Lost in Cactus, Thorns and Sand

Exodus 20: 1-17

A sermon by John Thornburg

March 15, 2009/Northridge Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX

[Explanatory note: Though you’ll find the words of the sermon title within the body of the sermon, there’s a story that goes with it. I was commissioned to write a hymn text for the Northridge congregation for the church’s centennial celebration in 2005. On that occasion, I marveled in being able to sing the hymn I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art, a hymn deep in the DNA of the Presbyterian tradition. Being a visiting Methodist, it was simply grand to sing Presbyterian ‘heartsong’ with such a devoted congregation. So when Dr. Roger Quillin asked me to preach this sermon, I asked if we could open the service with some Methodist ‘heartsong’, and requested that we sing Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. The triumphant final phrase of that hymn, ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’, gave rise to the sermon title.]

I have a story to tell and an experience to share. It happened at Lebh Shomea, a house of prayer and retreat center at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in Kenedy County, south Texas. I am now aware that I have usually gone there when I was either mad or depressed or both; mad at Methodism for something, mad at my parishioners for being small about certain things, mad at myself for not being anywhere near the person I sensed God was calling me to be. Maybe the best way to put it is that I was running away from lots of things, and hopeful at some remote place in my soul that God would search me out and find me.

The place itself is wondrous, filled with wildlife of all sorts, including an exotic Asian antelope named ‘nilgai’ imported to South Texas by ranchers 150 years ago for sport. I had been told about this animal, but in 6 or 7 retreats there, I had never seen one, and that just ticked me off. So, one hot, sunny south Texas day, I headed out onto a ranch path on a 1000 acre section of the Kenedy ranch to find me a nilgai.

I have to tell you that I am not proud of the state of mind I had that day. It is hard to imagine how this outing could have been less about God and more about my need to be the reincarnation of Davy Crockett. I was going to find one of those animals. I had been to Lebh Shomea seven times without seeing one and it was time for ME to see one.

The biggest problem with my strategy was that I began this safari not at daybreak, when common sense would have indicated that I had half a chance of spotting such a naturally skittish animal. No, I started out under the Texas sun at 1:00 in the afternoon.

The path which appeared from the map to be nearly circular was marked with white paint circles on mesquite trunks every 200 yards or so. I walked, assuming my best Davy Crockett adventurer pose, pacing through the sand and native grass of the ranch. And I walked, and I walked, and after quite a while, I realized that two very important things were true; I hadn’t seen a white dot in at least 20 minutes, and the sun was directly overhead, so I had no idea what direction I was walking in. I could hear nothing except the wind in the grass and an occasional bird. It was hot, I didn’t have a hat, I didn’t have water, and most of all, I didn’t have a prayer of seeing a nilgai.

At this point, I didn’t know how long I had been walking because I also didn’t have a watch. The only thing I did know was that I was lost, and given the dangers of the desert and the fact that I really had no idea where I was, I was scared.

I began to silently chastise myself to keep my mind off how scared I was. And then, a remarkable thing happened. I heard words come out of my mouth that I have no memory of forming. I heard these words come out of my mouth, “It’s not because of what you do that I love you.” And I knew that God had spoken. And I knew that this trek was not at all about spotting a nilgai. I wasn’t yet able to know what it all meant, but I knew that God had stopped me in my tracks. As fearful as I still felt, I also vividly remember that I was experiencing something I had never felt before. God was vividly present.

Imagine my embarrassment. I was 43 years old, I’d been in ministry almost 20 years, and I was just now experiencing what genuinely felt like an epiphany.

At least for a few minutes, I could only stand where I was and experience what it means to be lost in wonder, even at the same moment that I was literally lost on the path. There among the cactus, thorns and sand, I was fully and deeply lost, a slave to my own willfulness; a slave to whatever the set of oppressions were that had caused me to go to Lebh Shomea in the first place. And I met the God who is massively faithful to freeing people from whatever oppresses them.

As much of an epiphany as this seemed to be, the fact was that I was still lost, and hot and tired. But I’d been met by the living God, and that had given me enough hope that I could relax enough to figure my next move. Since I’d been walking in sand for all those hours, I reasoned that I had been making footprints for that long, so I just started to re-trace my steps. Five and a half hours after I left my cabin on this adventure, I found my way back to the start of the path.

Ever since that experience, I’ve had new eyes for reading the Ten Commandments, and especially the words, “you shall have no other gods before me.” It’s the scholar Walter Bruggemann who has given me vocabulary for my experience. In talking about this sentence in the Ten Commandments, he says it’s not an imperative. It’s an indicative. If we view the Ten Commandments as just a set of moral rules that Moses picked up on a mountaintop, then we’ve obviously missed the words that come just before. The passage begins with these words, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” It’s God saying, “Surely the fact that I brought you out of Egypt amounts to something. Surely you see that the other gods didn’t do that. Surely, you will have no other gods before you, because they haven’t done what I’ve done. They don’t love you, but I do.” This is the partly confusing, but amazing biblical reality: God is jealous. God says, in essence, “How dare you not realize what I’ve done for you!”

That’s who we’re dealing with, the God who heard people in slavery and freed them. Our forebears, the Israelites, dealt with this God, and so do we. I didn’t know the depth of my slavery to my own willfulness until that desert walk in South Texas. I was going to see that animal because I was just that clever, just that entitled to see such a sight. I needed that story for my journal. I needed that notch on my adventure belt. I wanted people to admire that I go to a retreat place and I wanted people to admire me even more that I was smart enough to go to a retreat place where you could see an exotic Asian antelope. And none of it was true. I wasn’t clever. I was stupid. And I wasn’t entitled to see that animal. I was privileged to breathe the air and have sand under my feet and a sky over my head. To see that animal would have been a wonderful gift, but I wasn’t entitled to it.

I wish I could tell you that my path to sanctification has been smooth and unimpeded since God jolted me in the desert. It hasn’t, and I still have the same problem I had before I ever took the desert walk. I have not given my full and complete trust to God.

My problem is that I keep forgetting that God’s biggest gift to us is freedom. I’m not talking about the freedom our politicians, past and present, have talked about, promising that the mind-numbingly self-indulgent life style of modern America is what defines us as a free people. No, the freedom God gives is the freedom to be part of something bigger than ourselves, something so much grander than any one of us could imagine or plan. The freedom we receive from God is the freedom to search for the place where the world’s greatest need and our greatest hope intersect.

O God, I’m so sorry, but here’s some things I have to admit, and I’m wondering if anyone in the sanctuary has to admit to this.

Freedom is what you give.
Comfort is what we preach.
Justice is what you ask.
Safety is what we teach.

Lepers received your touch.
Stigma is all we show.
Prodigals felt your love.
Envy is all we know.

O God, I’m sorry. For me everything is about getting. For you everything is about giving. When I hear someone cry, I ask what it will cost me to respond. When you hear someone cry, you free them.

I’ve talked to lots of clergy in the last month, and the almost unanimous testimony has been that worship attendance was dramatically up on Ash Wednesday. I don’t know what that’s about, but I wonder if America is beginning to fall to its knees and say, “O God, we’ve pretended that freedom is about keeping dangerous people from entering our country and threatening our lifestyle. But our oppressor isn’t only on the outside. We’re stewing in our own juice, and it’s time to face our denial of the real freedom you are making available, the freedom to be joyfully obedient to you.”

Hear these words again. You shall have no other gods before me. It’s not an imperative. It’s an indicative. We have a God who has freed us from ourselves, who has brought us out of our own bondage to what we own and to how we define security. And in God’s holy jealousy, God now says to us, “How dare you not realize what I’ve done for you!”