Resting on the Bed of This Love

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on The First Sunday in Lent by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean & Rector.

Master of our own fate. Captain of our own ship. The pioneer spirit (“Go West, young man!”). The self-made man (it’s always a man, of course). This is the true American gospel. Self-reliance–relying on our own efforts, thinking ourselves the author of our good deeds, and castigating ourselves for our apparent failures–runs so deep in the American psyche that it’s hard to even notice how counter to the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ it runs.

What if I told you that these forty days in the desert without toys or props–the great journey of Lent–is the undoing of that whole picture of who and how we are? Master of our own fate? "You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust." Captain of our own ship? Think of Peter in the boat,  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” The reply? “Come.” Not exactly a scene out of Master and Commander–taking one’s hands off the wheel and stepping faithfully into the unknown and seemingly impossible. The pioneer homesteader? “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you….” The American Gospel is self-reliance: the bootstrapping self, I, me, and mine at the center of the picture. The Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is total dependence on God: God at the center. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. Makes you wonder what exactly it means when we blithely say this is a “Christian nation,” doesn’t it?

Who is the main actor in our passage from Deuteronomy? Why, God of course. Think how different this is from Steve McQueen and the gang in The Great Escape where the American prisoners of war escape their German captors on the strength of their wit, wile, and good old fashioned guts.. Good movie, and a great story, but not the one Deuteronomy is telling. “The Lord brought us out of Egypt… he brought us into this place.” God acts. God liberates, God frees and feeds. And out of recognition and remembrance of God’s gracious action the people are moved to gracious response–offering the first fruits in recognition of what the Lord has done for them. The very same thing we do each and every Sunday during our common work as celebrants of the Eucharist offering up the gifts we have received from God back to God: “we now present to you from your creation this bread and this wine.” “All things come from Thee, O Lord,” we used to say in the old days, lifting high the gifts, “And of Thine own have we given Thee.”

No mistake, then, that we find Jesus in the very same “sticky situation” that the Israelites found themselves in. But where the Israelites pine after the three squares under Pharoah, threaten to huddle up against Moses in murderous scapegoating violence, and murmur that water from the rock, manna from heaven, and an all you can eat Quail buffet isn’t enough, Jesus–as the only fully human human being–shows us a different way. The way of the desert. The way of dependence and trust in God’s abundant provision even in a place of apparent scarcity and lack. The way, in short, of Lent. 

Jesus’ temptation in the desert gives us a sense of what dependence on God, transparency to the love of the Father looks like in fully human form. Each of the temptations is actually, when we see clearly, a temptation to some form of reliance on one’s own efforts. Human beings are made for union and communion with God, the source of all beauty, goodness, and truth. In God and in God alone is our peace, happiness, joy and equanimity. The trouble, of course, is that human beings don’t know, or forget, or fail to recognize that we already are immersed in the happiness for which we seek, for which we hunger and yearn: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Absent the awareness of this startlingly gracious reality we set off, each Prodigal in our own way, seeking in power, possessions, prestige, substances, relationships, knowledge for the happiness that lies buried like a pearl of great price in the field of the heart. Like birds flying through the air we ask, “Where is the air?” Like fish swimming in the ocean, we ask, “Where is the water?” Like honored guests seated at the banquet of Divine Love we ask, “Where’s the beef?”

Jesus, as the Bread of Life, can surely have as much bread as he wants. He’s set for life in the bread department. He doesn’t have to rely on anyone for anything. He never needs to feel hunger, and yet he sees, he knows, that making a god of his belly, that making a god of security and comfort, is not where true happiness is to be found. So Satan tries a different tact–he aims at power, control, and prestige to see if that will tempt Jesus. But Jesus sees that power, fame, prestige, affection and esteem are not where the peace that passes understanding are to be found either. Praise and blame blow this way and that–no sooner are you adored than you are despised, raised up than dashed down. 

The third temptation is a temptation to invulnerability, to becoming immune to the chances and changes of this life. It’s common to all of us, I think, in that we think that if we’re spiritual enough, nothing will touch us. We won’t feel fear, anxiety, grief, sadness. We’ll enjoy (if that’s the word) a kind of imperturbable calm in the face of anything the world throws at us. But that’s not it at all. If anything, the more deeply we travel into the heart of God, into the heart of love, the more deeply we feel our emotions. It’s just that fear, loss, grief, sadness are held in that good and broad land of God’s limitless love. Jesus willingly chooses a life of radical vulnerability–he weeps at Lazarus’ tombs, rages at the money changers, cries out from the cross, whoops it up with the sinners and tax collectors. When he loses a friend, he just cries. There is only crying. “God needs another angel in heaven,” is exactly the last thing he’s thinking.

This Lent, I encourage you to take the daily risk of actually letting yourself be loved. Take a few minutes a couple times a day to let yourself come undone in love. Be still and rest in, rest as God’s Great I Am. Just be. The Tempter will tell you to get up and do something, make yourself useful. The Tempter will tell you you need to feel a certain way as if the peace that passes understanding were an experience alongside myriad other experiences rather than the edgeless container that holds all experiences, even the difficult ones,  in love. The Tempter will tell you that if you really work hard at letting yourself be loved you’ll be the very best at letting yourself be loved. Just notice those rather predictable thoughts grinding away as they always do and don’t fuss with them too much. 

Fast from all of that food that never satisfies and simply come home. Come home to the one who out of His great love has made His home in you. Know yourself as a branch on the vine. Abide in that love and let its sap seep and soak your body, mind and soul. Let go of the captain’s wheel, step out of the boat, and let love live itself through you free and unbounded. The yoke of self-reliance is a heavy burden. The world of I, me, mine, for all its seductive charms leaves us always hungry, fearful, angry, and alone. Letting God be God to us, even for a moment, is a yoke so easy, so light, it’s no yoke at all. And if you mourn and weep and lament, mourn and weep and lament over how far you’ve traveled, how much you’ve struggled, how hard you’ve searched for the pearl of great price that was yours all along. You might find yourself laughing through your tears.

The poet John Astin, in his book This Is Always Enough gets at this very thing nicely when he writes

Body, mind,

let them rest upon the bed

of this love

All the questions of the mind,

let them rest upon the bed

of this love

All the images of your self

and the ceaseless effort

to make them different,

let them rest upon the bed

of this love

The personality

and all its wants

and preferences

let them all rest upon the bed

of this love

The projects

of self-improvement

or self-annihilation,

let them rest upon the bed

of this love

Let your whole self rest

until there is only resting

love,

abiding in itself. (1)

What if this letting our whole self rest until there is only love abiding in itself were your Lenten discipline? Do you dare to let yourself be loved?

(1) I have taken the liberty replacing “love” with Astin’s original word “wakefulness”