Led into Vulnerability, a sermon delivered in Christ Chapel on March 4, 2004, by James Flowers, Class of 2004 from the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast

He is the Way. Follow him through the land of unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth. Seek him in the kingdom of anxiety.

There is something about the desert. It has an alluring beauty all its own. Just a year and a half ago Katharine and I traveled with some friends to the Big Bend to witness first hand this mysterious beauty so lauded by those I knew who had been there, and they were right. It was beautiful: Ancient rock formations painted in elegant and subtle pastel; cacti, ocotillo; Silverado sage a deep lavender; the poignant smell of creosote in the air; a coyote; birds indignant to our presence; converging mountain ranges honed over millions upon millions of years by wind and water and earthquake; craggy igneous peaks pushed out of the earth towards heaven; At night one can see the lighted river of gas and metal that we call the milky way un-obscured by the artificial lighting of our world not present in this remote place; planets appearing somehow closer than ever; more stars than I have ever seen in my life wheeling in a vast and mysterious order; the awe of our receiving their light that has traveled far across the universe over eons to meet our eyes in a moment…..Beautiful indeed.

But there was another side. I noticed upon our arriving that once one headed south from Marathon, Texas, we passed no gas stations. From the backseat, I kept a steady eye on my friends' gas-gauge. Cell phones no longer worked; we passed fewer and fewer buildings. We didn't see any people at all. At the welcome station I noticed a brochure that suggested appropriate behavior upon encountering wild animals: snakes, coyotes, mountain lions, bears. We were told to keep large quantities of water with us at all times. I could feel the anxiety well within me. During the first day I was preoccupied trying to remember which animal it was you backed away from slowly, and which was the one from which you just turned and ran like hell. There were times during our hikes that I felt something was watching me. Perhaps we were being pursued, hunted. It was a possibility.

This desert, this place of unlikeness at the very edge of the world, at the margins of inhabitable existence, is an emblem of what creation is really like: It is beautiful but dangerous; it is diverse, life springs inexorable in it, yet it is so very fragile and provisional. There is a profound silence in the desert that invites one's deepest thoughts. Truth itself seems near, impending, in a desert. I have read that there are times in the desert silence that one can hear one's own heartbeat. What would one discern by listening to one's heart? Desert unlikeness: Beautiful and mysterious; uncontrollable…. and dangerous. It is a place of poignant vulnerability.

It is to this alluring and dangerous place at the edge of the world that the Spirit leads Jesus. This is a place for him of extreme vulnerability… and it is a place of crisis. The imagery is rich here in Luke. He obviously wants to make the connection between Jesus and the prophets and sages before him. Jesus' forty day fast would connect him to Elija and Elisha. His being tested reminds us of Solomon the Sage being tested by YHWH. His quoting Deuteronomy would evoke the figure of Moses. It is of utmost importance to Luke that Jesus is the culminating figure, the epitome of the prophetic tradition in Israel's history.

By using the number forty and by employing the setting in the desert, any hearer worth his or her salt would remember the sojourn and plight of Israel for forty years after the exodus from Egypt, as well. Jesus is shown in our pericope to be the personification of the New Israel, in the line of the great prophets, that he, the anointed one, and the movement he represents is the way forward. He is the obedient one in contrast to his ancestors before him. These are important themes to be sure in Luke, but the force of this pericope lies, I believe, in the crisis of temptation itself. Here, we see Jesus in crisis. And this is no ordinary crisis, but, like his ancestors, a crisis of faith. Vulnerability abounds: in the landscape, in Jesus' heart and in his very faith. Everything is at stake: His life, the movement; the world's salvation. All are at risk. The desert after all is a dangerous place. Here we witness Jesus wrestling with his own self-doubt. As Israel doubted their call and future, as the church doubts its call and future; so too does Jesus necessarily confront the very same demon.

And why not doubt it. Why not question it. This is a movement that has as its guiding principles an ethic utterly foreign to the status quo. It is a narrow way: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who abuse you; loan money with no expectation of getting paid back; don't judge; always forgive. Turn your check to receive another blow. Who wouldn't doubt. The devil cleverly perceives the crisis. He senses the same need to cry for rescue from Jesus that his ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai cried… A cry from the belly of the crisis of faith. The devil quotes a portion of Psalm 91 that speaks directly of God's rescuing those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High. For those who do, according to Psalm 91, God will slay their enemies, God will give long life, he will bear you up, no evil will happen to you, you will tread on the lion and adder. He will give you honor. He certainly wouldn't lead you into such a dangerous place as this. God wants for you safety and peace. God wants you satisfied and protected…. The devil makes a pretty good case. The contrast to the call of the faithful is stunning. The words of the Psalm must have felt empty to a movement that finds itself continuously persecuted: Suffering and death pursuing them at every turn. Jesus is in crisis as the church of Luke's day must have surely been in crisis as well. His community would hear the hard words of the sermon on the plain and the comforting words of Psalm 91 as well. The contrast is palpable, palpable as one's heartbeat in the desert. Of course one would doubt. It is always tempting to doubt the way. We in this room doubt the way forward. A tempting argument can always be made against it. So the question burns hot: Is this truly the way, this way of unlikeness, this way of the desert, this way of anxiety, this life of vulnerability. The devil offers the opportunity for an abundant life in and of the world, a chance for tangible status by living in complicity with the powers and principalities of the age whom the devil himself represents in this passage. Doesn't God promise wealth and power for those who abide in his steadfast love? Psalm 91 implies as much.

This of course is our crisis as well. Do we acquiesce to the powers and principalities of our world? Do we look for honor and power in society and in the church? Is our faith walk about our rescue only? Do we cry to be rescued from the hard journey to which we are called? Or do we allow the desert to allure us into the only true choice we have: and that is the beautiful and dangerous way of unlikeness. This way is provisional and risky. This way holds vulnerability, not power, as the cardinal virtue. But this way, as Jesus reasoned in his trial in the desert, is a way of fecund potential. It is the way consecrated by the tradition. This is the way that engenders selfless love in an intensely self-interested world. Doubts abound… but doubt, as Tillach artfully put it, is a vital dynamic of faith. I am convinced that a faith not in crisis is a faith that lacks the Hudzpah for saying no to the powers that would prevent the life-giving praxis of the Gospel. A faith in crisis insists on the presence of the Spirit, which empowers one and all for the journey into unlikeness and sacred vulnerability.

The faith that Jesus models here in Luke is a faith that consciously and critically tests itself. It is a faith that inevitably leads us to the margins of existence…into the desert. This faith calls us as community into creative self examination, into the place of vulnerability wherein we meet God's people face to face. In the desert all are in solidarity, because we need each other there. Jesus models this solidarity. He continues on the way, danger, doubts and all, trusting God's promise that God will provide. He knows in his heart of hearts, even in the face of temptation to the contrary, that this odd and mysterious way is the only way, the only way to life and light for a world fallow for it.

At the climax of Luke's Gospel, Jesus gives his legacy, the Holy Spirit, to the church so that they/we might be empowered to continue to make our way anew. This beautiful, mysterious and ambiguous way is the means of the world's salvation. It stands against the status quo of injustice. It finds its life in the ambiguous sands of the desert. In the desert we can hear our own heartbeat. Perhaps in hearing our own heartbeat amid the sands and stones of the desert, we might know something of God's heartbeat, who made our hearts in the image of God's own. It is a heart at risk.... It is a heart open to the other….. It is a heart that bears all things….. It is a vulnerable heart…. in a vulnerable landscape.