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Lent 1B
February 21, 2021
Mark 1:9-15
INTRODUCTION
Always on this first Sunday in Lent, we hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. It’s a great way to set the tone for Lent, a season when we consider our own temptations, and work to overcome them so that we might turn our hearts back to God and God’s ways. Mark’s temptation story is so short that the lectionary also includes Jesus’ baptism – and this is the third time we will have heard it in as many months! But it’s good to hear it today because baptism is such a central part of our Lenten journey back to God.
Baptism is a covenant God makes with us, and in this liturgical year, we will be hearing about numerous other covenants God has made with God’s people over the course of salvation history, a different one each week. Today’s covenant de jour is the one God made with Noah, which is marked by a rainbow in the sky. Of course you remember that this covenant follows the flood story, which is very baptismal in nature – God uses water to wipe out all the evil on the earth, just as God uses water to wipe out the evil in our hearts. Our reading from 1 Peter will point out that connection for us.
The covenant of baptism is always an important focus of Lent, and especially today, so be sure to keep an eye out for all the baptismal imagery, today and throughout Lent. As you listen to today’s texts, which are pretty familiar, see if you notice anything new about them, or glean any new insights on what baptism means for our lives. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Several months ago, I found a CD of children’s Bible songs, and started playing it in the car for the kids. Grace soon became obsessed with Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the walls came a-tumblin’ down! I get it – it’s a fun song! She would ask for me to play it again and again. Then when we would read stories out of our children’s Bible, she always wanted to hear the story of Joshua. We read it. We sang it. We played it, knocking over towers we had built while playing kazoos and recorders.
But really, it’s a pretty weird, and devastating story – if you aren’t as familiar with the story as you are with the song, it is the story of the first battle of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan, the land God had promised them. They arrive at the city of Jericho to find people already living there (and big, strong, mean-looking people at that), but God assures them if they do what he says, the Israelites would overtake the city. As per God’s instructions, they walk around the city once a day for 6 days, and on the 7th day, as they march around the city walls now seven times, blowing ram’s horns, the walls come a-tumblin’ down. And, mass killing and bloodshed ensued – yay! (That part, understandably, didn’t make it into the song, or the children’s Bible!)
It’s certainly an interesting story… turns out, though, that archeologists have been unable to substantiate it with evidence. But honestly, that doesn’t bother me, because to me, whether it happened just this way or not isn’t really the point. The point is this: that God can tear down walls, that no barrier is too strong or too daunting for God to overcome, and that even when things seem impossible, we still can trust God to come through for us, even in dramatic fashion.
The reason I think that’s the point is that this is a story that God continues to tell throughout salvation history, and today’s Gospel reading is yet one more example. We’ve heard this baptism story now three times in the past few months, but I want to point out some details that you may have missed before. First, notice what happens at the moment Jesus is baptized. We usually think of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove coming down, which has a sort of gentle feel about it. But in Mark, this is not gentle. Marks says, “The heavens were torn apart.” Seems a small detail, but don’t miss it! Compare it, for example, to Matthew, who observes that the heavens were “opened.” Like a door, that can be opened and then shut again, no damage done. But torn? That’s a violent image, and an irreversible one. In fact, the only other time Mark uses this same word, torn, is at the crucifixion, when the temple curtain is torn in two – the curtain that separates the people from the Holy of Holies, the place in the Temple where God was said to dwell. That curtain, that separation, is torn. That barrier between God and humans is opened up, irreversibly.
Why does all this matter, and why in particular does it matter right now? Because in this way, the whole Gospel of Mark is framed by this violent and disturbing image of destroying the boundaries and barriers that would separate us from God, and now nothing can go back to “normal,” to the way it was before. With Jesus’ presence in the world, “normal” is no longer an option. As commentator Don Juhl says, “God is on the loose!”
Now this may come to you as good news, or it may be terrifying news. I mean, it seems like good news that God would be with us… until we realize that this barrier-breaking God cannot be contained by the boxes in which we would try to keep God – those boxes that cause us to limit what God could or would do, or where God could or would go. As long as God fits in a box, we can feel like we have some control, because we know what we can expect, but in God’s barrier-tearing wall-tumbling activity, we see that God will not conform to what we think or expect God to do or be. We lose control of the situation.
Though it may be at first unsettling, this is also great news for us, because it means nothing can keep us away from God’s presence. Perhaps, for example, you felt before this pandemic like God was mostly found or experienced at church, in the building, and you were fine with that because you had regular access to that building. But now, most of us haven’t been in a church building at all, which would disrupt our connection to God… except that, who’s to say that the God who tumbles walls and tears open the heavens cannot be equally present in your home? Not just at 9:30 on a Sunday, but also around your dinner table, or in the backyard, or while you’re making dinner or doing homework? God is on the loose!
Another example of how God rejects the limits we may place on Him: we are accustomed, I think, to noticing God’s presence in miraculous or joyful occasions – when a sickness is healed, when a relationship is mended, when things finally go right. But does it ever occur to us that God is also, and perhaps even more, present in the moments when things do not go well? This is a God who would tear open the heavens to come down, whose death tore the temple curtain, who repeatedly causes walls to come tumbling down. So why wouldn’t God also come to be with us in our moments of sadness and despair and lack – not necessarily to fix them, but to be present in them? Why wouldn’t we believe that God is also there with us in the wilderness, the hunger, the temptations?
And there’s the second detail to notice: that immediately after God tears His way into the world, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness: a place of hunger, despair, loneliness, and lack. This is the very first place God chooses to go. Like when you first get home from a long road trip and you walk in the door and make a beeline for the bathroom, that is your most urgent need, God makes an immediate beeline for the wilderness, because upon arriving in the world, being in this place is God’s most urgent need. In this way, another wall comes a-tumblin’ down: God is not confined to feel-good places and miraculous moments. God chooses to be with us also in the wilderness, where things don’t go well. And this choice shows God’s willingness and readiness to teach, form and redeem us, even and especially in those most desperate and difficult times of life. In this way, by tearing down this wall, God makes even the wilderness a holy place, even in the face of evil tempting and threatening to devour us. By crumbling this wall, God shows us that the places of the most profound despair, where wild beasts are with us, are the exact places where angels also tend to us, where God chooses to be present with us… even, where God can bring redemption.
I spoke on Ash Wednesday about how Lent may not feel very welcome this year, because more talk of death and sin just adds more oppression to a world already under a shadow. But in fact, this story about how God makes walls to crumble and barriers to be torn apart, in which God makes an intentional effort to be in the places of longing and fear, is exactly why we do need Lent. These six weeks are a time of noticing God’s presence in those places, and noticing what barriers in our lives God might need to tear apart, what walls need to be tumbled, so that God might enter in. Of course, God can do that without our help. But what Lent does for us is to help us notice where and when God is doing that for us. Through time in repentance, and disciplines like fasting, prayer, sacrificial giving, and scripture study, we gain eyes to see and ears to hear how God is tumbling walls all around us. I hope that you will engage in some of these disciplines during these weeks, to better focus your attention on the ways that God tears open the heavens and causes walls to tumble, all for the sake of our salvation.
Let us pray… Barrier-breaking God, we think that walls and barriers will keep us safe, but you have a different idea. Open our eyes to see how you are breaking down barriers to order to be with us in our wilderness, and to bring us into life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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