Daniels Run Peace Church

Speaker: Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: Mark 1:9-15

Summary:  As we begin the season of Lent, we should remember that various spiritual disciplines will actually enrich our lives and free us from some of the struggles of modern living. In this sermon I overview ‘The Celebration of Discipline,’ suggesting a few ways we can connect to God and one another and be enriched during a ‘wilderness’ time — when we voluntarily give up some of the rich things of our lives so that we can be drawn closer to God.

Good morning everyone, really good to be with you.

A headline caught my eye this week — an article shared by my cousin from Time magazine, titled “Why We’re More Exhausted than Ever.” The author, Emily Ballesteros, apparently runs a burnout-management coaching business — whatever that exactly is, I’m sure she’s making plenty of money these days. Right now, in every facet of my life, it seems everyone I run into is barely finding the energy to keep getting through their weeks. Plus, statistics on mental health and life satisfaction are hitting new lows every year, particularly for younger people.

In the article, Ballesteros identifies three main things that are leading to our current lack of energy and unhappiness: unsustainable lifestyles, exposure to stress outside of our control, and financial insecurity.

At first glance, these are things we don’t really feel we can control — so often, our lifestyle choices are determined not just based on what we want, but on our family and community obligations; staying engaged in the world and the lives of our family and extended family, no matter how stressful or heartbreaking news, is a noble thing that we should seek to do as people of faith who want to make a difference; and in the post-pandemic world, while things are definitely improving in the economy, inflation’s bite means many of us are worrying more about money than we ever have before.

But it’s important to note that we have much more control over all three of these factors than we may think — we make hundreds of choices, on a regular basis, about our lifestyles, how we interact with stressful news, and how we manage our money. We have a great deal of control in all three of these areas, too. If we stay on the same path and wait for external factors to balance out so that we’ll someday not be exhausted, we’ll be waiting forever — as Ballesteros puts it, “We can’t wait for changes to come from the top down; we must address the factors of exhaustion within our control to ensure we live healthy, peaceful, and satisfying lives.” 

And in another quote, her single suggestion to tired people is hope, saying that “Hope is a powerful counter to exhaustion and burnout.” In this light, remembering building our lives around hope, as Paul suggests, is wise — we need to make hope the anchor of our souls. 

Now, I open with this discussion of burnout and exhaustion, because we just started the season of Lent. Lent is a way the church marks the 40 days leading up to Easter, Sundays excluded, and historically during Lent church has emphasized fasting, sharing with the poor, and prayer. It’s a season where we remember, and recognize, the wilderness times in our lives and faith journeys.

So, today, we’re going to talk about Lent, this season of faith in the wilderness, and how it should be an opportunity for all of us to form new habits that connect us to God — and when we connect to God, even in the wilderness times, we connect to the life and strength and hope that God wants for each of us. Jesus himself often withdrew from the stream of life for periods in the wilderness — I hope we can do the same.

As I said earlier, Lent is in some ways a season of exhaustion — we’re tired at this point of the church year. We had Advent — when the church year begins — and we celebrated waiting for God to be born as Jesus. We had Christmas, which runs for multiple Sundays, when we celebrate Jesus’ birth, and that leads directly to Epiphany, when we remember Jesus baptism and ministry beginning, included again in our text today.

And now we arrive at Lent — when we remember, intentionally, the difficult and painful times, the times when God has felt distant from us.

During Lent, we remember the many times that God’s people in the story of faith waited, and often wandered, in the wilderness. Our scripture today talks about Jesus’s time in the wilderness — but it’s important to remember that the image of people in the wilderness in scripture is one of the richest and most symbolic pictures of interaction with God through the whole bible.

Anyone — what are times you can think of in scripture when an individual or group spent time in the wilderness? (Examples: Elijah; Moses as a young man, when he fled Egypt; David while running from Saul, and as a boy; The people fleeing Egypt.)

I’m sure we’ve missed a few, but that’s a good list. Wilderness wandering is central to the Bible, and to help think about it let’s think a bit specifically about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.

Stephanie and I just finished reading Leviticus, which is a slog in and of itself, but after Genesis, the rest of the first five books of Moses are sure a time of wilderness. And while amazing things happen in the wilderness, we can also way over romanticize time in the wilderness. From exodus to Deuteronomy, the people are restless — they don’t like the wilderness. They have just been exposed to an all powerful God — they’ve lived through the 10 plagues, they’ve seen first hand that Yahweh is more powerful than Egypt, the greatest empire the world has ever seen…and then they are asked to hang out in the desert, not just for a few years, but for a generation.

Quite predictably, in my view, they get bored. Moses goes up to talk to God, and if you read the story of the golden calf, the people’s excuse for making the idol isn’t that God has abandoned them, it was just that they were impatient — they wanted to be able to see God at all times in the form of this image, and they weren’t sure if Moses was coming back from his long talk with God. Their impatience and boredom and fear make them disobey God. 

We face a similar choice during our times in the wilderness, when God seems far from us — we can grow impatient with God, and turn to idols, or we can wait with hope and turn towards God, knowing God is in the wilderness too.

Anyhow — wilderness sometimes serves as a metaphor for time far from God and goodness and life, but the wilderness is also the setting for many times when people actually draw much nearer to God. During the exodus, God’s presence is continually with the people in cloud and fire and literally providing their bread every morning in the form of manna. This nearness to God in the wilderness is echoed by Jesus, in our scripture for the day, being attended by angels, and we can imagine him preparing for his ministry during this time of solitude. Then, once his ministry began in earnest, Jesus often withdrew from people, to go to the wild places, to be with God. The wilderness often signals a time of preparation — it did so both for Jesus and the people fleeing Egypt.

It’s with all this background of wilderness that we come to Lent — when we voluntarily choose to enter into a wilderness season. This is a time when we want to strip some things away from our lives and acknowledge the rough places, so that we can draw closer to God.

My bible teacher at Hesston, Michelle Hershberger, always reminded us about the wilderness wanderings — it was simple for God to get the people out of Egypt — it was much more difficult to get Egypt out of the people. Today, we remember the season of Lent, perhaps choosing to give something up from our lives, in order to do the same thing — if we cannot leave our daily lives, can we get our daily lives out of us, via Christian habits?

The time in the wilderness is crucial to the story of faith because time in the wilderness lets us form new habits of life, habits centered on God, rather than on money, or status, or our daily lives — and when we do leave the wilderness, we return to our daily lives more connected to God, more grateful for what he’s given us, and more discerning as to what gives us life and what does not. We need habits — things that we build off of, rather than simply do sporadically — to be central to our lives as Christians.

So, let’s think a bit about habits — what are the Christian habits that can bring us closer to God? 

Andrew Suderman, my professor in Seminary who preached here last week, often reminded us as a class that too often as Christians we try to believe ourselves into new ways of living — but we might be getting it exactly wrong: we may need to live ourselves into new ways of believing.

Let me repeat that — we can’t just try to believe ourselves into new ways of living — we need to live ourselves into new ways of believing. This is what Christian habits are all about — building habits and practices into our lives that expose us to God, so that we are transformed.

Historically, rather than the word ‘habit,’ the church has used ‘discipline’ to refer to the things we do on a regular basis to connect us to God — not discipline in the sense of time-outs or disciplining one another, but discipline in the sense of voluntary commitments toward a goal — like how we used the adjective form of the word, disciplined. We need to be disciplined in our faiths, like striving athletes, or dedicated scholars.

We should ask in this era of fatigue and fear — are we practicing, as well as we can, disciplines that guide us towards God, each other, and health?

I’ll share an anecdote from my erstwhile musical and writing careers — every writer, of music or poetry or prose that I know — says that if we show up to write, inspiration will show up too. If we simply wait for inspiration to strike, it almost never will.

Our spiritual lives, I think, are very similar — if we show up for God via the spiritual disciplines, God will show up, too. If we only pray once a week at church, we should not be surprised when prayer feels awkward, or difficult. If we show up for God every day, he will show up for us.

Richard Foster, a Quaker pastor, talks about disciplines this way — “God has given us the disciplines of a spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.” 

Foster wrote one of the most beloved classics of Christian writing of the past fifty years — Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth; I want to just briefly overview it for us today.

But before we do that — talk of discipline may leave us a bit wary, and this wariness is actually good, since church disciplines and ordinances have in the past been legalistic requirements that, rather than bringing us nearer to God, actually take people further away. 

As Foster puts it, “The Spiritual Disciplines are intended for our good. They are meant to bring the abundance of God into our lives. It is possible, however, to turn them into another set of soul-killing laws. Law-bound Disciplines breathe death.” 9. When we practice the disciplines, we need to avoid the legalistic idea, for example, that if we don’t fast and pray on a regular basis, our souls are in danger — but similarly, we need to avoid the pitfall of making no Christian habits central to our lives — then, what makes us different than people of no faith? 

Foster also emphasizes that these disciplines are not about external signaling of piousness — this is the mistake of the Pharisees, practicing disciplines so that others could “see” their righteousness. Instead, we need to practice disciplines today so that we receive internal strength, transformation, and nearness to God. We practice the disciplines so that we, quote, “Place ourselves where God can bless us.” 

So, now the overview — Foster divides the disciplines into three categories: Inward, Outward, and Corporate. The inward disciplines are practices that change our relationship to ourselves. The first Meditation — quieting ourselves and our lives and listening for God, in silence or in scripture. Closely related to meditation is Prayer — bringing our requests to God, and listening for God’s response. The final two inward disciplines are fasting, which emphasizes our embodiedness and connects us to God via the absence of things we may take for granted; and study — reading scripture and intentionally seeking God’s will on a given topic. 

The Outward disciplines, then, are those things that change our relationships to others. Simplicity as a discipline calls us to care much more about people than about things, and to be able to remember that everything we have comes from God, and that we can joyfully share everything we have. Practicing Solitude — intentionally taking time to be only with God and away from other people — makes us value much more deeply the human connections we do have. Submission, when we give up our own priorities for the needs of our community, and family, again brings us closer to God via the collective. Service, from washing other people’s dishes when it’s not our turn, to weeks or seasons of serving the less fortunate, tangibly connects us to the needs of the world and God’s presence in other people, particularly those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Corporate disciplines, then, are those things that we practice together with other Christians. Confession brings us closer to God by reminding us where we’ve failed so that we can do as Jesus commanded — to go and sin no more. Guidance, when we seek the council and wisdom of elders in the faith, draws us closer to God via the community’s wisdom. Worship, remembering that Jesus, the lamb who was slain, is worthy of our praise, connects us directly to God’s goodness, as does the discipline of Celebration, where we intentionally remember and name the goodness God has put into our lives. 

So, obviously, that was the summary of a whole book, so you’re right to feel a bit overwhelmed! But, there’s good news — by being here today, you’re practicing four of the 12 disciplines! When we come together to worship, we both worship God and celebrate the good things in our lives; when we hear a sermon, we study; whenever we gather as Christians, we pray. Many worship services also incorporate confession, and when I or Tig preach too long, you might feel like you’re practicing fasting!

Now, ideally, we’d all be able to practice all these disciplines, and more — but we live in a complicated world, and I don’t want to burden you with more to do! Rather, I want each of us to pick one of these disciplines you can do this Lenten season. A traditional practice in lent is to practice fasting from one specific thing — sugar, coffee, tea, or candy, or something more modern, like Netflix or social media.

Anyone in the congregation, have you decided something to fast from this Lent? [ask congregation] These are all great — I’ve taken notes, I’ll check in on how it went at Easter! Jokes aside, I do encourage everyone to give something up for Lent — and I also invite you to consider trying one of the other disciplines as well.

I want to tell three brief stories about disciplines that might inspire you towards one of them.

One thousand, two hundred, and five days ago, I decided I could study another language every day — and I soon grew very proud of my Duolingo streak. But, about six months into doing so, I realized — if I could make time to study a language every day, why couldn’t I read scripture every day? And pray every day? So, I started doing so, and now every morning I start my day with scripture reading and prayer — and when I’m done with my devotions, I still do Duolingo. 

To be quite honest, this routine of prayer, quiet, and study in the morning has kept me grounded through grad school and a trying professional season; I’ve been amazed how God has shown up for me via this devotional time. I agree with Foster — if we show up for God, God will show up for us.

I ask: do you have time to read scripture, or a devotional book, or pray for five minutes, each day this season of Lent? 

A second short story of a discipline that I practice is fasting — but this isn’t really story about me. When the war in Palestine started again last fall, I felt helpless — what could we do, so far away? I felt paralyzed, and often still do, as each day seems to bring worse news. Matthew Bucher, a friend and of mine who lived in Egypt for four years and who is now pastor of Immanuel Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, immediately decided to embark on a hunger fast — 40 days with no food. Each day, instead of eating lunch, he hosted a prayer for peace in Israel and Palestine at noon. I’ve not attempted a long fast like that, but now every Friday, I don’t eat till sundown — this is a small thing, but let me tell you: I pray more for peace in the world on Friday, and remember those around the world with no food, than on every other day of the week combined. This is small — but it’s tangible, and it connects me to God.

I ask: is fasting, even for one meal a week, something you could do to connect you to God and the needs of the world?

A final story of discipline — It’s not named as a specific discipline by Foster, but the idea of it is scattered throughout the book — the discipline of Sabbath. Now, our Jewish cousins do Sabbath much better than we do, but we as Christians, I think, need to get back to the idea of Sabbath as well.

My sister practices sabbath very dutifully. I know a few of you here know my sister; I like to describe Grace — who has now lived in a garbage collecting community in Jakarta, Indonesia for about 12 years— to people who don’t know her as being a lot like me, but two notches more intense. This occasionally freaks people out, as I suppose people can find me a little intense, but I stand by the description. Sabbath has been something Grace has practiced well her whole adult life. Never once, during high school or college years, did she do any school work on a Sunday. For her, Sunday was a real sabbath, and a disciplined one — it was a day for church, for friends, for family, for prayer, for retreat, for service — it was a slice of time out of time. 

Sabbath has grown important to me, too — and I’m extremely into the idea of screen sabbaths. Though I haven’t practiced them as well as I’d like, I try once a week to spend at least an evening with my phone, computer, and TV turned off. Now, this isn’t always fun — but disciplines aren’t always fun. But on nights I turn off my phone and interrupt my daily routine, I pray more, I read more, I talk to people more, and I’m more aware of God. 

I ask — is there something in your life you could take a sabbath from once a week? Could you and your family take one evening a week to turn off all your devices and be fully present together, without any news of the world coming into your home, to talk and pray and be together with God with no distractions?

For this, once again, is the purpose of disciplines, and of Lent — to make us more aware of our need for God, to put ourselves in God’s path so that we can be transformed; transformed so that we are able to serve others, and point others on to God as the source of our strength and life.

God calls us into the wilderness — to these times of seeming emptiness, but that become the times when God draws nearest to us. God wants us to question — to pray, to fast, to cry out to him, to live lives connected to the pain of the world. When we build disciplines into our lives to connect us to God, we become partners of God in the world. 

As you go from this place, I hope one of the disciplines has stood out to you — and I’d encourage you to take a moment after the service to share with someone a discipline you hope to try this Lent. May we follow Jesus into the wilderness.

Pray with me. God, you call us into the wilderness — you speak to us even in the barren places, in the pain and emptiness of our lives. Help us to build habits of emptying ourselves, of disrupting our lives, so that you become the center. In Jesus name, Amen.