Day 24- A New Way in the Wilderness

Do you ever just wish for a god who was completely predictable all the time; where there was no mystery and you could understand everything about that god? I must admit that even as a theologian who is trained to appreciate the paradoxes that are part of our faith, that there are times when easy, simple and straightforward might be appealing. And yet the one Triune God of Scripture is indeed the God of mystery and selfless love and paradox who reveals himself to us in ways that are both enlightening and confusing at the same time. When this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob called the people into the wilderness with signs and wonders through Moses,they thought the journey would be short and straight and sweet. Then they spent the next forty years in the wilderness, learning who God is and who they were as God's chosen people. Through the prophet Isaiah, God explained in part why it took so long: "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a new way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19) God was teaching the people a new way of being the people of God and that way was through a relationship of love and trust with God and with each other.

Shortly before his death, Jesus told the disciples "'And you know the way to the place where I am going' Thomas said, 'Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.'" (John 14:4-7) Jesus was telling his disciples the same thing, that following the way of the Triune God is not about travelling the same path over and over again but about being open to new paths, new relationships and new ways of experiencing and expressing God's love. And Jesus is careful not to conceptualize this but rather to personalize it. It is through Jesus, God's Son, that we know God fully and completely and yet...there is always a mystery and a what next and a new possibility that God offers in Christ.

The early Christian community that started to live out the teachings of Christ were not called Christians but rather "The Way". It was a reminder that our Christian faith is not static but a dynamic expression of God's love alive in the world through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. So as we spend time together in the wilderness with Christ this Lent, let us look not to the way we have always done things but to a New Way to walk through the wilderness with Christ. As we build a new chapel in Westminster Woods, as we give out prayer shawls to people in times of need, as we worship in different ways this Lent, help us to see Christ along the Way.