Bags of water in the desert
1st Sunday Lent A 3/1/20 Gen2,Rom5,Mt 4:1-11 E 7:30 JMayzik
Have you ever been at a time of your life when you were confused about what you should be doing, or which road you should follow, or to which tribe you should belong? I’m talking about serious moments of question in your life. Perhaps it’s graduation time, or when you are lost in your job, or when a relationship is bewildering, or when a radical opportunity offers itself up to you.
I’ve had a bunch of those moments. Probably the most dramatic one was when my mama died. It hit me much harder than I had expected. You know you kind of always expect your parents and your family to be there for you, even if you are separated by miles and miles and your physical contact is limited. My mother died at 1 in the morning in our house, and after the police and the funeral director had departed with the shell of a body she left behind, I watched the sun rise at dawn and suddenly realized that this would be the first day of my life on earth without her. Not long after, I was on a plane to California to try to sell a script to Hollywood, and I decided that after my meetings I would take some time to seek some clarity in the confusion I felt after that loss. I got the idea to spend some time in the desert. I had never been to any desert before, but I thought of all the people throughout history who retreated to the desert to face big questions in their lives.
Saint-Exupery, who wrote the classic book, The Little Prince, remarked that “one sits down on desert sand, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…”. Bags of water that we are, when you wander around a place devoid of that very requirement of our existence, it forces you to consider the real truths of your life. And in the emptiness of such a place, there is nowhere to hide.
It was exactly what I needed to do, because it was in the desert that I was able to hear the sometimes conflicting voices that spoke to me. It helped me to understand who I was as my mother’s son, and it enabled me to give her back to the universe from which she came.
Of course you don’t need a physical desert of burning sun and sand to hear the voice of God that I believe is always whispering to you. You can experience it on a solitary road trip, a walk beside the East River, in the middle of the night as the city sleeps all around you, even here in the darkness of the church when everyone has gone home.
On a busy Ash Wednesday a few years ago I was deeply enmeshed in a crisis of sorts on the college campus where I taught and worked as an administrator. It was one of those moments when I felt like I was floundering in my life, unsure of who I was and what I should be doing. That day I had taken a few very painful hits to my ego and I doubted my worth on many levels. Alone in my office around midnight, I found myself reading and rereading a bunch of emails on my computer, and nothing was making any sense. As I turned away from the screen and looked out my window, the moon looked as though it was fighting its own diminishment in the night sky.
I suddenly realized that Wednesday had turned to Thursday and I hadn’t even taken the time to get ashes for myself to begin the Lenten season. I felt somehow that I was missing something. So I went to the chapel. The place was empty, and I spent some time there quietly trying to begin my Lent. I noticed that there was a small dish on the altar, and when I went over to it, I saw that it was filled with ashes. Can you put ashes on yourself on Ash Thursday, even if you're a priest?, I wondered. And then I thought, why not? I looked around at the empty pews and thought, besides, who would know? And so I reached over to the dish, pushed my thumb deep into the powder of holy ashes, and traced a thick black cross upon my own forehead, saying out loud, 'Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return'.
I stood there, ashes on my forehead, alone in the chapel, and for a moment, an instant that seemed to be an eternity, I couldn't remember who I was--it was like I had amnesia, as though I had no past at all, just the present. I looked down at my hands, at my body, my feet. 'Dust, and to dust you shall return', the words were echoing inside me, and I looked over to the wall, there was a huge statue of Jesus with his arms held way up over his head, reaching up into the heavens. His arms outstretched, taut, reaching out, or being pulled upward. For a moment that's all there was, just me, hands, body, feet with no past and no future, only the present, and Jesus reaching out and up on the wall. And all these questions poured out of my heart into the darkness of that chapel. Who am I? Who should I be? What do you want from me? Over and over again, my questions, looking up at Jesus, glued to the wall. And then this overwhelming sense that I should be silent, shut it up, stop. Listen. Just listen. And it was like I was in the desert again, on top of the hill, waiting for the Word. The Word for me.
And then a voice, from the back of the chapel. Not a heavenly messenger. It was the security guard and just as suddenly I was back in the world, with a past, present and future and a name: "We're locking up, Fr Mayzik," and after a pause, I said, "Yes, thank you,". The campus bell struck one and I went home with ashes on my forehead, the moon still fighting the darkness above.
Who am I? was the question that Jesus went into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to be answered. For a moment, at the river Jordan, baptized by his cousin, there was a voice—was it human? Was it the wind? The sound of a dog barking far away? "This is my Son, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests". At that moment, there was no past, just the present: hands, body and feet drenched in the muddy waters of the Jordan. He spent 40 days trying to figure that out, starving himself in the dust of the desert, looking at his hands, his body and his feet, "You are dust and unto dust you shall return", and ultimately tested in temptation after temptation to disbelieve the words he heard at the river: "My Son, my Beloved...". At the end of the test, he knew who he was, and what that meant he had to do, and from that moment onward, his whole being was pointed upward, taut arms outstretched way above his head, reaching towards the heavens, reaching towards the One who made him and defined for him--from the beginning--just exactly who he was, and is.
Exactly who we were, are and always will be. The same as Jesus, we are daughters and sons of our Father the Creator, and we are beloved. We never believe that enough, and in our disbelief, like Adam and Eve, we try everything out there in search of the truth that has already been spoken to us and lived for us, outstretched towards the heavens. May this Lent be such a moment for all of us, a moment when we have no past and no future, only the dusty present, forgetting everything but the one truth Jesus grasped in the desert. "You are dust, and unto dust you shall return, my sons, my daughters, my beloved."
May we use these 40 days and 40 nights in pursuit of that truth, waking every day and going to rest every night with the prayer that we come to know exactly who we are and what we are meant to do.