"To learn to be God's people once again" Lent 1C at Coventry Cathedral

The Jordan is a most disappointing river…."more history than water", said our guide – and certainly there wasn’t much to impress, not worth the detour for the casual tourist. Muddy, reed-lined, and now, rather terrifyingly, approached through a minefield it was, for us, a significant but not an encouraging stop on our Holy Land pilgrimage.

I certainly found it very hard to imagine it as a place of affirmation, for all the wonder of the opportunity we were given to renew our own baptismal vows and hear God’s voice reminding us “You are my beloved child in whom I am well-pleased”

We had made the journey in reverse – travelling from Jerusalem to Tiberias, via the barren majesty of Wadi Quelt , the wilderness valley that forms part of the Jerusalem/Jericho road– and oddly, for all the inhospitality of that landscape, it was a place that drew me, somewhere I long to return to walk and think and negotiate with myself, and with God.

Perhaps it’s one of those “thin places” we heard about last week...somewhere that the Spirit is still active – still leading people in the Wilderness as they attempt an inner journey.

But 40 days?? That sounds rather beyond me - though I guess that 40 days of thinking/praying and negotiating is exactly what Lent is about.

Today’s Collect emphasises that it was here that Jesus was tempted, as we are...and of course that matters hugely. We are following his pattern, and this is a time for each of us to consider where our own temptations are….as individuals and as a community...and to form our own responses, for good or ill.

Right now may well feel like a wilderness moment in our common life...the political landscape is every bit as rocky and dangerous as the stony tracks through the Judean wilderness. The beautiful dream of international co-operation from which our Cathedral was built seems to be crumbling around us...and this city that we love is a place whose young people are afraid to come into the centre for fear of knives after dark.

A desolate landscape indeed...so, what temptations face us here?

Might our experiences find their counterpart in those that Jesus faced?

And can we draw strength and direction from his responses?

For Jesus, each temptation invited him to be LESS than his true self ...To have yielded to even one of them would have been to change the entire shape of his ministry.

That inner voice of temptation is very crafty....These are not questions of chocolate or single malt or even that expensive sports car guaranteed to make you feel younger and more exciting - but  instead something far more important...how Jesus will inspire people to follow, and engage with building the Kingdom.

Will he go for the quick fix and the easy win, take a short-cut through the desert?

Surely that would just be common sense...

“IF you are the Son of God – command this stone to become a loaf”

Well, why not indeed?

What harm could it do.

He was famished, after all. 40 days is a long time to fast.

After all, God once provided manna for his people in the wilderness...and Jesus could surely do the same – but to do so now would be to cheat...to step outside the limitations of his humanity, just for his own benefit.

This isn’t a case of “If you are...” but of “Because I am”...

And so he will have none of it.

NO aspect of Jesus’s ministry is for HIS benefit. It’s all, - ALL – for us...

To value oneself above anything else is the root and ground of all genuine temptation...for any individual

It can be a temptation for communities too.

We might, perhaps, fall into the trap of thinking ourselves a bit special here – and of beginning to imagine that we exist to safeguard our own existence...for the greater glory of Coventry Cathedral, if you like.

But remember “The Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of those who are not yet members” . We cannot relax, well fed with beautiful liturgy that speaks to our souls, if we’re not prepared to use the beauty of this place that we love to reach out and feed those who can’t imagine that they’ll find anything to draw them through our doors.

I suspect that churches that hold on to the idea of worship feeding their own needs – whose congregations come together more for what they receive than what they can give – will find that the soul food they crave has turned to stones in their hand…

Let's not go there.

Jesus, of course, stays true to himself but next comes the temptation of power, an easy route to victory – all gain with no pain. To yield would mean Jesus ruling the world – but enthralled to the will of another and thus so much less than himself. Later Jesus would show all times and all people that God's power is made perfect in weakness, - for the greatest moment of his glory was when he was lifted on the cross, in powerless vulnerability. That's counter-cultural, counter- intuitive - and something it's hard to imagine opting for.

Ironically, of course, though Jesus has emptied himself of all his heavenly power – it belongs to him as of right. It is never Satan’s to give...this is an empty, delusory offer.

It might seem appealing – the idea that we are monarch of all we survey – but the strength of our cathedral is actually rooted in brokenness.

It is in the ruins of something that once looked strong and beautiful that we find the impetus for a work that we would never otherwise have attempted.

We wouldn’t have chosen to be broken. If we had interviewed Provost Howard in 1939, I'm sure his prayers for the cathedral would not have included one asking for its destruction– but it was then that Coventry Cathedral was given the vocation that still draws people here. We had to be broken to find ourselves.

God’s power was made perfect in our weakness, our brokenness.                                   That’s never comfortable – but it IS certain.

So, if we find ourselves struggling with disappointment that our dreams for a cathedral to change the world seem to be on hold...that’s OK

If we find ourselves frustrated that we can’t simply fix things – that’s OK too.

The power is not ours...and we delude ourselves if we believe or behave otherwise.

For now Jesus simply asserts that all worship belongs to God...worship offered elsewhere is meaningless and empty – the point of this wilderness journey is to learn to put things back in their proper order...God first.

Finally Jesus is encouraged to make God PROVE that he cares.

“Go on.....jump....He'll save you if you're THAT special”

Does that conversation strike a chord for you? I've certainly had moments when I've asked God to show me unmistakeably that I matter...often with rather silly suggestions as to how that might best be managed. I'm really not great at remembering in my heart as well as my head that I matter to him. Jesus, however, is the proof of God's love – not a needy recipient of it....and in this 3^rd exchange we hear him coming into his own identiy. He is secure in the knowledge and love of God.

Full of the Holy Spirit, he has no doubt that he is both Lover,Beloved and Love itself….

It is, though, through these temptations that Jesus discovers his true identity and the course he is to take.

He reveals something of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit, which is founded on unconditional, unwaveriing love. The Spirit leads Jesus in the wilderness, because the Spirit leads him everywhere.

And against the odds, against even our lived experience, the same holds good for us too.

We are never alone....and those wilderness experiences, those times of desolation, are also the times when we have room to grow, and to discover both the truth of who we are and the wonder of who GOD is as well.

That’s our invitation, as individuals and as a cathedral family. To discover the truth of ourselves and the truth of God.

To go into our own wilderness to seek God in the silence of a less cluttered landscape.

It’s all there in the liturgy….In the Eucharistic prayer you’ll hear, shortly

“ For in these forty days you lead us into the desert of repentance, that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again”

To learn to be God's people.

That's our core purpose...the reason we are here...not just here in the Wilderness, not even here at the Cathedral but here on this earth at all…

“Life is for love”, said Augustine, “Time is only that we might find God”. and so the wilderness experience is something to be welcomed and cherished.

It’s an opportunity to listen more attentively, and in the sparser landscape that we have created by our Lenten abstinence, to gain a new perspective and discover what really matters. Even in those apparently unfriendly surroundings the Spirit is present, leading us, helping us to strip away the small deceits and distortions that we've come to rely on, enabling us to increase our conscious dependence on God.

Can I, then, invite you, as you travel through Lent this year, to hold those words “To learn to be God’s people once again” in your hearts and in your prayers?

Ask God how best we can be God’s people together, here at the Cathedral Church of St Michael – how best we can collectively show our love for God with all our hearts and minds and souls and strength – how best we can love our neighbours – the skate boarders in the square, the rough sleepers who leave needles and mess behind them on our campus every morning, the many many people who walk past seemingly oblivious to this building and whatever may happen within it.

I don’t think that God has given up on Coventry Cathedral yet – so let’s take a deep breath and ask what God means when God invites us to learn to be God’s people once again…

We may not like the answer – but to attempt anything less is to walk away from our calling, as surely as if we’d chosen to turn stones into bread, dropped to our knees before the father of lies or leapt hand in hand off the Cathedral tower.

As I was preparing these thoughts, a 1960s song by the band "America" was going round and round in my head. "I've been through the desert on a horse with no name...In the desert you can remember your name"...

As we travel through this desert together, may we remember our collective name, our shared idenity in Christ – and then may we live it in all its transforming hope and joy.