Lent 01: The Wilderness and the Temptations
Community Group Questions
1. Tim referenced David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” speech, in which Wallace describes two fish swimming along when an older fish passes by and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The two young fish swim on, and eventually one turns to the other and says, “What is water?”
Wallace’s point — and Tim’s — is that the most important realities are often the ones we’re least aware of, because we’re so completely inside them.
Tim also cited Wallace’s line: “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it,” and suggested that the discomfort of fasting during Lent is meant to do exactly that — disrupt us enough to make the water visible.
What water do you swim in that you often — or always — forget is even there? Have you had the experience of suddenly becoming aware of a reality you’d been living inside for years without ever seeing it as a reality at all? What was that like?
Have you experienced any disruption in these early days of Lent? Or do you have past Lent experiences that managed to break through? How do you feel about disruption as a spiritual practice — is it something you’re more likely to welcome or resist? Why?
2. Tim drew on the first temptation of Christ and the Deuteronomy text Jesus quotes to make this point: the Israelites needed to remember that they were more than just mouths to be fed. They weren’t simply a hungry people looking for provision — they were a priestly people. There was far more to freedom than leaving Egypt behind.
What basic, ordinary needs tend to cloud your sense of who you really are? Do you find yourself thinking of yourself — even without meaning to — primarily as a mouth to be fed, a home to be maintained, a bank account to be replenished?
What in your day-to-day life has the most power to quietly take over your deeper sense of identity? How do you push back against that — or do you? What do you think the long-term cost might be of never questioning it or letting it be challenged within you?
3. Tim also taught that empires built through coercion or violence have to be maintained through coercion or violence. He said, “How you build a kingdom is how you have to sustain it.”
What personal empires have you inadvertently built — or found yourself inside — that you’ve realized require something of you for their upkeep that you don’t actually want to keep giving? How did you get there? What would (or did) it look like to stop maintaining it?
Tim’s closing reminder was that promise of the Lenten process is that we are not trapped. What comes up for you when you think about that idea? What do you most need to hear today that you are not trapped by?
How do you respond to the idea of Lent as a possible step in the journey of freedom from that space? What do you think that means? What does it require of you?
