YAGM Wilderness

This is the manuscript that I preached from for the opening worship at this year's YAGM Re-Entry Retreat.

A reading from Mark (1:9-13).

⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee

      and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

      ¹⁰And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water,

            he saw the heavens torn apart

            and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

      ¹¹And a voice came from heaven,

            “You are my Child,

                  the Beloved;

                        with you I am well pleased.”

      ¹²And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.

            ¹³He was in the wilderness forty days,

                  tempted by Satan;

            and he was with the wild beasts;

            and the angels waited on him.

Word of God, Word of Life.  Thanks be to God.

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I grew up in the mountains of Colorado, so I have always loved the Bible passages about the wilderness.  It’s easy to imagine the wilderness, because it was my back yard growing up.  And it’s beautiful and fun—the snow, the aspen leaves in fall, the bluest of blue skies.  I have always had a fondness for the wilderness.

Then, as I was getting ready to graduate from Luther College, I came here for DIP.  From there, I ended up in a different kind of wilderness in a small village in eastern Slovakia.  Sure, there are hills and even a few mountains in Slovakia, and I got to go hiking and enjoy nature, but this was a different kind of wilderness.

Like the wilderness we find throughout the Bible, this wilderness wasn’t familiar to me and it wasn’t always friendly.  You all have spent a year in the wilderness.  And in that year, a lot has changed.  You have changed.  The people who sent you have changed.  The people you encountered have changed.  This country has changed.  That’s what wilderness does.  It changes you.

Whether you’ve heard the distant rumbles of the heavens being torn apart or encountered wild beasts, doves, or angels—or maybe all of them at once.  You spent a year away from your family, your friends, your loved ones, and that is hard.  I can’t help but think of the words from the song, The Summons, “Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?”        

You did.  And you probably will again.  And it will still be hard.               It is hard to be different and an outsider.  I still remember those first months in Slovakia, hearing sermons and Bible studies in which I could only pick out a few of the words.  And the sinking feeling I would get in my stomach every time the word I understood was Sodom or Gomorrah, knowing that there was a part of me as a queer person that would never belong.

Maybe for you it was a racist remark, or the violence you witnessed in words or actions, the access your u.s. passport granted you at checkpoints, the parts of the language that always eluded you, or the customs that never quite got explained so that you could understand and participate.

The wilderness doesn’t always make sense, and sometimes it hurts; but the other thing about the wilderness is that that’s where Jesus goes.  Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan, the heavens are torn apart, God claims Jesus as beloved, and then “the Spirit immediately [drives] Jesus out into the wilderness,” to you.

Because that is what YAGM is about: Jesus finding you—in the hug of your host mom on that extra homesick kind of day, in the kids who are excited about how well they did on the test—or who continue to push your buttons until the day you leave; in the struggles to understand yourself and others, in the quiet moments of just being with another person, drinking mate, talking, singing, laughing, and crying.

We as the church have sent you out into the wilderness and called you back to a new kind of wilderness in this country.  This wilderness is both familiar and foreign, full of love and full of fear and hatred.  The struggles against injustice, the pain of oppression, sorrow, and hardship are not reserved for other countries. They are here, too, as are countless options for which spaghetti sauce or laundry detergent to buy, new and different ways to ride the bus—no longer the crammed rush hour buses of Buenos Aires or the long winding country roads. 

But what may be the hardest about this new wilderness we’ve called you back to is that it seems so much like the land and places and people you called home before; like a place you should know.  Shouldn’t you understand what to do, who and how to be here?  And shouldn’t they understand you?   

But the people, the places, the politics here        have all changed in subtle and obvious ways,                  as have you, so that the ways you seek familiarity and comfort aren’t the same.  The people you are encountering again might not understand why you like different foods, why you need more time to talk or more time to be silent, but together, than you did before. It's wild, this new wilderness.

Your YAGM year may have ended, but this journey in the wilderness has not, and maybe it never will.  Maybe, as you continue to leave your heart in different places, you will always find a wilderness around you—of joyful mountains and snow, of desert and scorching heat, of safety and of danger.  We don’t know.  You can’t know until you get there.

But the promise I have, the promise of God for you, is that Jesus will show up.  In the suffering and struggle as well as the comfort and joy.  Jesus will show up because that’s how the Holy Spirit works—in the most unexpected places and ways—driving Jesus out into the wilderness to meet you.

The Holy Spirit has claimed you.  The voice from heaven claims Jesus and she claims you as well.

You are God’s child, the Beloved, with whom God is well pleased.  And there is no amount of wilderness or struggle or pain or screw up that can make that untrue.  There is no loneliness, isolation, alienation, or oppression that diminishes God’s immense love for you.  And, especially in these days that we have together, there is no questioning, frustration, random burst of laughter or tears, or befuddlement that is more powerful than God’s love for you.  No matter what.

Thanks be to God.

1 john 2:7-17 - beloved, god loves you into the world

a reading from 1 john (2:7-17)

⁷Beloved,

       I am writing you no new commandment,

              but an old commandment

                     that you have had from the beginning;

              the old commandment is the word

                     that you have heard.

       ⁸Yet I am writing you a new commandment

              that is true in [Jesus] and in you,

                     because the darkness is passing away

                     and the true light is already shining.

       ⁹Whoever says,

              “I am in the light,”

                     while hating a brother or sister,

              is still in the darkness.

       ¹⁰Whoever loves a brother or sister

              lives in the light,

              and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.

       ¹¹But whoever hates another believer

              is in the darkness,

              walks in the darkness,

              and does not know the way to go,

                     because the darkness has brought on blindness.

¹²I am writing to you,

       little children,

       because your sins are forgiven

              on account of Jesus’ name.

¹³I am writing to you,

       fathers,

       because you know him

              who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you,

       young people,

       because you have conquered the evil one.

¹⁴I write to you,

       children,

       because you know the Father.

I write to you,

       fathers,

       because you know him

              who is from the beginning.

I write to you,

       young people,

       because you are strong

              and the word of God abides in you,

              and you have overcome the evil one.

¹⁵Do not love the world

       or the things in the world.

              The love of the Father is not

                     in those who love the world;

                     ¹⁶for all that is in the world—

                            the desire of the flesh,

                            the desire of the eyes,

                            the pride in riches—

                     comes not from the Father

                            but from the world.

       ¹⁷And the world and its desire are passing away,

              but those who do the will of God live forever.

word of god, word of life.

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one of my friends at the lutheran school of theology at chicago was talking about preaching the other week and she told me about this professor who says that everyone has pretty much one sermon that they always preach.  i thought about what my one sermon was and easily realized that it was “god loves you, you are a beloved child of god.”

when i realized that, i promptly geared my next sermon towards communion and the welcome that we find there…because god loves us.  to be completely honest, this has been my one sermon long before i took my first preaching class.

when i was the worship volunteer coordinator here at luther, i used to leave notes for people.  always the same note, really: you are a beloved child of god.  once i took hebrew from professor swanson, i got fancy and even used hebrew to write out god’s name!

that is the beauty of today’s reading.  not only is the address fitting, “beloved,” but it’s also about an old commandment—about telling the old, old story anew.  the author of first john is writing again the old story, that one sermon, of god’s love for you and me and all of creation.  it’s the story as old as time and as true as it was in the beginning of creation when god saw it all and called it very good.

just as god did with the day-old humans, god, through the writer of 1 john’s words does it with us.  “you are strong and the word of god abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”  the word of god, the spirit of life, is in you.

during j-term this year i took a course called "community organizing: leadership development for public life."  as we explored community organizing from the perspective of faith leaders, one of the biggest themes that kept coming up for me was: relationship.  it’s throughout the bible and our shared history.  relationships change people.  relationships connect people so that we realize that what affects one, affects us all.

this, i think, is what the writer of 1 john is getting at.  the light is only the light, when all of the colors are present.  when they separate out or are missing through hate or neglect, then it is darkness, it is no longer the full spectrum of light.  to be the light, we need everyone.  i need people who are different from me. 

my classmates in seminary come from different backgrounds.  they have different experiences…of cultures, of language, of relationships, and of injustice.  some have dealt with racism while i try to figure out what white privilege is.  others have had harder economic barriers to overcome to come to seminary and others have had fewer.  people come from towns and cities, big churches and small, and yet it is only when we are together that we are actually in the light and the full spectrum of the light itself.

if your time at luther has been anything like mine, i’m sure you’ve all heard the parker palmer quote about vocation being “where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep needs,” but there’s one i like better.

after graduating from luther, i spent a year in slovakia with the elca’s young adults in global mission program.  from slovakia i went almost directly to seminary at lstc and in my first weeks there, a fellow seminarian shared this quote by parker palmer:

"vocation at its deepest level is not, 'oh, boy, do i want to go to this strange place where i have to learn a new way to live and where no one, including me, understands what i'm doing.' vocation at its deepest level is, 'this is something i can't not do, for reasons i'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling."

there is something that pulls at us.  it pulls me into the world. god pulls me into relationships with others where i experience first or second hand the injustice that exists.  engaging in work to end injustice is something i can’t not do,

            for reasons i’m not always able to explain even to myself,

and yet, it keeps coming back

            to this god who loves me

                        and you and every person on this earth,

and if that god loves everyone,

            how can we not also love everyone

                        and love the world

                                    into being a just place?

amen.