The Redemption Project - Liminal Space (Reprise)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about liminal space, a place in-between where things seem uncertain. I struggled with that particular post, and in the days that have followed, something about it didn’t feel right. I was honest, but not really touching what the term meant in this time and place in my life.

Now, I know why.

In this moment, we have all found ourselves in this middle-space. We have been tossed into this realm where everything we knew is now in question, and the future is unclear, uncertain. In ways emotionally and physically, we’ve found ourselves in the wilderness, left to wander and wonder how long, O Lord, how long.

As I pen these words, I’m still moving around out in the world. The company I work for has not yet closed its campus, and I’m expected to be there physically. By the time you read this, that situation may have changed. Things are in such flux that I find I have no idea if the Adult Christian Education curriculum we started on Sunday will be something we return to before Easter. Will there even be a service come Palm Sunday, or will, out of caution, we cancel and encourage everyone to worship at home?

The biggest struggle, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, with this wilderness-space is finding an answer to the question of what should I do? Where, in this time, this place does my passion and the world’s need intersect? What, when the problem seems so big, so overwhelming, can I possibly do? What sort of action brings redemption into a situation like this?

But that’s the hopelessness of the wilderness isn’t it? It’s why the Evil One tempted Jesus with these grand actions: turn stones to bread, perform some grand spectacle, rule the world. Inside this space, nothing but godlike action seems enough.

Jesus' mission, however, consisted of small things. Sure, he could have healed every sick person, gave sight to all the blind, and stood proud beside a mountain of discarded crutches. Instead, he only touched a few. He could have ended famines by making the stones at our feet food. Instead, he made enough for breakfast after a long night’s fishing.

Here, in the wilderness, those actions don't seem very big. They don't seem as world-changing as the moment demands. But weren't they? All those little things, they mattered. They altered reality. Not in the immediate, dramatic way the temptations offered, but like ripples in a pond that traveled, gathering energy and speed to become a wave. A wave that was fed by other ripples, those made by those who followed, and those who followed them.

This in-between moment in which we find ourselves is not forever, though, it can seem endless right now. Forty days, let's remember, are a measurement of time beyond time. And in these days, like those before, it's likely the smallest things that will bring us nearer to the moment that follows.

A moment like the dawn. 

The Redemption Project - Liminal Space

I'm learning to pay attention to thing that crop up during the week. This week it was the term liminal space—a time between one thing and the next.

Jesus, following his Baptism, goes into the Judean wilderness for forty days and forty nights. It's a time-span that calls to mind both the flood of Noah's time and the long wandering of the Children of Israel. It's meant to imply something that goes on for a long time, something beyond mere human measure. It could be exactly forty days. It could be less, or it could be more. Jesus, for all we know, could have been out in the wilderness for years.

I often imagine that Jesus spent that time thinking about what he was going to do. How do you go about healing the world? How do you get people to understand that the God of the universe is deeply in love with Creation wants a relationship with it? How do you redeem a world?

In the midst of this, there was temptation. The Devil came along and offered a few suggestions on how to accomplish this monumental task. Jesus could meet the needs of the world through their stomachs or capture their attention with awe. He could just take over and rule the world. All of them made sense. Every option was one that could change the world. But none of them were the right choice. And so, Jesus remained in this in-between, this liminal space.

Ten years ago, this year, I graduated from seminary. On a warm, beautiful, clear day in late May, I and my classmates received our hoods and diplomas and stepped out into the world. Two months after that, I was living back in the city that had been our home before, looking for work, and having no idea what I was supposed to do. A year after, I was in a job I did not enjoy and in which I would be for almost five years.

Those years led to the position I have now, one I love and that allows me to grow and to be challenged every day. But, I am still in liminal space. I still feel in-between, feel that I am waiting, and listening, and trying to discern how I can do my part in the healing of the world.

How about you? Have you wandered into the wilderness this year, or have you been in this space for forty days and nights? Have you given in to temptation or, like me, are you wondering if you have?

The story that begins this season is a strange one. It's the one right before everything begins to happen. It doesn't seem to advance the narrative like the birth, the baptism, or the calling of the Twelve. You'd almost begin to think it had nothing to do with the redemption story.

Unless, it's where that story begins.

First Sunday of Lent

Luke 4:1-13
Forty days of temptation: surely none of us can imagine that. Can we?
While I've no desire to take away from the impact of the idea of forty literal days, I often like to remind myself that the concept of forty in scripture is a nebulous one. Forty is the number of days that the rains fell during the flood. Forty is the number of years that the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness. And while it can be taken as a true count of time, it is also a stand-in for a time outside of time. It's a time that may be days, may be months, or may be years. No matter how long it lasts, it feels like a very long time.
Time after a major event can be like this. No matter how many years pass, it always seems like just yesterday that I married my wife. And, at the same time, it seems as though we've been together for the whole of our lives. Forty is what really explains the time of our marriage. It is a time somehow beyond time.
So when I come to this story, I find myself thinking that the time in the wilderness could have been longer than forty days. And whether it was only a month-and-a-half or six months, the entire time, we're told, Jesus was tempted. He was, to borrow a military term, besieged. And the success of a siege depends upon the attacker's resources outlasting those it has attacked.
When we think of temptation, we often think of it in a childlike sense of a suggestion to do something wrong—a cookie before dinner, crossing the street without asking. But temptation involves more than just simple no-nos. In fact, I've often found that the temptation to do things is often a lot easier to resist than the temptation to stop doing things.
All three of the temptations outlined in our Gospel today involve a suggestion, a seduction to stop doing something. For Jesus to turn stones into bread was to stop relying upon the Divine. To throw himself from the temple's peak was to stop being humble. To bow down and accept the riches of the world was to stop being honest to his own heart just for a decent paycheck.
Jesus, somehow, withstood the siege. Worn down, tired, hungry, wondering if this was how it was all supposed to work out, Jesus managed to resist the temptation to stop. So often, I look at these passages in awe and think how weak I must seem when I, time and again, succumb to the siege.
But then I remember that the one who endured those long days, the one who was weak, is also the One who remembers what that experience was like. That's the One who has overcome and returned to show us the way.
You are the One who has overcome the urge to stop, the urge to cease doing good. Help me as I hold out when I am tempted.