God in the desert

I said I would comment further on the book by Beldon Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, so here goes. This may be more than you bargained for, but this is the sermon I preached Sunday thinking about this whole idea of apophpatic theology. Hope you enjoy it.

Finding God in the Desert

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle. Exodus 13:17, 18

As many of you are aware, I am preparing to leave for Israel this week. In the midst of Bible school, packing, organizing, and everything else, I have been preparing in other ways for my trip to the Holy Land. I have been reading a book that was assigned to us, and I have been learning and trying to understand a new word. Today’s Theological Word-for-the-day is “apophatic.”

Apophatic is not a word you come across very often, not even in theology books. Its not even in the Bible. It comes from the Greek word meaning “to deny,” or, literally, “to say no”. (apo as in oppose, and phatic, from phoneo or “to say”, like phonetic.) Apophatic theology recognizes that every time you attempt to say something about God, you almost always have to add a “but.” We can say that God is a rock, but God is not really a rock; God has no material substance, and even a rock is not as eternal or as stable as God. The point is that most of the time we can get a more accurate picture of God when we talk about what God is not, rather than what God is. The Latin church called this the Via Negativa, or the “negative way.”

I came to a study of apophatic theology in preparation for my pilgrimage next week. You see, much of the Holy Land is desert, desolate and sparse, like West Texas in August. So, in preparation, our spiritual director asked us to read up on this Via Negativa, finding God in places where you least expect to find him.

Throughout the centuries, there have been generations of holy men and women who have gone into the desert to get alone and commune with God. There are volumes of books written by these Desert Fathers and Mothers, to help point the way to God. One of the interesting things they talk about is how often in scripture people must go out into the desert, into the wilderness, to come face to face with God. One of their favorite images is Mt. Sinai, the holy mountain, where Moses saw God in the burning bush, where he took the children of Israel to receive the Ten Commandments, and where Elijah fled to escape the evil Queen Jezebel, and God spoke to him, not in the fire, the wind or the earthquake, but in the still small voice, the sound of silence that abounds in the desert wilderness.

In this morning’s scripture, we read about the children of Israel leaving the slavery of Egypt, and going back to their home in the promised land. They knew where the promised land was, because its where their family came from generations ago, just like I know where my family came from, and you know where yours came from. So they set out with Moses to go there, but they took a route no one expected. They could have gone the direct route by the Mediterranean Sea, the Philistine Coast Highway, it was the most direct and the most well traveled way to go. But it was also the most well-guarded. Not only did Egypt have several well-garrisoned outposts along the route, it also led past the Philistine country, and they would gladly have attacked and pillaged the rag-tag band of ex-slaves.

As I was reading this story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt, I was intrigued by these two verses. Verse 17 says, “God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that way was shorter.” Evidently, the direct route was not the best. According to Exodus, “God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’” So evidently, God wanted to save them from battle.

But that doesn’t make sense to me. Look at it this way: First of all, it turned out that Pharaoh came after them with his army, so they had to fight anyway. Second, they didn’t really fight at all, God smote the Egyptians, not the Israelites, and if God could do it to the Egyptians, I suppose God could do the same to the Philistines if it came to that. Third, look at the end of verse 18, “The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.” They were ready to fight, if it came to it. So why did God lead them out of the way, into the wilderness?

There is an interesting discussion about this passage, mostly among Jewish scholars. It centers around the little word, ki, and how it should be translated. Most of the time it is translated, “although,” so God did not lead them by the sea, although or even though it was shorter. That makes sense. But in Hebrew that little word, ki, can also be translated, “because.” Many Jewish scholars prefer this translation because of the implications for the text. You see, with this reading, God decided against the shorter route because (for the very reason that) it was easier and less demanding. God intentionally opted for the more difficult route, the desert route, the way of the wilderness. 1

This seems to be the way of God, to choose the more difficult rather than the simple, easy way. There seems to be something special, something significant about the desert and the wilderness. Why does God so often choose to meet people there, like Moses and Elijah on Mt. Sinai? That place is extremely remote and desolate. Why go there? I have a few thoughts about that.

My first thought is that in the desert, we come to the end of ourselves. The Desert Fathers and Mothers didn’t go into the desert just to be alone. Surely they could find peace and quiet closer to civilization. No, they went into the desert because there they looked death squarely in the face. Survival was a full time job. You can’t take anything for granted in the desert. Many of the places where their ancient hermit caves are have only an inch or so of rainfall a year. Imagine how desolate a place like that is. They were in genuine danger; they lived on the very edge of existence. That’s what the desert meant to them. They were following Christ’s injunction, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (MK 8:35).

But there are other deserts besides the ones with no rainfall. There are other landscapes besides physical landscapes. In all of our lives, there are times when we feel emotionally bereft and dry. There are emotional and spiritual deserts inside us that are just as desolate and just as dangerous as the ones where camels walk across the burning sand. We all face sorrow, disappointment, and heartache. These are the deserts of our lives, and it is often in these deserts where we meet God most profoundly.

Being a child of the 70s, when I think of the desert, I think of a particular song. Its by the group America, and its called A Horse with No Name. Maybe you know it. It goes like this:

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
La, la ...

I looked up some information on this song, and although there were some who thought the song was about drugs, that’s not how the person who wrote it explains it. He says he grew up around the desert and wanted to express some of the imagery of Arizona and New Mexico. He says, “I was trying to capture the sights and sounds of the desert, and there was an environmental message at the end. But it’s grown to mean more for me. I see now that this anonymous horse was a vehicle to get me away from all the confusion and chaos of life to a peaceful, quiet place. 2

Another interpreter sees the song as “really a physical journey of self-discovery. He discovers one main thing. He discovers that running away from your troubles does not make them go away and that they will come back.”3

I think that’s one reason the song was so popular. It hit the top of the charts in 1971. All of us struggle with the desert sometimes. It may be a physical desert with sand and rocks and hills, but it is more likely to be an internal desert, a dryness of spirit that makes our very soul feel dry and gritty. I also believe that it is in these times, sometimes terrible times, that we often find God. These become our holy places, our sacred spots; times in our lives we hope we never have to live through again but wouldn’t trade for the world.

Another reason I believe God takes us out into the desert is that in the desert we come to experience and understand the concept of harsh grace. This concept is sometimes called divine apatheia by the Desert Fathers. The desert really doesn’t care whether you live or die, whether you survive or not. Sometimes it feels like that with God. How often, in the driest of our desert times, have we cried out to God, “Don’t you care what happens to me?” and, if we are honest, sometimes it feels like God says, “No, not really.”

The Israelites cried out to Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”(Ex 17:3). This is the answer that Job gets at the end, after all his friends have had their say, when God finally shows up. God doesn’t say, “Oh, I’m sorry Job, I really didn’t mean it. You see, the devil and I had this bet…” No, God looks at Job and thunders, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.” (Job 38:4). God does not mollycoddle Job, he shows up in all his fierceness and strength and reminds Job of his place in the grand scheme of things.

That’s what those crazy desert hermits were after. They wanted to experience what Job did, to meet God in all his grandeur and strength. They didn’t want to find some mamby-pamby god to meet all my needs, and to be at my beck and call. They understood that God is God whether we like it or not. God was God for eternity past before the world ever came to be. They discovered a God who “comes with might,” “who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span.” (Isa. 40:12).

But we mustn’t assume that these were just rough-cob people who like a tough God. These people were serious about Jesus’ command to die to self, and they understood that a focus on divine majesty tends to reduce the attention and concern most people so often lavish on themselves. How do you become less selfish? Focus on someone else. Not just on anyone else, but on a God of glory and majesty. This, they believed, was the path to holiness. So they looked to the desert to find the largeness of God and the smallness of their own being. 4

Finally, the desert is a powerful place to strengthen one’s own spirituality because in the desert, we come to understand God’s gift of sparseness, or even of nothingness. Christ said, you must lose your life in order to find it; you must lose yourself in order to find yourself. When all the false grandeur and vanity that we build up around ourselves is finally stripped away, then we discover who we truly are. Why do people love the wild desert places? Some of them love them because of their inherent beauty and majesty. But I think there is a sense as you stand and look over a grand mesa or valley that it would be just as grand whether you were there to see it or not. We like to delude ourselves and think that it was all created just for us and for our pleasure. But it was not. The beauty and the glory will be there whether we see it or not. The Bible says that creation was made not for our pleasure, but for God’s. We are made for His pleasure, not the other way around. There is something about the desert, the wilderness that reminds us of that fact.

Belden Lane, in his book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, puts it about as well as anyone I can think of. He says, “Why am I drawn to desert and mountain fierceness? What impels me to its unmitigated honesty, its dreadful capacity to strip bare, its long, compelling silence? It’s the frail hope that in finding myself brought to the edge—to the macabre, stone-silent edge of death itself—I may hear a word whispered in its loneliness. The word is “love,” spoken pointedly and undeniably to me. It may have been uttered many times in the past, but I’m fully able to hear it only in that silence.” 5

1. Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. (Oxford University Press, Oxford:1998) p. 44.
2. http://www.last.fm/user/ohh1972/journal/2009/07/17/2vk5tr_1971:_meaning_behind_ america's_%22a_horse_with_no_name%22
3. http://www.lyricinterpretations.com/lookat.php/bands/america/d6fd9505913a9b8
4. Belden Lane, op. cit. p. 56.
5. Belden Lane, op. cit. p. 61.