Creekside Church Sermon of March 1, 1998 "Nothing But God " Luke 4:1-13	Rev. David Bibbee
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This week we entered a new season, not an early spring due to the favorable flow of El Niño which has brought us a remarkably warm winter. The season shifted on Wednesday and for the next forty days leading up to Easter we will be observing Lent. You won't find any mention of Lent in the Bible because it didn't become a tradition in the early church until years after the Bible was written. You won't even hear Lent mentioned in some churches, while others will mark the time by doing prayer calendars, holding extra services, and in some Christian traditions by giving up something like dessert, sleeping in, some habit or routine. Letting go is a practice which confounds the modern mind that is bent on accumulating. About the only thing we are encouraged to give up is a meal in exchange for a delicious Slim Fast shake to help us shed extra poundage.

But Lent's emphasis upon giving up something isn't done for its own sake. Forty days is approximately a tenth of a year, so Lent becomes a Christian tithe of time devoted to a holy pursuit. It is a time to consider what it meant for Jesus to be Jesus. It's a time to consider what is means for you to be you, and what it means to be a Christian. It's something we don't do enough of because our lives get so cluttered we lose sight of what is necessary.

The same thing happened in the early church. As the years went by following Jesus' departure, the passion and purpose began to wither. The love for each other which distinguished Christians from the rest of society, their help for the hurting, and their desire to be different began to fade. They entered middle age, blended in, reclined in their Lazy Boys, cozy and comfortable and content to look at the painting on the wall of Jesus at the Last Supper. Then someone heard Jesus say, "For crying out loud, this isn't what I had in mind!" This person remembered the stories of forty...Israel's forty years wandering in the wilderness getting acquainted with God- Moses' forty days listening to God dictate the law on Mt. Sinai-Elijah hiding in the wilderness forty days from Queen Jezabell and awakening to God's still small voice. And Jesus spent forty days alone in a desolate wilderness with no provision but God, enduring the torture of the tempter who tried to convince him he needed something more. So the church declared a forty day soul- searching period given to self-examination, clearing the clutter, and learning that God is the absolute essential, the daily bread by which we live.

I recently shared with my wife something from my "things I want to do" list. Before I am fifty, I want to enroll in one of those survival training programs where you take crash courses to learn the basics of how to survive in the wilderness-how to identify edible plants, snare a bird or rabbit, climb a canyon wall, defend yourself against becoming Grizzly bear prey, building a shelter from a storm, and how to reach civilization. When you've completed the training, they take you deep into the wilds where you're on your own with nothing but a pocketknife, a compass, six matches, a Band-Aid, and a handshake goodbye. I want to go to Alaska for training. It will be my way of making amends for dropping out of the Cub Scouts after I got my Webloes patch.

It would be an incredible experience, but it wouldn't take long for the romantic appeal of the wild to wear off. When you're all alone, you learn a lot about yourself. Thoughts, which you have been successful repressing, bubble to the surface. You discover what you are afraid of. When you don't have your props, when you don't have an injection of novocaine for the brain, when you don't have your habits, your work, your television, your music, your crossword puzzles or familiar faces to insulate yourself from uncomfortable feelings, and all you have is you and God, you discover where the holes are. It's one thing to say we need God. It's quite another to be in a situation where there's nothing to rely on but God. That's when we learn there are other things we place ahead of God.

Last year a high school senior from Freemont, California made the national news for a remarkable achievement. She scored a perfect 800 on both parts of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and a perfect 8000 on the University of California acceptance index. It was the first time in history a student has accomplished such a phenomenal feat. Her intellectual ability has earned her the name, "Wonder Woman" at school. She entered college this fall. Harvard. Where else? But there was a side bar to this story. The reporter asked her the question, "What is the meaning of life?" Her reply? "I have no idea."

We don't live by bread alone or knowledge alone. Life isn't measured by what we know or have. You have heard the expression, "Nature abhors a vacuum." Where a vacuum exists, something is drawn to fill it. Sam Keen has made this poetic observation: "God must like empty spaces. He made a lot of nothing that longs to be filled with something." Nowhere is this more true than in our lives. We were all created with a hole in the center of the self...not the navel, but the center of our spiritual self. God made us with a natural vacuum that yearns and aches to be filled and fulfilled.

Life is a long process of learning what cannot fill the space. It takes more than a full pantry, an open line of credit, a hefty pension and paid for home where the thermostat is set at 76 degrees in the winter and 70 degrees in the summer which houses our cushy comforts and large inventory of accumulations.

The reason for going without something during Lent is to remember there is only one thing which can fill the vacuum. The great challenge we face is the temptation to fill the vacuum with little comforts when we're alone and afraid and hurting-when something feels wrong and we inject an antidote to fix it and end up cheating ourselves.

I love this observation by Barbara Taylor: "The hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside us, the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God." It's easy to trivialize self-denial during Lent, but it can teach us something about ourselves and how susceptible we are to putting fleeting things in God places. If I asked Don Mumaw if he could give up something for forty days, he would say yes. If I asked Don whether he could give up Mountain Dew, he would hesitate, but he would say yes. To be fair, he might ask if I could go without fishing for forty days, and I would say, "Yes, of course." But Don and I would discover something about ourselves during this time. How often during those forty days do you think we would think of popping a can or wetting a line? When feeling stressed, how intense would the desire feel? Mountain Dew is a fine beverage and fishing is a noble, spiritual sport. But these things and all things have the capability of getting in the way.

What about silence before worship? Can we be still for five or ten minutes before worship begins? Of course. But we have a hard time keeping quiet. It can be very uncomfortable. We think thoughts we don't want to think. Something that happened. Something that was said. We become anxious or sad. Instead of hiding in talk, can we sit quietly, feel the feelings and focus upon the fact that nothing but God can satisfy the longing or heal the hurt?

When we are all alone, trying to be more trusting, a voice says, "Not so fast. You can't give that up. You'll starve. You'll go crazy. If you deny yourself what you want you won't be you anymore. God wouldn't want that!" You don't have to travel to the middle of nowhere to be in the wilderness. The wilderness exists inside you. It is that place we are called to go and let go of our props and pacifiers and compulsions and addictions and everything that is less than God, and experience the holy of holies within which is the throne of God.

The same voice tempted Jesus. "You're hungry. Turn this rock into a sandwich. You want some authority? I'll give you authority. Are you sure you're God's son? Better check it out and do a swan dive off the top of the temple to be sure." There's nothing in this story that says reliance upon God was easy for Jesus. Matthew's version adds that after the ordeal, angels came to minister to Jesus.

Letting go of the things we are told to want and upon which our lives depend, is hard. We get confused about our wants and needs. I want you to listen to some words which bear this out, words which are amazing because they were composed by a fourteen year old middle school student named Jason Lehman:

It was spring, but it was summer I wanted...
The warm days and the great outdoors.

It was summer, but it was fall I wanted...
The colorful leaves and the cool, dry air.

It was fall, but it was winter I wanted...
The beautiful snow and the joy of the holiday season.

It was winter, but it was spring I wanted...
The warmth and the blossoming of nature.

I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted...
The freedom and the respect.

I was twenty, but it was thirty I wanted...
To be more mature and sophisticated.

I was middle aged, but it was twenty I wanted...
The youth and the free spirit.

I was retired, but it was middle age I wanted...
The presence of mind without limitations.

My life was over...but I never got what I wanted!

Incredibly insightful, isn't it? Into the wilderness Jesus went, and into the wilderness we must go. There we will discover that God likes empty spaces. He made a lot of nothing that yearns to be filled with something. Fight the voice that says, "Fill it! Fix it!" Instead, let it be. Not every want is a need. We don't put fleeting things in God places and finally find what we are looking for.

Learn what it means to let go and give up and be content with nothing...nothing but God.

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