One
of my favorite Broadway musicals is Stephen Sonheim's Into the Woods. This musical is a mishmash of children's
fairy tales woven together to deal with the choices people make in their
lives. In the stories that are
intertwined . . . Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella,
Rapunzel, and a childless baker and his wife . . . each makes a decision, but
they must go into the woods to realize the magnitude of their decisions upon
their lives. It is "into the
woods" that the questions and doubts . . . that the struggles begin. Though this may seem to be a pretty clever
metaphor by the writer . . . it is not new.
People
have been going into the woods for generations as long as there have been
people. These ventures have been called
quests . . . vision quests . . . by many cultures, and they always occur in the
woods . . . or they occur out on the sea . . . in the desert, but always in the
wilderness. It is in the wilderness that
the adventurer is stripped of the familiar and thrust into a strange and
foreign landscape . . . it appears dark and foreboding. Stripped of the familiar one begins to sense
that there is a whole lot of stuff in the world that he or she has never
encountered. They are reduced to the
bare essence of who they are as the only thing that they can rely upon . . .
and, even then, they begin to second guess . . . begin to doubt . . . begin to
struggle with their choices in life.
The
Christian mystics understood this well . . . this journey into the woods . . .
into the wilderness. They understood the
struggle of the spiritual journey of life and how it always has to go through
the woods in order to get to the other side.
They often referred to this journey and struggle as the "dark night
of the soul". It is nothing new,
but it always seems to catch people's attention when it is mentioned as a
normal part of the spiritual journey in life.
This
morning we have the story of Jesus' journey through the woods, or as it was in
his case . . . the wilderness. It was
into the wilderness that he journeyed after his affirmation and confirmation of
his ministry . . . into the wilderness for forty days and for forty nights . .
. the biblical term for a long time. It
was there that we learn of his confrontation with the devil who challenges him
in his ministry. Challenges his choice
to follow God's will . . . challenges his motivation for wanting to follow
God's will . . . challenges him to really look at what he wants to do and to
compare it to something that the devil feels is much better.
In
literature and in cartoons this battle of wills is usually portrayed as a devil
on one shoulder and an angel on the other . . . but that is the role of the
devil . . . to raise questions, to stir up doubt, to tempt, to dangle the
proverbial carrot before the individual's face.
That has always been the role of the devil . . . to turn people away
from Jesus and ultimately away from God.
The devil cannot do it by itself . . . the devil needs assistance . . .
assistance by the one who is being lured by temptation. It is up to the individual to make the choice
. . . it is always the individual's choice to decide. Note that in our story this morning that that
is all that the devil does . . . dangles the carrot in front of Jesus' face. It is up to Jesus to decide.
It
is no different for any of us . . . it is always our choice . . . and, life is
full of choices.
Shoot,
we are all good at making choices. From
the time that we get out of bed every morning we make all sorts of choices . .
. from the clothes that we wear to the food that we eat . . . we make
choices. We make choices about the
places we work . . . the people we hang out with . . . to the television shows
that we watch. We make choices all of
the time, and a lot of the time we do it without even thinking about the
choices we are making . . . we just do it.
And,
for the most part, I doubt if too many of them are even difficult to make . . .
that they are not the sort of things that we struggle in deciding . . . that we
are not tip toeing into the woods. Yet,
at the same time, I think we all know that there have been choices that we have
made that have dragged us into the woods where we struggled with our decisions
and longed to find our way out to the other side. I think that we have all experienced the
"dark night of the soul" that is spoken about by the mystics. After all, we all know the line in the
familiar hymns that proclaims that the darkest hour is just before the
dawn. We have been to the wilderness in
our lives and if we are still breathing . . . well, I imagine that we will
continue to enter into the woods from time to time. Making the majority of the choices in our
lives is pretty easy, but there are times when they are tough . . . tough, but
necessary.
Necessary
because that is how we discover more about ourselves . . . discover more about
our faith . . . how we grow. Necessary
because it is how we strip ourselves down to the essential understanding of who
we are as created by God to discover that we are nothing without God. Necessary because it makes us have to rely
upon God and only God. It strengthens us
. . . and, it strengthens our faith . . . but most of all, it brings us that
much closer to God.
In
the story of Jesus' time in the woods he is down to the brass tacks . . . he
has had no food . . . little sleep . . . exhausted and at his lowest
physically, and one would think, mentally.
A perfect time to come and mess with a person's mindset . . . and, that
is what the devil does. Three times the
devil attempts to lure Jesus with wonderful opportunities . . . opportunities a
common person would not think twice about . . . to come on over to the dark
side of life. And, three times Jesus
relied upon . . . what? Well, God. Using scripture as the basis of his answers
to the devil's temptations, Jesus affirms that God is the only thing that
matters . . . not power, not prestige, not wealth . . . only God and God's
will. Amazingly Jesus never loses sight
of the light on the other end of the woods.
Today
marks the first Sunday of the season of Lent . . . what I like to refer to as
the journey into the woods. As the
followers of Jesus we are called upon to examine our lives . . .examine our
faith . . . examine our commitment and relationship with God . . . and to lose
ourselves to discover who it is that we are created to be and to discover, once
again, the one who calls us by name. It
is a time of examining our choices in life . . . are they the will of God . . .
do they help bring about the kingdom of God?
are they loving? Are they peaceful? Just?
Through discernment and prayer we journey through these woods known as
Lent. No one enjoys evaluations and Lent
is a season of evaluation. I didn't see
Lent listed in the top three choices of favorite seasons of the church year by
many of the followers of Jesus.
Though
Lent might not be the most favorite of the seasons of the church year, it is
probably the most important . . . because it is about choices. It always begins with the story of Jesus'
temptation in the wilderness . . . where he struggled with the choices he had
made. It does so as an invitation for us
to journey with him into the wilderness . . . an invitation to struggle with
our choices of faith . . . and, to really get down to the important thing like
our relationship with God and others.
Thus our reading this morning is an invitation . . .
.
. . and, it is also another opportunity to make a choice. God, nor Jesus is going to make the choice
for us . . . neither is the devil. The
choice is up to us as individuals. Do we
make the journey into the woods . . . the journey into the season of Lent . . .
so that we might make it to the light on the other side? To the promise of Easter. The choice is ours . . . always ours. Choose well.
Amen.
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