St. Matthias Lutheran Church (ELCA)

On Sunday, the first of six Sabbath days that we will gather for worship during this Lenten tide, we heard the story of the Temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Luke writes, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” The wilderness, for many, represents a place of discomfort, of dis-ease – a place where our weaknesses become more apparent to ourselves and to others – a place of increased vulnerability. Most of us would not, given our choice of places to head off on retreat, choose to go willingly into the wilderness. And yet it is precisely the place where the Spirit leads this newly baptized beloved one of God.

The wilderness is also the way caretakers of Holden Village, a Lutheran center for renewal, describe their location. Situated in north central Washington State in a remote area of the Cascade Mountains above Lake Chelan, Holden can only be reached by a scenic boat ride from the town of Chelan or from Field’s Point Landing 16 miles up the lake. After disembarking from the ferry, visitors are met by an AWD vehicle to carry them the remaining 11 miles to the village. Intentionally isolated as it is, visitors to Holden find themselves “inconvenienced” by the lack of communication with the outside world – no phones, no television, no cell phone reception and very limited radio reception. Further, “there are no roads connecting to Holden.”

Most of the time, the majority of us have little idea which road, if any, led us into the wildernesses we encounter and endure. If we were conscious of them and where they would take us, we probably would not have chosen to walk down them. The wilderness of our deeply depressed economy; the once beautiful horizon that looked so lovely at twilight today looks more like an abandoned strip mine with the majority of its jobs extracted, a desolate and depressing sight. In Appalachia, when the mines played out or strikes erupted, folks rushed off to the urban centers and began smelting steel and building automobiles. The global reality has changed even that. Or the anxiety and fear which follow an otherwise routine visit to the doctor where we hear things like, “We need to run some more tests.”  Some people seem to cross the street from one type of wilderness to another. Mike Cross once wrote a song he titled “Hard Times,” the refrain to which went, in part, “Hard times, trouble and strife, seen hard times most all of my life. Take away the hard times that I’ve known, and I’ve only lived about a week or so.”

Sometimes we discover our true selves in the wilderness. Perhaps that is the legacy or gift handed on to us by the church during this season of Lent. We walk the narrow way, our focus intentionally narrowed by the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and sacrificial giving. We might add a bit of time for spiritual reading and reflection, participating in a book or bible study or small group discussion. Not that any of these will make the earth move or alter the global economy, but they will, when engaged in prayerfully, change you. And if you are not careful, you just might, “become the change you wish to see in the world.”

When we gather on Wednesday evenings this Lent, you will be welcomed into a quiet, contemplative time of prayer beginning at 6:00 PM. We will sing the church’s ancient evening song from Psalm 141. In the Temple, incense was sprinkled over glowing coals of charcoal thus creating clouds of aromatic smoke as the people chant, “Let my prayer rise before you as incense, the lifting up of the evening sacrifice.”  This liturgical rite symbolized God’s presence calling the people’s memory back to their ancestors sojourn in the wilderness when God, “in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night” went before them leading them into freedom. Our Lenten journey will be one taken through the rough and rugged terrain of the wilderness where we will encounter some of our own demons and temptations on our way to Easter. Oh, and the beautiful liturgy which will enable and guide our prayer at midweek, will be one written for the church by Marty Haugen. We’ve done it before. And get this – it was crafted in the wilderness of Holden Village, where there are no roads.

Together in Faith,

Pastor Alan