This is the desert box. We need a little piece of the desert in our room, because so many important and wonderful things happened to the People of God in the desert.
We need to know what it is like.

 The desert is a dangerous place. The sand is always moving, so it is hard to know where you are. There is little water in the desert, so you can get thirsty. Almost nothing grows, so there is almost nothing to eat. People can die if food and water are not found. The wind blows the sand, and hits your skin and stings. In the daytime, the hot sun scorches your skin, at night it is very cold. People wear many layers of clothing to protect themselves from stinging sand, the scorching sun, and the cold night. 

The desert is a dangerous place. People don’t go into the desert unless they have to.

I went to the desert last week.
It was SO hard.
I like to think I’m pretty tough. But this was a whole ‘nother order of difficult.
(I said that last night, and 30% of the congregation came up afterward to say they love the Black Rock Desert, including the white outs! Go figure.)

Together with 8 people I don’t know, most of us first-timers, I went on a mission to share the love of God in Christ with people who have no idea that’s in any way relevant, at a Burning Man theme camp called Religious AF.

Lots of people thought we were being ironic.
A few heckled as they rode by on bikes:
“Good luck with your sky wizard”
and “There is no God.”
(A campmate responded, “We love God.”)
Some people came into our living room and visited for a while,
before it dawned on them that we were serious.
“Wait?! You’re religious for real?!”
(How I felt finding out that some people love white outs.)

In this day and age, people think that “religious” means “intolerant”, “unkind”, “proselytizing”, “judging”.

One of the first people we met was Rabbit. His camp makes
pinhole cameras and develops the film,
old school: in a dark room.
Same way we do religion
old school: with sacraments, & the Bible.

Tho’ not one of us—who call ourselves Religious AF—
brought an actual Bible.
(We have bible apps which don’t work without cell signal.)

Rabbit said he was glad we were there,
though it was too bad we weren’t “allowed” to do things.
I think he meant dancing and drinking,

So many of our neighbors don’t know that Christians,
even old school Christians, do all the things.
If I’d had a Bible, I might have read today’s reading from
the Song of Solomon; or today’s Gospel:
nothing outside us defiles us, only what’s in our hearts.

Incarnate passion, Celebration! Art! Bread! Wine! Dancing:
All holy!
God has created us with love, for love.
How have we not shared that message?

Despite the dismay that people, nice, thinking people,
believe in God and Jesus,
more people came to our camp every day.
to pray, to ask questions, seeking sanctuary, and silence.
I think some came because something had scared them.
And we also went out to adventure among them!

We went into the desert with our ancient Christian traditions.
Jesus used common, every day metaphors
which ordinary people understood, but
we don’t have so many shepherds and oil lamps,
and so our ancient language and symbols have become
a kind of secret code separating us and them,
instead of uniting us as one in God’s love.

I guess that wouldn’t matter if the people weren’t seeking God –
but they ARE – they just don’t have language for it.

People often speak of Burning Man as a place of hedonism:
but it’s too hard for hedonists.
The Four Seasons is for hedonists, not the Nevada desert.

Burning Man is more a place of abandon:
abandonment of old assumptions and identities, for
for celebrating impermanence, Creation, and creativity.
For 2-thousand years, Christians have gone to the desert
to be tested and refined.

All the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
are grounded in the same stories of a people, our people,
finding God as they faced hardship in the desert.

Burning Man is difficult by design.
At the entrance gate: they make you lie down in the dust.
Dust gets into everything –
What does our tradition say about dust?
We blessed ashes, and offered them with Ash Wednesday words:
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return”
words as meaningful in the desert as they are here.
Maybe more.

70-thousand people live cheek by jowl for nine days a year:
with no cell service, no wi-fi,
nothing bought or sold but coffee and ice.
Everything else a gift.

They create community, and amazing works of art –
and then they give it all up,
leaving no trace,
holding the transformation written on their hearts.

That seems very Christian to me.
Resurrection is not about dying and getting our old lives back.
None of Jesus’ closest friends recognized the Risen Christ.
Resurrection is about the powerlessness of death to
overcome God’s Creation:
about God’s call for us not to cling to things of this world –
but to let it go, and accept the gift of new life in Christ.

How can we, as Christians, abandon the things of this world,
and transform our ancient traditions in ways that seekers comprehend –
and to be transformed by seekers showing us
new meaning in God’s teaching?

What do sin and salvation really mean? For us. Here. Now.
I’ve been translating these things in my mind for years,
but it’s hard to articulate them for people who aren’t
fluent in religious language!
Godly Play is all about teaching the art of religious language:
Gestures, movements, liturgical actions, words, silence.
These languages connect us with companions grappling
with the existential questions every human being must face:
Who am I? Where did I come from? Am I alone?
What am I supposed to do?  What is death?

Some people use the language of pilgrimage –
old school to Rome, the Camino, Sinai, or Mecca,
new school at Burning Man:
the journey is a great blessing.

For four years, Brian Baker has been giving a blessing
as his gift at Burning Man.
I have seen the people who scoff at religion begin to cry: as he puts his hands on their shoulders, looks in their eyes and says:

The world NOW is too dangerous and too beautiful
 for anything but LOVE.
I bless your eyes that you may see God in everyone you meet,
your ears that you may always hear the cries of the poor,
your lips that you may speak nothing but the truth with love,
your hands that everything you give and receive will be a sacrament.
and your feet that may run to those who need you,
your heart, that it may be so opened, so set on fire that your love, YOUR LOVE changes…everything.