Year B
Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Joy in the Lenten Journey
If Ash Wednesday was the day of our humility, our call to repent and turn back to God, the first Sunday in Lent is the day of our joy. It is the day of our joy because today, we witness God’s covenant with Noah after the flood and through Noah with all living creatures, and with the earth itself. We are witnesses today of Jesus’ baptism and the beginning of his ministry, as this anointed one comes from the wilderness after being tested for 40 days to announce a new day of salvation and belief in the good news. And as witnesses, we too are anointed and our participation in the covenant is assured. The Sundays in Lent call us to consider our lives as a journey with Christ away from the wilderness toward Easter.
Even though we have taken this journey many times before and the journey metaphor has worn thin in our time, we can’t help but feel the urgency in Mark’s words today. Mark is famous for his theme of urgency. He uses the word immediately repeatedly some 42 times, especially near the start of his gospel. In the space of just a few verses, we have the heavens torn apart, and then immediately Jesus being driven into the wilderness. The baptism comes across as almost a calm moment in between the frenetic activity of the Spirit descending and God affirming “You are my Son, the Beloved with you I am will pleased.”
Compared to Matthew and Luke, this is where the brevity of Mark is really striking. If Mark’s story were the only one we had, we would know nothing of John’s attempt to make Jesus the baptizer instead of him in Matthew. We would have no debate between Jesus and the devil in the wilderness found in Matthew and Luke. All we would have are these seven spare verses, moving at breakneck speed. Yet, this lack of detail is intriguing, for Mark fills these verses with echoes from Israel’s past and as a call narrative, Jesus is called to ministry in his baptism as we all are. Mark adds quickly Jesus’ struggling with demons and wild beasts, of which we all do, and finally we have the action of which we are all called to do, repent, believe and proclaim.
What we have is a model of discernment and discipleship. Verse 15 when Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news” is famously seen as the summary verse of the entire gospel. In Jesus, the reign of God has arrived and we are called to participate in this reign by repenting and believing. This is the work of Lent, a journey that will take us to Pentecost, and even then will not end. Under the symbols and the signs of Lent, and in the hope of God’s covenant and everlasting love for the world, we are guided in this journey to life.
On Ash Wednesday, ashes; throughout Lent, the waters of baptism; the bow in the clouds; the dust formed in God’s likeness and alive with God’s breath in the beginning; the flood as a wall of water that destroys evil and brings us to life; ourselves, the church, as the sign of God’s presence. God delights in these symbols as a sign of love and we delight, as a sign of participating in God’s reign. Mark makes Lent the norm for Christian life. We surrender our imperfectness and wrestle for God’s meaning in our lives afresh every day. Thereby, we are empowered and called to live and serve in the newness of life that is ours in Jesus. God’s rule has come near. There is joy, as all the old obligations have been cancelled for those who repent and follow Jesus into God’s kingdom. There is a new beginning.
This is why Noah’s ark-building stands at the beginning of this Lenten journey because the earth, with its hills and valleys, its grasslands and rivers, its clouds and rainfall, is God’s sacred creation. God bound creation in covenant with Noah to God’s self forever with compassion for all living creatures. God will not abandon us. Never again will the waters become a flood on all the earth. Noah’s flood is a symbol of our salvation, our new beginning the apostle Peter says, because it corresponds exactly to the baptism that saves us. Through the baptismal waters, we are identified with Christ’s ministry and claimed by Christ’s destiny. Life, new beginnings, come from death and the time to live this truth is now.
As we live and reflect in this season of Lent, we are called “to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection “ and to walk, in the power of the one who knows our temptations, “through the wilderness of this world toward the glory of the world to come. This is the time to “Change our hearts and lives! And in the prayer of the psalmist, to know God’s paths and to do what is right. We lift up our very souls to God, everything we are, trusting that this is the road to life. Lent is not an easy journey, yet it is important. This 40 day period of preparation for Holy Week and Easter is a time to seek to learn God’s ways and God’s path’s; to choose God’s way despite the many easier paths available.
As author Fredrick Buechner writes, “If you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are”. Lent is the time to choose who we will be and whose we will be. Our identity will not be defined by what we believe, but by the road we take”. We would rather bypass the cross for the empty tomb, but the wisdom of Lent proclaims that Easter Sunday will not make much sense unless we are able to stay the course to and through Golgotha. Here at the beginning of this strange season, we answer God’s call not with words, but with our steps.
Let our steps acknowledge that all humankind is meant to be God’s image and likeness in the world and to make accessible God’s concern and love for all living creatures. This is the joy of the good news that is proclaimed in Genesis. This is the good news that the psalmist sings, “Good and upright is the Lord; he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.” This is the good news that Peter proclaims today and that we are made alive by the power of the Spirit in our baptism to bear witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” This is the joy of our Lenten journey with Christ.