Matthew 4:1-11, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Many of you know that I work as a hospital chaplain and
this past Wednesday was a busy day. I arrived at work at 6:45 am and helped set
up a table in the area referred to as “main street” at the hospital. It’s the
main hallway where almost everyone walks through on their way to the various
units of the hospital. The table had printed out signs on it that said “Lenten
Ashes” and cards with Lenten prayers on them. To set up, I helped carry out the
little plastic cups of ashes that had been prepared and the long individually
wrapped Q-tips that the hospital said we need to use to dispense ashes in a
sanitary way. And then I stood there as the shifts changed and said “good morning,
we have ashes for Ash Wednesday if you would like to receive them.” And over
and over again I smeared dust on foreheads and said “remember that you are dust
and to dust you shall return.”
At times I felt a bit like those people at the mall with
the perfume kiosks trying to get passersby to stop and sample their product.
Because sometimes I could see people were hoping I wouldn’t make eye contact
and that they could just hurry on by. But instead of selling fragrances, I was
offering dirt.
Honestly,
I’ve never been into the whole “ashes to go” thing as I feel like just getting
ashes without the beautiful liturgy of repentance and scripture readings is a
bit disjointed. But, mostly, dispensing ashes at the hospital was a really
meaningful experience for people. Some people stopped and asked what it meant
and I got to tell them why we do it and what it means. Some people let tears
out as I looked them in the eye and reminded them they are dust. Some people
stopped and shared their stories with me. Some people asked me to pray for the
loved one they were visiting in the hospital.
We gave ashes to over 200 people in that main street
hallway, and, in addition to that, we went to the floors and offered ashes to
staff and patients there. The staff were so appreciative, even if it wasn’t
part of their faith tradition and they did not take them. As I swiped my badge
and walked through the doors of the Emergency Department, it struck me what a
unique opportunity it was to invite people to pause in the midst of their busy
jobs of keeping people alive to be reminded that we are all going to die. It’s a bit of a juxtaposition really.
I thought of this kind of juxtaposition as I read the scriptures
for today. We read two examples of people being tested. The first is Adam and
Eve in the garden. God tells them there is only one tree to avoid and then
after being tempted, they eat from that tree. And then in the Gospel reading, Jesus
goes out into the wilderness and is tested three times. The first is with bread
when he is starving, the second is to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and
the third is with power. Jesus resists every temptation.
It’s interesting to look at what happens before and after
this. Before this reading in Matthew Jesus is baptized and then goes right into
the wilderness where our reading from today takes place. As soon as he comes
out he learns that John the Baptist has been arrested and he gets right to
work, he starts calling his disciples and begins his ministry of preaching,
teaching and healing. This order shows us how Jesus chose to begin his ministry.
Before he began surrounding himself with crowds and travelling around, he went
to the wilderness to be tested. He looked inward and wrestled with temptation
and when he came out, it’s as if he is fully connected with God’s will. Like he
emerged with a special kind of closeness and reliance on God that would enable
him to face all the suffering, pain, temptation and struggle that lies ahead.
For Adam and Eve, it’s a bit of a different story. Before
the passage that was read, they roam freely and without shame, they enjoy closeness
with God, even a physical closeness with God. But after this passage, after they
disobey God and give in to temptation, they are sent out. And then the pages of
the Bible after that tell the story of God and humanity trying to keep that
closeness again and again as humans move away from God, God calls them back and
it happens over and over again. For Adam and Eve, this experience of temptation
was a move away from connection with God, for Jesus, it was a deepening of connection
with God. Both went through temptation and struggle, but there were two
different choices made and two different outcomes.
I don’t know about you, but I wish we didn’t have to go
through the struggle part. I wish we could just become closer to God, wiser and
more connected through just being comfortable and everything going well. I wish
it so much that I often find that I am holding tension in my body as I worry
and fear and try to control uncontrollable things. I’m not one to say that God
causes our struggles in order to prove something about us. I hear that often as
people wrestle with why something bad is happening to them. They wonder if God
is causing their suffering to try to teach them something. I believe that God
wants love and joy and peace for us and that God suffers with us when we suffer,
but that life is full of choices and scary things and uncontrollable things
that there is no rhyme or reason for. And Jesus models for us how to walk
through all of that and stay connected to God. How to weather the storms and
find that God’s love and peace was actually there with us all along and has not
left us.
Beginning last Wednesday with Ash Wednesday, we are invited
to follow Christ on a journey through the wilderness. To face the tests, the
temptations, the scary things of this world and hold on to our faith, stay
connected to God and trust that God has not left us. I’d rather skip to Easter
baskets and candy than face the discomfort and pain, and yet … I do believe
that there is much to be gained from the valleys of life, from the wilderness
wrestling.
Often
people think that a chaplain’s job is to encourage people, make them feel
better and provide reassurance. That’s actually not true. What we do is sit
with people in the struggle, in the pain, in the uncertainty. Part of our
training is to practice again and again not trying to fix people. If a patient
tells me what they are struggling with and I tell them “everything will be ok,
don’t worry, you will be fine.” I am not honoring their story, their pain,
their struggle, I am not honoring the ways their spirit is growing through that
experience of suffering- I am only trying to fix them so that I can feel more
comfortable. And so we practice again and again sitting in the suffering, and trusting
that God is present. We don’t have to turn off the hard things or make them
look away from the struggle, we can accompany them as they face the pain,
trusting God will hold them in God’s eternal and unconditional love … without
our empty reassurances or shallow attempts at fixing.
It is a strange thing to walk around a hospital where
everyone is focused on saving lives- and remind everyone that we will all die
as I wipe dust on their foreheads. When I walked into that Emergency Department
last Wednesday with my sanitized Q-tip and plastic cup of ashes, it did feel
like a strange juxtaposition. Everyone is busy and I am asking them to pause.
Everyone is doing their best to not show emotion and I am looking them in the
eye to see their humanity. Everyone is working against death and I am inviting
them to face it.
But it’s also really beautiful. In the midst of medicines and diagnoses and machines and a constant rush, we remember that we are humans, all of us. The nurse, the doctor, the custodian, the patient. All of us are made of dust and to dust we shall return. And it’s ok. We are all connected in that shared humanity, we are all in it together. None of us is unique in having to face the truth of our own mortality. There is a connection in that. It’s also a reminder that there is so much we can’t control. And that’s ok. We are called to trust in God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who molds us from the dust and the one who invites us into a new life beyond this one. We are connected in that reliance on God. No matter what we do, we are all dust and to dust we shall return. A reminder that we can release the tension, the weight of the world, the attempts at controlling or understanding what is not controllable, because it’s all in God’s hands.
This week I had a birthday, I turned 45. When I was 25 I became
a pastor and in all that time I have longed for wisdom. I have studied and
prayed and accepted new challenges and learned and taken classes and trainings
and thought and thought and thought and asked questions and worked hard to find
wisdom, the kind of wisdom I always though a pastor should have. I have heard people
talk about how there is a certain kind of wisdom that comes with age and I
think I am starting to understand that more and more. In all this time of being
determined to be wise, in trying to figure everything out, in trying to
remember to loosen the tension in my jaw and let my shoulders release the
weight of the world, wisdom kept coming, through every tear and laugh, every
moment of awe and moment of pain. Through the tests and temptations that I
failed and the ones I passed. It has been lesson after lesson in trust. In
knowing that God is with me and that no matter what I do, God is the beginning and
the end. That I am dust and to dust I shall return.
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