Tuesday, September 25, 2018

For I am a Sojourner with you, my Father


“For I am but a sojourner with you; a wayfarer, as all my forbears were.”
(Psalm 39:14)

Throughout scripture we find examples of God calling people out of their present context; inviting them beyond familiar horizons into the uncertainty of the unknown.

  • In the story of Noah we find God calling a man and his family to “sail away” from impending doom, lest they too be washed away in the floodwaters.
  • In Abraham we have someone being called away from his city, his life, his father; having been promised that his descendants would go on to be a Light unto the whole world (as numerous as the stars in the sky).
  • In the Exodus we hear of a people who have become trapped – stuck under the rule of mortals who claim to be “god” – and of how the True God (of Heaven and Earth) shook the very foundations of nature so that God’s people might be free to continue the journey begun by their ancestors.

This image of the journey – of being “called out” into the unknown by a Divine Voice – is one of the most enduring human ideas across time and place. We find it writ large in the stories and mythologies across the world; famously “distilled” in the work of Joseph Campbell and his “Hero’s Journey.”
Campbell presents the Journey as the “monomyth” – a common thread woven into stories throughout the world; each story being unique to its time and place, but with similarities popping up in stories across other cultures:

  • The not-yet-hero is called by Fate to leave her home and cross the threshold of the unknown.
  • She enters the wilderness to be challenged and tempted by gods and monsters.
  • The hero undergoes a kind of death; sometimes literal but always real in the sense that they are forever cut off from their old way of being.
  • The hero is then experiences a kind of resurrection and presses on towards further triumph and transformation.
  • After having finally reached a state of Divine Union, the hero eventually returns home, newly empowered and with newfound wisdom to aid her people in their own transformation.

While today’s great stories (in movie form) often end with the climactic triumph of the hero, that journey home is often just as problematic as the initial call to adventure. Having been forever changed by our experiences of God on the road – out in those Wild places beyond urban experience – the “civilized” world to which the sojourner returns seems different. It is indeed the home they left, but having looked into the Wild Face of God, they no longer see the world in the same way – the journey has given them new eyes.

To the people who never left, the returned traveler seems to have shorted a few circuits upstairs. The person no longer seems bound by the constraints of ordinary society and even begins to challenge settled truths.

This could be the story of any prophet, of any man or woman of God who has stepped beyond ordinary. Having been drawn across the threshold of everyday experience, they are gifted with the Revelation of the Untamable God – but upon their return their message is often challenged on the basis of “status quo” and rejected (until it’s too late).

After running from the guilt of murder, Moses eventually found himself in those wild reaches at the edge of human civilization. In the shadow of Mount Sinai, he is drawn into the Wild Mystery of the God of his ancestors (the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the Holy One who drew his forbears from the nations of the world to be a Holy People. The Mighty Voice commissions Moses to go and proclaim freedom to his people and judgement upon Pharaoh if the king blocks their way (which he will).

But before Moses even begins his contest with Pharaoh, he must first prove the legitimacy of the Divine Message to his own people. His brother Aaron is driven into the wilderness by the spirit to meet Moses on his way to Egypt. Moses shares his encounter with Aaron, and together they boldly bear the Divine Name and the hope of freedom to their Hebrew brothers and sisters, and preform the miraculous signs of the Most High God among them.

Then Moses, Aaron, and their sister Miriam, with the backing of the united Hebrew people (most of the time) went on to face the man who had claimed the title of “god” for himself, Pharaoh – the one who would attempt to stop God’s people from following the course into the Wild Places to which they have been called.
Not that they’ll necessarily like the wilderness once they get there…


Having witnessed the wonders and miracles in Egypt which won their freedom, the people of Israel followed Moses into the desert with their sights set on a promised land and somewhere beyond the horizon – that place their ancestors once knew they’d return to. But before they could get there, the people of God had to undergo a period of transformation in that wilderness between their old ways of being and the New Life into which God was ultimately calling them – between Egypt and Jerusalem.

Moses once more ends up at the base of Mount Sinai, now with an increasingly restless and quarrelsome flock of people hungering for the lives they left behind. He once more ascends the mountain to seek God’s will for the wandering people and the Lord proclaims:

“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

After the people receive this message, the holy mountain becomes covered in smoke and flame, shaking with the wild glory of God. Seeing that the mountain is most holy, and fearing the awesome Presence of the Most High, Moses is appointed both by God and his people to be an intermediary. Moses is given the task of bearing the concerns of his people before the creator of heaven and earth, and then delivering the Diving Word back to this chosen people – to look into the Wild Face of the Almighty and reflect the brightness of that Face back to God’s people.

This is the task of the prophet and of any man or woman of God who seeks to bear the Divine and transformative Word in this world. We are called to journey into those wild places where others fear to tread – to those places that disorient and confuse our worldviews, where everything we know about the world is stripped away and we are left with nothing but the untamable power of the Living God. Having looked into that Wild Face, nothing will ever be the same. Our perception will have shifted and we will have new eyes to see and love world in which we find ourselves. But this gift is not our own, we are called to turn those loving eyes upon those towns and villages and cities which produced us in the first place, to present that Wild and recklessly loving Face upon God’s people, that they too may know the One who calls them to be a priestly people.

My great love for the wild places of the world primarily comes from my father, a man absolutely enamored with the natural beauty of creation. His perfect bliss in life was found either in the woods with a rifle (or bow) in hand, or out on the waters where Tampa Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico, pulling up the living treasures of the sea. He taught me a great love for all living things, chastising me from ever plucking leaves off of a plant unless I had a very good reason. My father was a hunter through and through, entering the woods and joining that primordial dance of predator and prey – always watching, always searching.

But eventually this hunt and this search lead elsewhere; in his wandering my father got lost in his journey and eventually made turns which left him broken and struggling for the rest of his life. I didn’t really know my father for the last ten years of his life, and in 2008 he passed away from a brain hemorrhage – I was fifteen years old.

Now, ten years later (as a twenty-five year old man) I know that in some sense I’m still looking for my father; to know more about who this man was and who I am as his son – a newly bearded Telemachus watching for the return of an unknowable father.

In a few days (after the conclusion of this conference) I will be taking a cross-country, road trip; camping in national forests and arid badlands, beside lakes, on the sides of mountains, and on the edges of canyons. On this road trip I plan to take my father’s ashes to the most beautiful and wild places that I can access, before releasing the last of his remains in the waters he knew best.
I will be hunting with my father, searching for the Wild Face of God in the best of creation. Everyday offering more of my own lost father to our Heavenly Father, and leaning ever more into my own identity as a beloved child of God. Upon my own return from the mountains I pray that I may bear something of that Wild and Wonderful Face I seek, having been transformed by the experience and strengthened in my ability to minister to God’s beloved people.

Following our Lord’s baptism in the Jordan River, a Great Voice from Heaven proclaimed “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11)

Saint Mark (of course) gives the shortest account of what happens next:
“…the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” (Mark 1:12-3)

Having been divinely pronounced the Beloved Son of God, Jesus is immediately driven out into the lonely places, away from “civilized” company to live among animals and the spirits of the wild places. Here he is tempted by Satan and apportioned a time to reflect on the kind of messiah that he is called to be - rather than simply running straight into Jerusalem to establish the earthly kingdom of heaven without having first gone out to listen for the Voice of his Father, and establishing his messianic identity.

As in all things, we are called to follow our Lord Jesus out into the wilderness, to be tempted and tried by the spirits that dwell there, ever growing in our understanding of what it means to be Children of the Most High God in Christ Jesus.

We should not fear to tread beyond our own familiar horizons and follow the Spirit into the unknown; for we trust that our Father is there also, ever ready to reveal more of his earth-shattering (and down-right terrifying) Wonder, Glory, and Love. Having followed Christ into those places, and having looked into the eyes of the One who has made deserts and mountains, rivers, oceans, canyons, and forests; let us now stare out onto this world with those same eyes, showing the world just how wild the Most High is.

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