2020.03 | Into the Woods

On Ash Wednesday, Feb 26, we joined Christians around the world on a journey into the wilderness of Lent. Our liturgical journey mirrors Christ’s 40 days in a metaphorical wilderness, and the Hebrews’ 40 years in the Sinai desert. 

Like pilgrims in every time and place, we find our way filled with challenge and wonder. D. T. Niles describes the wilderness challenge beautifully in his book, The Bible through Asian Eyes in Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Volume 1, Kenneth T. Lawrence, Editor. (Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press, 1994), 150.

The choice between God and every other God is a real choice. Both make promises. Both demand loyalty. It is possible to live by both. If there were no real alternative to God, all [humanity] would choose [God]. Indeed, God is the more difficult choice to justify in terms of provable results. The chief difficulty is that God demands of us that we live by faith: faith in [God], [God’s] sovereignty over the future, [God’s] sufficiency for the present; while, on the other hand, the various other gods whom we can serve appeal to us in terms of the things which we can see and the forces which we can calculate. The choice between the life of faith and the life of sight is a choice between a God whom only faith can apprehend and gods whom one has only to see to understand.

Living by faith is not easy. The challenge of the wilderness is real. Our forebears knew this truth, so the authors of Exodus and the gospels chose wilderness metaphors to describe situations fraught with danger. Yet the wilderness has more to offer than a gauntlet of challenges.

Images and metaphors used in Wisdom Literature (one of the several forms of literary genre in the Hebrew Bible) provide an important counterbalance to the sometimes mixed and negative messages that we have received about the wilderness from stories about the Exodus and Christ’s temptations. For example, in Wisdom Literature, the wilderness is depicted as evoking a sense of wonder and awe, and her authors suggest that it is possible to develop strengths and skills on the journey so that we can navigate uncharted territory with grace and peace, rather than fear and trepidation. 

Our Holy Week services, Bible studies, prayer practices, and Sunday worship services are designed to help us develop strengths and skills for the journey ahead. These opportunities also remind us that this journey we are on is a group project. So here we go, with faith and courage, and one another. Here we go—into the woods.

Pastor Arlene