Ash Wednesday Service: 2/18

Re-Wilding Our Faith: Giving Up the Tame to Find the True 

Lent is marked by desert stories. Wilderness stories. 

We see Jesus tested in the wilderness. Abram is called to leave his country and venture out into the wilderness. Moses strikes a rock and water flows forth to quench the thirst of God’s people as they journey through the wilderness. 

“Wilderness” is rich with metaphor and symbolism in scripture, but Wilderness is also a legal term. 
In U.S. law, a Wilderness Area is undeveloped federal land where "the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain" (the Wilderness Act of 1964). 

Last year, I listened to the “How Wild” podcast by NPR, and I was amazed by the depth of scientific thinking surrounding the idea of Wilderness. The host, Marissa Ortega-Welch, troubles this legal definition, as indigenous people have been in North America for at least 23,000 years, and human-caused climate change has left no creature unimpacted. 

Yet as more and more Wilderness areas are being used for human manufacturing and oil rigs, “Re-Wilding” has become a movement as small as your backyard and as big as the Amazon Rainforest. 

​As the World Wildlife Fund explains, “Rewilding can mean a lot of different things. It ranges from not mowing grass verges, to restoring rivers, through to the reintroduction of wild species. Rewilding generally involves letting nature take the lead. This is done by restoring natural processes and reducing human management.” 

Wilderness is complicated, but there is so much it can teach us–if we let it. 

I once heard Rev. Paula Stone Williams say, “Lost is a place too, and there is wisdom to be gained there.” This has stuck with me for years. 

I think the Wilderness has a bad reputation, and like Lost, there is wisdom to be gained there. In fact, I wonder if Wilderness might just be the antidote many of us need for a faith that has been tamed by empire and modern life. 

What might it mean to Re-Wild our lives, our faith, ourselves? 

We may not know where we are going, but we need the Wilderness because it's a place of transformation. 

I hope you will join us on Ash Wednesday (Feb 18, 7 PM) as we begin the journey of letting the Wild God lead. 

See you in the Wilderness, 
​Pastor Jason