First in Lent

Mark 1: 9-15; Psalm 25: 1-9

Last Sunday as we observed the turning of the Church Year toward Lent I was reminded of the verses from the Old Testament Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah—chapter 3 verses 22-23, “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” For those survivors of the fall of Jerusalem back in the Sixth Century before Christ, those who were carted away from those smoldering ruins in a kind of anticipation of our Ash Wednesday, covered in dust and ashes, to begin their exile in refugee camps and ghettos in distant foreign lands and with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, as their homes and properties were expropriated by the victorious soldiers,  bereft and in grief and impoverished—to them, Jeremiah says, this is what you need to know, this is what you need to hold in your heart as the one sure thing, to sing by memory as you rock your children to sleep far from home:  “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” 

The words seemed counterintuitive then, as they do now, almost ironic.  But resonant of the deepest truth that would be revealed through all this suffering and loss.  And I would continue to share the thought that we might hold on to these words as maybe a kind of  background music, for all that we continue to do in response to the  invitation in the Ash Wednesday service: “I invite you therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  However we set apart this time on our way to Holy Week.  To have that playing in the background: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases . . .  great is thy faithfulness.

So the first Sunday in Lent – and perhaps in Lent of 2018 we feel some kinship with Jeremiah and the people of old Jerusalem.  A sense of the world falling apart.   Feels that way to me sometimes anyway.  This horrible school shooting, another one, down in Florida, not too far from where our daughter lives.  Endless wars in Afghanistan and Syria, to name just two of a long list of wars and rumors of war, ethnic conflict and religious violence and persecution in Africa and Asia and sometimes closer to home.  This kind of electric tension and polarization in our social and political lives.  Seems like everybody is mad, all the time, about something, or about nothing, or about everything.  Even in the Church, where some people might have thought there could be a quiet haven, a space of rest and refreshment, currents of anxiety and negativity.  Definitely Lent.  Definitely Lent.  And in this context, the First Sunday,  I would just pause for a moment with our gospel reading from the first chapter of Mark, centering on the story we read every year on this Sunday, immediately following the Baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan River:  “The Temptation in the Wilderness.”

We notice first that Mark is the most succinct of the Evangelists in telling the story, really all of it in one efficient sentence, chapter 1 verse 13, “And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.”  In Mark, none of the familiar dialogue and back and forth between Jesus and the Tempter.  We hear all that in other years of our Lectionary, in Matthew chapter 3 as we read on this First Sunday in Lent last year, and next year in Luke chapter 4.  But this morning Mark’s very economical shorthand--a few key evocative words and phrases.  First to highlight, the word “wilderness” of course not just a geographical description.  The wilderness a reminder of the Exodus, of the place of testing and transformation of God’s Chosen People in their journey from slavery in Egypt to the Land Promised to their Ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  One of the foundational narratives and symbols of the Holy Story of the Bible and the People of God.  40 Days an echo of their 40 years of nomadic life, testing and formation--and of the 40 days Moses spent on Mount Sinai communing with God, the place where God reveals himself and establishes the great Covenant of the Law, and farther back in the story of the 40 Days of the Great Flood in Genesis 7, as God sustained Noah and his family and the remnant of the created order.  That flood and that wilderness journey a symbolic template for our 40 days in the Wilderness of Lent, our 40 Days in the Ark, our 40 Days on the Mountain, as we hear in many of our hymns and Lenten readings.  Then for Mark to say simply, so simply, that there in the wilderness in those 40 Days, the place of Israel’s testing and formation, Jesus was “tempted by Satan” is to reference by simple title the vast, cosmic, supernatural rebellion against God that Sin brought into the world back in the third chapter of Genesis. Beginning with Adam and Eve and the Serpent in the Garden. In our baptismal covenant each new Christian definitively renounces “Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.”   Jesus now stands at the head of the line to take the force of the attack, the brunt of the battle, our shield and protector.  And then next Mark mentions the “wild beasts.”  Actually an interesting detail that Matthew and Luke skip over.   I picture scorpions and snakes in the desert wilderness.  The Psalms and the Prophets often refer to hungry lions in the wild places, wild dogs, dangerous bears.  It’s not just supernatural forces that cause us to struggle in this life, that push against our efforts to live faithfully.  There’s the fallen world around us, and even our own bodies.  Sometimes the place we see those wild beasts is when we look in the mirror in the morning.  In Romans 7 St. Paul talks about the “war within” our own members.  A war that all of us find ourselves engaged in pretty much every day of our lives.  Perhaps a bit of the practice of a moderate fasting on days like Ash Wednesday and the Fridays in Lent call that to mind for us.  Our aches and pains and diseases.  Our unmanageable emotions, and how we are hungry and thirsty for so much that we know is not good for us.  Wild beasts out there and wild beasts within.

And then finally in Mark’s one sentence, there are those angels.  They “ministered to him.”  Some supernatural nourishment and encouragement.  We may think that that happens in the Wilderness for Jesus, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.  But maybe we just aren’t looking up to see what is going on.   Perhaps for us a reminder that those practices of prayer, fasting, reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word might just be his gifts, how he might come to us to feed us in our wilderness with manna from heaven.  The Lenten practices and disciplines not intended as deprivation, but instead to be for us his instruments of blessing.  As we turn our eyes toward Jerusalem and his Cross, our Heavenly Father sends his angels in his Word and Sacraments, and in the quiet prayers and contemplative spaces of our hearts—he sends his angels also to minister to us, just as they did for Jesus. 

A time in the wilderness, Lent.  Where perhaps for a few weeks we exchange the momentary intoxicating pleasure of the glass of wine at dinner to experience even more deeply the intoxicating refreshment and renewal that comes when we open our hearts and minds to his presence.  When we forgo the sweetness of the cookie at lunch or the slice of pie after dinner in order to know more intensely the sweetness of prayer.  When we take time in the morning before heading off to work to read a few Bible verses and to consider the reflections in the Lenten Devotional booklets linked on the St. Andrew’s website. 

Each of us finding our own way, we follow Jesus into his Lenten Wilderness.  Having before us his victory over the Prince of Darkness, having before us the hope in his Resurrection Body of our transformation in him.  A dark and confusing time in the wide world. But also this Lent, if we look up, opening our eyes and minds and hearts, angels, all around us.  Ministers of mercy and grace and peace.  Jeremiah 3, verses 22 and 23:  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.  His mercies never come to an end.  They are new every morning.  Great is thy faithfulness.