Wilderness

Origin: Quiet Service, Sunday 19 October, 2003
Theme:
To remind ourselves that the wilderness can be the place God leads us into and isn’t necessarily a bad place to be. Based on the words, ‘The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness’. (Matthew 4/1)
Mood:
Reflective, edgey feeling.
Setup:
Five televisions running video loop of feet walking in sand (ex Vision Loops, www.visions.org.uk.), black fabric cave with ‘wailing wall’ of bricks with holes in them, white sheets on floor to make central ‘desert’. Communion elements, paper/pens, candle trays, paper bag candle holders. Cards with quotes spread out on centre of ‘desert’ sheets.
Gear:
See above, CDs — Eerie Wind fx, Arvo Paart -any album that is slow.

Running Order: time 15 minutes introduction and 30 minutes for reflection, then openended.

1. Prelude: VID: feet in sand, TRACK: Wind FX.

2. Intro: Welcome to the desert. To the wilderness.

Kiwis aren’t too familiar with desert wildernesses. We live in cities, where water comes from a tap, electricity at the flick of a switch, safety at the turn of a key.
We put up an umbrella when it rains, get in our cars when it’s too far to walk.
The desolation, aloneness, danger and inhospitability of the wilderness is a long way from our experience.
But there are times in our lives when we are thrown into the wilderness — not a physical place, not a geographic place, but a circumstantial one. A spiritual desert.
The prophet Elijah has just beaten the prophets of Baal in a competition to see whose God is the real God, he’s on a high…

3. READ: I Kings 19/1-4 or 10
4. Rant 2: No matter how civilised you are, how well educated, how wealthy, how secure

your life seems you can suddenly find yourself beside yourself, struggling to cope, to get a handle on life. Welcome to the wilderness. It’s not a place we would choose to be. Circumstances drive us there. Life was going well for Job…

4. READ: Job 1/13-20
5. Rant 3: When we find ourselves in the desert it is easy for us to lose our perspective, to forget where we have come from, who loves us and why we are there. A wilderness experience isn’t like conquering a mountain, it isn’t about learning how tough you are. It’s not a struggle against the elements. Being in the spiritual wilderness is about learning how tough and compassionate and grace-filled and forgiving and loving God is. In the wilderness your relationship with God is tested. It’s God and you. No props, no cultural supports. Just God and you.
6. READ: Exodus 15/22-25a, 27, 16/1-3
7. Rant 4: God is in the wilderness. The wilderness is a place of confrontation and change. We are always faced with a choice — to deal with God face to face or to try to find a way out on our own. God always honours our choices, it is we who move forward, or leave the wilderness as the same people we entered it.

Jesus didn’t have it all his own way either…

8. READ: Matthew 4/1-11, repeat at end “Then the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness…”
9. Rant 5: Being in the desert doesn’t mean we are deserted. Quite the opposite in fact. The wilderness can be a frightening place to be. It can bring you to the very edge of your faith, but it can also be the place where God meets you; even the place where God takes you. It may just be that God’s place for you at this time in your life is the wilderness… “the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness…”
10. Silence
11. Link: The refrain running through our reflections tonight is the words about Jesus,

‘Led by the Spirit, Jesus entered the wilderness…’ These words remind us that the wilderness is not a bad place, it is not a place uninhabited by God, it is not a place of punishment or abandonment, and it is possible that the dark place we find ourselves in may be the place God has led us into…
We invite you to pick up a card at any time, use as many cards as you want to, or none at all. Use the quotations to reflect on.
At any time take bread and wine, light a candle, or write a prayer and roll it up and place it in the wailing wall. There is no official conclusion to the service.

(NB, Every 8-10 minutes call out ‘The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness…’ and have solo voice sing chorus of ‘The Sorrow’)

(At 7.45pm change TRACK to ex Arvo Paart CD until all people have left.)

Cards Content: (4 copies of each)

1. Biblical texts from running order.
2. Joshua 1/5. God says…‘As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.’
3. Text of chorus to ‘The Sorrow’. (ex Enemy of Apathy, John Bell and Graham Maule, with Wild Goose Worship Group, Wild Goose Publications: Glasgow, 1988)

I need to know that God is real!
I need to know that Christ can feel
The need to touch and love and heal
The world, including me! (Words and Music (c) Iona Community.)

4. Bill Viola Quote

vast open space
landscape can exist as a reflection on the inner walls of the mind, or
as a projection of the inner state without. flat open vast space lends
itself to a clearer monitoring of the subjective inner world.
contemporary urban spaces talk to you incessantly — signs call out, to
try to grab you…[vast open spaces are]… clear and uncluttered. it is the opposite of
our urban spaces. out here, the unbound mind can run free. imagination
reigns. space becomes a projection screen. inside becomes outside. you
can see what you are.

(Bill Viola, from his journals)

5. Quotes ex Spiritual Literacy — reading the sacred in everyday life by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat.

If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide, and so we are found. — Terry Tempest Williams in Refuge.
The willingly embraced desert fosters realism, not despair. — Kathleen Norris in Dakota.
The desert where God alone is King — Meister Echardt.

6. Stuff ex prayer books eg

NB A few years ago we did a service with some points of connection to this that involved covering the floor of the Baptist Theological College chapel with black polythene and then barrowing in sand until the floor was a desert. We stood in our bare feet for the 30 minute duration of the service while readings and rants and the sung chorus to ‘The Sorrow’ were alternated. A benediction closed the service and punters were given empty pill vials to take sand home in as a reminder that ‘God meets us in the desert experiences of life’.