(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Matthew 4: 1-11 (Lent 1A)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “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 will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

The wilderness story…we read some version of this in the first week of every Lenten season.  It makes sense.  It is the beginning of our journey.  It is the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross.  And it leaves a lot of really good fodder for discussion.  Oh, we could talk about the usual subjects.  We could talk about the way Jesus did not fall prey to the temptation to be powerful or protected or relevant.  Instead, Jesus let all that go.  He just was. And he started walking.

But where was he?  He had been led into the wilderness.  There was no map.  There is a faint remnant of a road that moves and flows and ebbs like waves as the winds blow over the sands.  The way is dim, sometimes non-existent.  You might be able to navigate if you knew the mountains well, if you knew which ones rise first and tower higher over the others.  You might be able to navigate when you think about where the beating sun is sitting, where it rises, where it falls.  But the way is not dependable.  The way is the way.  There is no map.

That is hard for us.  We want to know where we’re going. Oh, we’ve moved beyond maps for the most part.  There is instead a voice in the car or a voice on our phone that tells us where to go, that takes all the guesswork and most of the journeying out of the trip.  And with that, we have become dependent upon the voice, dependent upon being told the way and we soon find that we have somehow ceded our navigation to something that limits us, to something that controls us, to something that doesn’t allow us to deviate from the path.

I grew up with a dad that, I swear, knew every back road that was to be known.  He always had a “shortcut”.  And we always had maps.  I loved maps.  I was fascinated by them as far back as I can remember.  I remember navigating from the back seat with the tattered map that I never knew how to fold back the way it was meant to be.

Soon after I lost my dad, a friend and I drove to Taos, NM so that she could officiate at a wedding.  I just went along for the ride (and, apparently, navigation support).  It dawned on me that there were probably places in rural West Texas that might not respond to my GPS.  There was an excitement in me when I realized I needed a map!  Oh, I had a map!  It was the map my dad gave me when I went to college in 1980.  OK, maybe I needed a new map.  So, I went to Amazon and ordered maps for Texas and New Mexico.

Fast forward to rural West Texas.  Yep, there it was…that gray slice of nothingness in the middle of my iPhone straining to form a map.  So I pulled out the paper version.  And I began navigating.  One of those jaunts included a missed turn.  Not a problem…I have a map.  So, we drove down a barely-paved county road toward the road we meant to turn onto.  There were delightful farmhouses and beautiful vistas and the most wonderful 19^th century Spanish church and cemetery.  And we would have missed it all if we had had the GPS.  I remember commenting, “oh my goodness, Billy Don Williams is SO proud of us right now!”

The journey is not about the way; the way IS the Way.  So what do we breathe out?  We breathe out needing to follow a plan.  We breathe out needing to always know where we’re going.  We breathe out anything that gets in the way of the Way.  The journey is not mapped.  It’s a faint pathway and the winds may blow the sands so that sometimes it is concealed.  Keep walking.  What is the way?  It IS the way. Just listen. You’ll know where to go.

There is a journey you must take.  It is a journey without destination.  There is no map.  Your soul will lead you.  And you can take nothing with you. (Meister Eckhart)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli