Readings FIRST LESSON The first lesson is "The Secret of Life" from The Immense Journey by Loren Eisley I am middle-aged now, but in the autumn I always seek for it again hopefully. On some day when the leaves are red, or fallen, and just after the birds are gone, I put on my hat and an old jacket, and …I start my search. I go carefully down the apartment steps and climb, instead of jump, over the wall. … By the time I get to the wood I am carrying all manner of seeds hooked in my coat or piercing my socks or sticking by ingenious devices to my shoestrings. I let them ride. After all, who am I to contend against such ingenuity? It is obvious that nature, or some part of it in the shape of these seeds, has intentions beyond this field and has made plans to travel with me. We, the seeds and I, climb another wall together and sit down to rest, while I consider the best way to search for the secret of life. The seeds remain very quiet and some slip off into the crevices of the rock. A woollybear caterpillar hurries across a ledge, going late to some tremendous transformation, but about this he knows as little as I. … there may be those who would doubt the wisdom of coming out among discarded husks in the dead year to pursue such questions. They might say the proper time is spring, when one can consult the water rats or listen to little chirps under the stones. Of late years, however, I have come to suspect that the mystery may just as well be solved in a carved and intricate seed case out of which the life has flown, as in the seed itself. …As I grow older and conserve my efforts, I shall give this season my final and undivided attention, I shall be found puzzling over the saw teeth on the desiccated leg of a dead grasshopper or standing bemused in a brown sea of rusty stems, … I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of a Scotch theologue, "is not as natural as it looks," I have learned this in a small suburban field, after a good many years spent in much wilder places upon far less fantastic quests. SECOND LESSON The second lesson is from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4 verses 1-4 4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
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This Week's Sermon Date: July 19, 2009 Title: Forty Days in the Wilderness Message Delivered By: Sheri L Lohr Forty Days in the Wilderness There is a place in Greece near the coast where a tall, sheer cliff overlooks a wooded area near a small village. The paths on this cliff are barely passable by goats, but the face is dotted with dozens of small caves hewn into the rock and inhabited by holy hermits. The place may have been a sacred site in ancient times, and it may have been the home of a very early Christian congregation, but certainly it has been a place of pilgrimage since medieval days. The villagers bring food offerings to the holy ascetics, and there is a spring, said to have healing properties, that issues from the cliff and runs to a stream in the woods. There is a story that at one time three of these hermits lived in caves near this spring. One day as they sat in contemplation, a horse ran out of the woods, jumped over the stream and disappeared into the trees on the other bank. Seven years after this event, one of the hermits said “That was a beautiful white horse that crossed the stream.” They all continued to meditate in silence, until seven years later the second hermit said “That was a gray horse.” Seven years after that, the third hermit took his simple clay food bowl and his simple small wooden cross and wrapped them in his worn homespun cloak. He stood up and walked out onto the narrow path, and he said “If you two are just going to sit there and bicker, I’m outta here!” Please join me in prayer: Creator God, in whose creative image we are made, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always pleasing in thy sight. Amen Emily Dickenson once said, “They say that God is everywhere and yet we always think of him as somewhat of a recluse.” She should know. Perhaps she considered that it takes one to know one. The gospels often tell about Jesus retreating to pray in solitude: Mark 1:35 35Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Luke 5:16 16But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. And Luke tells about Jesus calling the twelve apostles: Luke 6:12-13 12One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Matthew, Mark and John tell the story about Jesus praying alone in the garden at Gethsemane on the night before his arrest. And, famously, just before the beginning of his ministry Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. Matthew 4 and Luke 4 tell the three temptations: make the stones into bread, leap from the temple to be saved by angels, rule over the kingdoms of the world. Mark [1:12-13 ] just says : 12At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, 13and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. Forty Days: That’s Bible-speak for “a long time.” Noah’s flood was forty days. Moses was forty days on Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the law; after he broke those in anger, he went back for another forty days to get the warrantee replacement. When Joseph prepared for his father Jacob’s funeral, Genesis tells us that “the physicians embalmed him, 3 taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming.” We also read that the Israelites explored the Land of Canaan for forty days, that David watched Goliath for forty days before the famous slingshot strike. Elijah traveled for forty days to Horeb, and Jonah predicted forty days before the fall of Nineveh, unless the people repented. The book of Acts tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples over a period of forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. This forty days mirrors the period at the beginning of his ministry. As one who has for some years made a custom of abstaining from alcohol during the Lenten season, I can tell you that forty days (which is actually 46 counting the Sundays) is a very long time. Some of my friends seem to find it even more interminable than I do, claiming that I’m inclined to get a little testy toward the end. Forty days is more than a lunar month. The Hebrew Bible and the Christian testament together have 98 references to the number forty. It is the number of waiting. So if we think of those forty days in the wilderness, we shouldn’t concentrate on the drama of Satan tempting Jesus. That couldn’t have taken up the whole time. We should picture Jesus’ stillness. We should try to understand what kind of prayer he would make. I don’t think it would be the “magic wish-list” kind of prayer we make when we are troubled or think we are in need, that is to say the kind of prayer we make when we try to tell God what to do. I think Jesus demonstrates for us a kind of prayer of listening rather than talking to God. We sometimes think we would like to hear from God, for direction or an explanation. I believe that God is talking to us all the time; hardly ever shuts up. The problem is not in the voice of God, it is in our hearing. We all know that being a good listener is a gift and an all too rare one. It’s hard to listen to our brothers and sisters without changing the topic to ourselves. We often have the same problem listening to God. So although God has a message for each of us, sometimes we need to find a way to concentrate to hear that Word. Sometimes we need to separate ourselves from the distraction and noise, both literal and metaphorical, of the world. Sometimes the voice of God is best heard in solitude. Yet solitude eludes us. We are busy with the things that need to be done and the things we want to do. We have friends and families and co-workers and business associates around us most of the time. If we consider it honestly, though, solitude is less eluding us than we are evading solitude. Because we fear loneliness. As you reach a certain age it seems that you become more familiar with loss. It happens to you and to those around you: death and separation, being left behind. Some of us also remember when death was all too common among the young and promising and loss was with us every day. Many of us have known people who live very long lives, only to see everyone they ever knew and loved taken from them. Paradoxically, experience of loss seems to make it harder rather than easier to bear. It’s a blow you flinch from before it falls. So we turn on the television, we go to bars and places where people gather. We fill up the time and cover up silence. Humans are, after all, social animals. More like wolves than like panthers. More like seagulls than hawks. More like the lion than the leopard. But in spite of the importance of our bonds with others, we should never overlook the importance of self-reflection. You will be a better friend to others if you are comfortable in your own skin. You will grow greater in spirit if you give the spirit a chance to be heard and move within you. My friends know that one of my very favorite things to do is to go camping in the beautiful Florida Everglades. I’m beyond the days when I can pack a backpack and go trekking or kayaking to really remote spots, so I pack the van and pitch a tent in one of the park’s campgrounds. Pascal thinks a tent is the perfect kind of den, just right for the two of us. In the daytime when other campers are seeing the sights and wonders, we take long walks that are not exactly hikes and listen to birds and wind in the trees, and see wonderful things large and small. At night I conserve my firewood, so I still have a small fire to watch, as well as stars to see, after the camp quiets down and other campers have gone to bed. I have done some of my best writing in this setting. I never fail to feel holiness.
If you live, you will face loss. You will probably find yourself at some time alone. Do not shut out the help and support of others, but do not fear to be alone with yourself. Do not fear to be alone with God. Create for yourself some time to listen to the voice of God. Find your wilderness, wherever that may be, if it’s in the Everglades or Fort Zach or the salt ponds or your own front porch. Take your forty days, however long that may be, whether it’s a vacation escape or an hour in the early morning. Listen to what God is saying. Do not expect instructions; do not expect explanations; God’s voice is not so trivial as that. Expect illumination. Angels will attend you. Amen
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