It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which surely will surprise us, and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction any more than by wishing. But stop dithering. The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it as you care for no other place, this place that you belong to though it is not yours, for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.
Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor, who comes like a heron to fish in the creek, and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing in the trees in the silence of the fisherman and the heron, and the trees that keep the land they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.
This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work. Answer with knowledge of the others who are here and how to be here with them. By this knowledge make the sense you need to make. By it stand in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you. Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it before they had heard a radio. Speak publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.
Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart. Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields. There are songs and sayings that belong to this place, by which it speaks for itself and no other.
Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls freely upon it after the darkness of the nights and the darkness of our ignorance and madness. Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you, which is the light of imagination. By it you see the likeness of people in other places to yourself in your place. It lights invariably the need for care toward other people, other creatures, in other places as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.
No place at last is better than the world. The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue in them. When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.
Not long ago, I revisited the stories of Jesus’ temptations while preparing some words for another topic. The specific temptations detailed in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 have been taught as “one off” experiences in the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. They are tests that Jesus passes on his way to living as a meditation on what it means to have faith in God. Maybe they are not “one off.” Your moral compass. Your empire claims. Your use of power. Those are always going to be Jesus’ temptations. They are never “one off.” They keep coming back. That’s the lesson. They always return in different clothing, financial instruments, power structures, political parties, slogans, policies, empires, instruments of injustice, and in the name of the Divine. Jesus dealt with it. Those first generations of disciples dealt with it. Saul, transformed to Paul certainly had his issues as did those claiming apostleship and interpreting a backstory to mean dominate the known world for Jesus. History shows how badly that interpretation coupled with politics can be. The Crusades. The Holocaust. A new PRRI survey indicates it remains a struggle in the 21st century for those that claim Christian faith, be it faith in Jesus or the faith of Jesus.
One of the differences often noted between Matthew and Luke is the order of the temptations. That’s not what caught my attention. In Luke’s version, Jesus has been in the desert forty days being tempted by the Satan. The text says “He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.” It is then that the Satan offers the big three detailed in Luke and Matthew. Famished. I think this is a way of understanding the rise of pop-Christian evangelicalism, the New Apostolic Reformation, Christian nationalism, and the religious fundamentalism that has returned in our Nation. Mainline Protestant Christianity and Catholicism became comfortably numb in its place in society having been popular post WW II and experienced righteousness during the Civil Rights era. A queasy tolerance of secularism and the expansion of rights for women, expanded gender roles, the sexual revolution, voting rights, interracial marriage, and changing cultural norms drove some to a wilderness. These emerged from the wilderness of the second half of the 20th century famished. Everyone was left behind at the turn of the millennium. Jesus didn’t return. For some the search for a purpose driven life has embraced an amoral capitalist turned political leader whose worldview is immoral. We’ve seen what being famished will do to a person, a people. We are seeing Captain Jack Sparrow’s pirate moto in realtime, “Take all you can. Give nothing back.” Two characters from central casting, President Trump and Musk, play their roles well. Savior and villain. It could be understandable had they been born into poverty fighting the man and the man’s systems for their fair share. But, they were born into wealth and privilege, and protected when they failed over and over again because of that wealth. Famished. Have we as a Nation learned nothing from world history and our own history with these temptations?
The good news according to Mark gives no details of the temptations. The text simply says Jesus was driven into the wilderness, tempted by Satan, was with wild beasts and angels waited on Jesus. (Mark 1:12-13). I don’t pretend to know what the wilderness is for people, nor the metaphorical wild beasts of other’s struggles. Everyone experiences both. I don’t believe in the existence of celestial beings called angels, but I think the idea of caring, watching out for people, treating people fairly and tending to our neighbor, is a description of what people are capable of. It might be what President Lincoln meant in his first inaugural address as, “the better angels of our nature.” Based on his behavior pattern this doesn’t interest the 47th President unless the transaction benefits him somehow. Famished.
It was with great surprise last Sunday that my congregation’s minister referenced the podcast, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” Ted Danson is interviewing his wife, Mary, who mentions how her childhood church was important to her growing up and still is today. It just happens to be part of the little frontier movement in which I serve. She speaks as one who understands the temptations never go away, and that church can embrace the faith of Jesus in simple acts that are super intense. Care for people. Do good in the world. I don’t know if that will stop the pirates ravaging our government today as they attempted to do on January 6, 2021, but it is a place to begin locally when the temptations return. It’s not easy, but the best way to not be fooled again is to not be famished inside or outside the wilderness. Jesus didn’t fall for it. Followers of Jesus do Jesus-like things. You do your best. Persons of other faiths that may pass by this site, I suggest the parts of your holy texts that teach something like the Golden Rule. Maybe you are of no particular faith and consider yourself spiritual, agnostic, or something else. The simplicity of Zoroastrian faith is a place to begin in the wilderness or oasis: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.