Jesus in the Wilderness

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Kate: Good morning, everyone. Annie made this for me so I would be less nervous. I promised her I would put it on the back. First of all, I want to thank Debbie for asking me to share. I'm not much of a public speaker. My husband is taking a video right now. Sorry. I won't call you out next time if you want to do that again. It's been a really healing process to put this story together. And I also want to thank my husband for not just his bravery but his willingness to share my story, but also he's weaved in there quite a bit as well.

Growing up, I was a good girl. I sang in all the church choirs, celebration singers, and also the audition-only SACE or St. Anders Children's Ensemble. We had on reversible vests, velvet on one side, plaid on the other. I brought home only S-pluses, which is Satisfactory Plus, and volunteered at the Alzheimer's wing at St. Anders. And I was just generally always trying the most.

As a child, I knew that I was lucky and I felt lucky, but I also felt like being a good girl was a foregone conclusion. It was just how I operated. I learned to work really hard to anticipate the needs of others and to put them first, to strive, to smile, and be appreciative. I also learned what not to be, messy, loud, and definitely not angry. I felt like the type of person I was inside didn't match the girl that I was supposed to be. And that chasm created pressure. Oftentimes, I felt a feeling of unrootedness. And in terms of feeling God, I definitely didn't. Because in this world, God was Him, and He was up there. I most definitely never felt like I was made in His image. How could I? I'm not a He. And the she that I am is not the she that He wants me to be. God was other, and He was far away, anyhow.

That being said, I wanted to feel God's presence. Like any being—oh my gosh, I didn't cry when I was practicing—but like any being, I yearned for meaning, connection, purpose, and community. And the best way I assessed to be part of those things was to play the role the best I could. Somewhere I felt if I could be good enough, then I would feel whole, and then I would feel God. So for the better part of my life, I felt like I was holding disparate parts together underneath my skin. And I also felt like my ability to keep it all together, to not get angry or really freak out, was decreasing with each year. And so this wrestling match went on unbeknownst to me until 2018, when I met my husband. He awoke that capital S self part largely because I felt all of the other parts were accepted. So that that part could run the show a little bit more, finally. I felt renewed, restored, and hopeful. And it was happily ever after. Just kidding.

Now I'm going to skip ahead two years to really get into the wilderness, or where the wilderness outside really started to feel like it reflected the wilderness inside. On September 1st, 2021, our daughter June was born, our second daughter. Two weeks later, I brought Ryan to the hospital for a mental health emergency, where we learned he was—like where he learned he had bipolar disorder. It wasn't safe for Ryan to be at the home for a little while, but hospitalization was. It was a dark time. I had a new baby, a just-turned-2-year-old who couldn't understand why her dad sometimes was at home, but was living elsewhere. And I was also in charge of my husband's care. June felt like an extra appendage I didn't know what to do with, because my days were spent managing the next surprise. There was so much chaos, and my husband was a different person to me, and it was scary. I felt so vulnerable, still leaking from birth, and I wanted to be cared for, but I couldn't reach my husband. I didn't feel like I had time to bond with my new baby, and then went back to work a few weeks after Ryan's mania subsided.

People often told me, "I don't know how you do it, and you're so strong," but I felt like a complete sham, because I felt like I wasn't really doing it. I was resenting my husband the entire time and feeling really guilty about it, because what I should have been doing was taking care of him with an open and soft heart. After all, this was happening to him, not to me. It could be so much worse. He could be terminally ill. All of this was manageable. So I should be grateful, and at the very least, I should be the strong, selfless woman that people saw. But I wasn't. I was overwhelmed by what felt like everything on my shoulders. I was scared I would break, and I was really angry. But whenever I would release it, try to release it, I would simultaneously be trying to push it back down. And then, two years after June was born, I did something with that anger and that desperate need to be taken care of that no good girl, good wife, good mother ever. And when my husband learned what I did, I felt like our lives were going to end. It was very public, and all of my striving and good girlness were now exiled. And all that was left were the parts that I had for so long denied.

And this is where I found spirit when I lost all of my. Turns out God wasn't in the high ground up near the clouds where I thought, but on the ground, in the dirt, by the weeds. I felt as if everyone could see through me how bad I was. And sometimes that made me want to hide, and sometimes that made me want to fight back, both of which I did. But as often happens in trauma, it shook something loose in me, something free and true. There was one night I met Ryan to say goodbye before he flew out to treatment and was heading back to my parents to get the girls. One thing my therapist would say to me in this time was, "Slow down and remember your essential goodness," which usually made me want to scream. But something happened on that car ride home. It came into an awareness that I am the only one who will always be with me, and that I am good. No matter what I think, feel, or even do, I felt spirit in my chest. I felt known, and I also felt something I had never felt in my. That something greater than me knew and cared for me. Goodness.

This gave me the courage to be, to listen, and sometimes even to rest, and to care for that capital S self. While Ryan was gone, I would put the girls to bed each night, sit in the quiet, and read Braiding Sweetgrass. This book opened spirit up to me in a whole new way, too. Spirit could be a tree, a bee, or a she. I had felt spirit inside of me, but now God was starting to descend from the clouds to commune around and with me. I felt her around me quite literally in the wilderness.

One of Ryan's most favorite passages is, "Be still and know that I am God." I assumed that knowing happened in the mind academically, but this time taught me that knowing is an experience that happens when we let the light shine on the parts of ourselves that we think are wrong, unlovable, and let ourselves be whole. Thich Nhat Hanh said, "The way out is in," and that is where I finally found spirit inside my own chest.

Marta: When I found out that we were doing our sermon series this way with someone sharing their story, and I was on the preaching roster, I was like, "I cry all the time." I am so grateful. I'm grateful for vulnerability in this community that, you know, I think about a couple weeks ago when Gino shared his story, he talked about measuring his faith in percentages. You know, maybe I believe 80% today on my best days. And on my best days, Rachel Held Evans would say, on the days that I believe, what gets me there as close to 100% as I can be are the days that we share stories with each other. I love how Maggie Keller says, "Stories are where we sit knee to knee together."

And I think that's what makes The Table really great. So even if it's your first time here, I hope that you're already experiencing this authenticity in storytelling, because I really do think that this is how we find our way back to each other, find our way back to ourselves, back to that spirit.

So each week, we return back to this ancient text, see if it speaks to our context today and our own stories. We're currently finding continuity in Scripture through the theme of wilderness. And I'm usually upstairs or downstairs with the kids, so I was listening through the sermon series. If you've been here, you've gotten the context of what wilderness looks like in Scripture, so I won't take too—it's usually like a desert of some kind that puts a window into these wilderness spaces within ourselves. It's not hashtag van life wilderness where you know you really clean up a van and it's so cute with your golden retriever in the back. This is the kind where you're alone, you're sweaty, and you're stuck with your own thoughts. This is people groups wandering together, individuals secluded and alone, friends gathering together. We see a lot of different expressions through this body of work in the biblical canon, and now we come into the life of Jesus as he too tells his.

This story shows up a couple different places, but we'll be reading from the Gospel of Matthew, and if you're following along either in the physical Bible or on your phone, I don't have it on the screens today, so feel free to let it wash over you. It starts, "Then Jesus." Well, hold on. "Then," you know, it's not the word "therefore," but youth group kids, if you see the word "therefore," you ask, "What's it there for?" It's not that. It's the word "then." But it makes you wonder, "Then what?" Like, "What came before then?"

So if you zoom back to Matthew chapter 3, you see the beginning of this story, that Jesus' baptism happens with John the Baptist, and if you remember this story as he's being baptized, it says, "The heavens parted, the spirit descended like a dove, and here this is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased." And this is the mountaintop moment, right? This is like pretty much as good as it gets if I heard it from the Spirit, like, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased." That's like the highest high you're going to get. His ministry is affirmed. He, you know, it's just, it makes sense.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. I think about this John Mayer lyric from the Heart of Life. It says, "Bad news never had good timing." Right? And how often this, often our highest highs feel like they're chased by our lowest lows, not giving in to karma or superstition. But why is it as soon as you say to your partner, "I feel like we're making really good strides on our savings goal" that your water heater breaks. Why is it that after you have glowing reviews from management and your peers about what a good job you're doing at work, that ownership eliminates the position due to budget cuts? Why is it when you're finally brave enough to stop taking birth control with your partner to try for a family that you're diagnosed with infertility? Sometimes after our highest highs that our lowest lows come running at us full speed.

So Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, and afterwards he was famished. Now, if you're reading in your scripture anywhere, you might see that the heading says that Jesus, the temptation of Jesus, or the word might be tempted instead of tested. And that feels more like a sneaky, like, "God set him up to get him in a gotcha."

But I want you to imagine this series of tests to be more like a stress test that NASA does on their rocket ships. That before you send something up into outer space, every little piece has made sure that it works just the way it's supposed to. Because do you think that Gayle King would have gone up in that rocket ship if she maybe—maybe Katy Perry would? But there's no way Gayle King would have gone up in that rocket ship without knowing that a stress test happened to know that it worked, right? So right after this moment of clarity on his calling, there's this test ensuring Jesus' mission is secure.

And you might have heard that number 40, if you're in my second through fifth grade class, what story did we do last week? Do you remember? (Silence) 40 days, Noah, right? You think of Noah with 40 days and 40 nights. You think of Moses on top of Mount Sinai was there for 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus, after he resurrected and before he ascended was around for 40 days and 40 nights, right? You hear this and it's supposed to be less of like a literal magic amount of time, like Jesus was just sitting there waiting for day 40. It's more of like a literary tool to cause us as the reader to say, "Hey, something's going to happen here. There's going to be a transition event. There's going to be a change in the narrative." So 40 days, 40 nights, Jesus is famished.

And then the tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Right? This is probably to me the most relatable temptation that comes Jesus' way. Jesus is famished, right? You think about all of us, not even, I was going to say kids, but all of us here, sitting here, knowing that there are donuts sitting out there, right? Like, "Oh, man, it would be so easy to sneak out to the back of the room and take one," right? And sneak back in. That times a million is how Jesus is feeling, hunger-wise. And then he comes back and quotes Deuteronomy and says, "One does not live by bread alone." And I don't think he's quipping to like out spiritual trivia, this temptation. And I also don't think that Jesus doesn't like bread, because in fact, we know that Jesus likes bread, right? We see the feeding of the 5,000. We see the Last Supper. But every story of Jesus and bread is always tied to community and connection. He's resisting instant gratification.

I think about one of my wilderness stories when I was exiting the seminary plan that I had and really wrestling and using what people call deconstruction, taking these things that I believed in trying to figure out where to put them, what I believe. And I don't know if it's true. I don't know where I read it. I heard somewhere that this process takes six years. And I thought, "Well, I could beat that." It's kind of like when you see the little time ticker on your GPS and you're like, "I bet I could get two minutes faster than that," right? So I, any Christian-ish self-help book for aggressive Christian deconstruction, podcast, conference, book published between 2017 and 2021, you better believe I was there. I read it. I know it. I know the ins and outs of all of it. And it kind of helped, but it kind of felt like I was covering myself with band-aids all over open wounds. This healing, this grief process takes time, community, and presence. I couldn't understand my way out of it. I couldn't race my way out of it. I had to feel my way through it.

I think about writer Sarah Bessey says,

"Our healing journey and transformation will always be homemade, never store-bought." Healing and wholeness and satisfaction doesn't come quickly in the wilderness. And boy, it would be nice to turn those stones into bread. But we don't live on bread alone. We don't live on quick fixes and bathroom stitches to our wounds, non-self-help TED talks, or grief seminars on books on how to get better.”

So then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, right at the tippy top, and said, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written. He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you do not dash your foot against a stone." And Jesus said to him, "Again, it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Essentially, this temptation is saying, "Go viral, Jesus. Do something flashy. Prove your divinity. If you're really the Son of God, do something cool." And Jesus' ministry was radical, for sure, but it was not for show. If it was, why would he immediately retreat into the wilderness right after his mountaintop high of being baptized? And Jesus for sure did miracles, right? We've got lots of stories of it. But his miracles always redirect people towards God's justice and restoration. He was in community with those he shouldn't have been. He was countercultural. He practiced religion in ways that provided healing and wholeness. And I think it's interesting, this scripture that he quotes, "Again, it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test,'" goes back to Deuteronomy 6, verse 16, and that text is going back to Exodus 17.

So if you think about a month ago, Debbie told the wilderness story of the Israelite people after fleeing Egypt in Exodus. And these Israelite people are wandering the desert, and they're tired, and they're hungry, and they are especially thirsty. And they're saying, "Moses, why did you take us out of Egypt? We always had water in Egypt. Everything was great there." And Moses literally says, "God, what do you want me to do with these people?" He's so annoyed, and they're thirsty. And so God has Moses take the staff that he parts the Red Sea with, and hits a rock, and water comes from it. And God says, "Essentially, why didn't you trust me? I'm going to provide to you." And so also Jesus using his scripture to call back to other wilderness moments to say, "God is going to provide, maybe even a miraculous way, but it's not just to be flashy and just for show."

How many people here have seen the movie Encanto? Good. Those of you not raising your hands, you're going to go home on Disney Plus, and you're going to watch it this afternoon, okay? For those of us who haven't seen it, the main character Mirabel is the only one in her entire very large extended family that doesn't have a gift. Some people can heal, change the weather, have extreme strength. So she sings this song, "I'm Waiting on a Miracle." I'm not going to sing it for you, but it's a long song, Maggie. The lyrics, some of the lyrics go,

"Someone please let me know where do I go? I'm sick of waiting on a miracle, so here I go. I'm ready. I've been patient and steadfast and steady. Bless me now as you blessed us all those years ago when you gave us a miracle. Am I too late for a miracle?"

And that's how wilderness feels a lot of times, right? Waiting for some kind of miracle, a cure for the diagnosis, for putting the bottle down to be easier this time than it was the last time, for parents to accept you with no strings. But just like Mirabel's miracle, I won't spoil it for you, but it's not always cinematic or strong enough for virality. They draw us deeper into belovedness. Wilderness miracles draw us deeper into relationship with God, into our communities, and into our own identities as beloved.

So finally, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, "Away with you, all of these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him.'" Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Maybe this seems like the most unrelatable temptation, you know, why would Jesus worship Satan? Obviously, he's the Son of God. He's going to worship God, be God. Until you really look into it, this temptation offers all power, influence, comfort, and control. Think about all these opportunities that we have where if you just don't talk about that injustice, if you just be more agreeable, if you just keep a little sweeter, stay a little smaller, be a little quieter, keep the status quo, you'll have the power, you'll have the influence, you just have to give up what you know is true. And Jesus refuses. His mission is not to take over. His mission is to participate with people in a radical kind of leadership. The whole point of Jesus is that he does not take power by force. If you think about Palm Sunday, everyone's expecting a ruler, a king to free them from Roman rule when Jesus's ministry is more about, is entirely about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom. And wilderness tells us this truth, tells us this truth that pursuing justice is what makes sense, that pursuing community and connection is what. And in this truth, it takes a little bit of work to find it, to find who we are, to find what we know is true.

Wilderness and grief often feels like a tornado that has gone through your town. Everything that was once a dependable landmark seemingly seems ripped out from underneath of. The totality of grief makes what was once the simplest path over to the neighborhood community entirely unknowable and completely covered. Just like after a tornado, slowly and with community, the street lamps are put back upright and branches and decay are cleared from neighbor's yards. Some storefronts open and some do not. Sarah Bessey again writes, "You'll never forget how it feels to be left out, left behind, cast away or abandoned. You'll never forget what it feels like after a tornado goes through your town and creates a wilderness landscape in front of you." And so already, a new map of goodness is being drawn in you. Healing is hard work. Harder than we ever know, plainer and more ordinarily steady than we expect. But what was meant to shame you or silence you or punish you will become the making of you. When you're confronted with the chance to take the easy way out, or at least what seems like it at first, take a moment to look under the branches and debris to find what you know is true, what you know is true about yourself, what you know is true about God, and lean on it until you can see your way back home.

Because I think that's what Jesus is doing in each of these scenarios, right? He's not clapping back to try to win some Torah Trivia against the devil. What I hear Jesus saying at each of these temptations that are oftentimes offered with scriptural backing is that doesn't match what I know to be true of God's character. That isn't what I know the goodness of God. When given offers of ease, shortcuts, and instant gratification, Christ says, "That's not what I know to be true." In doing so, He reveals not only His character, but God's. And the story ends with angels coming to Jesus' side, right? A great. I honestly don't know what this means, what this looks like. I hope it's some kind of food, hopefully some deep sleep, and maybe some echoes and whispers of the once resounding call at His baptism: "This is my beloved with whom I'm well pleased." Because immediately after this story, what calls Jesus out of the wilderness is not some magic set amount of time, but rather He finds out John the Baptist is put in jail. And He says, "Okay, it's time for me to head back." Bad news never had good timing, right? But it's after the stress test that Jesus leans in to what He knows to.

And it's my hope that moving into communion, that we all get even the smallest whisper of that wind. Right? We pray the Lord's Prayer, the prayer that Jesus taught us before we do communion every week, and we say, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." We pray for the strength to say back to the voices of temptation and stress tests, drawing us to ease and instant gratitude at the sacrifice of ourselves and others: That's just not who I know God to be. And if we're strong enough, may we be the ones to clear the debris on other’s streets and point them back to the way home.