February 22 2026, God’s First Book of Revelation

God's First Book of Revelation

 

 

 

God’s First Book of Revelation

Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

for St. John’s Episcopal Church

The First Sunday in Lent, February 22, 2026

Matthew 4:1-12; Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

 

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, that great forty day period of fasting and introspection and transformation that concludes with Holy Week and Easter. The first Sunday in lent always features the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In three of the four gospels, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, he first goes to John in the wilderness at the River Jordan to be baptized, and immediately after is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, where he fasts for forty days and is tempted by the devil during that time. Whenever in scripture you encounter a period of time that includes the number forty, whether it’s forty days or forty years, you should know you have moved into Kairos time, mythic time, time heavily laden with meaning. For forty days and forty nights, the rain fell, and Noah’s world was drowned in the great flood while Noah and his family and a few animals from every species floated above the flood in the ark. For forty years after the people of Israel had been liberated from slavery in Egypt, they were led by the Spirit of God in the wilderness before they finally came to the Promised Land. For forty days and nights, Moses was on Mount Sinai, encountering the living God and receiving instruction from God for the people. For forty days and nights the prophet Elijah, fleeing for his life from the wicked King and Queen of Israel whom he had criticized, journeyed on the strength of food provided him by the angel of God to Horeb, the Mountain of God, where he asked to meet God face to face.

 

I had the great good fortune to study with a Jewish rabbi for awhile, and Rabbi Ulman said that whenever you encounter the number forty in scripture it’s about a great transformation. It’s about an ending and a beginning. Do you know how many weeks it takes a human baby to develop inside its mother’s womb? Forty weeks. And lent is forty days, forty days where we fast alongside Jesus in the wilderness, praying for transformation. If I were to ask you, what in your life need to end so that something else can begin, how would you answer? How do you think the still, small voice of God in your inner being would answer? What needs to end, and what needs to begin?

 

Listening for the voice of God is the other major theme that is evoked during lent, that is evoked when Jesus goes to the wilderness to be tempted. The Hebrew word for wilderness is midbar, which is derived from the root word dabar, to speak. The wilderness speaks. In fact in scripture, wilderness is always where the people go to hear the voice of God. The slave woman Hagar went to the wilderness with her son Ishmael, where they were overcome by the great heat and dryness of the desert and where at last they laid down to die. But the angel of God appeared to them. God came to Hagar and gave her water and hope and saved her life, Hagar the slave woman of Abraham, alone of anyone in all of scripture, scripture gave God a name, El-Roi, the God who sees, the God who sees those who are vulnerable and who saves them.

 

 

People seem to generally be divided on their love of the wilderness or lack thereof. Some people love the wilderness, its majestic beauty and wildness. Some people think it’s a dangerous place to which one should not willingly go. Whether you love it or fear it, the wilderness is a place where one encounters the raw power of nature. Last summer, Jeff and Carly and I went canoeing in the boundary waters where Jeff and I experimented with sleep hammocks while Carly slept in the tent. One night we were caught in a massive thunderstorm. I had a rain tarp over my hammock and there was one point that the storm was so fierce that I was pushing against the tarp with all my might because it was stretched absolutely taut against my face, the wind being nearly horizontal, and I found myself yelling a prayer for safety over and over. The storm was so loud that it was impossible to call to Jeff and Carly to see if they were OK even though we were only ten or fifteen feet from each other. I kept looking to see if Carly’s tent was still standing. Jeff and I were hanging between massive trees and I prayed  we would not be struck by lightning. It went on forever. Thankfully we lived to tell the tale but it was terrifying and incredible to encounter the raw immense power of nature.

 

And perhaps that is the point. In the wilderness, we are without the protections that distract and insulate us from encountering what is real directly. The ancient desert fathers and mothers were early Christians in the first few centuries who were watching the decline of the Roman Empire and its persecution of Christians and its overall indulgence and violence, and they decided to opt out. They moved to the wilderness and lived in caves in the desert and prayed. They ate very little and possessed nothing, and were filled with the Spirit of God. They encountered the temptation of everything good and not so good that was within them because they had nothing to distract them from themselves and their memories, their petty grudges and their hopes and dreams, their selfishness and their goodness. And they left writings and wisdom for us, and indeed they are part of the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints who are still with us, our spiritual ancestors who journeyed through the cauldron of violent empire and desert wilderness and who emerged with their souls intact and shining like the sun.

 

It’s so important for us, at this point in the life of the world, not to lose sight of the greater picture, of our spiritual ancestors, of the Great Story we are a part of. It is so important for us to remember that no matter how powerful and wicked human authority can become, the power of the wilderness to speak the word of God to us is stronger still. It is so important for us to know in our bones that we have a choice about who and what to listen to. If we listen exclusively to the voice of the news and the rage around us all the time, that is what will fill us. If we make time to be schooled and nurtured by the wild places around us, we will see that everything has a season, every part of nature fits intricately with every other part, that there is enough for everyone to have enough as long as some do not take more than their share. If we make time to listen deeply to what the eagles and the springs of water teach us, we will see that living water can arrive pure and fresh from the earth itself, that one needs to see the big picture.

 

Most of you know at this point that I am taking a sabbatical for four months between mid-June and mid-October. The theme of my sabbatical is “deepening relationship with God’s first book of revelation, the sacred earth.” Throughout Christian tradition, theologians have referred to God’s two books of revelation – the little book of Scripture and the big book of Nature. Nature reveals to us what is true about God. The wilderness teaches us that we are not the center of the universe, but that we are an essential part of the vast weave of interdependence in which everything belongs to everything else. During my sabbatical, St. John’s is invited to have a parallel experience of learning from God’s first book of revelation: the natural world, the wilderness. We can learn from the cold and the snow, the swans departing for their summer homes and the birds making nests, the trees which will soon send out buds even though at this point in the wheel of the year winter always feels like it will last forever.

 

For this lent, I’d like to invite us to consider three practices. First: let us spend regular time listening for God in the wild places of nature around us, being schooled by God’s first book of revelation. We need this especially when the human world is so distorted. Even if it just means letting the fresh air kiss your face for a little bit every day, or watching the sunrise or the sunset from your window, allow the wilderness to teach you something about what is real and what is really important, and then share it with each other. Second, this lent I’d also like to invite us to spend regular time in God’s second book of revelation, in holy scripture, seeing the great stories of our tradition with fresh eyes, letting them come alive for us and give us strength to resist evil, to stand up for the marginalized, to risk what must be risked so that we can keep our souls intact and stay aligned with Jesus’ Way of Love. And finally, third: please consider joining Jesus in his fast by fasting from some, or all, of your discretionary spending—and instead, use that money to support the many immigrants in our city who are hungry and at risk of being evicted from their homes because of the recent occupation of our city by ICE.

 

May your lent be sacred. May you encounter the presence of God in scripture and wilderness and fasting. May you resist the temptations of numbness and indifference and be immersed in the love and generosity of God. Amen.

10am Service