Two weeks ago I preached a sermon on Jesus’ expulsion into the wilderness after his baptism. As I’ve said before, we preachers tend to preach to ourselves along the way. What you also may not know is that sometimes the sermon sticks with us after we preach it, the way it can stick with parishioners who hear it. Sometimes people have stopped me weeks after a sermon to tell me that they are still “chewing on it”. Well, we sometimes do the same thing. For me, the one that is sticking with me is the sermon on the wilderness. And it comes from an unexpected place, in one sense.

As sometimes happens with preaching, we preachers edit on the fly. We revise and adjust, adding or taking away, depending on how the Spirit moves. During the third iteration of that sermon, so the one at 9:15, I heard words escape my mouth that weren’t in my original text: “We can stay out of the woods, but we can’t stay out of the wilderness.” It fit perfectly with what I had been saying, yet it wasn’t a concise thought until it popped out. I have continued to think on it ever since, recognizing the work of the Spirit in it. 

The point I was making in that part of the sermon was building off the idea that Jesus’ wilderness experience was not a camping trip. It was something much more than that. Wilderness experiences are a bit wild, hence the name. Camping or traveling in a true wilderness area is a bit scary and dangerous, which is why we (most of us) don’t go to those wild, untamed places. We stay in places with paved roads and starred ratings, and maybe a complimentary happy hour each evening. We are perfectly content and able to spend our lives in inhabited and inhabitable places, leaving the wild areas for the animals and the humans who like that sort of thing. 

What I was also pointing out was that we find ourselves in wilderness experiences anyway, in the spiritual sense. No matter what we do. My continued thinking on this has been to realize that we can try different things to reduce the likelihood of such experiences, based on where we live, what we do with our free time, whether we attend religious services regularly (they can be hazardous to our ego!), who we see socially, what news outlets we choose to read (and believe). That is all designed to help keep things on an even keel, with as little boat rocking as possible. And yet that won’t always do the trick. Cancer finds its way in. Depression will not be held at bay. Aging doesn’t care what we want. Discernment can’t be forced or ignored. We simply find ourselves in wilderness experiences.

I also realize that while we can’t prevent them, we can create the environment for them as well; some wilderness experiences are helpful. For example, when I was looking at seminaries, a priest in my home parish insisted that I go to General Seminary in New York. He thought there was no better way to get down into the nitty gritty of the world than to live with it in New York City. He explained what a gift it had been to him to study in a place that forced him to deal with homeless persons on the doorstep and gay folks, which he had little experience with. His concept wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t applicable to me. 

First, I didn’t grow up in rural Kentucky, nor did I have a career in the military before heading off to seminary, both of which were large parts of his story. His own life experiences meant that he didn’t have a lot of experience with homelessness and homosexuality (that he was aware of anyway), but that wasn’t my experience. I grew up, literally, around homeless persons because my home parish, and my family in particular, ministered to homeless persons. I wasn’t scared of them, nor did I avoid them. As I child, I knew quite a few by name, and ate my lunch right alongside them in the parish hall. I also had family connections to gay people and was taught acceptance and love from a young age. My mother was also the person who led the charge in our diocese when AIDS ministry was a both a new and necessary idea and afflicting the gay community in large numbers. For me, going to New York was not going to provide an earth shattering experience like it did for him. I wasn’t going to hide in Sewanee (and I didn’t), although that’s why he chose not to go there. For him, Sewanee would have provided a hiding place for a while longer.

One of the things I realized in that back and forth is that a person can try to hide from some things anywhere they are. I’m sure there are people who live in New York and Sewanee and find ways to ignore homelessness. And I guarantee there are people everywhere who continue to ignore homosexuality in their midst; maybe even in their own family. Even by putting ourselves in the midst of something does not mean we’ll experience it. It doesn’t mean we’ll be driven to a wilderness place of introspection and growth. But it can happen. If we need certain experiences, we can move towards them and make such encounters more likely. Or, we may just find ourselves in the midst of it against our will, when it’s our loved one on the street, or our child who comes out of the closet. 

I guess what I’m reflecting on, when it comes to wilderness experiences, is that they are never easy, but can still lead us to new places. Some we would never wish on anyone, like the death or illness of a loved one, and yet we deal with them anyway. Others are less painful, but also beneficial, like instances that challenge a long-held assumption or a misplaced fear that has been driving a lifetime’s decisions and actions. In truth, we can avoid some of the lesser ones by living in our bubble, and simply not engaging the world around us. But that doesn’t mean we should. 

The other takeaway has been the assurance that our wilderness wanderings always include God. We may feel lost and alone, but we’re not. Not in the least. And let me be clear here – although I said we preachers preach to ourselves and wrestle with topics ourselves, my wonderings this week and half have not been because I’m in a wilderness place at the moment, but because I’ve been doing ministry with some folks in one wilderness or another. My wondering is how I process how to help them as best I can. For now, it’s to help them find God in the midst of their wandering, in the hopes that through that connection they’ll find their way to a new and hopeful place. Wilderness moments don’t last forever; thank you, God. We can stay out of the woods, but not the wilderness. And we’ll never be alone in either.

Tom+

Heavenly Father, we thank you for our journeys, and for the many persons who serve us along the way. We thank you for your guiding hand, preserving us from danger, seen and unseen, along the way, and for your presence at every destination. Grant that our wisdom in ordering our lives may increase as fast as our skill in conquering distance, so that all our journeys may be undertaken with care and ended with praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Adapted from a prayer in, Prayers, Thanksgivings, and Litanies.