Sermon of October 2, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Exodus 19:1-9

“The Lessons of the Desert"

Two weeks ago, my wife Jane and I traveled to Arizona for a few days of vacation.  We hiked in the Grand Canyon , drove through an “old west” town (that was partly authentic, partly “Hollywood”), and shopped a little in Sedona.  The best part of the trip, though, was the time we spent in the desert – including an afternoon at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix , and a day exploring native American dwellings just south of Sedona.  I came away from the experience with more than just rest and relaxation.  As it often is with time I spend away from home and work, I also came away with lots of thoughts about sermon topics.  So today, and on a couple of other occasions later this month, I will be drawing my sermon themes from some lessons I learned in the desert.

The desert has a prominent place in our faith story.  In fact, today’s lesson from Exodus 19 – which leads up to the giving of the 10 Commandments in the chapter that follows – is set in the desert.  The passage says that Israel is in the “wilderness” here, but a lot of Bible scholars believe that when it says wilderness it also can mean desert. So when Israel is going from Rephidim to Sinai and they encamp there at the base of the mountain, at the base of the mountain where Moses will go to get the 10 Commandments, they are in the wilderness or in the desert.   Let’s take a few moments to look at the importance of the desert in our faith story – and the lessons it can teach us…

One of the things that strikes me about the desert is that the desert is a place of revelation. In order for something to be revealed to us, we have to be able to be paying attention, and we have to be in a place that doesn’t have many distractions, and the desert is great like that. Contrast it to other places in our lives: the mall, for instance, is not a place to get revelations. There’s so much going on: things flashing, people talking, people moving, things catch your attention – it’s not a good place for revelations. A city street, a busy city street, is not a place to be walking along and expect to get great revelations, because of all the noises and all the things going on. 

I found out yesterday that Fenway Park is not a great place to get revelations.  I was at the ball game and unfortunately it did not turn out the way I wanted, but I was there with two of my children and a nephew and up in the “monster seats”. I still have a little green ‘M’ on my hand that proves that. Nobody else has a green ‘M’ on their hand, do you? But, I was aware of the noise and the distractions there. We were underneath the speaker, underneath the big Volvo sign that was there, and every once in awhile my daughter would turn to me and start talking and it was always when they started playing the music. I couldn’t hear her at all, I couldn’t even hear her voice yelling at me right into my ear, let alone get a revelation.

So, for us to get revelations, something new revealed to us that is important and significant, you need a place like the desert, a quiet place, a place where not much appears to be going on; a place that is still and ready for us to receive revelations. As I said earlier, that’s where Moses and the people of Israel were called by God to, in the next chapter, get the 10 Commandments – the 10 Commandments that we still cherish today that are a foundation of our faith and our lives and our society. They were given not in the temple, not in a big, busy city – but out in the desert where revelation can take place and people can receive it well. I had a little revelation in the desert recently when my wife and I were in Arizona , not a major one, not a life-turning one like it was for Moses and the people of Israel – but as I was taking in the beauty and wonder of the desert, I got some ideas for sermons. And the next couple of sermons I’m going to do will also be about the desert, not quite a series. I started jotting down notes about what I’m perceiving here, what I’m taking in, connects right up with faith. And so I started getting notes down for the next couple of sermons. That was my revelation, just something about how the desert can teach us things about our faith and our life just from being in the desert. 

The desert is also a place of appreciation of things.  As I think about this story of Moses and the people of Israel in the desert, I just have this conception of God looking down and looking on creation and all the peoples and all the places on earth, and God focuses down on the desert. God finds this band of people, these nomads moving from one place to another, and starts telling them how much they are appreciated. (I’ve taken to doing something when I prepare for sermons, and that is using the computer to copy different translations down side-by-side, it’s less bulky then holding three different Bibles because I might drop them, so if I drop this it doesn’t matter. So I’ve got the King James and the Revised Standard and the New Revised Standard side-by-side). Where it says that God is speaking in the translation we heard, “If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all the peoples,” God is saying I care for you the most; I appreciate who you are as a people moving from one place to the other. But in the King James, I liked it even better. It says, “Now therefore if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” We think that peculiar means strange, but it means here unique or special. You shall be a unique or special treasure unto me; I appreciate you above and beyond all the other people. I look down in the desert and I see people who mean a great deal to me and I appreciate who you are. Not because you’re the greatest, later on God says, but because you’re the smallest. 

I remember having an appreciation for water while I was in the desert. We packed water, at least you’re supposed to, but you only have as much as you pack with you, because there are no great lakes, streams, ponds, water fountains. There is no great Poland Springs water cooler out there in the middle of the desert. So we had water and as we got further along, and the water bottle kept getting lower and lower, I had more appreciation for what was left in there. And it made me think about what I learned about the native people who lived there. There were tribes who lived there whose caves we were exploring, and the ranger we were talking to said they might have been a tribe called the Yavapai or the Hopi. We’ve heard of the Hopi, most of us, but the Yavapai was kind of new to me. When the Mexican explorers came in and found them there, the Mexican explorers called them the “sinagua” people, which is the best Spanish I can say for the words “sin” and “agua,” meaning without water. So these are people without water! Because they were there in this desert where there weren’t any streams, rivers, ponds, brooks – yet they lived. They did find water, it just wasn’t in any great abundance like in other parts of the world. 

So I imagine the “sinagua” people who lived there and made these etchings and paintings on the wall, really had a great appreciation for something simple like water. I began to have a great appreciation of the desert for the simplicity of life that was there, and for things like water that we take so much for granted. One of the lessons that I learned, or was reinforced for me, is that the things that we have in great abundance we start to lose appreciation for once in a while if we have too much of it. But the things that we start to get lesser and lesser amounts of in our lives or we have just a little bit – we appreciate that all the more. Like water – or things that are either dwindling in our lives or things we just don’t have much of. If we have a little bit we appreciate it so much more than some of the things that we have in great abundance. Great lesson for us all to learn.

The last lesson I came away from in the desert, is a belief that the desert is a place of resolution, to resolve something, to decide something firmly. That’s what Moses and the people did in the lesson we heard earlier. At the end, after the message goes back and forth, Moses goes up the mountain and comes back down with the message, and the people all answered as one: everything the Lord has spoken we will do. They resolved at that point to do what God was calling them to do, which was going to involve following the Ten Commandments and all the other laws that were about to come down.  In the desert where there was nothing else distracting them, nothing else taking their attention, they resolved to do everything the Lord was asking them to do; a big decision for the people of Israel and for Moses. 

Later on in the New Testament, others go into the desert and come out with great resolution. John the Baptist was born believing (his parents were telling him) that he was going to be the one to prepare the way for the Lord, and he went into the wilderness and lived in the wilderness and came out of the wilderness, the desert, ready to prepare the way for Jesus. And then Jesus went into the desert, the wilderness, for 40 days and 40 nights, and he was tempted time and again until he came out resolved that he was going to do what God was calling him to do, was to be the savior of the world. The desert is a place to go to and become resolved in something important.

I came away not with a big resolution like that, but with a resolution to share with you some of the lessons of the desert, with a new appreciation for the wonder and the teaming life that does exist in this place that doesn’t seem like it has a lot of life.

The good news today is that the desert, in its dryness, in its slowness, in its apparent barrenness – really is full – full of life, full of lessons. And so I encourage you to go to the desert. While you don’t all have the chance right away to go to a desert, there are other places that can be as deserts for you. I was thinking that if you go as far as Cape Cod, some of the dunes and the sands there can be kind of deserted and kind of like the desert. But even if you can’t go there, somewhere like an Audobon center or a Nature Trail, or somewhere where you can get away from all the distractions of life once in awhile and be open to God’s revealing, and open to appreciating life more than you might, and the simple things in life more than you might just in the normal flow of things – when so many other things are on your mind. Where you might have a chance to resolve something, to come to a decision in your life that you’ve been struggling with, but it isn’t coming to you in the normal routine of life; to find somewhere else to go.

For me, on Sunday mornings, at about 8:40 and 9:55 , I go into my office and shut the doors, and I tell Mary Lou and Julia that I’m going in to get ready for worship. Sometimes I tell them I’m going to go write my sermon. But I really have done that by then. But it’s just the last few quiet moments, away from other things happening, just to kind of prepare myself for worship. So, a desert place for some people can be a room that’s quiet and has few distractions- not the one with the TV and all those things.

I urge you to find a desert and go there once in awhile, and be open to God speaking to you, revealing to you, teaching you to have greater appreciation for the simple, natural things in life. And maybe take time to make the decision you’ve been waiting to decide – a good one, I hope.  

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