Matthew Nygren
Homiletics
December 30, 2007
The Wilderness
Matthew 2:13-23
Imagine if you will that you are in a forest. It is nighttime and there is a full moon, illuminating everything. You can see in the horizon snowcapped mountains shining in the moonlight. Below them you can see the treetops of tall pines. The air is crisp and cool. It is almost silent, but you can hear in the near distance a low rumble. You try to place the noise but all you can come up with is that of wooden wheels traversing the treacherous ground of the forest. Not too long after placing this strange noise you begin to notice something moving through the trees. You can see it above the trees. As it moves into the moonlight you start to make out the shape of a cross, just bouncing up and down, moving through the forest. It strikes you as odd. This image before you seems so out of place. As this cross comes to a clearing you are finally able to see what the cross shape is attached to. To your surprise you see that it is a mast of a ship and this ship is on wheels and is being pulled by a group of men and mules. Now you thought that the image of the cross was out-of-place, but this image of a ship being wheeled through the forest takes the cake.
But this is the image one is greeted with when they are watching the beginning of the film The Man in the Wilderness. And this was the image a professor of mine was shocked to see one fateful day as he watched the TNT cable station. You see not too long before this surreal moment he had a dream in which he was plummeting down a windy road with a lady that belonged to the church he pastored. The vehicle that they were racing out of control in was a ship on wheels. No matter how hard he tried to control this ship he could not get it to stop meandering all over the road. Seeing now a similar image on the TV before him he knew it was time to pay attention. Seeing this absurd image of these men pulling a ship through a forest made his dream a little clearer.
The gist of this film is a group of trappers decided to portage a ship full of their furs to the Mississippi River before winter sets in. On the way, the groups main hunter/scout is mauled by a bear and is left behind for dead. Forced to be on his own in the wilderness, he recovers from his injuries and swears revenge against the captain that left him there for dead. Along his journey, however, the experience of being in the wilderness changes him. By the time he reached his group and the ship he no longer wanted revenge or the safety or familiarity that the ship gave him. Instead he just wanted his gun, which the captain took from him, and to go home. He could have easily killed the captain, taken over the group, and shared in the wealth of the furs. However these things were no longer important to him. He had been to the wilderness and the wilderness changed him.
My professor was in tears by the end of this film. It was all clear to him now. The dream that he had was calling him to the wilderness; a call to leave the safety and familiarity of his church. You see he realized that in his dream the ship he was trying to control was his church. His congregant passenger was a symbol for the whole congregation. No matter how hard he tried, his church was barreling down the road and there was nothing he could do about it. He took it as a sign of things to come if he stayed a pastor there. This was a hard pill to swallow for him. The ambiguity of not knowing what to do now was gut-wrenching, but that is what the journey through the wilderness is all about.
You may be wondering what any of this has to do with the scriptures we read. Well, in the gospel passage we read we have the story of Joseph, Mary, and the newly born Jesus being forced to leave the country they were so familiar with and journey through the wilderness. Not once, but twice. First they fled to Egypt and then they spent a good portion of Jesus’ life in the territory of Galilee. Galilee was north of Judea and you had to go through Samaria to get there. So Joseph and Mary were not exactly in familiar surroundings. But this is where they raised Jesus and it was in this wilderness that Jesus probably learned to empathize with the marginalized. I say wilderness because although they lived in a town, “the wilderness” is any place or emotional state that we didn’t plan to be in. Mary and Joseph most likely wanted to stay in Judea and raise Jesus there. But they were forced to live elsewhere, the wilderness so to speak, and Jesus surely benefited from it.
The wilderness is a place that makes us more conscious and more aware. It makes us a better version of ourselves. However, no one really wants to go there. I mean the wilderness, whether a real place or an emotional state, is a foreign land. Nothing makes sense and sometimes there is suffering. It’s like being in a country where you don’t know the language. You can either retreat or forge ahead and learn the lessons the wilderness has to teach you. Some do retreat and some try to avoid it altogether. They would much rather stay where things are familiar and give them a sense of security. Doing this, however, will only make them stuck, never growing as a person, never venturing out and never taking risks. They might as well put another brick in the wall and close themselves in the safety and comfort of an unexamined life.
A great example of this is the movie Shawshank Redemption. The main character Andy was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Prison was his wilderness. For nineteen years, it shaped him and molded him into a better person. And when it was time, he left he wilderness by escaping prison. Ironically the film supporting character named Red was quite comfortable with prison life. To him, the outside was the wilderness. Prison made sense to him and in prison he was somebody. The thought of leaving angered and scared him. He did eventually get out on parole and he hated it. He did not like the wilderness and he thought of ways to get back into prison. But through the influence of his newly escaped friend Andy, he finally came to the conclusion to either “get busy living or get busy dying”. The movie ends with Red joining Andy in Mexico with endless possibilities before him. He took a journey through the wilderness and he was better for it.
My fellow UCC-ers, I have to ask what wilderness to do we need yet to travel through? What wilderness do we need to go through to help us be better at taking care of the sick, the homeless, the hungry, the naked, the abused, and the hated? From personal experience, ever since I quit my job as a youth minister, I have been in the wilderness as far as my vocation goes. But working in this vocational wilderness has taught me that my education and vast vocabulary doesn’t mean anything to the working-class man. If I wanted to teach them about love, I was going to have to speak their language and empathize with their lives. I think this is a lesson all middle-to-upper class professionals could learn.
This wasn’t my first trip to the wilderness. When I went to college everything was unfamiliar. I was in the wilderness emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. My fundamentalist faith was being challenged, I was dealing with panic disorder, I had to realize that I was unhealthy in my relationships with others, and I was being cast-out by my family. Now if one man would not have made his own journey through the wilderness, leaving his church, eventually getting his master’s degree and becoming my professor at my college, then I would not have been molded into the person I am today. His brave journey through the wilderness eventually helped my journey through the wilderness.
And now I stand before you to say if you are in the wilderness now, and you know who you are, take comfort in the fact that this is exactly where you’re supposed to be. You are being molded into a better you. You are very brave for weathering this journey and someday you will reach you destination.
However, for those of you still sitting in the safety and comfort of the familiar, I say get busy living or get busy dying. For it is only when you journey into the wilderness that you will become all that God intended you to be. Amen.
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February 2008 
Jocamiah
