Abide and Resist – Br. Keith Nelson

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Luke 4:1-13

It feels to me as if a great unraveling is underway in our world – and especially in our own nation.

Perhaps it began years ago, but the recent stripping away of structures and protections that safeguard basic features of our democracy is a sign of its acceleration in recent weeks.

Knowing just how to respond – skillfully, lovingly, and faithfully – is no easy task. There are many temptations to wander down paths that don’t lead to larger life. On the one hand, there is the temptation to “doom scroll”: in the quest for genuine information and analysis, we may end up marinating our hearts in a froth of anger, fear, despair, and cynicism. On the other hand, the temptation may be to tune out entirely, insulating ourselves from the endless, terrible news so that we can simply face the day ahead of us in relative peace.

For most people I know, the predominant feeling is helplessness: a feeling of utter impotence to effect change or stem the tide of so much that is being lost. “What can we actually do?,” is the question I hear the most. It is a question at the center of my own prayerful discernment, and in our discernment as a community.

Part of what we can do – the central part, for us, as followers of Jesus – we are already doing. We are here. You came here this morning with some measure of hope in your heart and a need for God’s mercy and truth. Every warm body and heart counts, and every scrap of hope and ounce of need builds up the Body of Christ.

What does our gospel give us in the midst of this helplessness – here at the beginning of Lent? And how can it reconnect us with our inherent and inalienable power?

From one perspective, we see a Jesus full of strength, conviction, and purpose: filled with the Spirit and driven into his solitary sojourn in the wilderness. After the divine affirmation Jesus has received in his baptism at the river Jordan – complete with a voice from heaven (“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”) – Jesus seems destined to go from strength to strength, upheld by God’s favor. If this were a retreat before making a Life Profession, we Brothers might say that the primary purpose would be simply confirmation of the call: to settle and deepen into the rightness and confidence of God’s will as it is revealed more and more clearly.

But then there’s Satan. Although Jesus is empowered with a deep and clear intention, he is brought in these forty days to the lowest point of his own human limits and faced with his own barrage of temptations. Being “God’s beloved Son” does not shield him from this foe. To the contrary, it seems to ignite a deeper resentment on the part of the Enemy. Satan levels all his diabolical ingenuity at Jesus, who represents the one true threat to his dominion over the hearts of humankind.

Save for his utter reliance on God, Jesus is quite helpless.

But Jesus chooses to abide in that place. For forty days, he makes his home there – with all who have ever known helplessness, hunger, loneliness, and the temptation to succumb to impulses that would disfigure the divine image within. Rather than exercise divine power in accordance with the insinuated purposes of the Enemy, Jesus abides, resists, and emerges true to God’s plan for him.

The earliest monastics who made their home in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine would draw much inspiration from Jesus’ call to abide and resist. They did not simply believe in demons, the way nearly all ancient peoples did. Rather, they knew demons by direct experience: those minions of Satan who manipulate our innermost thoughts and feelings to lead us down paths that do not lead to life. They also knew the power of speaking aloud words that correctly named the offending demon, and the words of Scripture to weave a net of protection and blessing in response to each habitual thought that might ensnare, distract, or even persecute them.

 This may seem like inaccessible or advanced spiritual technology. For some, the desert fathers and mothers are so far removed in space and time that they might as well be Jedi.

Here are a few practices that are imminently possible, and practical:

Cultivate spiritual friendships.

Do you know one other disciple of Jesus whose faith you admire; whose values and way of living reflect the gospel; and to whom you can speak freely and in confidence? Ask that person for help when you are in the midst of trial and temptation. Take the risk of expressing freely the thoughts and feelings that tie you down and leave you less free to fulfill God’s will. Make it clear that the help you are seeking is primarily a listening ear, an open heart, and a companion in prayer – rather than someone to offer well-meaning solutions or commiserate with your worst impulses. You may find the idea terrifying, humiliating, or exposing. Ask yourself why. Is this a protective impulse of your ego? Is Satan deploying the demon of pride to convince you to keep those thoughts and feelings to yourself – where they can consume your spirit under cover of darkness? When they are named for what they are, externalized in the presence of another Christian, these habitual thoughts shrink back to their actual size – much smaller and far less powerful than the soul who clings to Jesus.

Spiritual direction or sacramental confession are more formal versions of this kind of trustworthy encounter, with a person who has been trained and authorized within the church to provide such listening as a ministry. Your primary need may be to know God’s forgiveness, but you can’t seem to find that broad, open place of Resurrection without help. Receiving it in the private and confidential rite of reconciliation– mediated through the words of another humble sinner like yourself—can lift untold burdens from our souls.

One practice in which I have participated and been trained to lead is a Truth Mandala, or Truth-Telling Circle. The Truth Mandala’s purpose is to create a safe and well-contained space to ritually express challenging and heavy emotions around the state of our living earth. In the center of the circle are four objects: a heavy stick, a stone, a pile of dead leaves, and an empty bowl. The stick signifies our anger; the stone, our fear; the pile of dead leaves, our sorrow; and the empty bowl, our need and emptiness. A piece of fabric signifies any other feeling they are in touch with. One by one, each participant comes forward, grasps whichever object they choose, and voices these feelings aloud, while the circle bears silent witness. In the Truth Mandala, polite elderly women raise their voices and stomp their feet. Stoic-looking men accept permission to open the floodgates of their tears. Young people voice profound fear of an earth their unborn children will not be able to inhabit.

Guiding this exercise with a church group yesterday, one young woman simply grasped the dead leaves with both hands and wept for several moments in silence. We wept with her. Participants learn that they are not crazy for feeling as they do; that there are many, many others; that speaking truth unlocks hidden power; and that in speaking these truths, they speak for all life. The other face of our anger is our passion for justice. The other face of our fear is the courage it takes to speak it. The other face of our sorrow is our love – we only grieve what we are losing if we have come to love it. And the other face of our emptiness is open space for new possibility to emerge.

The desert monastic Evagrius of Pontus wrote: “The monk is one who is separated from all and united to all.” We read in our Rule of Life, “The pioneers of monasticism believed that the monk was called to the margin of society in order to hear within himself the deepest cries of humanity, and to discover a profound unity with all living beings in their struggle to attain ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’

In whatever form you are called to abide and resist, the contemplative life of spiritual struggle with Satan is always politically subversive. Self-awareness, sharpened and refined by patient hours of self-offering to God, produces people who cannot be coerced by the powers of this world. They are rooted in a much higher Power and breathe the air of the Spirit.

Far from a self-absorbed withdrawal from the pain of the world, to accept the call to follow Jesus into the desert asks that we open ourselves wider than we thought possible to the suffering of all.

In this season of Lent, join Jesus in his helpless, desert fast. Join your helplessness to his. And in doing so, watch and wait for the tide of your spirit to turn, as you realize: You are not helpless. You are endowed with power that is not your own, but it flows through you. God empowers you to use it. We all need your power now.

I conclude with a poem by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

Go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is a country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.