Sermon, Feb 21^st 2010, First Sunday of Lent, Lumby United Church  

 

By Hermann Harlos

 

Forty is an auspicious number in Christianity: Moses spent forty days in the desert when he met God; the Israelites traveled for forty years before settling in their Promised Land; Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert and stayed with his disciples for forty days after his Resurrection.

 

Today we celebrate the beginning of Lent and commemorate the beginning of Jesus’ forty day fast in the desert. During forty days of fasting, meditating, and praying, Jesus resisted all sorts of evil temptations, attained his oneness with God and found his way to divine grace.

 

The mystical tradition that Jesus belonged to was a way of purification that was later named via purgativa: the purification of the soul in order to make room for the light of God. The first step on that way is a conversion of the heart. Through fasting, meditation, and prayer, one makes direct contact with God, experiences one’s innate unity with God and with everyone and everything, and thereby attains the grace of God. Within the Christian mystical tradition, Jesus was the first to show us that we are not passively dependent on God’s grace but can actively and consciously bring it about; that grace is attainable and available as a physical and emotional human experience to everyone, and that the soul can attain liberation even in the darkest moments—if we allow ourselves to trust totally and completely in God. This opens the door to the “kingdom of heaven,” which is attainable by everyone.

 

The circle of those who left everything behind to follow Jesus, to attain his kingdom and spread his teachings, grew rapidly. They did not initially name themselves “Christians,” that name came later. But they were, perhaps, “Nazirites.”

 

Moses mentions the Nazirites as a mystical Judaic sect dedicated to the knowledge of God, and lays down the details of their vows in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 6, Verses 1-21. Samson was a Nazirite, so was Samuel, and quite possibly other heroes and prophets of the Old Testament as well. Of the New Testament prophets, John the Baptist appears to have been a Nazirite, and perhaps Jesus as well.

 

The early community around Jesus and John the Baptist could also have been “Ebionites.” The Ebionites were a Judaic mystical sect similar to the Nazirites. Solitary vision quests in the desert were practiced by both Ebionites and Nazirites, and Jesus’ forty days in the desert could have been standard Ebionite or Nazirite practice, but the name “Jesus the Nazarite” seems allude to Jesus being a member of the Nazirite sect. Even if Jesus did grow up in the village of Nazareth, Nazareth could have received its name from being a settlement of Nazirites.

 

Immediately after his baptism by John in the River Jordan, Jesus retired to the desert wilderness for forty days of meditation and ascetic practice. There he let go of the darkness of his soul and of all worldly attachments. This was a painful experience for Jesus, and can be painful for everyone, because everything that links us to our human perception—our entire world of concepts—needs to be expurgated. This can be our dark night of the soul, where we let go of everything, where we empty ourselves to be filled with the divine.

 

This may sound harsh to us moderns, but it is a process of detachment from the ego and from all those things that our ego is attached to and which cause us suffering. It is a deep meditative process by which our consciousness undergoes both an active and a passive purification. In our day and age, most of us who seek purification do not go off into the wilderness but on a spiritual retreat to a retreat centre, or take time off for solitude and meditation at home, which can also be an active part of the soul cleansing process.

 

Whether we go to a retreat centre, or into the wilderness, or meditate at home, something deep and mysterious happens at the very core of our being: we attain detachment from all those things that dominated our lives with worries and fears; we gain a different perspective on life and are enriched by spirit. Jesus abandoned himself to this process in an extreme way, completely letting go and surrendering to the divine spirit.

 

During this process of letting go, unconscious material can flow to the surface of consciousness, causing torment to the meditator. These were the temptations of Jesus, his battles with Satan during his forty days in the desert. Both Zen Buddhism and the Christian mystical tradition offer the same advice in these situations: pay no attention to those feelings, voices, or images of temptation, let them go by and remain quietly within the wisdom that lies hidden in the inner depths. When one does not give in to the temptation but remains focused on meditation and prayer, then the soul is rewarded with bliss and benediction. Jesus underwent purification of his soul in his darkest night, and at dawn he found the sweetness of the spirit, as if angels had attended to him and helped him awaken from evil.

 

The moment of spiritual awakening during Jesus’ forty days in the desert linked him with John the Baptist and interlocked their destinies, for it was John’s imprisonment and death upon Jesus’ return that prompted the followers of John to rally around Jesus. They saw in him John’s natural successor and possible new Messiah, whom they badly needed in the face of Roman oppression.

 

The desert where Jesus had spent his forty days is the wilderness south of Jerusalem. It is rough and uninviting, hardly anything grows there; it is devoid of any human habitation, with only wild animals roaming. But this desert and solitude, far away from all distractions, was the perfect place for meditation and coming into close contact with God. God first spoke to Israel through Moses in the desert; the desert was where John, Jesus, and Paul trained their spirits for the tasks that lay ahead of them. It was in the desert where Jesus’ ministry began; and a desert monastic mystical tradition grew from the followers of Jesus and continued uninterrupted to this day.

 

 It is, perhaps, the wilderness that best encapsulates Jesus’ message: a compelling call for simplicity, a place far away from worldly complications, desires, and pains, a state that is longed for by everyone and yet so hard to attain. Jesus’ call for simplicity was taken up from time to time throughout history by figures as diverse as Saint Francis of Assisi, William Blake, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and many others who never rose to fame because of their simplicity. Jesus’ simplicity, however, embodied a metamorphosis of the soul, whereby one could, through simplicity and prayerful meditation, attain unity with God. Jesus entranced his followers and taught them, with his own example, how they, too, through simplicity and prayerful meditation, could attain unity with God and become children of God.

 

Although mystical seeking was common practice among early Christians, it was later abandoned in favor of a more doctrinal and dogmatic approach. Christianity fell away from mysticism to dogmatism. The unquestioning belief in the absolute truthfulness of a doctrine became the essential element of faith, and remained so to this day.

 

The fall from mystical and experiential spirituality to doctrinal spirituality was also a fall from grace. Grace is an experience of God, or an experience of our innate connectedness with the divine. Grace is the living experience of the living God rather than the unquestioning belief in an abstract theory about God. Grace is, above all, an experience. By cutting ourselves off from the experience of the divine, we cut ourselves off from the living roots of our faith.

 

Most of the world’s major religions have their mystical denominations. Judaism has several mystical sects, Islam has its Sufism, Buddhism has Zen, and Hinduism is in itself a mystical religion. Although mysticism has been nurtured in Christian monasteries, Christianity is the only major religion without an official mystical denomination. And this despite the fact that Jesus had been one of the world’s leading mystical teachers, and that mystical experience and direct contact with God had been the main attraction for the original followers of Jesus.

 

I think there is a dire need for us Christians to re-discover our mystical roots. More and more of us are doing just that. We are going on retreats, or meditate at home and in church. Meditative or centering prayer, which has been a monastic Christian tradition all along, is now taken up by congregations everywhere.

 

We Canadians are fortunate to have an indigenous culture that is deeply spiritual and still thriving. Not only is indigenous Canadian culture deeply spiritual, its spirituality is also deeply mystical, making it a thoroughly mystical, spiritual culture.

 

To de-mystify mysticism, it needs to be said that mysticism is nothing more than spiritual experience, or experiential spirituality. Experiencing ourselves as spirit beings, and the entire world around us as spiritual, is the most natural thing in the world because it is the basic state of being.

 

What is not natural is our world of concepts. Our thinking minds have conceptualized the world, and we believe those concepts to be absolutely true, and thereby alienate ourselves away from the innate state of grace.

 

When we let go of our concepts and ego attachments, then we experience the spiritual reality as it really is. This experience is unique to every one of us simply because each individual is a unique being, a unique manifestation of the divine, and experiences the divine uniquely. No one else can tell us what our experience ought to be like; no one can interpret its meanings to us. The quest for an experience of the divine is a solitary quest, and is best undertaken in solitude.

 

It is still customary for our indigenous people to go off into the wilderness on solitary vision quests similar to Jesus’ forty days in the desert. During this quest the seeker abstains from eating and sometimes even from drinking, detaches him- or herself from all worldly desires; prays, meditates, sings or chants or practices some other meditative or contemplative practice.

 

The experiences and insights attained on such a quest are sometimes shared, sometimes not; this is up to the seeker. But the experience almost always marks a turning point in the life of the seeker, a new direction and a new path in life, as if the divine were telling us which road to take.

 

The indigenous tradition of the vision quest is well worth following. Equally exemplary is the spiritual culture of our First Nations, wherein everything is suffused with spirit and dominated by experiential spirituality. When the Europeans conquered Canada, they believed their doctrinal religion superior to the mystical spirituality of the indigenous people, and imposed their religion on them, without bothering to investigate what indigenous spirituality is about. Today the tables have turned. We, the descendants of the European conquerors, have come to realize the value of the indigenous culture and ask our indigenous sisters and brothers to share their spirituality with us.

 

They, of course, have long ago adopted what is good and great about our culture—it is we who have failed to realize what is good and great about theirs! In a spirit of cultural sharing and learning, and as our first major wonderQuest event, Mollie Bono of the Okanagan First Nation is going to share the spiritual culture of the Okanagan People with us in a one-day interactive workshop on March 27th. Her workshop is announced in today’s service bulletin and will be duly posted and advertised as we get closer to the event.

 

By getting to know the culture of the Canadian First Nations, we can, perhaps, find our way back to our own mystical roots. Not only to the roots of our Christian faith, but also to the mystical roots of our indigenous European ancestors, whose cultures are lost to us.

 

During this time of Lent let us remember Jesus’ forty days in the desert. Let Jesus’ quest inspire us to go on quests of our own.

 

 Amen