| In those days Jesus came from
Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw
the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like
a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And
the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;
and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited
on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee,
proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;
repent, and believe in the good news." |
|
| Mark 1:9-15 |
| Jesus’ baptismal scene in Mark is one of a few peaceful
and comfort-giving episodes for Jesus in his whole Markan ministry.
As he came up from the water he saw the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. In the midst
of the heavens being torn apart we get the sense that the Spirit
or the dove, shelters Jesus for a moment as he learns God is
well pleased with him and that he is the Beloved. When I picture
this image I imagine Jesus aware of the protective white dove
whose white wings shelter him more than the tearing of the
heavens. God’s words of love, comfort, and assurance
must have sounded like beautiful music to Jesus’ ears.
This beginning of the vision for the life of the baptized is
promising indeed. |
| Then Mark has the audacity to jolt us from this serene vision!
As Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “here is no sweet
dove.” The Spirit morphs into a kind of pecking, beating,
bird nightmare that sends Jesus fleeing to the wilderness.
He was driven there. “And the Spirit immediately drove
him into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty
days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and
the angels waited on him.” |
| In my life the wilderness has been as a place of solace
and retreat. Remembrances of camping trips, fishing, rock hopping,
playing in a field of wildflowers come to mind. This is not
the type of wilderness Mark is talking about. In this wilderness,
which we might describe as an isolating and barren desert,
the wild beasts surround Jesus for days on end. Throughout
Christian history the wilderness has been used to describe
times of temptation, seasons of illness, lifelong struggles,
and the wayward journey of a people always drifting and then
finding their way through God’s grace to a righteous
path again. A wilderness journey can mean many things. |
| What does it mean to Jesus in Mark? Our reading provides
us with some clues. Jesus isn’t the only one facing “the
wilderness.” John the Baptist, the one who came to “prepare
the way” in the wilderness for Jesus, was arrested during
this time in Jesus’ ministry. The wilderness, his arrest
and imprisonment, will eventually lead to death. |
| Jesus and John both faced the testing of their faith through
suffering. Those forty days in the wilderness, Jesus struggled
to live into the words of his baptism “You are my Son,
the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Mark doesn’t
give us the details of the temptation Jesus faced as do the
other gospels. All we know is that he was in “the wilderness” for
40 days, tempted by Satan, surrounded by the wild beasts. |
| Could it be that even in this first wilderness visit, Jesus
faced sin and began to put it to death? The authorities have
John the Baptist, and they will put him to death, but first,
the wilderness is being tamed through the person and work of
Jesus so that death is not the end of our journey with God.
Sin’s grip on us is already being broken down. We hear
this as Jesus comes out of the wilderness proclaiming, “The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent,
and believe in the good news.” |
| Through Jesus’ survival of his wilderness experiences,
even unto being raised from the dead, and his proclamation
of good news, God has offered all people the blessing of knowing
that the bow hung up in the clouds in Genesis remains there
forever. As God did then, God offers new life now through baptism
and the opportunity to renew our lives through repentence.
In Jesus, God has tamed the wilderness of our sin by facing
temptation and defeating it. God came so near that in Jesus
God experienced the depths of despair we face in the wilderness
of our lives, and has ultimately defeated it. There is no place
our sin can drag us that won’t find a merciful God waiting
to vanquish it and call us to new life. The wilderness is tamed.
Repent and believe the good news! |
| Gary Charles, a Presbyterian minister now serving in Atlanta,
Georgia, tells a personal story in his book Preaching Mark
in Two Voices. A college student had a religion paper to compare
theological positions from different Christian denominations.
After bombarding Charles with series of questions she asked, “What
is the central message of your faith?” Charles said
he “rambled a bit, giving her an acceptable answer, one
that would pass muster before any examining body of mainstream
theologians, but her question lingered long after our conversation
ended.” He yearned later for another shot at her last
question. Charles believes the central message of our faith
has to do with the first words Jesus spoke when he began his
public ministry in Mark. “I wish that student would
come dashing into my office one more time and ask again, ‘What
is the central message of your faith?’ The message,
I would tell her, is a gift. The gift is the call to Metanoeite
[the Greek word for repentence], which, simply put, means the
freedom to change and embrace God’s future, because God
is on the loose and, in Jesus, gives us the chance to begin
again….Still dripping wet from the Jordan, Jesus says, ‘Repent,
and believe in the gospel.’” (1) |
| Jesus wouldn’t have invited us to repent if change
weren’t possible in our lives. Repentence is our response
to what God has done, and was doing even in the beginning of
Mark’s gospel in Jesus Christ. Repentance and belief
go hand-in-hand. You cannot have one without the other. Both
are our response to a generous and loving God. |
| Today is the first Sunday of Lent. As we repent, and turn
to embrace a better way of living that God has initiated for
us we remember we are marked for life as Jesus was in the baptismal
waters, incorporated into Christ’s own body, the church.
We are not alone because God is with us always through the
Spirit and we have one another to lean on in the wilderness
of our lives. We can call each other out in love, not judgment,
when we are stuck in the muck of sin. For we never say only
repent, but “repent and believe in the good news!” If
we forget that the good news is about justification by faith
through grace alone, thanks be to God that the Lord’s
Table and the Baptismal font remind us that God’s grace
is abundantly enough, and always will be. Repent, and believe,
and receive God’s grace. |
| Amen |
| Beth E. Godfrey - March 5, 2006 |
| Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, New
York |
| 1. Brian K. Blount and Gary W. Charles in Preaching
Mark in Two Voices (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY,
2002) 36-40. |
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