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Sermon March 1, 2009 |
A Sermon Preached at
I am indebted to the New York Daily News for the story of Antoine Yates. Although Yates lived in a city apartment, he brought home a 2-month-old tiger cub and later an alligator. It’s not clear where he found them. But they were with him for two years and the tiger alone grew to 500 pounds. At that time, the police got a call about a “dog” bite and when they got to the 19-story public housing apartment building, they discovered Yates in the lobby with injuries to his right arm and leg. Someone alerted them to the possibility a “wild animal” was at his apartment. A fourth-floor resident complained that urine had seeped through her ceiling from Yates’ apartment. Long story short: it took a contingent of officers at the door, and some rappelling from the roof and the use of a dart gun to bring this animal under control. When they entered the apartment, they found the big cat lying atop some newspapers. The alligator was nearby. Both animals were relocated to shelters. Asked to comment, Yates told the paper that he misses the tiger.
I have a couple of reasons for telling that story here on the first Sunday of Lent. The first is that our Gospel this morning—as usual a narrative about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness—doesn’t mention Jesus’ hunger or ambition, but tells us that Jesus was “with the wild beasts.” The second reason is that wild beasts make a great metaphor for the internal forces that create problems in our lives. To borrow from the Antoine Yates story, I suspect that most of us get intimate with the “wild beasts” in our lives when they seem young and innocent, but somehow they just grow. I also suspect that the besetting sins of our lives eventually get really destructive: not only to ourselves, but also to those around us. Freud, you know, used a simple test to tell when you’ve got an internal problem: it interferes with your ability to love and work. Food, sex, anger, alcohol and work can all be addictions. You know when your life is out of whack when the things you enjoy cripple you and begin to mess up the neighbor’s apartment. And by the way, Antoine Yates is surely not alone in missing the tiger that mauled him. We often get really fond of the things that do us the most damage.
Getting our lives back in balance is what this season of Lent is all about. Those of you who were here on Ash Wednesday know that I don’t think of Lent as a time of self-inflicted pain and sorrow. Instead, I think Lent is an annual gift from the church: an encouragement to stop and take stock of our lives and to make changes that will restore us to balance and will make us more loving people. To be sure, Lent calls us all into a strange place, into the wilderness, into the place in which we can confront the wild beasts of our lives. Lent calls us to the old traditional discipline of giving up something we enjoy. That’s a great way to tell whether some of the things we’ve taken into our homes are not as innocent as we think. Lent calls us to a discipline of taking on new things: spending ten minutes in prayer a day, reading a book, taking a class, or volunteering to do some acts of kindness. That’s a good way to tell whether our priorities are in the right place or whether we’ve become too sure of ourselves to grow as children of God.
From time to time I’ve caught myself thinking that I don’t need a Lenten discipline. The idea of doing something special seems odd and a little pointless—after all, what am I going to learn about myself that I don’t already know? I think our Gospel reading helps underscore the reason we should keep Lent anyway. Mark makes the connection between Jesus’ baptism, his temptation and his ministry. Jesus receives his basic identity in baptism, he is told that he is God’s beloved. Then he goes out into the wilderness and is tempted. Then finally Jesus goes out into the world “proclaiming the good news of God.” This progression is worth noting. Jesus moves from the comforting knowledge that he is beloved into the not-so-comforting trial in the wilderness and it is these two experiences, taken together, which equip him for ministry. The same is true for us. We, too, are baptized and accepted as God’s beloved. But we are not supposed to rest in a cocoon of unquestioning acceptance. We, too, are meant to grow through a wilderness experience of testing. Both things—God’s acceptance and a godly challenge--equip us for ministry, too.
I talk a lot about how important it is to accept the fact that God accepts us. Lent is a time to balance that message and to talk about how important it is for us to grow into the people God intends us to be. The end result is not only that we might be able to lead more joyful lives, but also that we might be able to make a greater difference in the world. Let us not be afraid this Lent to go into the wilderness to encounter the wild beasts within us. The end result may be the same for us as it was for Jesus. For the Gospel not only tells us that Jesus met the beasts in the wilderness. It also tells us that there “the angels ministered to him.” If we keep a holy Lent, we will not only meet the beasts, we’ll also meet the angels.
AMEN