Scripture Reading Mark 1: 9-13
The first Sunday in this season of Lent always lands us in the wilderness … in the desert. In the bible, that’s metaphor for the last place on earth … a place of uncharted territory, anything but comfortable, rarely desirable, a place we would never choose to go because it appears to lack everything we think we need to survive. No matter which Gospel we read from, the first Sunday of Lent takes us into the wilderness -- which is the terrain we inhabit for the next 40 days. Why there? we might wonder. Of all the possible places, why on earth, there?
In part, the answer lies in the stories we have … In the stories of Jesus in the wilderness. And the stories he’s steeped in, of his ancestors in the wilderness. Why does Lent take us to the wilderness? In part the answer lies in the stories we ourselves have lived of our own wastelands when grief came pounding at our door, or depression, or we got handed the pink slip, or were informed of the diagnosis or when our marriage collapsed, or our body, or our mind went vacant and the usual comforts or distractions or whatever we count on to get us through, they weren’t there or they proved useless … Maybe you know those wastelands?
As harsh as those wilderness sojourns are -- for us, for Jesus, for the Hebrew people -- chances are it’s there we discover some things that we might never have otherwise come to know or trust … deep truths about ourselves and our capacity to endure, deep truths about what truly matters, deep truths about the nature of God and Spirit’s way with us.
For this morning I asked 2 people to speak to us about a wilderness experience of their own … and something about the role of JBUC in that experience.
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