Everything you wanted to know about Christianity at the Anglican Parish of the Otways Please join me each week for our reflections of sermons conducted during our church service. Plus, occasional splashes of humour and epiphanies! With much Love and Blessings Rev. Jenny Brandon |
![]() At some point in our lives we all leave home. It is something we do throughout our lives. We leave those places that are familiar, comfortable, predictable, sometimes eagerly, other times when life circumstances force us out the door. Regardless of how or why it happens, leaving home is a part of life. Leaving home can be difficult, frightening, and risky. It invites us to change and opens us to new discoveries about ourselves. It challenges our understandings of who we are where we find significance, meaning, and security. Leaving home is not, however, simply about the circumstances of life. It is the way of God’s people. Adam and Eve left the garden. Noah left his dry land home. God told Abram: Go from your country and your kindred Jacob ran away from home fearing for his life. Moses and the Israelites left their homes in Egypt. And in today’s gospel Jesus is leaving Nazareth. As Mark tells it, Jesus leaves Nazareth and now stands with John in the Jordan, the border between home and the wilderness. There he is baptized. The heavens are torn apart, the Spirit like a dove descends, and a voice declares: “You are my Son, the Beloved; This story is not, however, just about Jesus. It is our story too. The Father’s words refer to Jesus in a uniquely literal way but they also apply to each one of us. By grace, gift, and the choice of God we are his beloved daughters and sons. If leaving home, getting baptized, and going to the wilderness is Jesus’s way then it is our way too. We leave behind our old identity, we are identified and claimed by God as his children, and we go to the wilderness. That’s what this holy season of Lent is about. Lent is about leaving home and leaving home, in Lent and life, always takes us to the wilderness. The wilderness is an in between place. It is a threshold. We have left behind what was and what will be is not yet clear. In the wilderness we come face to face with the reality of our lives; things done and left undone, our fears, our hopes and dreams, our sorrows and losses, as well as the unknown. We leave home and experience wilderness temptations to discover that our most authentic identity is as a beloved child of God and our only real home is with God. The wilderness is new territory for us. In the wilderness the old structures, the ones we left behind, no longer contain, support, or define our life. In the wilderness our illusions of self-sufficiency become surrender to God, our helplessness opens us to God’s grace, and our guilt is overcome by God’s compassion. We can never escape or avoid the wilderness. Like Jesus, we must go through it. We must face the temptations of Satan and be with the wild beasts. Yet we never go alone. The angels that ministered to Jesus will be there for us. “Remember who you are,” is their message. “You are a beloved son of God- You are a beloved daughter of God- You are one with whom he is well pleased.” Over and over they tell us. They remind us. They encourage and reassure us. With each remembrance of who we are the demons are banished. With each remembrance of who we are we overcome Satan’s temptations. With each remembrance of who we are we take another step toward God. That is the way through the wildernesses of life. Remembrance after remembrance. Step after step. “I am a beloved child of God. With me he is well pleased.” Let that become our wilderness mantra.
Let those words fill our minds, cross our lips, and occupy our hearts. The truth of those words is the way home. The Lord Be with You! With Blessings Rev Jenny
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
About the author
Rev. Jenny is an ordained Priest of the Anglican Diocese delivering services at Anglican Parish of the Otway churches every week. With great depth of knowledge and a spiritual practice that shows she walks her talk and has taken her to the far reaches of N.T. Australia working with indigenous youth and elders.
Archives
May 2018
|