The Wild Places – Day 21

Tuesday, April 9 

Matthew 4:1-11 (CEB) 

Then the Spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness so that the devil might tempt him. 2 After Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights, he was starving. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “Since you are God’s Son, command these stones to become bread.” 

4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.” 

5 After that the devil brought him into the holy city and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, 6 “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down; for it is written, I will command my angels concerning you, and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.” 

7 Jesus replied, “Again it’s written, Don’t test the Lord your God.” 

8 Then the devil brought him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 He said, “I’ll give you all these if you bow down and worship me.” 

10 Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” 11 The devil left him, and angels came and took care of him. 

Points of Interest 

• The same Spirit that revealed God’s love and pleasure to Jesus also led Jesus into hunger and thirst and danger in the wilderness. So suffering is not a sign that God is not with us or that we have lost our way. Also, sometimes we need to set aside luxury and privilege to encounter God in harder places. 
• Jesus meets another force in the wilderness – one that is called the tempter, the devil, and Satan – an untranslated Hebrew word that means accuser or adversary. Whatever this being is, it knows the Bible (the second temptation is a quotation from Psalms) and encourages independence and manipulative use of power. Turns out the Bible can be used for good or harm, and abuse of power remains the greatest and deepest temptation for most leaders. 
• I’ve read a hundred things about Jesus’ responses to the temptations he experiences. Four of them most interest me today.
  • One, Jesus is grounded. Each of his responses come from just two chapters of the book of Deuteronomy. I have to think that in the days preceding his time in the wilderness, he’d been reading these two chapters extensively, committing them to memory, meditating on them. All that served him.
  • Two, Jesus shows us the power we all have, in all times and all places. No one can take away our power to guide our mind toward truth and light.
  • Three, Jesus is just not interested in reputation and external power. He is also secure in his vulnerability and leans in to love and trust of God.
  • Lastly, Jesus is keen to experience the full range of human vulnerability, including bewildering choices and hard temptations. Jesus knows what it means to not have enough food and to not have great reputation or power. In all our wild places, Jesus can be with us still. 
• Finally, I have no idea how “the angels came and took care of him,” but I take it that whether visible or invisible, literal or metaphorical, we should expect to encounter true and untrue thoughts and forces, nourishing and destructive forces when we are alone with our thoughts and feelings, or otherwise looking for God. 

A Direction for Prayer 

Pray for any friends or family who are experiencing hunger, setback, or hard choices – that they will find a way to lean into God’s care and love, and find God providing them the guidance or help they need. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week 

God with Me Mediation – We take a few minutes of quiet and welcome Jesus to be God with us. Ask Jesus, how are you with me right now? How do you see and know me? How are you present with me in all my strengths and weaknesses, in all my joys and stresses and sorrows? After a few moments of imaginative prayer, welcoming Jesus’ presence with you, close by praying this excerpt from the ancient prayer, The Breastplate of Saint Patrick: 

Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ within me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

The Wild Places – Day 20

Monday, April 8

The Jesus tradition teaches that in Jesus, God became flesh and lived – and still lives – among us. One fancy word for how Jesus did this is kenosis – the emptying of God’s status and power that was part of Jesus being fully human, just like us. Jesus, divested of all his privilege, went again and again to the wild places of our lives. This week we meet Jesus in the literal wilderness, and in the wild places of hunger, temptation, fear, chaos, illness, and death. 

Matthew 3:1-17 (CEB)

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” 3 He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said: 

The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.” 

4 John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. 

5 People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. 6 As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. 11 I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” 

13 At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. 14 John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?” 

15 Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.” 

So John agreed to baptize Jesus. 16 When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Heaven was opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him.17 A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.” 

Points of Interest 

• In business, a disruptive innovation is an innovation that changes the status quo and creates new opportunities. John the Baptist is a human force of disruptive innovation. Conventional religion thought God was at work in the temple, in the center of religious life in Jerusalem. It said the glory days of God’s work are in the past and that some people are God’s favorites more than others. And it kisses up to the in crowd, comforting and assuring them while judging others. Conventional religion still does stuff like this. John does the opposite – says God is at work in the wilderness, the glory days of God’s work are ahead of us, all people can find God, and all people need to change to make room for God. It’s radical, it’s disruptive, and it is somehow making room for the life and work of Jesus. 

• And surprise, surprise, Jesus shows up, not first to lead but to participate. Baptism likely has its roots in the Jewish mikvah – a ritual bath that cleanses you from sin or impurity, represents conversion into God’s family, or prepares your dead body for burial. Jesus – sinless, Jewish, and very much alive – needs none of this. John is as surprised as we are. 

• Yet Jesus begins his public life as he would continue it daily, by identifying with us in all things, even in the most bewildering parts of being alive – our sin, our alienation from God, and our death. Through his actions, Jesus says: every way you’ve screwed up and are not good enough, even in your dying body, I’m with you there. 

• In Jesus’ humble identification with us all, he is touched by the Spirit of God, flooded with a mystical, deeply felt experience of God’s love and delight. This is uniquely Jesus’ experience in some ways, but also part of the God-with-us experience for us all. 

• As a side note, baptism rocks! If you’ve never been baptized but consider yourself a follower of Jesus, talk to a pastor about it. It’s a beautiful way to identify with Jesus and experience God. 

A Direction for Prayer 

Pray that your city would experience disruptive innovations in its religious life – that radically new and good things would happen in many faith communities, reshaping the experience of God in your city. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week 

God with Me Mediation – We take a few minutes of quiet and welcome Jesus to be God with us. Ask Jesus, how are you with me right now? How do you see and know me? How are you present with me in all my strengths and weaknesses, in all my joys and stresses and sorrows? After a few moments of imaginative prayer, welcoming Jesus’ presence with you, close by praying this excerpt from the ancient prayer, The Breastplate of Saint Patrick: 

Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, 
Christ on my right, Christ on my left, 
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

The Wild Places – Day 19

Friday, April 5

Psalm 27 (CEB)

27 The Lord is my light and my salvation.
        Should I fear anyone?
    The Lord is a fortress protecting my life.
        Should I be frightened of anything?
² When evildoers come at me trying to eat me up—
    it’s they, my foes and my enemies,
    who stumble and fall!
³ If an army camps against me,
        my heart won’t be afraid.
    If war comes up against me,
        I will continue to trust in this:
⁴     I have asked one thing from the Lord—
    it’s all I seek:
        to live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life,
        seeing the Lord’s beauty
        and constantly adoring his temple.
⁵ Because he will shelter me in his own dwelling
    during troubling times;
    he will hide me in a secret place in his own tent;
        he will set me up high, safe on a rock.
⁶ Now my head is higher than the enemies surrounding me,
    and I will offer sacrifices in God’s tent—
        sacrifices with shouts of joy!
    I will sing and praise the Lord.
⁷ Lord, listen to my voice when I cry out—
    have mercy on me and answer me!
⁸ Come, my heart says, seek God’s face.
    Lord, I do seek your face!
⁹ Please don’t hide it from me!
    Don’t push your servant aside angrily—
        you have been my help!
    God who saves me,
        don’t neglect me!
        Don’t leave me all alone!
¹⁰ Even if my father and mother left me all alone,
    the Lord would take me in.
¹¹ Lord, teach me your way;
    because of my opponents, lead me on a good path.
¹² Don’t give me over to the desires of my enemies,
    because false witnesses and violent accusers
    have taken their stand against me.
¹³ But I have sure faith
    that I will experience the Lord’s goodness
    in the land of the living!
¹⁴ Hope in the Lord!
    Be strong! Let your heart take courage!
        Hope in the Lord

Points of Interest

• This psalm has a brighter mood than the others this week. I call it a psalm of hope in my notes, in that it expresses one person’s hope and exhorts us all to move toward strength, courage, and hope ourselves. Still, in the middle of the psalm, it’s clear it is written from its own wild place. There is trouble and loneliness. False witnesses and violent accusers are in play. There are people best called enemies. The writer is very much out of control and in trouble.
• Before I unpack this psalm’s anatomy of hope, a word about God’s power and agency in hard times. Theologians and ordinary believers have been wrestling with the nature of evil, the possibility of God’s power, and the hope in God’s love. There’s tension here. Why would a good and powerful God allow… well, you name it. Believers have usually reduced the torment of evil, arguing that bad things are part of God’s plan, in some way. I can’t stomach that; instead, I’ve been learning different ways to think about God’s power. I’ve come to the conviction that a relational and loving God doesn’t have or express the kind of controlling, micro-managing power many people associate with God. Regardless of how you come to terms with all this, the Bible demonstrates people dealing with these tensions, rather than spelling out a crystal clear answer for us.
• While this psalm may not make perfect meaning out of their troubles, it does get to hope. Here’s how, best as I can tell: 
  Freedom from fear – the psalmist is under threat so knows God doesn’t keep troubles away, but there’s an inner fearlessness that the light and presence of God shapes.

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for your city, that residents in trouble would find greater and deeper hope.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Words of Doubt or Lament – Too often we don’t express to God our questions, our doubt, and our anger. This week, though, we still remember the wild places of exile – loss, grief, disappointment, out of control seasons, anxiety born of change. Whatever challenges you’re facing, speak out loud to God, or write in your own mini-psalm, your questions, doubt, or anger. When you’ve said or written what you have for today, sit in silence for a moment, and see if you sense or feel anything from God.

The Wild Places – Day 18

Thursday, April 4

Psalm 77 (CEB)

77 I cry out loud to God—
    out loud to God so that he can hear me!
² During the day when I’m in trouble I look for my Lord.
    At night my hands are still outstretched and don’t grow numb;
        my whole being refuses to be comforted.
³ I remember God and I moan.
    I complain, and my spirit grows tired. Selah
⁴ You’ve kept my eyelids from closing.
    I’m so upset I can’t even speak.
⁵ I think about days long past;
    I remember years that seem an eternity in the past.
⁶ I meditate with my heart at night;
    I complain, and my spirit keeps searching:
⁷ “Will my Lord reject me forever?
    Will he never be pleased again?
⁸ Has his faithful love come to a complete end?
    Is his promise over for future generations?
⁹ Has God forgotten how to be gracious?
    Has he angrily stopped up his compassion?” Selah
¹⁰ It’s my misfortune, I thought,
    that the strong hand of the Most High is different now.
¹¹ But I will remember the Lord’s deeds;
    yes, I will remember your wondrous acts from times long past.
¹² I will meditate on all your works;
    I will ponder your deeds.
¹³ God, your way is holiness!
    Who is as great a god as you, God?
¹⁴ You are the God who works wonders;
    you have demonstrated your strength among all peoples.
¹⁵ With your mighty arm you redeemed your people;
    redeemed the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah
¹⁶ The waters saw you, God—
    the waters saw you and reeled!
        Even the deep depths shook!
¹⁷ The clouds poured water,
    the skies cracked thunder;
        your arrows were flying all around!
¹⁸ The crash of your thunder was in the swirling storm;
    lightning lit up the whole world;

        the earth shook and quaked.
¹⁹ Your way went straight through the sea;
    your pathways went right through the mighty waters.
        But your footprints left no trace!
²⁰ You led your people like sheep
    under the care of Moses and Aaron.

Points of Interest

• I write our reflection on this psalm on the day we learned of a murderous, white supremacist attack on Muslims in New Zealand. I think of the white supremacist terror on other people of faith – Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh last year, Christians in South Caroline a couple years before that. When I read this psalmist’s sleepless moaning, inability to access comfort, and deep sense of abandonment, I think of the victims of these public acts of terrorism, and their loved ones, as well as the victims of the domestic terror of sexual and gender based violence.
• Our own wild places may or may not involve grief or loss, but this psalm’s expressions of need, doubt, questioning, and loneliness are common in confusing, hard times.
• Scholars aren’t 100% sure what the untranslated word “Selah” means, but it may be a pause for meditation or musical interlude. This psalm takes a turn, but I appreciate that twice during its expressions of heartache, there is a pause to just sit with it. I have a few sad songs that have helped me sit with my pain, rather than trying to avoid or deny it. I wonder what your favorite sad songs are.
• This psalm takes a turn in remembering and meditating on what’s remembered. The great story of the exodus that the writer remembers would have been many hundreds of years removed from her circumstances. And yet its story of wonder, power, redemption, and possibility brings hope and comfort into the present. What stories can you remember that renew your hope and faith?
• It’s a small comment, but I appreciate that God’s holiness isn’t tied here to abstract ethical perfection but to faithful love in action and gentle leadership.   For most psalms, this one included, we don’t know when and where they were written, but they give voice to feelings we can have in wild places, in this case feelings of envy and resentment. 

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for your friends and family who are lonely, discouraged, or suffer heartache today – that they’ll have the right mix of sad songs and hopeful stories to make it through.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Words of Doubt or Lament – Too often we don’t express to God our questions, our doubt, and our anger. This week, though, we still remember the wild places of exile – loss, grief, disappointment, out of control seasons, anxiety born of change. Whatever challenges you’re facing, speak out loud to God, or write in your own mini-psalm, your questions, doubt, or anger. When you’ve said or written what you have for today, sit in silence for a moment, and see if you sense or feel anything from God.

The Wild Places – Day 17

Wednesday, April 3

Psalm 73 (CEB)

73 Truly God is good to Israel,
    to those who are have a pure heart.
² But me? My feet had almost stumbled;
    my steps had nearly slipped
³     because I envied the arrogant;
    I observed how the wicked are well off:
⁴ They suffer no pain;
    their bodies are fit and strong.
⁵ They are never in trouble;
    they aren’t weighed down like other people.
⁶ That’s why they wear arrogance like a necklace,
    why violence covers them like clothes.
⁷ Their eyes bulge out from eating so well;
    their hearts overflow with delusions.
⁸ They scoff and talk so cruel;
    from their privileged positions
    they plan oppression.
⁹ Their mouths dare to speak against heaven!
    Their tongues roam the earth!
¹⁰ That’s why people keep going back to them,
    keep approving what they say.
¹¹ And what they say is this: “How could God possibly know!
    Does the Most High know anything at all!”
¹² Look at these wicked ones,
    always relaxed, piling up the wealth!
¹³ Meanwhile, I’ve kept my heart pure for no good reason;
I’ve washed my hands to stay innocent for nothing.
¹⁴ I’m weighed down all day long.
    I’m punished every morning.
¹⁵ If I said, “I will talk about all this,”
    I would have been unfaithful to your children.
¹⁶ But when I tried to understand these things,
    it just seemed like hard work
¹⁷     until I entered God’s sanctuary
        and understood what would happen to the wicked.
¹⁸ You will definitely put them on a slippery path;
    you will make them fall into ruin!
¹⁹ How quickly they are devastated,
    utterly destroyed by terrors!
²⁰ As quickly as a dream departs from someone waking up, my Lord,
    when you are stirred up, you make them disappear.
²¹ When my heart was bitter,
    when I was all cut up inside,
²² I was stupid and ignorant.
    I acted like nothing but an animal toward you.
²³ But I was still always with you!
    You held my strong hand!
²⁴ You have guided me with your advice;
    later you will receive me with glory.
²⁵ Do I have anyone else in heaven?
    There’s nothing on earth I desire except you.
²⁶ My body and my heart fail,
    but God is my heart’s rock and my share forever.
²⁷ Look! Those far from you die;
    you annihilate all those who are unfaithful to you.
²⁸ But me? It’s good for me to be near God.
    I have taken my refuge in you, my Lord God,
        so I can talk all about your works!

Points of Interest

• For most psalms, this one included, we don’t know when and where they were written, but they give voice to feelings we can have in wild places, in this case feelings of envy and resentment. 
  After opening with the religious cliché that God is good to good people, the writer considers all the ways that seems not to be true. Good people suffer problems big and small, and sometimes really bad people appear to prosper. It’s not clear which is more frustrating – the ease with which the wicked accumulate wealth and triumphs or the seeming futility of virtue and humility. 
• Trying to make sense of this injustice doesn’t help. Knowing that envy and resentment are wrong (“unfaithful” is the poet’s word) doesn’t change anything either. What brings a shift in the poet’s experience is a thought that appears during worship. Sticking with the practice of worship even when life and God don’t make sense ends up helping.
• The first turn point away from resentment is remembering that bad people will suffer. Maybe this has to do with God’s judgment in the afterlife, maybe with some kind of karma, or maybe just that the principle of reaping what we sew catching up with people eventually. Here’s one thing I have observed, though. Think of a prominent person who seems to get away with misdeed after misdeed. I have someone in mind. I know many people who resent this person and want to see him suffer. But I have never heard anyone wish they could be this person. I certainly wouldn’t.
• There’s maybe a second, more important turning point in the psalm. More than just a shift in perspective about bad people, there’s a shift in perspective about where God is in our lives. Long-term resentment and bitterness has a connection to stupidity and ignorance – it emphasizes the animal in us.  A hope that God is with us is connected to different conditions – satisfaction, whole-heartedness, and inner peace. 
• At the end of the poem, the psalmist returns to the same simple, binary faith that life messed with earlier. (God is good to me, but “you annihilate all those who are unfaithful.” Ouch.) For this particular person, that conviction seems comforting and kind of hard to shake, I guess. More interesting to me is that satisfaction and freedom that have replaced resentment without any change in circumstances. I’m attracted to whole-hearted gratitude that stands up in the face of my own wild places, and others’ successes, even the ones they may not deserve. The psalm takes us from the burning ashes of Jerusalem to captivity in Babylon. We’re invited to picture the branches on which the stringed instruments hang, un-played, while the exiles weep by the riverside.

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for your church, that it will cultivate a community of gratitude and inner peace, freeing people (yourself included) from comparison and resentment. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Words of Doubt or Lament – Too often we don’t express to God our questions, our doubt, and our anger. This week, though, we still remember the wild places of exile – loss, grief, disappointment, out of control seasons, anxiety born of change. Whatever challenges you’re facing, speak out loud to God, or write in your own mini-psalm, your questions, doubt, or anger. When you’ve said or written what you have for today, sit in silence for a moment, and see if you sense or feel anything from God.

The Wild Places – Day 16

Tuesday, April 2

Psalm 137 (CEB)

137 Alongside Babylon’s streams,
    there we sat down,
    crying because we remembered Zion.
² We hung our lyres up
    in the trees there
³     because that’s where our captors asked us to sing;
    our tormentors requested songs of joy:
    “Sing us a song about Zion!” they said.
⁴ But how could we possibly sing
    the Lord’s song on foreign soil?

⁵ Jerusalem! If I forget you,
    let my strong hand wither!
⁶ Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth
    if I don’t remember you,
    if I don’t make Jerusalem my greatest joy.

⁷ Lord, remember what the Edomites did
        on Jerusalem’s dark day:
    “Rip it down, rip it down!
    All the way to its foundations!” they yelled.
⁸ Daughter Babylon, you destroyer,
    a blessing on the one who pays you back
    the very deed you did to us!
⁹     A blessing on the one who seizes your children
    and smashes them against the rock!

Points of Interest

• The psalm takes us from the burning ashes of Jerusalem to captivity in Babylon. We’re invited to picture the branches on which the stringed instruments hang, un-played, while the exiles weep by the riverside.
• The captors’ request for Zion-songs reminds me of the USA’s complicated, ugly history with minstrel shows and blackface, and white appropriation of African and Black-created music. Violence and oppression is bad enough; to pile exploitation and mockery atop it is utterly enraging. 
• But the psalmist finds strength, even if it is strength that in its lust for vengeance makes us uncomfortable. I’m reminded of two different things, one about the Bible and the other about human nature. 
  Bible scholar Pete Enns reminds us that God lets God’s children tell the story. The Bible can reveal God to us, but it also serves to reveal ourselves to us. The psalms are a model of whole-hearted, gut-engaged prayer more than they are a series of moral lessons or teachings about the nature of God. There’s no prayer they censor – even prayers of rage and vengeance.
• Secondly, as a therapist once told me, angry is often better than sad. Anger isn’t the greatest landing place, but as a stage of reaction to wild places, it keeps our dignity and our agency intact, and leaves us with options of what to do with our anger – act or wait, engage or walk away, reconcile or cut ties. The point is that we still have choices.  Watch out for adults who are upset when they don’t precisely get their way. There’s always emotional unhealth or abuse of power or both behind that. 

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for any friends and family who have suffered harm, that they would have the freedom to feel and express their anger, knowing God sees and hears. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Words of Doubt or Lament – Too often we don’t express to God our questions, our doubt, and our anger. This week, though, we still remember the wild places of exile – loss, grief, disappointment, out of control seasons, anxiety born of change. Whatever challenges you’re facing, speak out loud to God, or write in your own mini-psalm, your questions, doubt, or anger. When you’ve said or written what you have for today, sit in silence for a moment, and see if you sense or feel anything from God.

The Wild Places – Day 15

Monday, April 1
Last week, we read some of ancient Israel’s stories of exile – one of the great wild places of their collective historical and spiritual consciousness. This week we’ll read some of the poetry of exile – the expressions of sadness, anger, doubt, and faith hard and chaotic times can provoke. We’ll look to this poetry as a model for our own range of reactions to life, and our own possibility of faith while in wild places. 

Lamentations 1:1-11, 20-22 (CEB)

1 Oh, no!
She sits alone, the city that was once full of people.
Once great among nations, she has become like a widow.
Once a queen over provinces, she has become a slave.

² She weeps bitterly in the night, her tears on her cheek.
None of her lovers comfort her. All her friends lied to her;
they have become her enemies.

³ Judah was exiled after suffering and hard service.
She lives among the nations; she finds no rest.
All who were chasing her caught her—right in the middle of
her distress.

⁴ Zion’s roads are in mourning; no one comes to the festivals.
All her gates are deserted. Her priests are groaning,
her young women grieving. She is bitter.

⁵ Her adversaries have become rulers; her enemies relax.
Certainly the Lord caused her grief because of her many wrong acts.
Her children have gone away, captive before the enemy.

⁶ Daughter Zion lost all her glory.
Her officials are like deer that can’t find pasture.
They have gone away, frail, before the hunter.

⁷ While suffering and homeless, Jerusalem remembers all her treasures from days long past.
When her people fell by the enemy’s hand, there was no one to help her.
Enemies saw her, laughed at her defeat.

⁸ Jerusalem has sinned greatly; therefore, she’s become a joke.
All who honored her now detest her, for they’ve seen her
naked.
Even she groans and turns away.

⁹ Her uncleanness shows on her clothing; she didn’t consider what would happen to her.
She’s gone down shockingly; she has no comforter.
“Lord, look at my suffering—the enemy has definitely triumphed!”

¹⁰ The enemy grabbed all her treasures.
She watched nations enter her sanctuary—
nations that you, God, commanded: They must not enter your assembly.

¹¹ All her people are groaning, seeking bread.
They give up their most precious things for food to survive.
“Lord, look and take notice: I am most certainly despised.”

²⁰ Pay attention, Lord, for I am in trouble. My stomach is churning;
my heart is pounding inside me because I am so bitter.
In the streets the sword kills; in the house it is like death.

²¹ People heard that I was groaning, that I had no comforter.
All my enemies heard about my distress; they were thrilled that you had done this.
Bring the day you have announced so they become like me!

²² Let all their evil come before you.
Then injure them like you’ve injured me because of all my wrong acts;
my groans are many, my heart is sick

Points of Interest

• This is the first chapter of the short book of Lamentations, with a few verses cut for brevity. Tradition has it that the prophet Jeremiah wrote this poetry after the destruction of Jerusalem by the conquering armies of Babylon in the sixth century B.C. Many Jews still commemorate this historical destruction and other calamities Jews have faced, right through the Holocaust, on the annual fast day of Tisah B’Av.
• Scholars note that this chapter’s poetry reads like an ancient funeral dirge. Not one but many people have died. Collective suffering and chaos is personified through the death of the city’s husband. Once great Jerusalem is now empty, her people enslaved. She weeps, experiencing both suffering and shame, at the reversal of her fortunes.
• Lament is the expression of grief, sorrow, and anger. Bitter weeping and lost glory shape the tune here. Lament is an alternative to the cheer that can be out of reach in wild places. It is also an alternative to the denial of our suffering and shame, denial that can easily fuel inclinations toward despair, addiction, or domination of others. To lament is to be curious about our suffering or that of others. 
• An awkward aspect of Lamentations is how the author sees God’s agency in Jerusalem’s suffering. The opening narrator says, “The Lord caused her grief because of her many wrong acts.” When Jerusalem speaks in the second half of the chapter, she says similar things. Lamentations finds this helpful. To see Jerusalem’s destruction as the consequence of its injustice and unfaithfulness is more comforting to the author than to imagine it as the result of chaos, or the death or failure of God. But for most of us, I expect this merely raises more questions. Somewhere between a Calvinist, micromanaging God and a deist, absentee landlord god, is the God the Bible speaks of that is good and just and honors our freedom while also active in history. Lamentations tries to grapple with God’s possible role in their suffering, even if the results aren’t satisfying to you and me.
• Beyond looking for explanations, the lament ends with a cry for help and a cry for vengeance. We want to make meaning out of the story of our wild places; even more, we want to know we’re seen and known in it all. This week, we’ll invite you to speak with God in the hope that God sees and knows all that troubles you, and sees and knows with compassion. Watch out for adults who are upset when they don’t precisely get their way. There’s always emotional unhealth or abuse of power or both behind that. 

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for your city, your region, or your country. Tell God what grieves or angers you. Ask God that those who suffer shame will have the power to cry out and rage, rather than bury their shame, and ask God to hear and respond to their cries.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Words of Doubt or Lament – Too often we don’t express to God our questions, our doubt, and our anger. This week, though, we still remember the wild places of exile – loss, grief, disappointment, out of control seasons, anxiety born of change. Whatever challenges you’re facing, speak out loud to God, or write in your own mini-psalm, your questions, doubt, or anger. When you’ve said or written what you have for today, sit in silence for a moment, and see if you sense or feel anything from God. 

The Wild Places – Day 14

Friday, March 29

Daniel 3:19-30 (CEB)

¹⁹ Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and his face twisted beyond recognition because of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In response he commanded that the furnace be heated to seven times its normal heat. ²⁰ He told some of the strongest men in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the furnace of flaming fire.²¹ So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound, still dressed in all their clothes, and thrown into the furnace of flaming fire. (²² Now the king’s command had been rash, and the furnace was heated to such an extreme that the fire’s flame killed the very men who carried Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to it.) ²³ So these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell, bound, into the furnace of flaming fire.

²⁴ Then King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in shock and said to his associates, “Didn’t we throw three men, bound, into the fire?”

They answered the king, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

²⁵ He replied, “Look! I see four men, unbound, walking around inside the fire, and they aren’t hurt! And the fourth one looks like one of the gods.”²⁶ Nebuchadnezzar went near the opening of the furnace of flaming fire and said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire. ²⁷ The chief administrators, ministers, governors, and the king’s associates crowded around to look at them. The fire hadn’t done anything to them: their hair wasn’t singed; their garments looked the same as before; they didn’t even smell like fire!

²⁸ Nebuchadnezzar declared: “May the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be praised! He sent his messenger to rescue his servants who trusted him. They ignored the king’s order, sacrificing their bodies, because they wouldn’t serve or worship any god but their God. ²⁹ I now issue a decree to every people, nation, and language: whoever speaks disrespectfully about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s God will be torn limb from limb and their house made a trash heap, because there is no other god who can rescue like this.”

³⁰ Then the king made Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego prosperous in the province of Babylon.

Points of Interest

• Watch out for adults who are upset when they don’t precisely get their way. There’s always emotional unhealth or abuse of power or both behind that. 
• Nebuchadnezzar’s display of force is tragicomically rash. The strongest men in the army, the seven-times-more-potent capital punishment, the guards’ suffering all highlight that wounded pride and vengeance are at play, not justice. It’s like the villain’s threat to kill one hundred of the enemy for every one of his lost, or like the modern superpower’s unleashing of tons and tons of bombs to prevent or retaliate for its smaller experience of violence. 
• When the execution doesn’t go as planned, things get really strange. First, there are four men, not three. Then the impotency of the flames – no harm to hair or clothing or skin at all. Scholars and mystics and poets have marveled over this scene, speculating on the presence of an angel or even a pre-incarnate Christ (a fancy phase for God showing up in the flesh, long before the birth of Jesus).
• Nebuchadnezzar hasn’t matured or grown through this experience – he’s as rash and emotionally immature as ever. But the power of God to protect the people he tried to scapegoat and eliminate has given him respect for their god and restored them to protection and favor.
• Many Christians read this passage through the experiences of explicit persecution members of their own faith have experienced – usually small and sometimes invented ones in this time and place, deadly and brutal ones in other times and places. I think that’s fair (not the invented persecutions, but the rest), but my imagination takes this application further. When any minority group is persecuted, I like to think that the God of justice is empathetic to their cause, suffering with them, and rallying forces to work for their favor. In my country and my lifetime, the scapegoated victim has usually been of non-Christian religious faith, as well as people of color, immigrants, or sexual minorities. May the God of mercy walk with and protect all who are scapegoated and done harm because of power people’s fears.  We’ll take our final story of exile in two parts. 
  

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for any of your family and friends who are either unjustly victimized, for them to know God with them, and for God’s protection. Pray that God turns around any family or friends who out of their own fears, willingly participate in or stand silent in the face of the scapegoating of others.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Growing Hope – This week, the exercise will vary slightly from day to day. Each day, though, you’ll be invited to grow hope in your own wild place of exile – a loss that you or your culture has suffered, a dream that has died, some way that you don’t belong, don’t fit, or aren’t understood in your current context.

The temptation in exile is to a death of faith or a loss of hope. Today, follow the lead of this passage, asking God if there is any way you can stand in solidarity with people in your region who unjustly suffer. Perhaps your solidarity and hope can be expressed through your prayers or advocacy or service or civil disobedience.