Sermon - First Sunday in Lent

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 9.8-17
1 Peter 3.18-22
Mark 9.15

If you were looking for a theme that unites today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons, it could be the title of a U2 album from about eight years ago – “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” There is a song on that album with lyrics that speak of a journey “that has to be believed to be seen.” The lesson from Genesis is God’s promise after the flood. The opening chapter of Mark’s gospel sets its readers and its main character on the journey toward the cross. We know the end of both of those stories, but for the persons described in the stories they are journeys that have to be believed to be seen. Our lives have similar journeys.
To me, of all the seasons of the church year, Lent makes its message most tangible. It gives us the opportunity to walk that journey toward the cross through our own chosen disciplines – fasting, doing without things, making important life changes or deliberately choosing to learn or do new things. In doing so, we learn what can and can’t be left behind. We make the journey in faith – believing in an outcome that we cannot see, because it will only be revealed in the experience.
You’re all very familiar with the story of the flood in Genesis from which today’s Old Testament lesson is taken. That story describes the destruction of the earth, leaving only the most essential elements of a new beginning. In the aftermath of that disaster is a promise from God that it will never happen that way again and the command to go forth and give life to a new world.
The theme of a new world also underlies the first chapter of Mark from which today’s gospel lesson is taken. Mark was almost certainly the first of the four gospels in the Bible to be written. It reflects the pain and hardship of the first century Jewish-Roman war and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. More subtly, the writing of Mark may have coincided with a power struggle between four would-be Roman emperors from which Vespasian emerged as the winner. It is especially interesting to think about the language of the first chapter of Mark in that context. After the stories of Jesus’ birth that we are accustomed to from Matthew and Luke’s gospels, along with the historic creeds and centuries of tradition, we are in the habit of believing that the title “son of God” was one uniquely claimed and deserved by Jesus. In reality, Mark’s claim of divine sonship for Jesus in today’s gospel lesson was a shockingly bold appropriation of a title commonly given to the Roman Emperor. The terms “good news” and Savior are also associated with the Roman emperor in the literature of Mark’s day. From the mid first century chaos of warfare and political struggle, Mark invites us to re-imagine the world as God’s imperial domain – a more literal translation of the greek basilea tou theou than the words “kingdom of God” which we’re accustomed to reading in the Bible. Mark offers his readers that invitation with the voice of God to back it up. And he establishes without a doubt the continuity of this new “son of God” with the faith of his fathers by portraying John the Baptist as the heir of Elijah’s credentials. As Mark describes it, John proclaims the coming of the one who will be greater than all who came before him. As Jesus undergoes the ritual submergence and emergence from the water, with all of its symbolic connotations of chaos and creation, death and re-birth, his identity as God’s son is proclaimed by no less than God’s own voice. These few verses are a breathtaking fusion of past, present and future – the proclamation of a new world order that will change everything. The audacity of Mark’s hope, to paraphrase President Obama, is only truly apparent when you consider the magnitude of the destruction from which it emerged. The Jewish-Roman war was, by contemporary accounts, a horrific struggle. It reinforced the divergence between Christian and Jewish communities and it brought about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. To imagine in the midst, or the immediate aftermath of that conflict, that anything good would come of it must have been a tenuous hope indeed. And to challenge the Roman Empire as Mark does in this first chapter was a remarkable act of courage – a journey that had to be believed in order to be seen.
In today’s gospel lesson, Mark describes Jesus as being driven into the wilderness by God’s spirit. This departure from the ordinary sustenance of life – physical, mental and emotional, echoes the enforced isolation of the creatures who accompany Noah in the story of the flood. The metaphor of a time in the wilderness has remained commonplace and now, frequently takes on non-religious connotations. We apply it to experiences of emotional hardship, loss of power or privilege or a sense of dislocation from what has been familiar. Usually it ends with a new outlook and the realization that what seemed like a painful end was the beginning of what was yet to be created.
Our experience of Lent – its scriptural associations and the church traditions and spiritual practices associated with it can be a way of organizing and interpreting our own experience of discerning all that can’t be left behind. Lent can be a reminder that even in an absurdly risk-averse world that threatens to drown us in useful information, there are still journeys that must be believed in order to be seen. Our culture of late has taught us to believe that success is about appearances rather than substance. We have come to expect quick results that require little effort or sacrifice. The consequences of those beliefs and expectations are now upon us. The good news of God in Jesus is that the journey we envision, that goes beyond the cross to resurrection is a reality that we will see. The kingdom of God has come near – believe the good news.