Walking the contours of the heart, or just walking down Lincoln Avenue

Luke 4:1-13 

If you drive through the city of Chicago, you’ll notice that there are a handful of streets that are a little odd and don’t quite seem to fit the city grid system.  In 1833, the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commission drew a city plan for Chicago which established a street grid for most of Chicago’s streets.  These streets like Wilson and Western run north/south/east/west.  However, there is the odd street here and there that doesn’t quite match the grids.  

Lincoln Avenue, which runs on a diagonal just west of us here, comes to mind.  While I know that some people know how to “work the diagonals in the city,” I would be lying if I say that I’ve never been tripped up by one of them. I’ve had my fair share of times where I’ve turned on one of these diagonal roads off the traditional city grid, and suddenly gotten myself turned around and stuck in a mess of one way streets and dead ends.

Our Bible story today has Jesus thrown off the predictable grid of his kingly life and tipped sideways onto a diagonal street.  This story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert happens pretty early on in his life.  Right before this story, things are going pretty good for Jesus:  Choirs of angels sang when he was born, people were amazed by him when he taught at the temple.  No one has yet scorned him or spit at him. No one has tried to run him off a cliff or tried to trick him.  Most recently in the pages of scripture, he was baptized and God’s voice cried out from the heavens and declared that Jesus was precious and beloved.  Things have been going good when suddenly Jesus is thrown off the predictable grid and into the desert wilderness for 40 days.

Wilderness comes in all shapes and sizes.  Barbara Brown Taylor writes that, “the only way you can really tell if you’re in one is to look around for what you normally count on to save your life and come up empty.”  That’s a wilderness. I’m pretty sure that we’ve all known some sort of wilderness before.  

Maybe it looks like walking out of work with the news that your employment is ending.  Maybe it’s the stress of having a family member who is really, really struggling or sick. Maybe it is staying too long in a bad a relationship.  When we talk of the ash of Ash Wednesday that we wear on our foreheads, we are speaking of the wilderness ash of grief and weary exhaustion, sin that sickens us and our world, the things that imprison us, the fears that eat away at us. Needless to say, no one looks for the wilderness.  I certainly haven’t. No one looks for the street that turns you sideways off the grid and disorients you. And yet, scripture tells us that Jesus is led to the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. Author, Kaitlyn Curtice explains that[i] in her Native American tradition, around the time of puberty, a young man may leave for a wilderness experience—sometimes accompanied by an elder, sometimes alone.  The book, American Indian Healing Arts, explains it like this: “[the youth] goes off by [themselves] to seek a vision. [they] spends four or five days and nights fasting, alone with [their] thoughts, on a windswept butte or within a shallow pit.  [They] learns to deal with fear and find out about his own personal strengths.” Caitlyn Curtice goes on to explain that “A vision quest [like this] draws a person deeper inside [themselves] and at the same time allows [them] to look at [themselves] from outside. So much does a person learn in the process that in many tribes it is thought to be essential to the proper evolution of a healthy life path.”

Pete Catches, a noted Lakota medicine man, once said, ‘I do believe every young Indian, about high school age, should do a han ble che yapi (vision quest) to get direction in life, to know what life is all about.’ Jesus, out there in the wilderness, Curitce says, “learned something about himself.” It was a kind of “communion with the wilderness that taught him about himself and prepared him for his coming ministry and journey.  We cannot know what kind of conversations happened in that quiet, but I can imagine there were a lot of thoughts coming in and out of Jesus’ existence. And in his struggle with spirits— evil and good, past and present—(Curtice writes) he found himself, and his voice, and his own spiritual journey unfolding.”

When the glaciers receded from this area which is now Chicago, some 10,000 years ago, they left in their wake carved valleys, hills and ridges.  Some historians suggest that, once upon a time, Lincoln avenue down the block, for example, ran along a slight geological ridge.  Ancient Indigenous peoples created and traversed these trading trails along high ridges in order to avoid the boggy marshlands and wetlands.  Our city of Chicago is built on land that was home to Indigenous tribes for hundreds of years.  Potowatomi, Mishigama, Inoka, the Iliani tribes.  In 1833, the same year that the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commission drew a city grid plan for Chicago, the Treaty of Chicago was struck which granted the US government all of the land west of Lake Michigan and extended up to Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. Turns out that these diagonal streets like Lincoln and Elston Avenues follow the ancient contours of the earth pretty closely. There’s Milwaukee Avenue which was once, historians say, a buffalo route that led to the Chicago River.[ii][iii]  For those of you who know your city streets, Rush street is another well known diagonal downtown, it’s part of a trail which originally started at the North end of the Michigan Avenue bridge at the Chicago river, ran up that diagonal of Rush street and then cut over to Clark which also bends into a diagonal at North Avenue and heads north out of the city.[iv]  These old Native American trails that we know of as our diagonal streets follow the ancient natural contours of the land.  These paths navigate the valleys and the crests, the ridges and the uneven surfaces.  Yeah, today’s roads have been straightened a little.  But they’re there. Originally they meandered a little more, taking their time in the dangerous areas, routing safely through the wetlands.

 This road of wilderness which we all have known and will know has been walked before.  The Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years, Jesus sat in the wilderness for forty days. The journey of wilderness, even when it is uncomfortable and a little frightening, Curtice writes, is sacred.  Yes, Jesus and the Israelites were delivered, YES, they were delivered, out of the wilderness but they were delivered new, changed and transformed. Jesus, after walking the contours of his heart, stumbling on the unstable ground, and reflecting on the route before him came out of the wilderness a new version of himself.  Because God is faithful and with us, and even comes to us in the ash of life.

I wonder if something about Jesus’ belovedness had sunk into his bones when he was out there in the wilderness.  Was God’s voice somehow sharpened? We will never know, but I do wonder if he came out steadier, more peaceful, more convicted, more resolute, and more certain that he was deeply beloved to God.   

It was only after this very intense experience in the wilderness, that we hear from scripture that Jesus was “filled with the power of the Spirit, and returned to Galilee.” As we walk the contours of our hearts this Lenten season, as we think about what to cultivate in our souls and what to let go of, I wonder how we might be shaped and emboldened by God…  How God might prepare us as disciples for ministry?

This Lent when you are traveling around the city, and you run across one of these diagonal streets over in the Square, or riding the bus or downtown or even driving the diagonal Kennedy expressway out of the city (which is also an old Native American trail), I wonder if you might pause and slow down and remember to walk those offbeat contours of your own heart. Just as Jesus began in his wilderness, so we will begin in ours, again and again. Because while, yes, this holy life we live is laced with wilderness and ash, it is also painted with beauty and hope.  Blessed be the journey.

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[i] https://kaitlincurtice.com/2017/05/08/jesus-us-a-shared-wilderness/

[ii] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-12-18-9712180088-story.html

[iii] http://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/chicago-native-americans/

[iv] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-12-18-9712180088-story.html

When God is Silent. Remembering Ida and Esther on Bold Woman's Sunday

In today’s story, a royal order has gone out to kill all of the Jewish people living in Persia—a genocide.  King Xerxes, who issued the order, is flighty and superficial and he was persuaded by evil Hammon to kill all of the Jews in the region.  Little does the King know that his own wife, the Queen Esther who he adores  (because she’s apparently very beautiful) is secretly a Jew.  In the piece of the story that we’re about to hear, Queen Esther meets with her Jewish cousin, Mordecai, who tries to persuade her to use her power as queen to act and save her Jewish people: Esther 4:1-17

The book of Esther was one of the final books to be added to the Hebrew Bible.  A fun fact about the book of Esther: There is no mention of God or prayer throughout the entire book.  Martin Luther detested the book, said it was worthless and full of “pagan naughtiness.” In all fairness, the ancient Rabbis were also bothered by the fact that there was no mention of God in the book of Esther.  There is that one point in the story we just read where cousin Mordecai tells Queen Esther that if she doesn’t do something to save her people who are at risk of genocide, “relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place.” In trying to rationalize why there was a book of the Hebrew Bible with no mention of God, the Rabbis said that “some other place” is a subtle reference to God.  So, you see!? They said, God is mentioned in the story of Esther! Could be. But wow, that is a pretty subtle reference to the Almighty.

This morning we heard two stories: One of Jesus transfigured into his most Godliest and awesome of selves where he levitated above the mountain and another story of queen Esther where there is nary a mention or a peep about God.

Truth be told, I think my life probably looks more like Esther’s than the disciples. I don’t know about you, I would love for an experience of God like the one that the disciples had with Jesus up there on the mountain. Or I could use a lightening bolt, or something super obvious, like if God would just part the traffic on the Kennedy like the red sea, and I would just sail through…  In all seriousness, who cares about the traffic.  I could mention a whole lot of other things in our world and lives where it seems like we could use a couple of lightening bolts. Or just a voice, or a response, or an assurance that God is indeed there and active. 

It’s sort of ironic because we are surrounded by so many words these days.  Our phones are a constant stream of updates, email notifications, headlines, social media updates, and texts.  There are podcasts and morning edition and new songs to listen to. There’s the nightly news, opinion columns, work emails announcements from school, announcements from church. The snail mail is more information to process, bills to pay, solicitations for money.  Even when I ride the El or drive, it’s a constant stream of adds and billboards and so many photos of Brian Urlachers head, and I read each one of those billboards—tackle balding, breaking bald—why?! Why do I read them?!

All of these words compete for our attention.  And yet, the voice of God can seem so oddly silent. The Episcopalian priest, Barbara Brown Taylor writes that “Very few people come to see me because they want to discuss something God said to them last night.  The large majority come because they cannot get God to say anything at all.”

I get that.  Maybe a lot of us do.  I have had times of urgency and anguish where I long to hear the voice of God. Times when I’ve whispered repetitive and desperate prayers to God.  And instead in response there’s this sort of void. And… I’ve also had moments of business and distraction where the voice of God is muted by all the noise of my life and suddenly I realize that I am out of touch and disconnected with Holiness.

I think that longing for a word from God is a pretty common experience.  More than half of the psalms are the people crying out to God— Hey! Where are you, God! Answer me! I’m upset about something! Mother Theresa famously wrote letters where she wrote of her doubt and longing for certainty from God.   There’s writer and activist, Elie Wiesel, who told heart-wrenchingly of the moms and dads and grandparents trying to figure out where God was during the agony Holocaust in the concentration camps.  There’s Kate Bowler who wrote a book in 2018 trying to figure out where God is in the midst of a cancer diagnosis.  Where is God in grief, unemployment, or the daily grind of life when you find yourself mindlessly staring at pictures of Brian Urlacher’s head…?  I think it’s part of what it means to be human to long for connection and conversation with God—if not a lightening bolt, then one or two little words would do. 

One of history’s anguished stories of the silence of God is the story of Ida B. Wells. Ida grew up and came of age during the period of Reconstruction of the South after our Civil War.  When Ida was 30 years old (in 1892), one of her dearest friends, Tom Moss, was lynched with two other men.  Ida had stumbled into her calling as a journalist, first who wrote about Black life, and eventually she became a very prominent investigative reporter. After her friend Tom, was murdered, Ida began to connect the dots and see that there was a deeper motivation behind the lynchings which was designed to terrorize Black people and preserve racist social structures.  When she spoke truth about lynching later that year in a blistering editorial, she was run out of the South and didn’t return for another 30 years.

During that time, she moved to Chicago, married and her husband, a prominent lawyer who cared for their 4 children, while she traveled all over the place speaking about the evils of mob violence, sexual violence against black women, and the lynching of both men and women.  When Eliza Woods was lynched, Ida later wrote in her diary, “Oh, my God! Can such things be and no justice for it?”

Our Bible echos stories of people in situations where it seems like God is silent or even absent. Like the story of Esther’s.  The different stories across scripture have different responses to God’s silence.

In today’s story, where God seems absent, Esther’s cousin Mordecai has some words for her. Yes, Esther, he tells her. I know you are terrified about asking the King for this favor to stop this genocide against the Jewish people, but you must work for life. He implores her to have courage, to persist and to answer God’s call. It’s a call which is also placed upon on our lives. It’s a call to show up in the world as a disciple and work for life.

Cousin Mordecai’s advice to Esther is part of a pattern that we have inherited as people of faith.  Think, again, of Ida B. Wells. She lived during a violent and desperate time in our nation’s history wrought with injustice and evil.  Four years after she was run out of the south, the US supreme court decided that people classified as black and people classified as white were separate but equal. (Although in practice, that meant, separate but unequal because this meant legal segregation and we know the truth of that evil in our history.  That supreme court decision would be upheld for the next 69 years until after Ida’s lifetime. 

Although Ida’s voice was fiery, and she called out for God to answer, she didn’t win many victories.  She was scorned by prominent papers. She was threatened. She was very radical and edgy and subsequently written off. She didn’t see much change during her lifetime.  But, by God, she worked for life.

When God is silent or absent or when we just aren’t sure where in the world God is calling us, we work for life. To “work for life” means to answer God’s call to discipleship, even when we’re not sure what the outcome will be. To work for life is to serve which is just good old fashioned loving one another. To work for life is to do our best to embody compassion, to advocate for justice for all of creation, to humble ourselves and speak truth to power when we are called. To work for life, is to get out of bed on a Sunday morning and offer our lives and our very selves here in thanksgiving to God. To work for life is to have faith that, though God’s activity might be hidden, we are a part of it.  And even when we don’t have faith, we trust that the practice of living as disciples of Jesus will keep us close to God. For there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love—not silence, neither height, nor depth, nor evil, nor angels nor demons, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord; and it is bathed in that love that we are reminded that we are part of a project that is larger than we can comprehend.  And we show up in the world as disciples of Jesus and we work for life.

Queen Esther courageously asked the King to spare her people, and he did.  Ida B. Wells was a prophet and paved the way for a new chapter in the struggle for equal rights--a new chapter which we now remember as the Civil Rights Movement.  God worked though both of these women, just as God works through us even when we don’t sense it.

Now, I don’t know if any of us here can compare ourselves to Ida Barnes Wells or Esther, Queen of Persia, but—by the grace of God—we can stand on their shoulders.

Blessed be the journey.