A Sermon for I Lent All
Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.
March 9, 2014 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Spoiler alert: I just got back from another Dream
Intensive where we focused on Shadows and how we can identify them in our
dreams.
Why does Jesus go out in the Wilderness as related in
Matthew’s Gospel lesson for today? Matthew says that Jesus was led by the
Spirit after Jesus was baptized. So, Jesus is beginning his new ministry and he
wants to get ready. How does anyone get
ready for anything? For instance, I expect a carpenter to get all of his tools
together and to see if they still work or are sharp enough. Jesus was a carpenter and he knew those tools
well, but since his new task is not carpentry, what does he have to do to
prepare? The only thing he has is the fullness of his being - his body, mind,
and spirit. He wants to become whole and complete for his ministry. He begins
fasting, the discipline of doing without the usual food of nourishment in order
to be hungry for being fed by God.
Episcopalians are not that anxious to fast
because we have a hard time denying ourselves anything. We might go on a diet
to lose weight, but do we ever complain when we are on it! The purpose of
fasting is not to lose weight but to feed a different kind of hunger. The life
that Jesus is entering is going to be difficult, and Jesus knows that he will
have to have a passion for the hunger for God, to feast on the Spirit.
He is also there to get rid of so much stuff that has
cluttered his life - all the fears, hurts, prejudices, and assumptions that are
part of his life. We dump things in the wilderness away from people, and this
is where Jesus goes.
He is also there to claim his whole being, and he will
go into his very self to struggle with the shadow within, the unconscious side
of himself. We all have shadows that are part of ourselves; as John Sanford
defines it, “The Shadow is the dumping ground for all those characteristics of
our personality that we disown.”
Shadows are always at the places and times of greatest
light. Jung noted that the “most religious places in the world have the darkest
shadows.” Think of Jerusalem, Rome,
Ireland, and Spain, and reflect on the fact that much of the bloodshed and
violence in the world have had elements of religion as the cause. The attempt of humans to have harmony with
God somehow often devolves into disharmony between fellow human beings. Jesus
has just had his baptismal experience and he was in the light of the Spirit,
but he knew he had to go deeper into the shadow in order to make sure he would
not fall into that trap.
Our shadows dwell in the darkness of our own
unconscious. We need to be aware of all those things that we have pushed down
out of our consciousness but that have this nasty habit of coming to us in our
dreams and visions or spring up when we project the shadow onto another person.
We need to bring these shadows to light so that we are aware of them. Jesus
will later warn of this inability to see our own shadows when he says: “First
take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly how to take the
speck out of your neighbor’s eye,”
The journey into one’s very self is where we encounter
the shadows, and it is here where we meet some of our demons. Carl Jung said,
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making
the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and
therefore not popular.” This disagreeable task of naming, meeting, struggling
with, and claiming our demons is what Jesus is doing. As he fasts, he starts to
have visions of meeting with the darkness that dwells within each one of us.
Matthew gives this dream-like encounter a physical name- “the Devil”.
In the Bible, we first run into the idea of the Devil as
the “accuser”, the one who points out our faults before God. He is the one who
suggests to God in the Book of Job that Job may not be as pure as he seemed.
Later on his role develops, and he is identified as the “Tempter” who we saw in
the serpent in the first lesson from Genesis. We know him as the one who dwells
within us as our dark shadows.
For instance, I, for a time, was a pacifist because I
thought that war was not a profitable way of resolving differences. Wars simply set the stage for the next war. I
became passionate about my hatred of war and the passion was more than a
logical argument. I came to realize that I had tried to push down all my anger
and my innate love of violence into my unconscious, and it would come to the
fore whenever I saw someone who had been a warrior. I was projecting the hatred
of all my own deep violence onto another person and hated him for being that
object. It was only when I brought my violence and anger to my own
consciousness that I was able to claim it as my own. I had to claim it, honor
it, and deal with it instead of trying to hide from it and risk it coming out
in inappropriate way. When I saw the shadow within me, I had to withdraw my
projections from those who reminded me of that part I did not want to claim.
That is the Spiritual journey we are on in Lent - to
look at our shadows. Shadows can be identified by the emotion we have toward
another person which we cannot fully explain (there are bright shadows as well
as dark shadows, but that is for another sermon), and as people of the same
gender as the dreamer in a dream. Looking at our dreams is one of the ways we
can discover our shadows. This is one of the reasons that we will take a look
at Dreams as a spiritual help in the Lenten Programs as God helps us down into
the true self for wholeness and healing. We begin this Thursday evening over
soup and salad and a hunger for God.
Jesus deals with three shadows in the Temptations
story. The first Temptation, or Shadow, was the desire to do without God. Jesus
had entered into fasting to get in touch with his hunger for God, and the dark
shadow suggested that he could only be himself when he took care of himself
first and put all this God foolishness on the back burner.
At a deeper level in this temptation was the lure to
deal with things of God’s creation as objects to be used for our own purposes
instead of being seen, first and foremost, as gifts of God’s love, carrying the
very essence of God within their being. To go deeper into one’s true self is to
have a reverence and awe of all creation. The purpose of a retreat is to find
that the very ground on which we walk is holy ground. If our own agenda is the
only thing we pay attention to, then a stone is a stumbling block, but if we
look at the stone and contemplate how many millions of years it took this stone
to develop, then we enter into wonder as it tells us of the mystery of God. In
the wilderness without the distraction of our everyday life, we can see the
tenacity of a weed to survive instead of seeing it as an invader of our garden.
In a wilderness, we walk on the ground and feel every step as our foot takes
its time to pay attention to every ridge and depression. As we slow down we do
not step on “pests”, but we acknowledge their right to be there. In a
wilderness we are able to be part of the oneness of all creation and to deal
with our shadow which whispers and tempts us to act as if our desires are the
center of the universe.
The second temptation is the Shadow that whispers that
the best way to deal with people is to manipulate them. Satan, the accuser, our
shadow, hisses that Jesus could be successful if only he would impress them
with the fantastic trick of throwing himself off the Temple. The third
temptation is the Shadow hissing that the best way to deal with people is to
control them: “I will place the Kingdoms of the Earth into your hands; if you
will only follow me.”
These three shadows are the dreams of Jesus as he
encounters them and brings them into consciousness. These are the universal
shadows of being the center of our own universe and our desires for
manipulation and control. However, as
the infomercial on television tells us, “But wait, there’s more!” This Lent, as
part of your Spiritual growth into the depths of your true being, I invite you
to explore your dreams and your shadows.
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