I ran across this old sermon from the First Sunday in Lent. The readings are for Year B of the three-year lectionary, but I think the message holds up regardless of the year.
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| The Judean desert. |
* * *
By the mystery of thy holy
Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and submission to the law; by thy baptism,
fasting, and temptation, Good Lord deliver us.
-From The Book of Common Prayer's Great
Litany
This morning’s reading from Mark is one of
the few quiet moments in all of the gospel.
In last week’s gospel, the season of Epiphany went out in glory with
Jesus transfigured, elevated above Moses and Elijah, the greatest of the
prophets. The voice of God proclaimed to
the apostles, “This is my beloved Son; Hear ye him.”
This week, we begin Lent with the
beginning of the story that reaches a climax on the Mountain of the
Transfiguration. Last week’s gospel
showed us Jesus as at his height, made known to his friends shortly before his
passion and resurrection at Jerusalem make him known to the world. This week’s gospel shows us an obscure
Galilean.
Mark’s gospel has no account of a
child who made a king fear for his throne, of a virgin giving birth, of angels
filling the sky with gloria in excelsis
deo. Instead, Mark opens with a man
from Nazareth waiting to be baptized by John the prophet who many thought was
Elijah returned from heaven. This Jesus
does not seem to merit any notice from John or the crowd. Mark suggests that it is only Jesus who sees
heaven opened and hears the voice of God.
You are my Son, the Beloved,
in whom I am well pleased.
In the Synoptic gospels, God speaks
only at Jesus’ baptism and the Transfiguration.
The two utterances are similar, but the emphasis makes all the
difference. The Gospel story, from this
vision at the Jordan to the Mountain of Transfiguration, is the tale of the
transition from “You are my Son, the Beloved,” addressed to Jesus, to “This is
my son; hear him” addressed to those who will be his witnesses.
In Mark’s gospel, we do not know
what Jesus knew or when he knew it. Mark
chapter one presents an unexceptional man from a small town in an unsavory
province who, unnoticed in a crowd, has a vision of the voice of God.
In Matthew and Luke’s gospels, it is
the young Mary who is pulled by an angel into the drama of salvation. Mark puts Jesus into this position. Jesus sees a vision of heaven opened and is
compelled into the wilderness by the spirit.
In the other gospels, Jesus is set up as the son of God well before his
baptism. Matthew has John try to prevent
Jesus’ being baptized saying “I need to be baptized by you.” Luke sets this
moment up with the information that the Baptist is Jesus’ older cousin,
predestined by God to prepare the way for the Christ. In the Gospel of John, the Baptist sees Jesus
at a distance and hails him as the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of
the world. All of the evangelists,
except Mark, are uncomfortable with the Messiah that they have set up coming to
John for baptism. The nativity stories
in Matthew and Luke and the prologue to John’s gospel all make an anti-climax
of this moment when Jesus hears the voice of God. All take pains to set this moment by the
Jordan as a passing of the torch from John to Jesus. Matthew, Luke, and John give us the divine
Christ from verse one. Mark begins with
a human Jesus who has miles to go before
he is transfigured before his friends.
In Matthew and Luke’s accounts of this
story, Jesus next withdraws to the desert for forty days. During this time, he eats nothing then easily
bests Satan in three wonder-filled encounters.
Jesus’ answers to the devils temptations are brilliant, but pat.
According to Mark, the spirit that
descended on Jesus at his baptism suddenly drives him into the desert. The word here is ekballo: to drive out, to reject, to depose a king, to
force away. This is the same verb that
is used when Jesus fashions a whip from cords and drives the moneychangers out
of the temple. In contrast to Matthew
and Luke’s dignified withdrawal to face a challenge whose outcome seems a
foregone conclusion, Mark once again portrays Jesus as the one who is acted
upon.
While Mark tells his readers that
Jesus is tempted by Satan during these forty days, he makes no mention of trips
to the pinnacle of the temple or of Jesus eviscerating rhetoric. Mark says only that “he was with the wild
beasts and the angels ministered to him.”
In the other three gospels, the reader
knows that the man who is baptized by John is the Christ of Glory. Mark gives us the man Jesus taking the first
of many steps toward the mountain of the transfiguration.
` The creeds speak of a Jesus Christ
who was truly divine and yet truly human.
This truly human Jesus of the first chapter of Mark is an apt beginning
for Lent, the season of human frailty.
This man from Nazareth who slipped away from the crowd on the banks of
the Jordan to spend forty days alone in the wilderness pondering a vision is
our model as we come again to our forty days of self-examination. The Christ of the other gospels is a bit too
exalted and conquers a bit too easily to comfort us as we take stock of our
humanity. That august being is the
Christ of Easter whose resurrection has opened the way of life. But this lonely man, alone in the crowd, then
alone in the wilds makes our own sufferings, doubts, and insecurities, more
honorable adversaries. This man is the
one who makes us feel that in spite of ourselves we may be able to join that
glorified Christ in the resurrection life.
This is the man who makes it seem that perhaps we can come to a place
where we are bold enough to call God our Father, and believe it.
We know what it is like to go
unnoticed in the crowd, to be alone, to struggle with what it means to be a
child of God and how to live out that calling.
Jesus knew all of these things too.
Over the rest of this season, take
time to meditate on this Jesus of Mark, this Jesus of Lent who returns from the
wilderness not to glory but to rejection by his home Nazareth. This Jesus who in next week’s gospel tells
his disciples that he must die and receives a rebuke rather than comfort. He was a man acquainted with grief and sorrow
as we are. A man who, in the words of
today’s epistle, suffered for the righteous and the unrighteous alike in order
to bring us to God.
In six weeks, we meet the Christ of
the Easter story. This Jesus of today’s
gospel knew about frustration, loneliness, disappointment by family and friends,
about the enormous responsibility of being a child of God. Let this Jesus lead you to and past the tomb
where he once lay. Amen.
