Week 1: Judean Wilderness
Ash Wednesday 2021 Shalom and welcome! We set out today on our ‘virtual pilgrimage’ from the Parish of Castlerock & Dunboe to the Holy Land. We’re starting in the Judean wilderness at Jebel al-Quruntul, better known as the ‘Mount of Temptation’.
Imagine yourself getting off the coach and standing here. It’s a very pleasant 24 degrees today. It gets a lot hotter, of course, and come sundown the temperature will suddenly plummet.
It is eerily silent. This is not a sandy desert like the Sahara, but a rocky landscape of cliffs, crags and channels running between them. When you look up, you can see where over the centuries rainwater has created networks of hundreds and hundreds of caves. One of these caves is reputedly where Jesus spent his 40 days in the desert. It would have protected him from the extremes of temperature and from the punishing sun.
Look down at your feet. There are rocks everywhere. This is where John the Baptist told the Pharisees who came to him to be baptized, ‘Don’t tell me ‘we have Abraham as our father’ – for I tell you, God is able to turn these rocks into children of Abraham!’ (Matt. 3: 9).
Today, we remember how Jesus was in this place to be tempted, and he was hungry. As he stood looking at these rocks by our feet, the devil tempted him to turn them into bread:
Then Jesus was led up [‘up’ as in to a high, rocky place like where we are imagining ourselves to be now] by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain [quite possibly the one we’re looking at now] and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’”Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and ministered to him.
Matthew 4: 1-11
It looks like, as last year, we’ll be living Lent in lockdown conditions. We might well wonder, should I bother this year? Isn’t life tough enough these days? Do I really need to forego chocolate?
Lenten practices are personal and (other than church attendance) optional. I’ll leave that up to you. I do hope that you’ll continue this journey with us, and that it helps renew our devotion to our Lord.
One thought: we think of the wilderness as a harsh, cruel, barren place – and in many ways it is. But when the rain falls to the east, rivers appear from nowhere and run through this wild landscape, making ways through that we never thought possible before; washing away debris; carving out caves where we can take shelter.
Look down again at the many, many rocks by your feet. This is the hostile environment where Jesus was sorely tested. It is also the ground where God’s angels stooped to care for him.
It is in often in the desert that we see God’s grace to us most clearly.
https://www.facebook.com/CastlerockDunboe for our Service of Holy Communion for Ash Wednesday, tonight at 7.30pm from Christ Church, Castlerock
Thursday 18th February Yesterday we were looking at the rocks by our feet. Now look up … what can you see up there on the mountain?
That is a Greek Orthodox monastery, built on the ‘very high mountain’ where the devil tempted Jesus to worship him in exchange for ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour’ (Matt. 4: 8).
You can reach it by cable car. Now, you can’t literally see ‘all the kingdoms of the world’, although there are amazing views. When Jesus ‘saw’ all this, it seems to have been a psychological or supernatural vision (see Luke 4: 5, ‘in an instant’).
Like many sights along our pilgrimage, there’s a question mark over whether this really is the exact spot. In the first centuries, Christians in the Holy Land passed on traditions handed down over generations since the days of the by eyewitnesses. In the 300s AD, St Helen travelled to Jerusalem and recorded a lot of this information. But even if this is not the exact cave Jesus slept in, it would have been one very like it:
Everywhere we’ll see churches and monasteries built on these sites. It can be a challenge, because it is not how we imagined the scene when we learnt these stories in Sunday School. I’m sure the tiled floor, prayer cards and coins weren’t here when Jesus was!
The monks in the Monastery of Temptation follow in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They live a life of extreme simplicity and silence in order to hear God’s voice clearly.
Simplicity and silence are keynotes of Lent. (It’s not really about going out of our way to make ourselves suffer.) These are important because we are often so busy, and life gets so complicated, that God gets squeezed out.
In the first lockdown, we all said how it was good to get back to basics. We baked bread, walked, and enjoyed walks in nature. We noticed how quiet it was. We heard birdsong that we’d not noticed before.
With fewer distractions, many of us found more time to pray and read scripture, and many of you told me how the experience had brought you closer to God.
If we’ve lost some of that simplicity and silence in this second (third? lost count?) lockdown, now is our chance to try again. We don’t have to become monks/nuns and live a cloistered existence – most of us are not called to do that. But we can make a conscious decision to set aside regular time to be still before God in prayer.
My soul, wait in silence for God alone,
For my hope is from Him.
6 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
My refuge; I will not be shaken.
Psalm 62: 5-6
Friday 19th February A ‘wadi’ is an oasis in the desert where water springs up through the rock, appearing especially in rainy season. Here’s a particularly lovely one for us to visit in the Judean wilderness:
It’s called Wadi David Ein Gedi. This (or somewhere very like it) is where King David hid out, back when King Saul was refusing to vacate the throne and making threats. David wrote some of the most beautiful psalms in the wilderness:
A Psalm of David, written in the wilderness of Judah
63 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
When you’ve been a little while in the desert around the Mount of Temptation, how wonderful to come across a lush, green spot to cool off in the water! David drank from these wadis. I wouldn’t myself (a lot of people swim here! I once did), so when he writes ‘my soul thirsts for you’ he knows what he’s talking about. Being in the Holy Land (even virtually) really can enhance the way we read and understand the Bible.
Let’s pray that, if we’re spiritually running dry, God will provide for us those refreshing little oases along our journey. And remember to keep drinking, folks – it’s easy to get dehydrated on these pilgrimages – just like during our earthly pilgrimage!
Now, if you’d kindly board the coach, it’s time for the next phase of our pilgrimage. This Sunday 21st February at 10am, we will gather online for worship from Christ Church, Castlerock, and on Monday we head north to Galilee where Jesus grew up and launched his ministry.
https://www.facebook.com/CastlerockDunboe for more goings-on, including weekly services on Sundays at 10am and Wednesdays in Lent at 7.30pm
Greek this Week 