May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
I cannot tell you how good it is to be here. It is so good to be in this place and to look out and see you.
I love Incarnation very much - and it is so fun to hear about all the wonderful things that have been going on here under Doug and Adrian’s leadership, and to join you in worship and prayer, which is something that you do with such depth and style.
California living is great - it turns out that winter is entirely optional, and I am really enjoying a life without snow shoveling, scarves and frozen sidewalks.
But I do miss New York and New Yorkers. When I first moved to California, a fellow East Coast transplant warned me that the Bay Area is, and I quote, “an irony-free zone.” And I have found that to be true. Californians are very earnest about everything. What they eat, what they don’t eat which is mostly gluten, their hobbies and pasttimes. I miss the thread of self-awareness and humor that New Yorkers have.
I have also noticed that in California, everyone is always doing great all the time. You very rarely get a Californian to admit that anything is wrong, ever.
And that makes me think of Ash Wednesday at Incarnation. Every year that I was here for Lent, I was amazed as 600, 700 people would walk through those doors to receive ashes, to be told that they are sinners who need to repent and that they are fragile and will one day die. People from all walks of life, from all over the city, all over the world, flooding in here to be told some bad news.
It’s a testament to how many people feel a spiritual connection to this church, whether or not they attend on Sundays.
But why Ash Wednesday? Why come on a day when you get some very un-Californian, very unoptimistic, bad news. A bigger crowd than Easter and Christmas even. Why in the world is that the message that brings people pouring through the doors?
You can tell me your theory on your way out the door, but my theory is this: people, whether they are regular churchgoers are not, are dying to be told that they’re not okay.
Think about it, we go through the world hearing all these wonderful, positive messages: You have infinite potential! If you can only tap into your inner strength you can do anything. You can lose that weight, you can make that relationship work, you can get the perfect job. It’s just a question of finding the right technique, the right perspective. You’re wonderful, you’re amazing, you can do it!
And those positive messages are wonderful, and in most cases they are true. We do have deep reservoirs of strength and goodness. We are capable of more than we think.
But that’s not the whole story. In our hearts, we know that sometimes we fail despite our best efforts. We know that we are fragile beings, that we can be hurt. And we know our own thoughts - we know that even if we are basically kind and loving, there’s a part of us that is pretty dark and selfish. And to go to the most fundamental level, we know that one day we will die.
And in a world in which it can seem that everyone’s got it all together, we can feel very alone in that secret sense that something is not quite right. We can feel like it’s all our fault if we aren’t able to make our dreams a reality.
It can feel really good during one season a year to hear that your intuition is right - things are not okay. Sometimes effort isn’t enough. The world is broken, sad things happen, we are flawed.
It can feel really good to hear that affirmed because it reminds us that it’s not just us - we’re not alone in our brokenness. We’re not the only ones that fall short of our goals, have difficult family relationships or have some part of our life that just doesn’t work. It’s not us, it’s the human condition. It’s normal. It can feel really good to hear that and to face it honestly.
One of the messages of Lent is that God doesn’t need us to pretend that everything is okay. God does not need us to be Californian and say that everything is awesome all the time. There is nothing to hide. We can be fully ourselves with God and know that God loves us just as we are. In fact, our honest acknowledgment of our failures, our darkness, and our fragility is the beginning of God’s work in us. Intimacy with God begins from that place of honesty, where we can acknowledge that we can’t do it alone, that we need God to heal us and change us.
The life and ministry of Jesus is our model in this – even though he was without sin, his public ministry only began after he had spent 40 days in in the desert wrestling with darkness.
Today’s Gospel text, the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, illustrates the powerful intimacy that comes from honest and painful spiritual wrestling. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days, and in those 40 days, Jesus was forced to confront the most profound and identity-threatening temptations of his life and ministry: the temptation to seize worldly power, the temptation to be other than fully human, and the temptation to chart a different course in order to avoid suffering.
Jesus, of course, resists these temptations. But I think the undercurrent of the text is that he resisted them with some difficulty, that it took some sweat and tears, even for Jesus. Honestly facing the darkness isn’t easy, but it’s not something to avoid. It’s what frees us to move forward with joy and confidence and power.
The forty days of Lent mirror those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. Lent is our invitation to wrestle with the darkness a little, to acknowledge that things are not okay. That we are not okay. It’s not a time to be paralyzed with shame and guilt. It’s not a time to get discouraged or stuck. But it’s an invitation to be honest with God and with ourselves, and to find freedom and comfort in that honesty.
And I think that Ash Wednesday at Incarnation shows, people out in the world are craving that honesty. They are looking for a place to acknowledge that life is hard sometimes, we are broken, and we need help. That optimism is important but it’s not enough. They want the freedom to acknowledge that we need God.
One of the great gifts of serving with you at Incarnation was the freedom you gave me to be vulnerable. To be imperfect, to need God and to need this community.
I think that part of the call of Lent is to do our own wrestling with the darkness in ourselves and in the world. But it’s also to give that same freedom to others – to invite and allow them to be honest about their struggles and to point them toward God, who always stands ready to help.
To me at least, that’s the good news of Lent: You are not okay. I’m not okay. But we are so very loved. Amen.