The Rev. Eleanor Applewhite Terry

Sermon for 4 Lent B; March 14, 2021

Good Shepherd, Acton

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

          The photos on my phone from a year ago capture how quickly things changed.  Snapshots from February vacation week show my 80-something parents, my niece, and my three kids and I enjoying a day at a very crowded New England Aquarium in Boston.  And the weekend we took my Dad to the New England Boat Show at the Boston Convention Center.  We climbed all over the boats, touching handrails, ducking into tight cabins with other guests, breathing air that very well could have contained COVID droplets.  We had no idea what was coming and consider ourselves very lucky.

          Even my pictures from March 11, 2020 show how little we understood.  That’s the day I took off from work to chaperone my daughter’s class trip to the Harvard Natural History museum.  We were a little aware of the need to be extra cautious.  I brought along some hand sanitizer and some disinfecting wipes for lunch time.  But otherwise we roamed the museum freely.  I had no idea that after that day off, I would never return to a normal work day at Old North Church again.  Within 24 hours, like you here, we made the decision to cancel worship.  I remember the Senior Warden arguing passionately that the announcement not say we would be closed “for the foreseeable future” because she considered that too extreme. 

          March 14- a year ago today, my photos show three of us volunteering at Old North’s outreach program that morning, distributing food to North End seniors.  We decided not to invite the guests into the building, as we normally did, but to distribute the bags from the doorway.  Within a month two of the guests, residents of a neighborhood senior residence, would be dead from COVID.

          That afternoon I sent my husband a text from the Acton Trader Joe’s with a photo of completely empty shelves.  “This is getting scary” I wrote.

          None of us, perhaps outside of public health experts, could have foreseen the year that would follow.  And I suppose it’s good we did not know.  I cannot imagine what it would have felt like at the beginning of everything had we been told how long we would have to endure.  That it would be six months before our kids would go back to school- and even then only 2 days a week.  That over 1/2 million Americans would die- (even now, we are averaging well over a thousand US deaths a day as of this weekend).  That, actually, it would be far beyond “the foreseeable future” before church would regather again in person.  And those fun day trips with my parents, for which they had moved from their home in CT to enjoy with their grandkids, those would be replaced by grocery drop-offs on their front porch.  The toll on our collective mental health, economy, elders and children is especially hard to bear.  It has been a very long year for all of us.

           So on this one year anniversary of the week everything came to a halt, it is fitting that our Old Testament lesson takes us into the wilderness with Moses and the Israelites.  Perhaps we can relate to their plight more honestly than we ever have before, having spent the last year of our own lives in the wilderness of pandemic.

          You’ll recall that the Israelites spent forty years wandering, and complaining their way to the Promised Land.  Enslaved in Egypt, their ancestors suffered and toiled for four hundred years until Moses led them to freedom.  They crossed the Red Sea in triumph, only to wander for another forty years in the dessert wilderness.

          God assured them the Promised Land lay ahead, but it would be a long, dangerous, hard journey.  It’s likely that few, if any, of those who escaped Egypt would live to see it.   Forty years is a long time- can you imagine if our quarantine lasted that long?- and back in those days, with shortened life spans, at least two generations would come and go before they reached the Land of Milk and Honey.

          To say, as our Scripture does, “the people became impatient on the way” is a rather big understatement!   They murmured and complained constantly.  “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

          This behavior drives Moses crazy.  For 40 years he endures the complaints of his people, who frequently blame him for their hardships.  He doubts his own ability to lead such a stiff necked and stubborn people.  But God empowers him to continue, so Moses endures their whining and encourages them to maintain their trust in God.  But now, they are starting to “speak against God.”  It is one thing to speak against Moses, and his brother Aaron, but quite another to speak against God and distrust God’s guidance and promise.

          When God sends manna from heaven for them to eat and provides water in the desert for them to drink, they complain and doubt whether God is with them, even though the evidence of God’s care for them is literally falling out of the heavens upon them.  And when, in the verses just before today’s passage, God answers their prayer by helping the Israelites defeat a Canaanite army, they fail to offer thanksgiving, and instead speak out against God.  So God gets angry.  Very angry.  God sends snakes.  Lots of them!  And poisonous ones at that.  And they bite the people and many die.

          Suddenly there are snakes everywhere, and the people quickly realize their need to repent and they beg Moses to pray to the Lord to take the snakes away.  God must have known this would be a good way to get the people to be more faithful.  If daily food and water in the desert aren’t enough to remind them to give thanks to God, then poisonous snakes ought to get their attention!  God knows our human nature well.  How often we neglect to offer thanksgiving when good things happen, but we sure are quick to turn to God when we need help. 

          Perhaps, particularly so, when snakes are involved, as I know full well.  I am terrified of snakes.  All snakes.  Doesn’t matter what size.  What kind.  Whether a pet, or a harmless garter snake in my yard, or a lazy sleeping snake behind thick glass in a zoo.  They all scare me equally, whether poisonous or not. 

          Or at least that is what I thought until the night we discovered a rattlesnake coiled up near our campground in the Grand Canyon.  I shared about that trip in a sermon a few weeks ago.  I neglected to mention The Snake.

          Our guides on that trip said the usual, unhelpful things when the rattlesnake was spotted: “Don’t bother it and it won’t bother you.”  “It’s more scared of you than you are of it” - Which I doubt.  That snake probably saw people every night at that campground and I was encountering my very first wild rattlesnake within an uncomfortably short slither away from where I planned to sleep.  When I pointed this out, one of our guides offered this especially reassuring piece of advice: “If you notice a snake in your sleeping bag, just lie still and let it crawl out first.”  Needless to say, my fear of harmless garter snakes in no way compares to the terror of being in the presence of a wild, loose rattlesnake.               

          So I get the fear of the Israelites.  I can relate to their desperate plea that the Lord take the serpents away.  I’ve been known to pray that prayer myself, under far less dangerous circumstances.  And if God ever feels I’m not devoted enough to my prayers, a snake or two will certainly get me praying right away.

          Luckily, for the Israelites, God answers their prayer.  He hears their confession, their admission of sin, and he commands Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole so that from then on, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”

          And just like that the very thing they were afraid would kill them, becomes the means to healing and life.  Sound familiar?  It’s the paradox of our faith.  The story of the cross as well.  An image of terror and death that becomes the way to new life- for Jesus.  And for us.

          God takes the objects of our fear and death and turns them into the way to new life.  Thus those who look at the serpent of bronze will live.  And those who gaze upon the cross of Christ will live eternally.

          And perhaps this gives us a way to think about this year of pandemic as well.  Because God will never abandon us in our suffering and death.  God will never leave us to face our hardships alone.  God will not allow our fears to conquer us.  And throughout this year of isolation… this year of sickness for so many, and death for too many, God has been in the midst of us. 

          It’s a bittersweet milestone we are passing this week — a full year into the pandemic.  And even though there is much reason to hope that it will all be over soon… there is a lot that has been lost forever.  My own emotions have been all over the place this week— I’m delighted by the prospect of a more normal life come summer and encouraged by the increased availability of vaccines.  Yet, I am exhausted when I consider all we have endured, the burdens we have carried, and the challenges which lie ahead. 

          I have always appreciated the stories of the Israelites in the wilderness.  -Maybe not the part about the snakes so much- but it feels very real to me that God’s chosen people grumble and complain, get lost, and can be both incredibly faithful and hopeful and also distrustful and unfaithful.  They slog along toward the Promised Land.  It takes a very long time.  It is hard.  It is not always fun.  There are snakes along the way— the really scary kind.  And yet they persevere because that’s the stuff of which we are made.  We are people who live by God’s promise.  Who try our best to be faithful, and succeed sometimes, but fail along the way too.

          We wander.  We complain.  We try and fail and try again. 

          And God never leaves us.

          Not Ever.

          And that’s a message that I am grateful to hear right about now.  -A year into the pandemic.  When we are worn out from wandering.  And hopeful, but still a little fearful too.  We’re getting tired of the manna of this wilderness and are ready for some fun again, but we are not at the end of our journey just yet.

          And that’s ok.  Because God will see us through to the end.  As God has always done.  And God will always do.  Helping us face all that scares us so that we, too, may live.

          Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The March 2021 Issue of the Shepherd's Staff

Read the latest issue of the Shepherd’s Staff

March 2021 edition of the Shepherd’s Staff

Support our El Ocotillo Scholarship Students

We presently have 8 scholarship students in grade 8 through university. Scholarships typically provide 1/2 the cost of school expenses and the families provide the other half. We have also created one full university scholarship to insure educational opportunity for all students. An 8th grade scholarship is $275/year; high school is $495/year; university is $1440/year; university full scholarship is $2880/year.

We hope that you will support the continued education of our scholarship students. Please write "El Salvador" in the memo line of your check to the church.

Here are two ways that you can share in the experience of El Ocotillo without traveling 5800 kilometers:

Enjoy a cooking lesson from El Ocotillo: Great chefs in action. You can almost smell the melting cheese!

Meet the Scholarship Students: Translated videos of each student

The Good Shepherd Pupusa Truck is doing take-out!

Support the El Salvador Scholarship Fund and bring your family the experience of delicious Salvadoran pupusas!!

Place your order by Tuesday, March 9th and pick up in the church parking lot Saturday, March 13th at 5:00 – 6:00 pm. Details available in an attachment to the eblast.

(Deliveries available to those who are housebound.)

Pupusa choices are cheese, cheese and beans, cheese and jalepeño, cheese and chicken, cheese and port, and cheese and loroco (similar to summer squash).A typical adult serving is two pupusas. Dinner comes with red sauce, slaw and fried plantains. Send your order choices to Kevin Gross. Please include your phone number.  Any questions? Contact Kathleen Zawicki.

No set cost but a free will offering for the El Salvador Scholarship Fund is greatly appreciated.

BONUS TREAT: A video of our friends in El Ocotillo making pupusas!

The chefs in El Ocotillo teach us how to make pupusas

The scholarship students produced this video to show us how pupusas are made. Pupusas are the favorite Salvadoran food of delegations. They are served piping hot with cheese oozing out of them!

8 students from El Ocotillo introduce themselves

Our eight scholarship students introduce themselves and answer questions about their studies.

Greetings from Rolando Javier Guzman and Elvin David Argueta Nolasco

Guest speakers for 3 Lent; March 7, 2021

Words from Rolando Javier Guzman – 3/7/21

Hello dear friends and brothers of Good Shepherd! So, it is a pleasure for me to talk a litle bit about the scholarship project. So that the community of Good Shepherd to continue to promote in Ocotillo community, right. As we well know, this scholarship project over time has benefited young people here in the community. As we know, we have many of us who have gone to university and studied. For example, we have a lot of professionals here thanks to God. For example, we have professionals in public accounting. We have teachers in middle education. We have professional agronomic engineers and also, we have teachers in mathematics and teachers in language. Also, we have professionals in sociology. Do our professionals direct our thanks to this project? Many young people actually have a career in our community. So, from this project, there are middle educators (currently 2) in our community. Well, dear friends, I will tell you a little bit about my experience as a young man benefiting from this project. Thanks to God first, to my family, and to the community of Good Shepherd because all of you have been believing in my capacity and my responsibilities with each of them and mainly with myself. And also thank to my father, Samuel Guzman, for being a continued presence in our community. So, as we know, Samuel Guzman, was a good person to both communities. So now I will tell you a little bit about my person. I am Rolando Javier Guzman, son of Claudia Perez and Samuel Guzman, graduated from Gerrardo Barrios University with a bachelor’s degree in English. My commitment as a young man is to motivate children and young people in our community to follow their dreams and to value the sacrifice that Good Shepherd made for each of us. We are really very very grateful for this scholarship project. We hope to continue with this and other projects. We are hoping to you have you in our community soon to share new experiences, to share with joys, and to share a lot of experiences with all of you. So, blessing brothers and hoping you will soon be in our community again!

Here’s the video of Mr. Guzman’s message.

Words from Elvin David Argueta Nolasco – 3/7/21

Hello, my name is Elvin David Argueta Nolasco and I am part of the community of El Ocotillo. By this video recording, I want to talk a little bit about myself and how blessed I am by the scholarship program and the sister community Good Shepherd has here in this place. Well, in the first place, I want to tell you that I actually live with my mother who is one of the pioneers of the sister community relationship. Her name is Candida Nolasco. I also live with my wife. Her name is Beatriz Amaya. And I am studying English at the University. And I have been part of the program since I was in high school. I really think that this program has changed not only my life but also the whole community because of the improvement in the level of education in its youth people. Nowadays, there are a lot of professional people in different fields such as teachers, professors, engineers in different areas. For me, this has been a blessing because I was not going to continue studying because I didn’t have enough resources to continue studying. However, I have my goals which I want to accomplish. So, I started to work hard to do that. I was called to be part of the program and now that is the reason why I am so thank you, thankful, sorry, with all of you. Unfortunately, during this (pandemic) period of time it has been difficult to study online but I am trying to do my best in order to continue my learning process. Thanks to God no one in my family has been affected by the virus and hopefully nobody will neither in the community. And again, I want to thank you for all of your support, and I hope that this program can help more students who want to achieve their goals and dreams in the future. Thank you so much. I send you a big hug and may the Lord bless you always! Thank you so much.

Here’s the video of Mr. Nolasco’s message.

Thanks be to God.

          Amen.

Creation Care Environmental Movies and Monthly Challenge

Movie Night! Movie Night! Monthly Challenge!

The Creation Care Committee is launching a parish-wide, movie nights party! Each month, we will watch the same environmental movie on our own schedule, on the networks we have available at home. At the end of each monthly movie cycle, all are invited to discuss the movie and our responses to it on Zoom and what we intend to do each month to reduce our personal carbon footprint.

The March movie The Story of Plastic uncovers the ugly truth behind the current global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe– and the global movement and individual actions rising up in response.

 We encourage you to watch The Story of Plastic and to join us to discuss it on Sunday March 21 from 7:00 to-8:15 pm, via zoom. Come to our discussions with Questions…Leave with an Action Goal for yourself, your family, your church or town. to learn how to become part of the solution to climate change

The Story of Plastic is available to watch on the subscription DiscoveryGo streaming service, for rent on Amazon, on Apple TV, and on Xfinity video-on-demand.

Monthly Challenge

We want to focus on the task of reducing our own carbon footprint in whatever way is manageable for us personally right now. The important thing is to make a once a month action, however small and this can be as simple as arranging for a free energy audit of your house. Go to www.actonclimatecoalition.org and scroll down for a list of 6 websites that have all you will need to green your lifestyle – energy audits, electric cars, clean energy etc. Although it refers to Acton, the websites it links to are generally Massachusetts ones so can be used by all our towns at Good Shepherd. All towns also have information on their websites as to their own energy programs.

If you live in Acton, subscribing to 100% renewable energy through Acton Power Choice (APC) is the largest impact you can have on reducing your carbon emissions. Acton Power Choice is a town program set up for all Eversource customers to purchase their electricity outside of the standard offering to enable you to make a 100% Renewable Energy choice for your home.  Go to  www.actonpowerchoice.com to sign up. On the Acton Power Choice 100% renewable program, the cost is 1.68 cents/kwh more. 

If you are not an Acton resident, contact your town’s electric company to find out if they offer a 100% renewable energy choice.

The Rev. Eleanor Applewhite Terry

Sermon for 2 Lent; February 28, 2021

Good Shepherd, Acton

.          Our Gospel this morning is a pretty standard text for the season of Lent.  You’ll recall that in three of the Gospels, Jesus predicts his suffering, death and resurrection three different times.  Three times the disciples fail to understand.  And three times Jesus uses this context to teach about the meaning of genuine discipleship.  Today’s lesson being, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

          I found myself in conversation with a clergy friend this week about today’s Gospel lesson.  We both are preaching today- and at first glance, neither of us found the Scripture from Mark to be particularly compelling.  My friend John joked, “I just can’t find the juice in it!”

          So what is it about this familiar teaching that we find so uninspiring?

          Can’t you just see Jesus shaking his head at the two of us, well-intentioned priests in his Church, and rebuking us, along with Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

          And so we are!  There is probably no harder directive than the one which asks us to deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Christ.  And I think part of our aversion to a text like this is our honest admission that actually, we don’t want to do this.  Not really.  Not completely.  Who among us is willing to lose their life for the sake of the Gospel? Who is motivated by this particularly challenge?  Isn’t it more human (and more honest) to be like Peter, and object to Christ’s need to suffer, while avoiding our own suffering at all costs?

          Historically, of course, there have been magnificent examples of courageous and selfless Christian faith— often from times and settings when Christians were persecuted for their faith, when faithful followers of Christ really did give up their lives for the sake of the Gospel.  When rather ordinary folk really did bear the cross, with their lives on the line.

          My daughters were quite taken aback by the description of young Tarcisius, who was featured in Lent Madness last week.  He was a 3rd century child martyr who died at the hands of an angry mob while bringing the Sacrament to prisoners, on behalf of the priests.  It was a dangerous time to be Christian, and the priests were easily recognized.  So young Tarcisius, an altar server, was tasked with bringing the consecrated Eucharist to the jail.  When a Christian symbol was spotted on the lid of the box he carried, a mob turned on him.  He preferred death to allowing the Sacrament to be spilled or desecrated.  Is this what it means to bear the cross?

          Consider another 3rd c. example- that of Cyprian of Carthage in North Africa.  In a letter to his friend, Donatus, Cyprian wrote:[1]

          “This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of these vines.  But if I claimed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the high roads, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds, under all roofs misery and selfishness.  It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world…”

          Would we say the same of our own contact, eighteen hundred years later?  We may not have brigands on the highways, or pirates on the seas, but our lives do know something of theft and greed.  Humans in every time, it seems, have been known to take delight in the misfortunes of others.  And in these hard times of our own, it is not difficult to find examples of misery and selfishness in our own context.  What would we see if we climbed some great mountain, or the tower above our church, and looked out over our own community?  -An environment in peril?  Avarice and greed?  Rising economic disparity between rich and poor?  A nation divided by politics?  Relationships in trouble?  People frustrated by the ongoing pandemic while more than half a million American families mourn their dead?

          Cyprian goes on to write, “Yet, in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people.  They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure in this sinful life.  They are despised and persecuted but they care not.  They have overcome the world.  These people, Donatus, are the Christians, and I am one of them.”  Cyprian himself became a bishop.

          What if this were said of Christians today?  Wouldn’t it be something if people looked upon us, worshipping and praying and trying to lead faithful lives in the midst of these challenging times, and knew us to be a quiet and holy people, who have discovered a joy a thousand times better than any pleasure in this sinful life?

          Sometimes, we achieve this.  Sometimes our faith can free us to a peacefulness that surpasses human understanding.  Sometimes we can experience a grace so special, we know ourselves to be held in the embrace of a loving God.  Sometimes our experience of Christian community can be so fulfilling that it overcomes the burdens of the world.

          Other times, we find ourselves in Jesus’ words, setting our mind on human things, rather than on divine things, and we are far from Cyprian’s loving description.

          Jesus’ challenge to us, one that Cyprian’s community seems to have met well, is to overcome the world for the sake of Christ.  I suspect that most of us find this neither desirable nor easy.  For the truth of the matter is that we do live firmly rooted in this world.  Even in these days of quarantine, none of us are free from the demands, temptations and burdens of everyday life.  Christians we may be, but we are also mothers and father and grandparents, children and caretakers, workers, and retired folk.  We have obligations and desires that are not necessarily grounded in Gospel values, but that define our lives nonetheless.  We worry about worldly things: our income, our health, our families, our homes.  We pursue pleasures that bring meaning and happiness to our lives, and while not necessarily harmful, may not always be of God.  More often than not, our minds are set on human things because we are human and we do the best we can.

          Yet, Lent is a time for us to challenge ourselves. To face the Scriptures that demand much of us.  To acknowledge the commitment and devotion that Christ does ask of us.  It is tempting to explain away the Scriptures like our Gospel.  We convince ourselves that while Jesus may have needed his disciples to take up their cross, to lose their lives for his sake, such a demand is not relevant to us.  Perhaps in Cyprian’s day, when Christians were being persecuted, it was necessary that they overcome the world- but in our time- our world’s not so bad that we must forsake it completely.  Right?  We even trivialize the notion of taking up our cross: equating it with that annoying neighbor or our chronic back pain: “I guess that’s just the cross I have to bear!”

          The reality of the Gospel, however, is that the cross is not just some unfair burden we must bear, but a means of death.  To take up the cross is to take up that which would kills us, break us… not just annoy or pain us.  And most of us choose to avoid this at all costs.  In fact, I’ll suggest that it is likely we will always fail this challenge.

          I guess that’s why my friend John and I were resistant to this Gospel.  Here again is Jesus demanding something of us that we are loathe to do.  Here is that age-old challenge that we know we will always fail.  Take up your cross.  Lose your life for my sake.  Deny yourself.

          In our Gospel, Jesus directs his comments to Peter, the other disciples, and the crowd.  But he is also speaking about himself.  For it is Christ who will take up the cross, who will lose his life for the sake of others and the Gospel.  It is Christ who will forfeit his life, rather than gain the whole world.  It is Christ who gives his all to us, in return for his life.

          We may be expected to do the same, but the truth is that we will fail in our attempts every time.  It is only in our dependence upon Christ, to walk the way of the cross on our behalf, that we are saved.  It is not by our own doing.  But by the selfless act of Christ, who does for us what our own selfishness prevents us from doing on our own,

          I once heard someone suggest that Lenten disciplines are most effective when they really challenge us.  For what do we gain from giving up coffee or chocolate for 40 days, other than the self-satisfaction of having met a goal?  But by choosing a discipline that challenges us to fail, we come to recognize that they only way we are to grow spiritually is through our dependence upon Christ.

          Our Gospel provides a similar challenge.  Christ calls us to bear our own cross, to lose our life for the sake of the gospel, to follow him, even into suffering and death.  He sets the bar high.  His standards are impossible to meet.  And, ultimately, it is Christ who must do it for us, since we cannot do it ourselves.  By failing this challenge, we come to recognize our dependence upon Christ for our salvation.  We cannot do it alone.  It is the cross Christ bears for us.

          And for this we say, with upmost humility: Thanks be to God.

          Amen.

The Rev. Eleanor Applewhite Terry

Sermon for 1 Lent B; February 21, 2021

Good Shepherd, Acton

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O God, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It’s been hard to get through the last month without thinking about the weather. The cold and snow here has been manageable, but I’m hearing more complaints about it, especially as we endure the isolation of the pandemic on top of winter. The real weather news, of course, has been out in Texas and the Pacific Northwest, as millions in those regions have experienced uncommon winter storms resulting in horrific challenges. Our hearts are with those who have lost their lives and all those suffering as a result of loss of power, water, and access to help. For those of you who might be able to assist, I commend the efforts of Episcopal Relief and Development. Their disaster relief fund is providing much needed assistance to communities affected by these winter storms across many states.

When I lived in Portland, Oregon for three years, the only significant snow I ever saw was in the mountains. But rain, as you might imagine, was plentiful, especially in the winter. Their rain, however, is very different from our rain. Oregon winter rain is like mist— damp and fine. Thunderstorms and heavy downpours are rare. I never quite got used to the odd phenomenon of “rain with sun breaks” out there- which often meant you needed to drive with both your windshield wipers and your sunglasses on at the same time. Bright, glaring sun would shine down between clouds that drizzled damp, cold rain. A meteorological oxymoron — but one that produced brilliant rainbows.

Rainbows are always a welcome and stunning sight, don’t you think? In Oregon, they helped keep me sane in the midst of the otherwise dreary winters. -A promise that the rains would eventually end, and a sign that, yes, the sun still shines up there somewhere. I pray that those who suffered through the Portland snow and ice storms recently, will soon be treated to rainbows instead. And may they shine over Texas, too.

Rainbows, as we are reminded in our first Scripture today, are a sign of God’s promise and covenant with us. In this passage from Genesis, the great flood has ended. -Perhaps all that is left of the rain is the light mist of an Oregon drizzle. And Noah and the animals and his family are invited by God into an eternal covenant. “Never again,” God promises, “shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” A rainbow is given as a sign and reminder of the covenant God has established with Creation. And from this point on in Scripture, water becomes a sign of life, rather than death.

So it’s fitting, that as Jesus begins his public ministry, he does so after rising from the waters of the Jordan River. Jesus’ baptism, like our own, inaugurates and empowers his ministry. In baptism, that which has always been true becomes known: Jesus is named, and claimed, and loved by God. And it is through the waters of baptism that Jesus is strengthened for the challenges which lie ahead. Immediately after his baptism, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, where for forty days he is tempted by Satan. How quickly the glaring light of God’s Spirit, descending like a dove on Jesus, is overshadowed by the wilderness of temptation!

I have never been to the Holy Land, but I am told that the contrast between the lush fertile valley where the Jordan River flows and the barren desert just over the mountains is startling. Martin Smith, in a wonderful little book of Lenten reflections called A Season for the Spirit describes the landscape as viewed from the ruins of the ancient city of Jericho. “Imagine yourself sitting with me in these ruins,” he writes. “We are looking south down the deepest cleft in the earth and in the distance the Dead Sea is shimmering in the intense heat like a lake of mercury. To the east the river Jordan snakes towards it, and the mountains of Moab from which Moses had seen the Promised Land tower beyond. To the west rise the massive brown hills of the wilderness, rent by deep gorges… This is the place where we are all invited to stand at the beginning of another Lent to take in the meaning of this movement from the river to the desert, and to be caught up in it ourselves.”

Another book of Lenten reflections, A Spring in the Desert, which we will be discussing in our Lenten forum beginning today, explores a similar theme, “rediscovering the water of life in Lent.” As we come upon almost a full year of pandemic life, the images of desert and water, resonate with me as I thirst for new life after so much time in the metaphorical desert of quarantine.

The closest I have ever come to being in desert wilderness was in the Grand Canyon where my husband and I once spent 17 days hiking and rafting and camping along the Colorado River. One day our guides took our group on what affectionately became known as “The Death March.” -An 11 mile hike up a side canyon, across a desert plateau, and down another canyon, where we would meet up with our rafts (and the less adventurous members of our group) five miles down river from where we had begun. Because the rafts would need to travel these five miles to meet us, there was no turning back. Once we committed to the hike, we had to go all the way through.

It was an extraordinary day: exhausting, exhilarating, hot and amazing. After hiking all morning up the tedious switch-backs of the first, steep, side canyon, we came to a lush oasis, where a spring of water gushed from the side of a canyon wall. Trees suddenly appeared. There was shade and cool breeze, and even a somewhat tame wild turkey that begged for scraps from our lunch. It was amazing to experience the life that suddenly sprung forth in the midst of a desert wherever there was water. After our lunch break, we hiked away from the spring and across a flat, barren, hot desert plateau. It took hours to cross. And there was nothing around us except low desert brush, the occasional cactus, and the potential for rattle snakes.

The difference, of course, between the lush oasis and the total desolation of the desert was the presence of water. It was not something created or controlled by human beings. And as we hiked across the swath of desert, it was easy to feel insignificant. Nothing in that landscape relied upon us. And the landscape offered us nothing back in return.

Lent invites us to enter the desert landscape of our spiritual lives. To journey to that place where the only life-giving essence comes from God. Where we are forced to realize that we neither control nor create anything that we need. We are utterly dependent upon God.

Often, such experiences of spiritual wilderness sneak up on us when we least expect it- and when we are least prepared to handle it. We don’t always get to the choose, as Bronson and I did, to enter the wilderness as tourists, accompanied by our beloved, and some skilled guides who know the trail and how much water we would need for our journey. Instead, the landscape of spiritual wilderness often overtakes us uninvited, and catches us off guard- making us profoundly aware of how much we must rely upon God for our survival and well-being.

Yet even though we can’t always know when the spiritual wilderness will overtake us, the Church, in her wisdom, has set aside these forty days each year as practice for when the going get really tough. If we take its disciplines and challenges seriously, Lent helps us get spiritually in shape for the trials that may be yet to come. For Jesus, his forty days in the wilderness prepared him to better face the challenges of ministry, and eventually, the cross. And for us, these 40 days of Lent provide the opportunity to develop spiritual disciplines that can sustain us for the long haul.

As we enter Lent this year, consider how God might be calling you to use these forty days as you travel the landscape that lies between us now and Easter. What intentional practice of prayer, Scripture reading, study and service might you take on? What habits, temptations, and parts of you might best be let go?

In the words of our Ash Wednesday service, “I invite you therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

We pursue these disciplines not because we have to, but because they can be life-giving. Like the water in the desert, and the sun-splashed rainbows on a rainy day, they can sustain our spirit and make us ever mindful of the need we all have for a deepened relationship with God.

May yours be a holy and life-giving Lent. Amen.