Today is the third Sunday in the season of creation. It is Wilderness Sunday. We have spoken of
forest and the land but now we speak of wilderness. So how is that
different? Let’s break down the word for
a moment. Wilderness… wilder ness…to be
of something wilder or more wild…. more wild than the lands we have tamed more
wild than the forest trails we have hiked. It is old English actually breaks
down as wild deor, Land inhabited by only wild animals.[1]
It is interesting because we often think of the deep forest
and especially the rain forest as wild untamed thing that we need to protect
from human kind and yet “The first
review of the global impact of humans on tropical forests in the ancient past
shows that humans have been altering these environments for at least 45,000
years. This counters the view that tropical forests were pristine natural
environments prior to modern agriculture and industrialization. The study,
published today (August 3rd) in Nature Plants, found that humans
have in fact been having a dramatic impact on such forest ecologies for tens of
thousands of years, through techniques ranging from controlled burning of
sections of forest to plant and animal management to clear-cutting. Although
previous studies had looked at human impacts on specific tropical forest
locations and ecosystems, this is the first to synthesize data from all over
the world.”[2]
This indicates there may be no place that hasn’t been
touched by man but there are still places of wilder-ness. In today’s Gospel
reading; Rev. Craig Condon reflects that;
“Jesus went willingly into the wilderness, but the Spirit is
pictured as moving him to battle Satan’s temptations. Jesus often went into the
wilderness during his ministry. It is in the wilderness where we often meet
God. We don’t choose to go to wilderness places such as times of trial,
temptation and struggle. They happen to us. Even when the challenges are caused
by our actions, we rarely seek out or even want such hardship. Even when we
face life’s challenges, the Holy Spirit will make use of us.
All of us have wilderness experiences from time to
time. These experiences often force us to confront the negative experiences of
our lives. They force us to strip away our pride and worldly resources and come
to God in faith.
Some people believe that if you follow God’s will,
you will have a life of ease. Nothing could be further from the truth. The way
of God often involves circumstances where we must trust in God and draw on his
truth and strength. God tests us to help us grow, to show us that we have the
faith and ability to stand up to the testing, that we will trust God in
difficult times and to strengthen our faith and Christian character.
After all, Jesus’ faith was strengthened by his time
in the wilderness.
We are often led into the wilderness just after
moments of triumph in our lives, just like Jesus was led into the wilderness
after his baptism. When we are in the wilderness, our character is also tested,
especially when we are tempted. Do we let faith guide us, or do we give in to
worldly pleasures? Do we draw on our faith? Do we let God speak to us?
When we are in the wilderness, we don’t know how
long the journey will last or what is on the other side, but it is a time of
preparation.”[3]
This concept of the wilderness as a place of trial or a
place to meet God and be challenged is nothing new. John was in the wilderness before he became a
voice crying out in the desert prepare ye the way. Johns appearance actual describes him as
being as much of the wilderness itself as being from it.
In Mathew 3:4 it says “Now John himself wore clothing made
of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and
wild honey” we often picture John with a scraggly beard mussed hair dirty after
living in the desert for so long he is of the wilder-ness
Rev. Barbra Brown Taylor reminds us that;
“Only two of the four gospels give the long version of
Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. John leaves it out altogether and
Mark's gospel covers the whole thing in two sentences: The Spirit drove Jesus
into the wilderness, he was there forty days, Satan tempted him, wild beasts
kept him company, and angels waited on him. That's it; that's all Mark
knew--or that's all he thought we needed to know--about what happened between
Jesus and Satan in the wilderness….
What I want to focus on instead is where the test
took place--the wilderness--because I have an idea that every one of us has
already been there. Maybe it just looked like a hospital waiting room to
you, or the sheets on a cheap motel bed after you got kicked out of your house,
or maybe it looked like the parking lot where you couldn't find your car on the
day you lost your job. It may even have been a kind of desert in the
middle of your own chest, where you begged for a word from God and heard
nothing but the wheezing bellows of your own breath.
Wildernesses come in so many shapes and sizes that
the only way you can really tell you are in one is to look around for what you
normally count on to save your life and come up empty. No food. No
earthly power. No special protection--just a Bible-quoting devil and a
whole bunch of sand.”[4]
Now let me put this forward the wilderness is a time of the unexpected,
of the uncontrolled…something. It is not
always a trial. It is not always
something that needs to be controlled or worked through. It is not always a dry
desert place, sometimes the wilderness is a mountain top. What the wilderness always is, It is always
spiritual.
“Jesus performed much of his ministry in urban settings, yet
many of his most transformative moments occurred in outdoor settings—bodies of
water, mountaintops, and wilderness. The wilderness of the Bible is a liminal
space—an in-between place where ordinary life is suspended, identity shifts,
and new possibilities emerge. Through the experiences of the Israelites in
exile, we learn that while the Biblical wilderness is a place of danger,
temptation and chaos, it is also a place for solitude, nourishment, and
revelation from God. These themes emerge again in Jesus’ journey into the
wilderness, tying his identity to that of his Hebrew ancestors.”[5]
Our saint of our wilder places John Muir, though “he would
devote much of his life to the challenge of interpreting the wild to the men
and women of civil society. Though few
have done it so well, he found it a discouraging task. For one thing,
interpreting nature took attention away from truly important work of “gaping”
at the wilderness.”[6] He would write
“instead of narrowing my attention to bookmarking out of
material I have already eaten and drunken, I would rather stand in what the
world would call an idle manner, literally gaping with all mouths of soul and
body, demanding nothing, fearing nothing, but hoping and enjoying enormously.
So, called sentimental, transcendental dreaming seems the only sensible and
substantial business that one can engage in.”[7]
John is teaching us a spiritual and physical lesson about
the wilder-ness. The true wilderness is a place to stop “Gaping with all mouths
of soul and body”[8]
and breathe in what is a round you.
Physically or spiritually the wilderness is a place of awe and demands
pause. This is why Jesus so often went
out to the wilderness. This is why John
the Baptiser was in the wilderness and of the wilderness. This is why Moses went up to a mountain top
place where no-one ever dared to tread before and what did he find once he got there?
A place where he was so awestruck he fell to his knees and Listened and heard
the voice of God.
If we look around us and pay attention there are places of
wilderness around us though man has tried to “manage” it. Usually in one way or
another mother nature will burst force and show her wilder side.
One place I can think of is the desert. I lived in Palm springs and I loved going up
to Joshua tree. I was amazed by its dry
vastness. I loved the Joshua trees and
the ocotillo that grew there. They
always appeared quite tame…from a distance but up close they all had their
sharp edges.
Many people believe the desert to be dry and hot and the
heat is its danger but I have seen Habib’s, a wall of wind and dust come down
and fill everything with dust and sand.
I have seen rainstorms that send torrents of water down hillsides where
it is dry and not raining. This is the
wilderness…this is the unmanageable part of nature.
We have seen the effects of Global warming by the warming of
the oceans waters thus resulting larger more powerful storms. As a result of
human nature, the wilder-ness of nature steps forward. If we do not take time for and pay attention
to what we do to our environment. Better
yet if we refuse to take steps to make our planet healthy again I am afraid we
will see more evidence of wilder-ness.
We as a species may not survive, but the planet will.
Now I am sure I do not need to tell you what that means for
us here. I have said it before this area
we live in, most of us are the ones who do our part. We keep the thermostats low. We try to use appliances later in the day
when the demand for electricity is low.
Those of us who can, use alternative energy.
I was really happy to know that I had a choice where my
energy came from here. I signed up for evergreen which means 100% of the
electricity we use at home “is made up of 100% geothermal energy. And
best of all, geothermal is a baseload resource, which means it produces clean
energy 24/7 – so it is truly renewable both day and night!”[9]
as I was researching Wilderness and our spiritual connection
to the wilder places I discovered John Lionberger who works on;
“going into the wilderness to experience the presence of
God. John Lionberger is a former atheist who had a profound religious
experience on a wilderness trip. Now an ordained United Church of Christ
minister, Lionberger leads others looking for their own experience of the holy.
Lionberger is the author of “Renewal in the Wilderness.” He lives in Evanston,
Illinois.” When asked what happens to people when he takes them to the
wilderness Rev. John says; “What they encounter in the wilderness is getting
away from all of the things in society that we call “trappings” that are meant
to be good things, but that keep them away from a more authentic and deeper
relationship with God…. I think what happens for them is they get to the
transcendent through the physical—the act of canoeing, the act of setting up
camp. I like to say it strips them of the barnacles that they accrue throughout
their lives and society, and they begin to realize how little they need to be
profoundly happy. They are able to simplify, and in that simplification they
get a sense of something holy about what surrounds them, a sense of wellbeing
and a sense of being cared for and a sense of profound peace, and it’s kind of
a hackneyed phrase—“Be in the moment”—but there is something so powerful about
it, because that is the moment, in the very present is when God comes to us. It
is much easier, I think, for God to get through our defenses when we’re in a
wilderness.”[10]
In this interview John was asked “to recall the conversion
experience he had when he was alone on skis on a frozen lake in winter.”[11]
Rev. John recalls; “It was getting dark, and the trees were
etched against the skyline in kind of blackness while the skyline was turning
purple. I just looked up at the sky and put my arms out like this, with the
poles dangling from my wrists, and arched my back, and at that moment I felt
like I was in the midst of a warm stream of water that felt so pure and so
refreshing and so cleansing and so friendly and so loving, and then it kept
coming into my mind, slowly at first, and very dimly at first, but it said,
“It’s God.”[12]
Sometimes there are those wonderful explosive moments of
experiencing God, but most of the time it’s very, very subtle. It’s just the
small things that people ignore that being out in an environment like that
brings them to an awareness of. It reminds us of who we are, who we are not,
and who God is.”[13]
John goes on to suggest Just what I have been saying all along, get out in
your local park or wilder-ness area and “have an open heart and a willingness
to be surprised, and they do it very consciously. It is part of being here now.
It’s part of what the wilderness teaches you.”[14]
It is funny that during this interview John was asked has
any one ever come back saying they experienced Nothing?
“In the eight years
I’ve been doing this, and maybe the 400 people that I’ve taken to the
wilderness, I only know of one man who was not really touched by his experience
in some way, who said at the end, “I had a good time, but I got no spiritual
insight, no spiritual awakenings, nothing like that.” And that is not a bad
batting average, one out of 400. I’ll take that.”[15]
So in the end I would challenge each of us to take time to
find our wilder areas and step into the wilder-ness listen for the voice of God
and in return offer to find ways to be better stewards of God’s creation and
especially the wilder places. Amen.
[1] google?,
Wil.de.ness, accessed September 16, 2017,
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=wilderness+eptmylogy&oq=wilderness+eptmylogy&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i13k1j0i8i13i30k1.118317.127552.0.128108.23.20.0.0.0.0.136.2186.0j18.18.0..2..0...1.1.64.psy-ab..5.17.2051.0..0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i20k1j0i22i30k1j0i22i10i30k1j33i160k1j0i13i30k1.0.rILYY1FVBOs.
[2] Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History, Humans have been altering tropical
forests for at least 45,000 years, August 3, 2017, accessed September 16, 2017,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170803091931.htm.
[3] Craig Condon,
Life int he Widlerness, February 21, 2015, accessed September 16, 2017,
http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/life-in-the-wilderness-craig-condon-sermon-on-temptation-of-jesus-191727?ref=SermonSerps.
[4] Rev Barbara Brown
Taylor, The wilderness exam, February 21, 2010, accessed September 16, 2017, http://day1.org/1756-the-wilderness_exam.
[5] Jenny Phillips,
Jesus and Wilderness, 2017, accessed September 16, 2017,
http://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/jesus-and-wilderness.
[6] Richard
Cartwright Austin, Environmental Theology (Originally published as Atlanta,
Ga..J. Knox Press, Abingdon, Va: Creekside Press, 1987–c1990), 44.
[7] Linnie Marsh
Wolfe, ed., John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979 c1938).
[8] Craig Condon,
Life in the Widlerness, February 21, 2015, accessed September 16, 2017,
http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/life-in-the-wilderness-craig-condon-sermon-on-temptation-of-jesus-191727?ref=SermonSerps.
[9] Sonoma Clean
Power Authority, Evergreen, 2017, accessed September 16, 2017,
https://sonomacleanpower.org/your-options/evergreen/.
[10] Bob Abernanthy,
“Wilderness Spirituality,” Relifgion and ethics newsweekly, December 10, 2009,
accessed September 16, 2017,
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2009/12/10/december-11-2009-wilderness-spirituality/5194/.
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