Genesis 2:15 – 17; 3:1 – 7 Psalm 32 Romans 5:12 – 19 Matthew 4:1 - 11
As I was growing up, whenever anyone was looking for something, someone was bound to quip: “Go look in Cheri’s bottom drawer!”
Go look in Cheri’s bottom drawer!
My younger sister’s bottom drawer was the repository of anything she came across which intrigued her, and all her treasures wound up stored safely away in that space. The simple act of opening that bottom drawer resulted in a kind of explosion as the accumulation of things were released from their compacted space and spilled over onto the floor!
Of course, what Cheri was looking for was generally buried underneath and obscured by all manner of other things…
As we all know all too well – yesterday’s treasures can easily become today’s clutter!
So, too, with our lives, I think.
We acquire stuff – possessions, surely, but also tasks, activities, busy-ness, opinions – until our lives – and our treasure – get lost in our accumulated habits…
Like the fish who doesn’t know he is swimming in water, we become accustomed to our clutter, we assume it rather than recognize it for what it is.
I well remember one point in my late thirties when I suddenly looked up an realized that if anyone had simply dropped me into my life at that moment – with responsibilities for house, husband and family, raising three young children, working, being active in my community – like the proverbial frog dropped into boiling water, I would have leapt out immediately! But most of us aren’t simply dropped into the busy-ness and demands of our lives – it happens gradually, almost insidiously, so that we hardly recognize the “water we’re swimming in” as it were…
Sometimes, when we begin to feel overwhelmed – or perhaps even when we get some perspective that gives us a moment of clarity – we may try to modify things a bit, moving this piece from here to there… But it’s hard to do: everything seems important, valuable, so often our “changing” is simply a shell-game of sorts.
In the Middle Ages, remains of saints were highly prized as objects of veneration, and as a consequence there evolved a practice which came to be known as Furta Sacra – “holy thefts” – the moving of the pilfered remains of saints from one shrine to another. Each of us has our own highly prized objects of veneration as well – perhaps not saints, but venerated nonetheless: for most of us, I think, it is our busy-ness, our indispensability, our activities, our need to take on just one more project, yet one more activity… I think in our lives we often practice a kind of Furta Sacra – we can’t quite give up this project or that activity – and so we simply shift it to another part of our lives, pilfer it from here, enshrine it anew over there, until our lives get lost in the demands of what we are doing…
Think about your own life, for a moment.
Standing apart, looking – can you begin to recognize some of the clutter? Can you begin to see your life apart from what you do, what you think, what you have? Where are YOU in that mix? Where is GOD?
One of the great values of Lent, I believe, is the opportunity it gives us to be intentional about “cleaning out” that bottom drawer of our lives.
What have we accumulated that is clutter, and what treasure? Can we get rid of the things that obscure what is really important?
Jesus is led – Mark says “driven” – into the wilderness for a time of fasting, prayer, discernment. It is a time in which he, too, sorted through the clutter of his life – the hammer and nails of his carpenter vocation, perhaps, the cultural mores of honor and shame, the societal expectations of wife and children, the conflicting demands of Jewish religious groups around the rigor of the law and the appropriate response to Roman oppression…
Who is HE in the midst of all this?
Where is GOD in the midst of all this?
What is God calling him to be/do in the midst of all this?
It is at the end of his forty days of discernment that Jesus has attained a clear enough sense of self, of who he is and who God is and how he is called to live, to be, that he is able to recognize Satan when he appears to tempt him…
When Satan approaches him, Jesus is not distracted. Because he has sorted through the flotsam and jetsam of his life, the attachments and demands and expectations, he is able to see the tempter’s challenges for what they are: an attempt to lure him back into living on this-world terms. Confident in who he is, Jesus doesn’t have to prove anything to Satan. He doesn’t have to allow Satan to set the terms-and-conditions for this-world success. Jesus holds fast to Scripture, and replies simply:
It is written:
‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
It is written:
‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
It is written:
‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’
There is an old Tibetan saying: “When a pickpocket meets a saint, what he sees are his pockets.”
So with Satan and Jesus: When Satan sees “Jesus, my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased” he sees simply the power he just might be able to pick. Satan sees Jesus as a this-world Messiah – one who operates by human standards, expectations, rules: “Okay, Jesus… I get it; you’re just like everyone else, only more-so!”
He sees this Son of God as amped-up power – but not qualitatively different Sonship.
What defeats Satan is Jesus’ self-knowledge, his understanding that his Messiahhood is different; his Kingdom of God is not just one more this-world government with yet a different ruler.
Jesus was able to recognize the tempter BECAUSE he had cleared away the detritus of his life; his wilderness time had helped him sort out what was important and what was not, had helped him know himself and God…
Like the pickpocket and the saint, or Satan and Jesus, we often see only the pockets: we see what we must do, without the context of where the Doing fits into the Being of our lives.
Pickpocket and saint, Satan and Jesus, Work or Life: it is easier to see what we have or what we have accomplished, than who we are.
Our life – or our work.
Who we are – or what we do, own, have accomplished.
Like the pickpocket and Satan, we miss what is important.
Lent gives us a time to strip away the clutter and BE; a time in which we can clear away what it is that obscures the treasure of our lives.
Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, clearing away the clutter of his attachments, his life, so that he could see and respond clearly to God’s call.
How much more so do we need this clutter-clearing time!
As we enter this time of self-examination and repentance let us ask ourselves: Can we clear away the clutter so that we can see what is of value, and what needs to be discarded? Where are the tempters, the temptations, concealed within our clutter? We might ask ourselves the tempter’s questions:
- Have we fallen into the trap of “living by bread alone”?
- Do we put God to the test?
- What other powers in our lives have seduced us into service?
The theologian Frederick Buechner points out that the word that God speaks to us is an incarnate word – “a word spelled out to us, not alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events.”
Have we left room for those enigmatic events in our lives? One of the functions of Lent, I believe, is to clear the space in which we can experience those events, allow them to work on us, allow ourselves to enter into their mystery. Such experiences cannot happen in the left-overs of our days or weeks, in the odd corners when we have time – but come as full-bodied experiences when we are simply present and alive to what is happening.
We may be able to read the words during a commercial break, or standing in line at the grocery store – but we can’t engage the experience, get drawn into the enigma, without showing up with our whole selves, undistracted and open.
Once again, in the cycle of our Liturgical year, we are called into the observance of a Holy Lent. May our wilderness time give us the clarity to let go of some of our attachments that we might more clearly hear God’s call in our lives.
Amen.
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