Always before us until it is not

You have given all to me
To you, Lord, I return it
Everything is Yours
Do with it what You will
Give me only Your love and Your grace
That is enough for me
Amen

It is Lent and in this season we often think about things in terms of the wilderness, the lack of sustenance, the lack of comfort, the hardship within.

And still, even in the harshest of climes, there is God.

This morning, I ask you to reflect on that.

_____________

It was always there and it was always going to be there.

There.

In front of us.

Baldy Mountain in New Mexico on the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch.

I was thirteen years old, a part of a group of Scouts that traveled across country in a Ford Econoline van, and we had been planning on the day we would reach it for a few months.

We learned how to pack our packs placing the clothes we’d wear over the course of ten days, in the lower pocket, the pots and pans and other hardware would be stowed in the upper part.

I bought new hiking boots, as this would be my first true hike; quite unlike the walks we’d take around the Ansonia Nature Center when I was a younger Scout.

And we took a shakedown hike in May over Memorial Day weekend spending three days in the woods hiking the blue blazed trails from Meriden to Berlin over the course of three days.

It was the first time I hiked those trails that have become so familiar to me now later in my life.

Hiking those hills nowadays is gift of memory and connecting with God.

Connecting with God in the wilderness.

And on these hikes as a young teen and as we learned to pack our packs and as we drove out west, Baldy Mountain was always on our collective horizon.

Eventually, after that shakedown hike, after the trip out west driving in that van with stops along the way.

Stops in Canton, Ohio to see the football hall of fame.

In St. Louis, Missouri where we saw the Gateway Arch.

And my favorite stop, Ft. Riley, KS where we got to eat in the mess hall beside active-duty soldiers and where we also got to eat what became one of my favorite things:

Mass-produced freeze-dried eggs served by the massive spoonful and plopped on my plate besides salty bacon and spicy sausage links.

To this day, if there is an airport lounge or a hospital cafeteria serving such eggs, you will find me in line with tray in hand.

Eventually, we made our way to New Mexico.

We unpacked in base camp and checked our surroundings.

I cannot remember if we could see Baldy from where we were camped, but I do know it was always before us, always there.

And then it was time.

We took up our packs packed properly and headed into the pines.

Seven or ten days later, I can’t remember that too, we emerged.

Twelve or so teenaged boys left the pine forests and mountains behind smelling quite ripe, I might add.

Changed.

Older.

Perhaps better.

And in between our entrance and exit, was Baldy Mountain.

Standing in the middle of it all was this great big mountain, over twelve thousand feet high with a thirty-five-hundred-foot incline over 3 miles at one point and we climbed it.

And as we climbed it, we passed the tree line, we scrambled over rocky ground and through ice patches left over from winter even though it was now early July.

We climbed this mountain and from the top we saw.

More wilderness.

We climbed to the mountaintop and I realized that we were surrounded by wilderness.

__________________

Jerusalem was always ahead of him.

It was always going to be.

From chapter nine in Luke where Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, and since then, Jerusalem was always in front of him.

And them.

They were all headed towards Jerusalem.

Not right away, but he was preparing them for what would come.

And we’ve been reading about it.

All the healings.

All the exorcisms.

All the wildernesses.

This was Jesus teaching the disciples how to prepare, how to pack their packs and stretch their legs and taste new tastes.

And for Jerusalem.

Jerusalem would always be in front of him.

And them.

The wilderness was not some sort of analogy, some sort of metaphor.

It was real for them.

And him.

But it was not without favor.

Not without beauty.

Not without comradery.

This morning we hear of some Pharisees warning Jesus away from where he is.

Now, we often hear of Pharisees described in negative terms, folks more concerned with the law than healing the sick on the Sabbath; as collaborators and friends of Rome.

But they were none of those things.

There may have been disagreements on how to maintain a Jewish identity in an occupied state, yet they were not friends of Rome, they were not collaborators.

They were not Sadducees nor Herod.

Most of all, they were not Rome.

So, it makes sense that they would warn Jesus away from where he is.

Only, Jesus knows his day will come in the future and not in Galilee.

It will happen soon.

And it will happen in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem will always be in front of him.

Until it isn’t.

Jerusalem.

Jerusalem.

Always ahead of him until it is behind.

________________

Upon descending Baldy Mountain, we hiked a few more days in the wilderness, through the pines and scrub of the Southern Rockies, the Sangre de Christo, the Blood of Christ Mountains in New Mexico.

We walked through the brush and did many things, many fun things like cook stew in cast iron pots with coals set on top from our campfire.

And we cooked peach cobbler in cast iron pots with coals set on top from the campfire.

You see, hiking seven to ten miles a day takes a lot out of you and so I have fond memories of the food.

Even at four foot eleven and ninety-nine pounds, I still ate quite well.

So, we had reached the peak, we reached our destination.

Our goal of so many months was now behind us.

Baldy Mountain was always in front of us until it wasn’t.

After climbing those three thousand, five hundred feet over three miles we saw that we were in the middle of the wilderness.

And we entered back into it when we descended that mountain.

Though we had fun and were fed well, I experienced a certain letdown.

I missed the calm of being above it all, the views of faraway mountains stayed with me.

_________________

Ultimately, Jerusalem did to Jesus what he predicted, what he prophesied.

Ultimately what was in front was behind.

Ultimately, Jesus perished on that cross.

And the disciples escaped, returned even, to the wilderness.

The one that existed before they knew their master.

The one they fished in and experienced the joys that people experience.

Marriage.

Fatherhood.

Joys experienced in the wilderness, joys experienced though they were not with Jesus.

And afterwards, without Jesus once more, they settled in after a rocky start and formed a new church.

A church devoted to lifting up the poor and feeding the hungry; of giving all they had to all who had need.

And they did this in the wilderness.

A wilderness once more.

Friends, as I saw from the mountaintop, we are never without the wilderness.

We are never without tests and temptations.

We walk this earth, too, finding joy when we pass those tests and avoid those temptations.

But still we are within a certain wilderness, a certain in between where Jesus has gone to the cross yet still the kingdom is yet to arrive.

We are all in the wilderness, we are all tempted and tested, and yet still within it is joy.

In the sparseness of the brushland there is beauty just as there will be in the lush meadows of the kingdom returned.

There is joy in the love we feel for one another in the pine barrens just as there will be greater love found when we are all joined together when the kingdom arrives.

And though there is danger, though our savior is yet to return, our faith covers us as the mother hen protects her brood under her wings.

Christ and God and the Spirit protect us from the foxes that would invade.

There is beauty in the wilderness for though the kingdom has yet to arrive, still there is God.

We wander but we do not wander unprotected.

Jerusalem now behind us, we walk a path made level through our faith in Jesus.

____________

Our final day of that ten-day journey through the mountains ended with one last climb up a smaller mountain.

It was a cliff face made of the whitest stone that jutted up from the rust-colored earth below.

Because of its shape and color, it was called the Tooth of Time and we arrived at the summit just before daybreak.

As the darkness turned to dawn, as the sun created that orange line of light that pierced the horizon, we saw the early morning land on the wilderness below.

And along with the light of the sun, houselights, hitherto unseen till now since we were overlooking the town closest to the Scout Ranch, began to turn on.

One by one and then more and more, houselights turned on as people began their day.

Perhaps they were turning on the bathroom light as they shuffled in and brushed their teeth and ran a comb across their head.

Perhaps it was a porch light switched on so someone could find their way to their car and start the commute to work in the dawn’s early light.

Perhaps it was a kitchen light switched on where one spouse kissed the other good morning as they began to prepare breakfast.

One by one lights turned on until the streetlights began to blink off and the light of dawn became the light of the new day.

One by one, humanity awoke and from the top of the cliff I saw something I only know to be beautiful.

From miles away, the light shone before me, sunshine and electric I watched a small town and with it, a world waking to new light.

In the wilderness, there is always beauty to be seen, beauty to be found.

_______________

Jerusalem was always in front of them until it wasn’t.

And for three days the disciples succumbed to the darkness, to fear, to the protection of locked doors which would soon be walked through despite them.

They returned to a wilderness without being able view the beauty within it.

No light passed through shuttered windows, the good news shared with them was dismissed.

Yet the light did break through.

The door was passed through.

And the Christ returned to show them once more there is beauty in wilderness.

Jerusalem was behind them and there it stayed.

Now though they saw the light, the unyielding, undying, death crushing love that Jesus brings to us all.

We can climb mountains to see only scrubland and sparseness, perceive a scarcity of love unseen in the darkness.

Yet, the mountain is not the end of the story.

Jerusalem is most assuredly, not the end of the story.

The light will always be ahead of us and until that light washes over us fully, we will see glimpses of it as the day breaks and the promise of Christ’s resurrection is born anew.

We are never without light, we are never without hope, we are never without the promise of new life.

Easter will always be before us until it is not.

Amen.