First Sunday of Lent
The Gospel of Mark 1:9-15
Genesis 9:8-17
Preached at St. John’s Christopher St, NYC
February 21, 2021
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Christ the Beloved One, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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We have begun our Lenten journey through the wilderness, towards the execution and resurrection of Christ. On Ash Wednesday, we were reminded that we come from the dust of the earth, and will return to the dust of the earth. That our bodies are connected to God’s creative work in the world. We were reminded that God’s love is always with us, even as we sin against God and one another, and that God’s love transforms sin and death. We were reminded that God hates nothing God has made.
And yet. This past year, we have been surrounded by the truth that we are dust, that we are mortal. We have been surrounded by death, and grief, and loss. This year, for me, Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent feels like coming home, continuing on, not coming into a new season. Collectively, we have been wandering in a grief-stricken Lenten wilderness since last year, just after this time. New, collective anniversaries are beginning to come up alongside old, individual anniversaries – of the last time we sang together in-person, the last time we visited a friend, the last time we spoke to a loved one. Collectively, we joined those who were already in the wilderness long before last year. In fact, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to frame our entire lives – from birth to death – as a wilderness journey, surrounded by the angels of God, the animals of creation, and the temptations of Satan.
The wilderness is a space that we are driven into, born into. It is uncontained, unforgiving. It is harsh, and dangerous, but it is also beautiful, and gives plenty of space to grow. It changes us, changes our bodies. It is a place without a map, without borders. It might seem to stretch on endlessly, but it is an in-between space. It isn’t good or bad, it just is. It is a place of God. We join our ancestors in faith in the wilderness – today we hear the story of Noah and his family in and after the flood, and Jesus after his baptism.
In the reading from Genesis, we join Noah and his family in the middle of their wilderness journey. They have left the ark, after surviving a flood that wiped out literally everything and everyone they had ever known. A flood that happened because of how much people were hurting each other. So much has been lost – entire lives, entire histories, entire generations. The only bits of familiarity they still have from the before-time are the creatures and family that were on the ark. It might seem like the end of the flood was the end of their time in the wilderness, but in our text today they are emerging into a totally different wilderness, where the ground is different, their relationships are different, they are different. This new wilderness is unknown. Noah and his family are now faced with the question of how to rebuild. What to do if they find remnants from the world before, what to do with the trauma of the flood. In this changed landscape, even God has changed.
The story of Noah and his family and the covenant of the rainbow is well-known, and it’s a challenging story. Because in it, God changes. God repents from God’s action and makes a tangible commitment to a new course of action. After the flood, God makes a new promise to Noah and his family, and to the whole of Creation. “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God makes this covenant not just with the surviving humans, but also with the surviving animals – the birds, the domesticated animals, and all the creatures of the earth. By setting the rainbow in the clouds, God seals God’s promise with a visible sign. God doesn’t promise that there won’t be more floods, or wilderness times, but God does promise that Creation will not be cut off from God or destroyed. God establishes a new kind of relationship, promising, even when you hurt each other, even when you hurt me, I will not destroy you again. I will be with you, you will see signs of my presence, and I will not destroy you. The wilderness changes God, too.
When Jesus was driven into the wilderness, it was immediately after his life was irreparably changed through baptism, and he took on a changed identity as the Beloved Son of God. It was immediately after God irreparably changed the world, tearing apart the barrier between God and God’s creation. By tearing open the heavens, God made another new promise to Creation, building off of God’s earlier covenants. Not only will I not destroy you, I will tear apart any barriers that keep us separated. I will be with you – in baptism, in the wilderness, in death, in resurrection.
This uncontained God is the God with Jesus in the wilderness. God has made God’s position clear: I am with you, nothing can separate us, you are beloved. But this wilderness time, for Jesus, is a time of temptation and discernment. It is here, in this wilderness landscape, where he wrestles with what it means for him and his life that the Holy Spirit has entered into him. What it means to be the beloved Son of God. The immediacy of the Gospel of Mark inclines us to skip over this time in the wilderness, to move onto the next thing, especially because we know that Jesus refuses the temptations presented to him. But Jesus is human, just as he is Divine, and he is shaped by his time in the wilderness.
Jesus faced real temptation by Satan. This isn’t some sanitized, domesticated story where the outcome is pre-determined. Jesus, who is newly embodied with the Holy Spirit, is tested. What will he do with this power? What will he do with his identity as the Beloved Son of God? Mark doesn’t give us details of these temptations. From the other gospels, we might imagine that Jesus was offered money, power, influence, invulnerability. And taking any of those options would’ve been easier than the journey towards the cross. This was a real time of wrestling and struggle – Jesus could’ve chosen a different path. He had the option to say no to what God was offering, and to say yes to the temptations of the world. But he didn’t. I wonder if he still felt God’s voice reverberating through his body, naming him beloved.
In the midst of Jesus exploring his changed identity as the Beloved Son of God, he is not alone. Yes, Satan is there, but so are the angels. And so are the animals. And so is God. Even though Jesus’ discernment about his identity is personal, and individual, he is surrounded by both temptations and support. And ultimately, Jesus actively enters into the transformative work of God in the world, and he comes out of the wilderness proclaiming that the Kin-dom of God has come near. And by proclaiming the Kin-dom, he is rejecting the temptations of power, influence, and invulnerability. The Kin-dom of God is one where God is with us not just when we are at worship, or at church, but also when we are at the grocery store, or finishing a TV series, or crying out to a God we’re not sure hears us.
It is always such a risk to believe that God is present, that the Kin-dom of God has come near, in the midst of our daily lives, in our individual wildernesses. What does it mean if God is present but Satan is too? If God is present but suffering is too? Jesus proclaims that the Kin-dom of God has come near, even as our Lenten wilderness stretches across years and losses. And we find glimpses of that Kin-dom in the stories of Noah and Jesus. Glimpses of a God who loves us so much that God tears apart the heavens to be with us, no matter what. And we strive to carry those glimmers with us as we wander in the individual and collective wilderness spaces of our lives.
We carry with us the covenant God made with Noah and his family – that God will not destroy us again, will not destroy creation again.
We carry with us the memory of Noah and his family, who lost everything and everyone they knew to a flood, who lived with the fact that they were the only survivors and were responsible for starting over.
We carry with us the promise of God at Jesus’ baptism, that an uncontained, uncontrollable God will tear through the heavens in order to be with us. That God names us beloved, and hates nothing God has made.
We carry with us the memory and model of Jesus, who rejected temptation, and used his time in the wilderness to come to terms with his identity and role in the world. Who actively chose to participate in the transformative work of God.
We carry with us the knowledge of how the wilderness stories of Noah and Jesus turn out. They don’t turn out perfectly, or happily. There is pain, and loss, and doubt. There is death, even as death doesn’t have the final word. Satan doesn’t have the final word – God does. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t suffering. These wilderness stories, our wilderness stories, are honest stories, confronting different aspects of who and what we are, changing in the face of God. And I try to cling to the knowledge that these stories turn out radiantly. Noah, saved. Christ, resurrected. God, with us, always.
We carry these snapshots and memories with us in our wilderness spaces. We can hold onto them in the times when it feels like God is absent. It might be good to use these stories to inform our Lenten practices. In this wilderness year, I know I’ve been wondering what type of Lenten practice would be faithful to take on. Remember that these practices, at their core, are meant to draw us closer to God. And so they can be as simple and profound as creating a few minutes a day to remember our identity as beloved children of God, like Jesus after his baptism.
What might it look like for you to truly believe that God will not destroy you, destroy us, even as we live in a fallen world, and even as God transforms us, like Noah wrestled with? What would it look like for you to dwell in the wilderness, and emerge with a new clarity about yourself and your identities? Or, are there places in your life where you are being asked to reject the temptations of Satan, and make space for God? And when I say the temptations of Satan, I mean rejecting the temptations like diet culture, capitalism, Empire, white nationalism. The temptations that separate us from God. Our bodies and our neighbors are not our enemies. The powers and principalities that are against God, that are of Satan, are our enemies.
Our Lenten journeys are ongoing. If there is one thing I pray you carry with you in the wilderness journey, let it be the truth and promise that God is with you. Even in the midst of grief, suffering, and temptations. Even as things are lost, and found, in the wilderness. Even if you find it hard to believe that God is with you, that God loves you, one of the holy roles of a faith community like St. John’s is to hold that belief for each other, surrounding each other with prayer and love. God is with us in the wilderness of our lives, and invites us to enter into the Kin-dom, to enter into a changed world, together.
God’s love reverberates through Creation, through your very breath. God is uncontained, with us in our daily lives, our prayers, and our dreams. God has torn apart the heavens to be with you, to be with God’s Creation, in the wilderness. May our Lenten journeys be a time of returning to that same God. Amen.
Reed Fowler 