Mark
tells us that immediately after his baptism Jesus is driven into the wilderness
by the Holy Spirit. “Driven” is an
interesting word. Given that Jesus
had just heard a voice from heaven and then is swept off into a desolate
region, if it were a different person and a different circumstance we might
wonder what sort of mental illness has gripped him. But here, I think it is best to understand “driven” as
“compelled.” Jesus has just had a
truly life-changing experience, but needs to make sense of what it means. To do that he withdraws from society to
a place that is austere, that is without distractions.
It is during this time that
Jesus comes to realize and internalize the most important truths of life:
- That he comes from God.
- That he belongs to God.
- That he is loved by God.
- That all of life is lived in God.
- That he is called by God.
- That one day he will return to God.
These are things he could only
come to know in the wilderness. It
becomes that experience where he gains clarity, claims identity, and discerns
purpose.
Perhaps no greater task lies
before the Church today than to gain clarity, claim identity, and discern
purpose: clarity about what is happening in our culture, identity as to how to
be God’s people in our times, and purpose as to how to be evangelists of God’s
love for our hurting world.
C.S. Lewis, writing at the
outset of World War II, observed “something in the world has changed, you can
feel it the air.” Often it is
difficult to figure out what exactly has changed when you are living in the
midst of it, but every now and then you get a glimpse. Here is one: In 1999, a survey asked
Americans, “Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious,” “Spiritual” refers to an experience of
faith while “religious” indicates involvement with an institutional
organization. 54% identified
themselves as being “religious but not spiritual.” Just ten years later, in 2009, only 9 percent of Americans
responded that way. 30% said they
are “spiritual but not religious.”
That is a pretty dramatic change in just one decade, isn’t it. It suggests that fewer and fewer people
are interested in doing what we do here every Sunday morning.
The culture is changing in
ways we don’t understand and we in the Church are struggling to figure out how
to share the Gospel with people who don’t think we can provide something to
satisfy their spiritual hunger. At
least year’s diocesan council, our speaker, Phyllis Tickle, described what is
happening through the metaphor of pay phones. Since the invention of the pay phone, its use increased
steadily up until 1989. At that
point the number of people placing phone calls through pay phones plummeted at
a staggering rate. If you looked
only at that data you might conclude that people no longer want to be in verbal
contact with one another, which, of course, is not the case. Communication is more important now
than ever, but pay phones are no longer where they turn to stay connected. If we in the Church were in the
communication business, you could say that we have built some of the nicest
phone booths anyone has ever seen, but we can’t figure out why fewer and fewer
people are coming to us to place a call.
I have been ordained for
twenty-five years now and for most of that time I have been ministering in
phone booths whose patrons are truly wonderful, kind, loving, faithful
people. More and more I sense that
the last fifteen years of my active ministry are going to be spent figuring out
how to be the Church in a world no longer interested in phone booths or
churches, but longing to know kind, loving, faithful people.
Here is another way our
culture has changed. In 1960 only
5% of babies born were delivered by unmarried women. In 2010 it has risen to 42%, an eight-fold increase. Today’s children are growing up in very
different home environments than the culture of my childhood.
Divorce plays into this as
well. I recently read the story of
a twenty-something year old woman by the name of Ashley who was on a
cross-country plane trip seated next to a twelve-year-old girl. The girl’s mom had put her on the plane
to visit her father. She told
Ashley that her parents were divorced and her dad had a job in Georgia so she
flies there a couple times a year to visit him. This was her second trip alone on a plane. The two struck up a conversation that
day and when the flight ended the girl said to Ashley, “I think you know me better
than anyone else in the world.”
What does that say?
Our children are being born
into social settings very different from what most of us here knew growing
up. Often their lives are marked
by profound loneliness and they are alienated from the guiding institutions
which helped to form and shape us.
How desperately do they need to gain clarity, claim identity, and
discern purpose? The Gospel
compels us to minister to those so lost and hurting.
We could go on, citing
statistic after statistic that all point to the same things:
- The world has changed in ways we find difficult to comprehend.
- Organized religion is not nearly as exalted in our society as it once was.
- Those of us who love the Church struggle to understand why others don’t.
- For all that our modern culture can do for people, there is still a gapping hole that only God can fill.
- We in the church have not figured out how to share our faith in a way that resonates with people, speaking to the emptiness of their lives.
I wonder if I – if we – can
hear the baptizing voice of God speaking: “I love you and I have chosen
you.” Are we – am I – willing to
pray for God’s Spirit to fall on us and compel us into a wilderness where we
might gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose? For years and years we were so good at
communicating the Gospel by being a phone booth, but now phone booths are
obsolete. The Gospel, praise God,
never goes out of style, even if the way we convey it has a shelf-life and does
not last forever.
One person is on the right
track – Ashley. She stayed in
touch with her twelve-year-old friend long after the trip had ended through
texts, phone calls, facebook friends… everything the digital age provides to
help people connect and build a relationship. Ashley found a way to share her faith in Christ with a young
girl she met briefly on an airplane.
A year later that girl decided she wanted to be a follower of Christ
too.
The good news is that the
faith is going to go on. The ways
it gets transmitted from one generation to another is a very different
matter. St. Paul’s is such a rich,
wonderful deposit of Christian faith and living and it has so much to offer to
those who are lost and alone in this world - and their number is
staggering. What can we do? Perhaps it is time we got driven into
the wilderness in order to gain clarity, claim identity, and discern purpose.
