We Have Been Here Before

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, based on the lections from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year A. While I do not have the rights to reprint Women’s Lectionary translations here, the NRSVU versions of the two readings referenced can be found here: 1 Samuel 9:1-3, 15-18, 10:1 and Acts 13:16–23 and Matthew 4:1-11

This week, our People’s Warden, Sarah Blain, opened a meeting by sharing an excerpt from the work of Howard Thurman, the Black theologian and civil rights leader who helped found the “intercultural, interracial, interfaith and interdenominational” Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and later became a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.

Written in 1953, the passage comes from his book Meditations of the Heart — a volume Sarah remembers each of her parents keeping on their bedside table when she was growing up.

It struck me so deeply, I offer it to you:

A reading from the Book of Howard Thurman: [i]

“During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that life goes on. This we are apt to forget … The mass attack of disillusion and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great deception. By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.

Let us not be deceived. It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces by which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained. Birds still sing; the stars continue to cast their gentle gleam over the desolation of the battlefields, and the heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gracious deed.

There is no need to fear evil. There is every need to understand what it does, how it operates in the world, what it draws upon to sustain itself. We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil. Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble of cities; the real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of man and to give to his soul the contagion of inner disintegration. When this happens, there is nothing left, the very citadel of man is captured and laid waste.

Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within. This would be to be overcome by evil. To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind—this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

When Sarah finished reading this passage, someone said, “That could have been written today.” Indeed, we too are living through “turbulent times.” We are witnessing bodies destroyed and cities reduced to rubble. We are seeing mistrust being cultivated and people encouraged to regard their neighbors not as human beings but as threats.

Just this week, we witnessed federal agents in plainclothes, without visible identification, forcefully detain and send two women – from San Francisco and Oakland respectively — away to detention — right here at San Francisco International Airport and at Denver International Airport. Two of our neighbors.

And when I witness these things, I do indeed feel a “mass attack of disillusion and despair” — a temptation to believe that cruelty has already won, and that nothing we do can make a difference. And this is the temptation of Thurman’s “great deception.”

And, this morning, we find Jesus in the wilderness, experiencing that same temptation. He has arrived in this desolate place directly after his baptism — an event full of movement and sound and life. The flowing of the river. The murmur of the crowd. The singing of birds. And the voice from heaven confirming and affirming his identity: “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

So many “little graces.” A moment when it must have been easy to know, to feel, to be absolutely assured of God’s presence and God’s love. But here in today’s reading, in the wilderness, with only the company of the devil, I imagine that moment felt awfully distant.

Because the devil was up to its old tricks—trying, as Thurman puts it, “to invade [his] thoughts” so that what Jesus knew “to be true and valid” might seem “unreal and ephemeral.” In other words, trying to make him forget.

To forget that moment. To forget who he was. To forget what the river’s current felt like. To forget the “little graces.” To forget God’s love.

But despite the devil’s best efforts, Jesus remembers. Three times the devil tempts him, and three times Jesus leans on familiar words from the texts of his tradition. Jesus reaches back to the stories of the people; to Deuteronomy. He remembers Israel in the wilderness. And perhaps he thinks to himself: “that could have been written today.” He remembers that we have been here before. We have been here before.

That, I think, is one of the most valuable, if heartbreaking, truths scripture brings us. Not that every historical moment is the same. Not that present suffering is less significant because others have suffered before us. But that fear, and violence, and untrustworthy leadership, and the temptation to despair are hardly new. That people have wondered before whether the whole world was coming apart. That people have walked through the wilderness, over and over and over. And God … has been there with the people every. time.

In First Samuel, God says, “I have seen the humiliation of my people, because their cry has come to me.” In the wilderness, God was there.

In Acts, Paul reminds us that human leaders — and systems of leadership — rise and fall. Institutions disappoint and crumble. But God brought the people out of Egypt. God accompanied them through the wilderness. In the wilderness, God was there.

When the present moment tempts us to crumble in despair, scripture stretches our vision both backward and forward. It’s not a stack of flash cards with exact dates and events to memorize from a neat, linear timeline. It is the shared spiritual memory of the people, helping us remember who we are, and look forward in hope.

We are never promised that there will be no wilderness. We are promised that even in the wilderness, God is here. We are not alone. Even when Jesus can’t hear the sound of the river’s current, the words spoken there remain “true and valid.”

The wilderness is real. And it can feel so vast that we forget there is anything else. But our challenge is to remember; to notice: birds still sing. Stars still shine.  And paying attention to them is not a distraction from resistance.  It is how we resist.

Because the temptation to allow the wilderness outside us to settle inside us is, well, the work of the devil. I pray that we may continue to show that “great deception” the door. To welcome the angels. To “drink in the beauty that is within reach,” together. Even in the wilderness.

[i] Thurman, Howard. Meditations of the Heart, Chapter 7: “Life Goes On.”