First Sunday in Lent

 Mark 1:9-15

For the preacher it’s always a challenge to preach a well-known text. Because as you are hearing the text, you think you already know the story. And in a year like this one when we heard this text just six weeks ago for the Baptism of our Lord, and we’ve already explored what it means to hear God’s voice speaking, the challenge only grows. So, what is God saying to us this time?

In baptism we see how we are loved by God and by God’s grace, we are set free to live as God’s children. But it isn’t always going to be comfortable.

Often in his ministry Jesus goes off to a deserted place, and we imagine a place of quiet solitude and peace, where he soaks in prayerful silence, seeking comfort and guidance.

What happens here in Mark, after his own baptism isn’t that.

Mark tells us that the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness.(1:12) It could be translated as the Spirit threw Jesus or cast him out. The Spirit’s action wasn’t a gentle, quiet leading; it was forceful and unyielding.

As I read this text, I think we are meant to remember other times when God’s followers were in the wilderness. 

Hagar wandered in the wilderness with her son Ishmael. (Genesis 21:14) Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit in the wilderness. (Genesis 37:22) Moses was with his flock in the wilderness when he encountered God in the blazing bush (Exodus 3:1-2) The Israelites were in the wilderness after Moses brought them out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:20; Numbers 32:13) And then they were in the wilderness again during the years of exile in Babylon. (Isaiah and Jeremiah)

Throughout the history of our ancestors in faith, “wilderness” has been synonymous with times of testing, training and preparation.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” but I do believe that God is with us in all that we face. God doesn’t make it easy, or comfortable, but helps us make our way through difficulties.

When Jesus goes into the wilderness, he is separated from everything and everyone he has known, except God. It had to be disruptive and disorienting.

Mark doesn’t give us any of the details about the temptations; we have to go to Luke and Matthew to get those. (Luke 4; Matthew 4) But writing about the temptations, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “[All of the temptations] are one temptation – to separate Jesus from the Word of God.”[i]

What futility!

Jesus cannot be separated from God’s Word. As John’s prologue tells us:

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3)

So, of course, they fail. Neither the devil, nor the temptations, nor the wilderness and its wild beasts can defeat God.

In the wilderness, Jesus survived through obedience to God’s Word.  And, so do we.

In the wilderness, when life is disrupted and disorienting, and everything else is stripped away, we remember whose we are and live into our identity as God’s children.

In “Go to the Limits of your Longing” which reads as if God is speaking, the Austrian poet Rainer Marie Rilke [ry nr mr ee uh reel kuh] writes, “Don’t let yourself lose me.”[ii]

It would be easy in the wilderness to forget God’s way and look for the easy path, to look for a way out or a shortcut, well-worn by others. But, instead, we return again and again to God’s Word, which challenges and convicts.

Confronted by the Law found there, we must wrestle with our sin, our weakness and our failings. But thanks be to God, that’s not where the story ends. God never leaves us in despair. In God’s Word we experience the Good News of Jesus Christ. (Mark 1:1) and God’s love for us renews us and strengthens us for all that lies ahead. We face temptation and choose Christ anyway. We pray and we choose the way of forgiveness and mercy for ourselves and for others.

The late Catholic priest Edward Hays wrote prayers for pilgrimages and one of the wild places he wrote about is the human heart. Writing about God’s gift of pardon, he said,

I have searched for it in every pocket and hiding place;

I cannot find it, your gift of Self.

I know it is here, buried beneath my pain, somewhere in a back corner of my heart:

but for now it is lost.

 And then he continued,

Remind me ten times and more of all that you have forgiven me – without even waiting for my sorrow, the very instant that I slipped and sinned.

Remind me ten thousand times and more of your endless absolution, not even sorrow required on my part, so broad the bounty of your love.

Yes, I can—I will—forgive as you have forgiven me.[iii]

Hays reminds us that God accompanies us and reminds us of whose we are and what it looks like to embody God’s love. We come through the wilderness changed and transformed.

Oh, yes, I said it,

we come through changed.

How can we not?

When the Spirit drives us into the wilderness, it can’t be for nothing. As one preacher said, “If we wanted to go, the Spirit wouldn’t be needed!”[iv]

So, this Lent as we remember how the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, I wonder where the Spirit is pushing us to go? As a congregation and individually, what are we resisting? And how will we respond?

Let us pray…[v]

Good and Gracious God,

Thank you for your Son’s obedience, even to the cross,

that we would know Your love for us all.

Help us cling to our baptisms,

where we are drowned and reborn by the water and fire of your Spirit.

Sustain us with Your Word and comfort us with Your presence.

Driven by your Spirit, make us unafraid of what lies ahead. Amen.

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[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Creation and Fall. 105.

[ii] https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing

[iii] Edward Hays. “Psalm of Pardon”, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim. Ave Maria Press. 2008. 227.

[iv] Delmer Chilton and John Fairless, Lectionary Lab Lent Workshop.

[v] Adapted from Stanley Hauerwas, Prayers Plainly Spoken (Wipf & Stock, 2003), p.21.