diminished capacity of advancing years. Whatever form your wilderness takes, Lent is a time to consider befriending the beasts that reside there because those beasts are not going anywhere and you will find more peace by learning to live with them than by fighting them.

In the Sendak story, little Max first stares the wild things into submission, then becomes their king. Once he has put himself in a place where the wild things are not ruling him but he rules them, he is able to let them be wild. He plays with them. “Let the wild rumpus start!” he shouts and the book shows pictures of Max and the beasts living it up. When we truly confront the wild beasts of our own wilderness, we too can befriend them and then let them have their day. It’s when we try to avoid those beasts, when we try to deny their existence that we remain captive. One cannot get over grief, one has to live through it, embrace it even. Anyone who has ever been through the twelve-step process will tell you that you don’t overcome addiction by pretending it isn’t there. It’s only when the addict looks it in the face and embraces it as a destructive reality that it begins to lose its power over the person. A troubled or difficult relationship is rarely strengthened by avoiding the real issues between people. It’s only when those issues are brought into the open and stared down, through painful hard work sometimes, that they lose their ability to corrode the relationship and love between two people.

The important thing to remember about this sometimes painful wilderness sojourn to which we are called in Lent is that although it may be a solitary journey it does not have to be a lonely one. Each of us must do our own interior work to confront and befriend our own wild beasts. In the Sendak tale, Max doesn’t get to the place of the wild things until he is sent away by himself into his room. While he’s busy playing, he doesn’t find the wild things. We do not do that interior work alone, however. Each one of us is God’s beloved child in whom God is well pleased. When we embrace that foundation of love on which we rest, we enter the wilderness confident that angels will be there to care for us amidst the beasts. God protected Noah and his family even as God ensured the continued existence of the “wild things” and then God sent the rainbow as a symbol of God’s never-failing love and commitment to all God’s creatures. In the Sendak story, after Max cavorts with the wild things, he gets in his ship and sails back into “the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him.”

When we return from our Lenten wilderness sojourn, supper will be waiting for us in the paschal feast on Easter Day. In the meantime, let us journey this Lent to “where the wild things are.”

Epiphany 4B, 2012

“No Stumbling Blocks in Church” , A Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Newark, NY

But take care that this liberty of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak. (1 Cor. 8:9)

It is a busy weekday in the Greek city of Corinth circa 54 CE. In the temples of Apollo and Mithras, and of the Emperor and his family, devotees bring animals to be sacrificed ritually upon the altars, an offering to the gods in thanksgiving for blessings bestowed or for healing or for prosperity and good fortune. In the synagogues the Jews gather three times a day for their daily prayers. In the Jewish sections of the city, the market teems with stalls selling fruit, vegetables and meat butchered according to the dietary laws of the Jewish Torah. The Jewish Christians gather for daily prayers before going to their respective jobs, and on Sundays gather early in the homes of some of the more prominent of their members to share a meal, and enact the ritual of the Lord’s Supper, breaking bread and blessing wine and “sharing in the Lord’s death until he comes” before dispersing to their varied occupations. Paul is a tentmaker, and when he’s not preaching or spreading the gospel of the Risen Christ to any who will listen, he is busy making and selling tents to keep himself afloat.

The Christians are a growing sect within Judaism in this busy metropolitan Greek city under Roman rule. Paul is an effective evangelist, pulling in many new converts from those devotees of Apollo or Mithras or the Emperor. Word has it that the Christian community is suffering from some internal discord and Paul is kept busy instructing them in appropriate behavior towards one another, particularly those who are new to the Christian faith. Apparently, many Christians in Corinth routinely buy and consume the meat leftover from the sacrifices at the temples of Apollo and Mithras and the Emperor, as that meat is plentiful and tasty and readily available in the town market. Some among the Christian sect seem offended by this practice, while others see no reason not to eat the perfectly good meat especially as it is affordable and easily procured on a daily basis. They could care less that it was offered on some so-called “religious” altar, since they are so firm in their commitment to the One God whom they worship and the Lord Jesus Christ from whom they take their name. To them the meat is simply food, not something with any religious significance whatsoever.

On the other hand, there are some new Christians, recently converted from the Greco-Roman religions, who are reluctant to eat this meat because they recognize it as meat that has religious significance in the traditions of Apollo and others. Now that they have converted to the new Christian religion they find themselves feeling confused and torn as they remember with some fondness the religious rituals and practices of their youth, even as they embrace this new religion and its ritual of the bread and wine. The growing Christian community has had to contend with a number of issues with respect to converts. It has been decided that non-Jews who convert to this sect don’t have to undergo circumcision, but the issue of what to do about food offered to the Greco-Roman gods in the holy temples continues to cause considerable controversy. Apparently, members of this new sect have nearly come to blows on this thorny issue. Paul is twisting himself into a pretzel to try to bring the warring sides of this controversy to the table in some amicable fashion. On some days he’s more successful than on others. The Corinthian Christians are a conflict-ridden bunch and they don’t seem particularly eager to come to the dialogue table and resolve their differences. Those who see no problem with eating the meat sacrificed to Apollo do not see any reason to incur extra expense or go to greater lengths to acquire kosher meat, just to appease the new converts who are uncomfortable with the ritually slaughtered meat. They either don’t care or don’t recognize that their cavalier attitude to the ritual meat is causing significant pain to others in their Christian community.

Fast forward 2000+ years: The Christian community in the Northern Hemisphere is now the majority religion in a pluralistic environment where there are people from many different religious traditions living side by side in a bustling 21st century society. In the United States, a recent Gallup poll finds that fully 82% of people call themselves Christian, although a huge percentage of those people do not actively practice the religion. The numbers of people who designate themselves as “unaffiliated” has risen dramatically in the past 50 years, and secularism pervades the culture. Materialism and nationalism are heavy influences on the value systems by which most people live and the spirit of rugged individualism is pervasive in American culture.

While the Christian religious tradition is the religion of the empire, Christianity itself is now widely diverse, having split into hundreds of different denominations as conflicts like that early one in Corinth ultimately led to separation and division when warring factions simply could not come to agreement on the many issues that divided them. The older, “mainline” Christian denominations are in decline, struggling to retain members and desperate to determine how to attract new members. By and large, the younger generation of adults, those in their 20s and 30s are absent from Christian churches, particularly those in the mainline traditions. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity has become a significant political force in the United States in the past thirty years, and many of those churches are thriving, often buying into the cultural embrace of materialism and nationalism, preaching a “prosperity gospel” that encourages the quest for wealth and affluence as signs of God’s favor.

In Corinth the controversy over food sacrificed to idols tore the community apart. In 21st century America Christian communities struggle over different issues of inclusion and religious practice, such as:
 Should the church help undocumented immigrants working in the local community when they are threatened with arrest or deportation and should Christians work for immigration law reform to protect those undocumented workers?;
 How can the Christian community atone for centuries of complicity in racism and become an active force in eradicating racism within its own ranks and in the communities where the churches do their ministry?
 Should the church exercise its tradition of radical hospitality by reaching out in friendship to Muslim brothers and sisters at a time when Islamophobia is rampant in the culture and popular media, creating a climate of hate and mistrust that is damaging to the larger community and to national security?
 Should gay and lesbian people be ordained and should their relationships be blessed by the church?;
 Is it permissible to offer communion to unbaptized people, is it permissible to offer grape juice along with wine at communion, how can we introduce inclusive language for God into our liturgy?

In the church at Corinth, Paul confronted a controversy that at its core was about behaviors and attitudes among those in the Christian community that were likely to tear at the fabric of Christian community and that might get in the way of some believers being able to maintain their connection with God. Paul encouraged the Corinthian Christians to behave in ways that provided a safety net for the weakest among them, admonishing those who were more mature in the faith to make space for those who needed more help to live into their Christian faith with integrity. Paul reminded them that “knowledge puffs up but love builds up” encouraging them to act first out of love and not to get too hung up on what they thought they knew, or understood or believed. Paul firmly believed that love would be the glue that would hold the diverse body of believers together, not agreement on doctrine or theological propositions of one kind or other. For Paul, it was more important that Christians be loving than that they prove to themselves or anyone else that they were right.

Paul begins his preaching on love in this part of the letter, and he goes on to write an outstanding hymn to love a few chapters later. The love of which Paul speaks is not a sticky sweet, fuzzy Hallmark card kind of love by any means. Love, as Paul understands it, is love that takes us to the cross, that calls us to sacrifice our own ego, our own impulses, needs and desires for the good of God’s kingdom, so that we become compassionate lovers of humanity in our broken world. We are called to love even those we dislike, those who repulse us, those who push our buttons and drive us crazy. When human conflicts erupt it is important for each of us to remember “it’s not about you” and then to take the conflict into our prayer time, offering ourselves and our adversaries to God’s grace and wisdom. In Christian community rugged individualism has no place. Personal freedom and liberty is tempered by the command to love the neighbor.

In Christian community and in the world beyond our church we are called to take people as we find them, to love and nurture them as whole people of God, respecting the dignity of every human being in their full humanity. Paul is quite clear with the Corinthians that believers in Christ are to bend over backwards not to become a stumbling block to the weak. If something we say or do gets in the way of someone else’s relationship with God, we need to think twice about what we’re doing. My guess is that if Christians throughout the ages had listened to Paul’s advice more closely we might not be suffering the decline in attendance that we are seeing in our modern church. Our contemplative tradition is full of spiritual practices that we can each take on, practices like meditation, contemplative prayer, intercessory prayer, regular self-examination and confession, the Jesus prayer, that help us become the kind of loving Christians that Paul envisioned. Sadly, Christians have all too often become stumbling blocks to others and to themselves and the result is fractured community and declining participation.

Life in Christian community will always be fraught with controversies and conflicts. It is inherent in our humanity. How we handle conflict and controversy is what marks us as faithful disciples of the Risen Christ. Paul gives us a good measuring rod – “Take care that this liberty of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” The highways of life’s journey are full of stumbling blocks. Our baptism calls us to get out on the road and join the crew removing as many of those barriers as we can so the love of God in Christ can flow freely into our broken world through us and through our way of loving in the world. Amen.