Risen Lamb Church of the Nazarene, Kansas City, KS
March 10, 2019
The season of Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter, and these 40 days mirror the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert before he began his ministry. The repetitive way the passage that Pastor Tyrone read for us is written can be summed up in two words: I won’t. I won’t eat, I won’t grab for power, I won’t perform a miracle. It’s a bit anticlimactic, honestly. As far as stories go, the story of Jesus in the wilderness seems lacking in action. Right before this in the book of Luke, Jesus steps into the public eye, gets baptized, a voice speaks from heaven, and the Spirit comes down in the form of dove—whoo! Luke even follows up this much flashier story by listing Jesus’s lineage—not an ordinary lineage, but a lineage that traces all the way back to God. What a way to launch his time of ministry, right? But right when it seems like things are gearing up for something big, Jesus stops. Goes off by himself to the dessert, to… sit. Then when face to face with SATAN, he sits there, —almost stubbornly— arms crossed, saying NO. I won’t.
I don’t know if this story evokes any strong feelings in you as you read it. It hasn’t always for me. Knowing that Jesus is the son of God, I think we come to this passage assuming that we should agree with whatever Jesus does or says, so we tend not to allow ourselves to react fully to it. Like, if this story played out, but with different characters, I’m positive that you actually be very frustrated at the main character sitting there, not eating, saying, “I won’t”. How do I know that you would react strongly to this story? One word: Twilight.
That’s right. Twilight. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twilight, it is a book series, made into a movie series. It’s a love story between a young woman and, well, a vampire. When the Twilight books and even more so when the movies came out, they had a HUGE fan base. But what stood out to me most was not the enthusiasm that Twilight fans had, it was the reaction that everyone else had. What was that reaction? Pure, seething, unbridled hatred of the main character, Bella. Bella is extremely self-conscious, pretty broody, unsure of herself, and just doesn’t…do much, like she isn’t portrayed doing any hobbies. She’s introduced, then very early in the first movie, Edward, the eternally-teenage vampire falls deeply in love with her. THEN, Jacob, Bella’s werewolf friend, falls in love with her too! Where people who weren’t fans might have said, “the movie showed a lot of beautiful shots of the forests and cliffs on the Oregon coast, but I just couldn’t connect with the characters,” instead, people who weren’t fans, had a strong visceral reaction. How could someone—two people no less—fall in love with Bella? She’s so passive! She doesn’t do anything!
I’m gonna be honest, that was my initial reaction too. I had to pause and reflect on my reaction, though, because my daughter Shelly was such a big fan. But unlike many fans who split into Team Edward or Team Jacob camps, rooting for Bella to fall in love with either Edward or Jacob, when I asked Shelly if she was ‘on a team,’ she said, “I’m on Team Bella.” It really made me think, why am I and others having such a strong reaction to Bella?
I really think this reaction to Bella mirrors a reaction that we all experience as we go about our lives each week. In our culture we value action, proactivity, doing. And it’s not just a preference, it’s something that for many of us is very tangled up in whether we deem ourselves or others as worthy, as deserving, as lovable. When there are so many problems in the world, in our families, in our personal lives that need to be addressed, it becomes an unacceptable affront when we encounter someone who says with their words or their actions, “I won’t,” or it’s close relative, “I can’t.” I won’t. I can’t.
I mean, aren’t we as Christians supposed to be about saying yes, aren’t we supposed to be about doing? Healing, worshiping, winning victories, feeding the hungry? Doing?
The problem is that in our culture, Yes has become a source of bondage, and a source of shame. We can spot shame when we blame or we hide. For example, think of the responses people have when they encounter someone panhandling at a stop light. For any number of reasons, a person might see another person asking for money and choose not to give them any. But the exchange can quickly become very fraught. Maybe we look away, unable to make eye contact (aka, we hide). Or we create a narrative about why that person is not deserving. “They’re probably going to spend it on drugs.” Or “They should get a job instead of asking other people.” Or we create a narrative blaming ourselves: “I’m such a bad person for not helping.” Both the act of avoidance and the casting of blame are reactions that come from shame, that we gravitate toward because as uncomfortable we are about this encounter, we are much more averse to acknowledging to ourselves and this person asking for our help: I can’t help you. Or, I won’t help you. We can’t sit with that. We don’t want to think of ourselves as someone who won’t or who can’t. Because we are afraid that our character, our worth, our deservingness, our lovability is on the line. We don’t want to go there, so we hide or we blame instead of admitting that sometimes I won’t or I can’t is part of life.
Lent is a challenging season in the life of Christians, because Jesus calls us to join him in setting aside some time to say I won’t. I can’t. Instead of riding the momentum of his exciting baptism into the lime light, into battle, into his full-time ministry, Jesus stops in his tracks to spend time in stillness, in solitude. Trust me, there were people in need of healing, feeding, forgiveness, and inclusion in Galilee during those 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert. Just like there is much work to be done around us right now. Think about that. Jesus knew there were hurting people all around him and literally said, for the next 40 days, I won’t help them. In fact, he said, I can’t help those people, because I can’t both dedicate myself to this act of stillness, solitude, prayer, and fasting and also be around people teaching, feeding, and healing.
That’s why Lent is so hard! The spiritual discipline of fasting from food for example, literally limits our physical abilities and energy level. The spiritual discipline of setting aside more time for prayer literally limits the amount of time we have to “do” more active things—even other good things! Even something like fasting from social media limits our ability to communicate and connect with people. In these acts, we are prompted to connect more with God. As we do these practices, the time we set aside, or our cravings and impulses for that food, that coffee, that sugar, that facebook post, serve as a reminder to check in with God, to listen for the Spirit.
But in addition to serving as a reminder to direct our attention to God, these disciplines are also a chance for us to practice. By doing them, we get practice saying No. We practice saying I can’t. We practice saying I won’t. And boy howdy do we need practice with this! While Jesus does call us to put our faith into action, we tend to interpret this to mean action=doing, doing=saying yes, therefore saying yes is the only right answer. We don’t all react the same way to this dynamic, either. Just like in the stoplight/panhandler scenario, some of us hide, and some of us blame. If yes is the only acceptable answer, then we either say yes (whether we actually can or actually will), or we don’t answer at all, and instead duck out, disappear, or deflect. We need practice saying I won’t, or I can’t, all the while reminding ourselves that God’s love for us is not hanging in the balance, and reminding each other that our love for one another is not hanging in the balance either.
This stuff is not easy! Please believe me when I say, I’m the last person in the world to feel comfortable saying I can’t. First of all, that phrase has been outlawed in Texas, where I grew up. Just kidding, but seriously, from a young age, my default has been I can. If you were to sit across the lunchroom table from 9 year old Adri—with her fluffy white hair, chubby cheeks, and my tom-boy hand me downs—and ask her, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you know what her response would be? I kid you not: “I am going to be the first woman player in the NFL.” [Pause.] Now some woman out there is perfectly suited to play in the NFL. That woman is not me. And in case you were wondering, I’m small now, and I was small then too. “I can’t” wasn’t in my vocabulary!
Chances are, it pains you to say I can’t or I won’t, too. Chances are, you’ve found yourself overfunctioning from saying yes too many times. Or you’ve found yourself underfunctioning to avoid the discomfort of having to say no. Either way, we get stuck in a cycle of reacting.
What’s amazing about God though, is that, like God does, God can take this jumble of shame we’ve created and use it for God’s glory. To transform us and liberate us.
The Spirit is calling us to say no, not just to give us a reality check to remind us that ‘we’re not God’. God genuinely desires to bring about God’s will, God’s vision for us and for the world through the act of saying no. Saying I can’t. Saying I won’t.
How is it possible to for anything, much less anything good, to come from nothing? From a negation? From inaction?
I challenge you this Lenten season to reflect on this. I have seen God at work in various ways that I will share with you, but I’m excited to report that I’m only one piece of this Risen Lamb pie, and that the Spirit is at work revealing insights to each of us.
The first way that God can work through I Can’t is to free us from the shame of acknowledging it
When get caught in a cycle of reacting, we short circuit a process in which God can be at work in our lives. Acknowledging our impulses to say yes, to blame ourselves or others, or to hide or deflect, gives us an opportunity to deliberate with God’s help rather than react.
As we deliberate, God opens our eyes to things we didn’t see before:
I can’t and I’m sad, angry, or embarrassed about it
I can’t but God still loves me
I can’t so now I can respond with empathy and understanding when you can’t
I can’t but someone else can
I can’t but someone else is
I can’t but we can
I can’t but God can
I can’t but God is doing something different