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The story of early Christianity is quite fascinating. The secular culture did not exactly receive this new movement with open arms. Authorities from cities around the Mediterranean passed laws discriminating against this new religion. Where there were no laws there was outright harrassment, torture, and murder. At the Nicene Council, an important church meeting in the 4th century A.D., of the 318 delegates attending, over 300 of them had lost an eye, a hand, or limped on a leg lamed by torture for their Christian faith. So you better believe that when a person confessed Christ as Savior in one of those early churches gathered in someone’s home it was a decision that could mean an early death. Despite the persecution all over the region Christianity grew! More and more people were hearing the message of Christ and many wanted to give their lives to this new Savior. But then something very interesting happened in Rome. In 313 A.D. the emperor of the Roman Empire, Constantine, became a Christian. Overnight Christianity went from being a harassed and persecuted band of believers to an official religion of a vast empire. Christianity became legal. Prior to this most of the churches met in peoples’ homes. Some even met in underground in catacombs. Now Roman senators, eager to please their emperor began to build elegant buildings as houses of worship. Christians no longer feared persecution and became more comfortable with the status quo. And so the church began to lose its prophetic message, its ability to be the voice of Jesus, speaking out against the evils of human systems. What happened next was absolutely amazing. Some of these Christians, knowing all too well the dangers of state sponsored Christianity, escaped to the edge of civilization to sit with God in silence and solitude. Many of these men and women lived in the deserts of the Middle East and northern Africa. We call them the "desert fathers and mothers." The monastic movement had begun. In his book, "Touching the Holy," Robert Wickes writes, "What (these desert dwellers) all shared was a desire to find God by finding themselves. To do this, they asked for the grace to let go of the illusions and delusions upon which their identity had previously been based. They wished only to be themselves – to be ordinary." How are you doing in your journey to be ordinary? Are you secure in who you are becoming? Are you pretending to be someone you are not? Robert Wickes talks about three barriers that keep us from entering the desert. Three threats that prevent us from embracing ordinariness. Three distractions that drain off the energy we need to uncover and enhance our own true self created in God’s image. The first is PROJECTION. Projection is about blaming others for our behavior. John Killinger tells the story about the manager of a minor league baseball team who was so disgusted with his center fielder's performance that he ordered him to the dugout and assumed the position himself. The first ball that came into center field took a bad hop and hit the manager in the mouth. The next one was a high fly ball, which he lost in the glare of the sun--until it bounced off his forehead. The third was a hard line drive that he charged with outstretched arms; unfortunately, it flew between his hands and smacked his eye. Furious, he ran back to the dugout, grabbed the center fielder by the uniform, and shouted. 'You idiot! You've got center field so messed up that even I can't do a thing with it!' Every one of us has been guilty of blaming others. We don’t like something about ourselves and find it easy to project onto others. The reason we do this is so that we don’t have to look at the problems within ourselves. We would much rather look at problems in someone else. And sometimes it is very subtle. For example, what do you say in your home when you can’t find something? What I often hear in our home is something like, "Who took my scissors? Who stole my wallet?" Sometimes I even hear names. So and so took my pen. The tone is accusatory and blaming. What if we announced, "My magazine is lost. Does anyone know where it is?" Do you see the subtle difference? The desert is a place where we can face our projections and see our hearts as God sees us. Wickes writes, "By facing our projections, the energy we are wasting on defense can be reclaimed and made available for self-understanding and insight. Until we do this, our personalities are like well-fortified cities in which most of the resources are expended on exterior fortifications with little left to feed life within." The second threat to true ordinariness is CALLOUSNESS. When we harden our hearts to the point where we can no longer receive the grace to face ourselves directly we fail to be who God has called us to be. Sometimes callousness is a good thing. I play the guitar and the fingers of my left hand have to press pretty hard on the strings. If I play regularly enough my fingers develop calluses, layers of dead skin which protect the nerve endings from pain. If I play my guitar after a lengthy time of not playing, the layer of dead skin is not very deep and my fingers hurt terribly. It is one thing to have calluses on your fingers. It is another to have them on your heart. We must admit that there are times when you and I allow layers of deadness to cover our hearts. We do not want to face up to the pain in our hearts. We do not want to be our true selves. We do not want to be holy or ordinary. It’s called sin and it keeps us from being what God has called us to be. According to Robert Wickes a third threat to becoming ordinary is DUPLICITY. Duplicity is the temptation to compromise with secular values. The desert fathers and mothers understood duplicity and struggled with the lure of secular values. In the fifth century, a man named Arenius determined to live a holy life. So he abandoned the comforts of Egyptian society to follow an austere lifestyle in the desert. Yet whenever he visited the great city of Alexandria, he spent time wandering through its bazaars. This was a bit unusual for the desert dwelling Christians. Their desire was to totally separate themselves from the prevailing culture. When asked why he made these trips to the city Arenius replied, "Every time I come to the city my heart rejoices at the sight of all the things I don’t need." It’s an interesting response. When was the last time you walked through the Dimond Center or 5th Avenue Mall and rejoiced at the things you didn’t need? Robert Wickes writes, "We believe that things, images, success, or being liked will make us secure, comfortable and strong. We often choose freedom with a so-called "freedom to choose." We let other people determine for us what our needs are rather than listening to our hearts’ desire and allowing hope to grow. Consequently, we run through life trying to grasp what they tell us will fill us and make us whole." Projection. Callousness. Duplicity. These are some of the barriers that we allow in our lives, which block us from being truly ordinary. If we are interested in removing them we need to go to the desert. We need to follow the example of Jesus who, in the midst of his busy life, insisted on going into the mountains to be alone with God. We need to learn the lessons from those early desert fathers and mothers who desperately wanted to know God and their true selves. So where are these deserts? Deserts can take a variety of forms. The obvious is to go away to a place for retreat and solitude. Did you know that you can schedule a retreat at monasteries all over the country? Let’s be clear about the purpose of our retreats. We may just need some time away from our regular routine, a place to just hang out and do nothing. But if we are interested in facing the barriers of projection, callousness, and duplicity I would strongly suggest a spiritual guide be present: someone who knows their way around the psyche and soul. There are people in Anchorage trained in this area. They are called spiritual directors. You might try the desert of fasting, of doing without something for awhile in order to seek God. You might want to hole up in the library for a day to read and study and pray. These are "deserts" we may choose to enter. There are "deserts" we do not choose, but instead are forced into. Some of you have been shoved into the desert as you listened to the doctor tell you have cancer. Some of you have been dumped in the desert when you received the call about the death of a loved one. Sometimes deserts have a way of appearing when we don’t want them. We like the oasis. We like the comfort of a good and happy life. And we don’t want to face the ugliness in our hearts. Three men were marooned on a desert island. As the days slowly went by, they dreamed of what it would be like to be at home with their friends and family, to be back at their jobs doing the things they loved. One day one of the men found a bottle that contained a genie. He opened the bottle and the genie announced that he would grant each of them one wish. One of the men said, "Boy, I want to be back in Seattle with my wife and kids." POOF--he was gone. The second man immediately said, "I want to be back in Portland with my fiancé" and POOF-- he was gone. The third man was left all alone sitting on the sandy beach. He said, "Boy, it really is lonely with my friends gone. I sure wish they were back here with me again. And POOF-- The men in this story did not choose to be on the desert island. There will come a time when each one of us will be forced into a desert. We will have to face suffering. We will have to deal with tragedy. We will have to confront our true selves. The hope is that when we come to that day when we are thrust into our desert, it won’t be so terrifying and unfamiliar. Because we will be able to say with confidence, "You are here with me, God. I trust you. I’ve been here before." We can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and we can fear no evil. Because God is with us. Recently I asked a friend who is facing the desert of cancer what God was teaching him through this illness. He replied, "Even if I could go back and somehow not have this disease, I would not do it. It has been such a gift and I have never felt so alive." Such an attitude seems crazy only if viewed through the lens of the world who so wants us to deny our true, ordinary selves. Why would anyone want to enter a place where there is suffering and death? I’ll tell you why. Resurrection. Unless something dies there is no new life. Jesus died and rose again so that you and I might live in newness of life. When Mother Teresa was passing through a crowd in Detroit a woman remarked, "Her secret is that she is free to be nothing. Therefore God can use her for anything." Is there a place buried somewhere in your heart where you desire the freedom that comes with knowing the desert? Do you want to be ordinary? When we pay attention to that desire, as small as it may be, we can enter our deserts and discover the freedom of nothingness, and the joy of seeing God do powerful things through us. |
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09/17/00 - Touching the Holy: Lessons from the Desert
