I’ve discovered recently that my life is plagued with almost constant background noise - the low hum of heating systems, the buzz of baby monitors, the thrum of the stovetop fan. It’s only once the artificial noises have stilled that I realize how grating they are to me. There’s an immediate sense of relief in the temporary silence. I find I’m continually surprised by that relief, as if I’m constantly forgetting how loud my life is until I catch glimpses of the gift of quiet here and there.
Step foot in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, or really any large stone church in any city, let the large doors close behind you, and you’ll notice it - the sudden absence of noise. The background barrage of traffic, the hustle and bustle of the city are muffled by the huge stone walls of the nave of the church. The cathedral is designed to create a sanctuary of sacred space where the distractions and anxieties of everyday life fall away. In the stillness, the presence of God, who is always with us, fills the foreground. The peace of God, which is always available to us, feels more within reach.
Rabbi Abraham Herschel wrote in his seminal book on Sabbath that for Judaism "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals." This kind of cathedral can't be burned or torn down, it comes with God's people everywhere they go. This Cathedral is built and rebuilt each week, constructed out of the rules that clear away the day to be for rest, for community, for God. A time when the volume of everything else in a person’s life - the anxiety, the traffic, the stress, and pressure - the volume of all that noise is turned way down so that stillness and silence emerge. Sabbath is designed to create a sanctuary of sacred time where God’s voice, God’s presence, and God’s restfulness can be felt, heard, and cherished.
In our chapter this week from our Lenten study book on Sabbath as resistance, Walter Brueggemann writes that the heart of God is rest. Unlike other gods the Hebrews had known, like the insatiable slaver-driver Pharaoh, who demanded bigger, better, more, the God of Israel seeks connection to creation through rest and joy. When God created, God declared that it was good. It was very good. And God rested. God is continually inviting us into that rest - commanding it, even.
Right before Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, the verse directly before the beginning of our Gospel today, and a voice from heaven declares, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ At this point, Jesus has done nothing more than grow up in Nazareth into a young man. He hasn’t started his ministry yet. Jesus’ beloved-ness and enough-ness is not earned, they are where he begins. And God saw that it was very good.
It is from this sense of belovedness that Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast and pray. His ministry starts with stepping outside of the city to listen closely to God, to the voice of beloved-ness, in solitude. After forty days, Jesus encounters another voice, the tempter. The tempter shows Jesus what kind of Messiah he could be, his full potential: he could be free from ordinary human struggles of hunger and safety. He could have power over all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus turns down every one of the devil’s deals. He trusts in his own belovedness. He trusts in God. He is enough. There is nothing he has to prove.
I find oftentimes that folks, including myself, tend to misunderstand Lent as a time to punish ourselves for all the ways we are not enough. Some sort of big forty day push to perfect and fix all our flaws. Perhaps even slip into using Lent as a time to prove to ourselves or to God that we can be better, more, perfect. Those impulses toward perfectionism align so well with the voice of the tempter in the wilderness: strive for more. When we approach Lent in this way, we are turning up the volume on the anxieties that drive so much of our culture: the underlying refrain that we are not smart enough, rich enough, skinny enough, accomplished enough. The messaging of not-enough-ness is so constant, so insidious, in every advertisement and every type of media that we consume, that it can become easy not to notice we are even hearing it - that it has begun to define us.
Lent is not about examining how we are not enough. Lent is about letting go and giving up that which keeps us from believing we are enough. It is a time to turn away from all that distorts our sense of ourself, our neighbor, and God and leads us away from love, kindness, and, also, rest. This season we will confess that we have denied God’s goodness in each other, in ourselves, and in the world God created. We repent of the evil that enslaves us, all the false deals and promises that keep us on the anxious treadmill of bigger, better, more.
When the devil says look at all you could be, Jesus chooses to hold back. In a society that demands to be our best 100% of the time, that glorifies pushing for maximum effort and full capacity until we collapse, God asks us to leave one seventh of our life on the table. This table. God intends a whole day a week for us to rest in our enough-ness. Crucially, the rest is not in service of the work; we don't rest so we can become better workers the remainder of the week. Instead, the rest is what helps us resist allowing the anxiety of the majority of the week to define us. When we begin from our belovedness, when we start from a place of enoughness centered in the restfulness of God, we can move out into the world with Jesus’ confidence and trust. We can resist the voice of the tempter.
When and where in your life is the volume turned down enough for you to find your way into the restful heart of God? Where and when can you return and begin again from a true sense of your own beloved-ness? Where is your cathedral in space? When is your cathedral in time?
Whether you have one or not, it takes practice to build cathedrals of time and space strong enough to hold the anxious voices of our tempters at bay. It takes deliberately stepping outside of our patterns and habits. It takes turning off devices and closing doors. It takes community and it takes accountability.
When God’s people gave God the chance to say how God wanted us to be in relationship with ourselves and our neighbor, God said, “Love.” When we gave God the chance to say how God wanted to be in relationship with us, God said, “Rest with me.”
Amen.
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