Reflections on the Readings for the First Sunday in Lent, 2024
Jesus in the Wilderness. Purvis Young, USA, 1943-2010
Mark 1:9-15
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
Lent began on Wednesday with the rite of ashes. For a church centred on the Lord’s
Day, perhaps most people actually think of this Sunday as the beginning of Lent, a
season that has as its primary history the final preparation of adult catechumens –
candidates for baptism – for full lives as Christians.
Most of us are the long-baptized. We join our prospective new members in Christ in the
study of the Scriptures, prayer, and fasting both to give them heart and to acquire for
ourselves a renewed sense of Christian purpose. With the arrival of Easter the season’s
purpose will be accomplished – if we let it do for us all that it can in the midst of a
praying church.
Are you isolated at times in the midst of a family, desolate because you feel cut off from
all human companionship, alienated from those who ought to be your friends and
peers? I do not think of this parish as a body of misfits but as a perfectly normal spread
of human types. That is why I feel free to confess my own isolation at times, suspecting
it is the case of everyone here. In such I season of suffering I am not comforted. God
seems far away, my existence pointless; my sense that everyone is against me or totally
uninterested in me is at its highest point. It is not my normal state but when it overtakes
me it is real. I assume the same is true for you at times; for some of you, for long
stretches of time.
Jesus knew the human reality of which I speak. Mark reports it simply, almost as if he
has no interest in the human feelings of Jesus. In doing this he is in the great tory-telling
tradition, engaging the reader deeply with a few swift strokes.
Who is this “son of God” (Mark 1:1) that the Spirit can drive him into the desert? Who is
Satan that he is free to “put him to the test”? And how can wild beasts discomfit a
person who has the angels of God to comfort him?
The drama is a set piece, of course. Long familiarity with the Bible in Greek would have
cast light on each phrase for Mark’s hearers. It can do the same for us. This is the story
of a just man troubled by the “Satan” of the tale of Job (Job 1:6-12; see Zech. 3:1-2, and
1 Chr 21:1). The just man Jesus is sent off to the desert. The place was a home to
nomads but a real threat to grazing and agricultural Israel. Messengers of God attend
this Jesus who, for Mark and for us is God’s emissary sent to inaugurate the last age.
John the Baptist is deftly removed from the scene to give place to Jesus in Galilee – the
first and last place of the gospel’s proclamation in the narrative of Mark (1:14; 14:28;
16:7).
Mark, the first gospel to be written is completely absorbed with the idea of discipleship.
As things were for Jesus, so they must be for his followers. If he, after the pattern of
John, proclaimed the good news of God, so must those who come after him. This
ringing call of Jesus announces that the rule of God over human lives is nigh. Turn
around clear in your tracks, it says. Become believers in the only gospel that Jesus –
and Mark his disciple after him – ever announced. Use Lent as a desert time of testing
to prepare yourselves to be about life’s business of proclaiming the gospel.
Do I need to ask you to simulate a scene of personal desolation? Chances are that it is
unnecessary. Winter weather is a great help in this season, whether for the housebound
or those who must get around in it. We know the long stretch between Christmas and
Easter. It is a time of routine and sameness, a desert of the dullness of our lives. Is the
time irredeemable? The Church has thought so, ever since it initiated the Lenten time of
preparation for our anticipated rising with Christ our Passover. To be of the Church is to
ransom this time, in which hope is kept alive as the days lengthen. (“Lent” comes from
the word “lengthen.”) Our power to endure late winter comes from the Easter hope
symbolized by the sun climbing in the heavens. As the days grow longer so does our
hope.
As followers of Jesus, we are in some sense invincible – not with the triumph of a
sloganeering sect, not with the smug satisfaction that “all others will be damned,” but
with the gospel conviction that God who is mighty has done great things for us. God has
done these things for us in Christ, if only we will submit ourselves to the purifying test.
Kevin+
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