Dear Friends,
I like to wake up to the radio and listen to the news. More often than not, it is disturbing news. I remember a few years ago waking up to hear a description of what sounded like a disaster. “In the early hours of Friday chaos reigned: 6000 people had turned into a frenzied mob; 22 people suffered heat exhaustion; five people were so badly crushed they were taken to hospital; one man was stabbed.” I waited to hear where in Iraq or Afghanistan this had happened. You can imagine my disbelief when the announcer said that he was describing scenes at the opening of a new IKEA store in North London!
At this beginning of Lent, we are challenged by God to consider what is important to us and what we consider to be valuable. In other words, to get our priorities right.
We live in an age quite different from that of the Bible. In the Bible, facts and values are inseparable. For example, the sky is blue because God is good, and moral or ethical choices could not be made without reference to God’s commandments. In the Hebrew Scriptures, human relationships echoed the relationship that God has with his chosen people; marriage, for example, was an image of the covenant relationship that God has with Israel.
Even the natural world said something about God’s relationship with the created order. In the book of Genesis, after the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and God gave a sign of the covenant – the rainbow. Now, we know that a rainbow is created by sunlight refracted through droplets of rain and split into the colors of the spectrum of light, but to the Jewish community it was charged with meaning as a reminder of God’s promise that he would protect them and love them.
By contrast, we live in an age where facts and values are separated and many people make no connection between faith and the world in which they live. For the Christian, then, Lent is a time for re-connecting our spiritual lives with those around us and, indeed, the world in which we live. And during a time of pandemic – which started last Lent – perhaps we need this more than ever as we contemplate what we value and our priorities.
At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, he prepared himself with a period of fasting and prayer, discipline and self-denial. He did this in the desert, in the wilderness.
It is significant that Jesus goes into the wilderness immediately after his baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. In so doing, he echoes the life of the Hebrew Tribes who had passed through the sea from slavery into freedom at the Exodus. The waters were a sign of freedom, but they then spent 40 years in the wilderness; it was during those 40 years that their identity as God’s chosen people was formed. Crossing the River Jordan, they arrived in the Promised Land leaner but more mature. In a similar way, when Jesus came out of the water, he had his own wilderness experience.
I think it is fascinating that the monastic tradition of the Christian Church began in the desert. Starting with Antony of Egypt in the middle of the third century, Christians chose the desert or wilderness as a means of finding stillness and solitude. It is where they learned to pray. It is from this tradition that the practice of the daily recitation of the psalms and the sanctification of time through the Daily office originated.
Charles de Foucauld was a French Roman Catholic priest living in Algeria in the late 19th/early 20th century. He was the inspiration for the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus – originally a group of men who followed in the tradition of the Desert Fathers by living in a small community on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Later, the community grew and, significantly, chose to live in cities. The community’s spirituality is marked by finding solitude and contemplation amid the noise of the urban environment. Charles de Foucauld once said, “Whether our life be that of Nazareth, the Public Life or the Desert… it should cry the Gospel.”
How do our lives cry the Gospel?
During this pandemic, many of us have had an enforced solitude and a difficult wilderness experience. But we can use that to deepen our faith during Lent. We can hold on to the fact that in a noisy world we can find stillness; new wilderness experiences that will allow the Gospel to be at the heart of our existence.
I think becoming people of stillness is very important and is a gift of Saint Thomas Church to this city. As I walk up and down Fifth Avenue, I always have to avoid people staring at their smart-phones. I am now used to people seemingly talking to themselves as they make phone calls on the go and I recognize that it will be hard to get someone’s attention if I am ever in need because the chances are, they will have their earphones blasting out music as they walk along the street. Why do people fill every moment of their lives with noise and activity? Perhaps this is why people such as the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, choose the city for their wilderness experiences and not the beautiful countryside – they have discovered stillness in spite of the noise. Mark’s gospel is clear – the wilderness, the desert, is a dangerous and a noisy place – with its wild beasts and exposure to the elements – a kind of midtown Manhattan experience!
We, too, have the chance to discover stillness and solitude even here in New York – actually, especially here in New York. Remember, stillness is not the absence of noise but the centering of the soul on God. It is not about silence; it is about re-discovering how to be still.
Back in the UK, the naturalist David Attenborough, most famous for his extraordinary films on animal and plant-life on earth, is encouraging people to put their smart devices down for a while each day and to sit still for just a few minutes. He has suggested that people do this outside because he is convinced that they will be amazed what they will discover: “Sit down. Don’t move. Keep quiet. Wait 10 minutes. You’ll be very surprised if something pretty interesting didn’t happen within 10 minutes. Doing that in a woodland, if you haven’t done it, is extraordinary.”
So here we are, back to facts and values – making connections and becoming people of stillness through a wilderness experience no matter where we find ourselves. In so doing we connect the reality of our lives God’s presence. It will allow us to see connections that many people will not even notice as they hurry by Saint Thomas Church.
And don’t worry if you find it hard – it is! We have to persevere. Someone once asked Archbishop Michael Ramsey on television how long he prayed every day. He scratched his head and said, “About a minute…but it usually takes me an hour to get there.”
Affectionately,
Your Priest and Pastor,
Carl
