Sermon for February 21, 2021 - The First Sunday in Lent - Year B - The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Genesis 9:8—17; Psalm 25:1—9; 1 Peter 3:18—22; Mark 1:9—15  

I’ve had people tell me they stop going to church during Lent, because life feels full of Lent already.  As Elise commented in her sermon on Ash Wednesday, people are asking whether we should skip Lent this year given the year we have been through, and are continuing to go through.

I think skipping church during Lent, or keeping church but skipping Lent makes a lot of sense if your idea of Lent is that of a forty-day focus on pain and suffering.  It makes sense if your practice during Lent is to try to figure out ways to make your life harder, to invite suffering into your life in ways it hadn’t previously existed.  If that’s your idea of Lent, by all means, take a hard pass.

It’s strange, though, if the point of Lent is to suffer and feel badly about ourselves, or more badly about ourselves, it is strange that those who chose the readings for this First Sunday in Lent would choose the ones they did.  

If suffering is the point of Lent, why choose the rainbow and its promise?  If feeling badly about ourselves is the point, why choose Jesus in the Jordan and the assurance of his belovedness by God?

Even the Psalm centers us in a God who sees us as beloved children, not to be punished or made to suffer for our shortcomings, but continually loved more and more into who it is God needs us to be; who it is God knows we can be.

Remember, O Lord, Compassion and Love.

Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions, but remember me according to your love.

Ours is a God who remembers us according to a love that knows no limit.  That is the way of our God.

Teach me your ways, O Lord.  Teach me your ways.

In Mark’s telling of Jesus’ baptism, Jesus comes to John seeking what it is John offers to all who come to him to be baptized -- repentance and new life.

Jesus’ baptism, where Mark’s telling of the Good News of Jesus Christ begins, is a story into which we are invited.  It is a story in which we are meant to see ourselves.

Drawing closer to God often means the world around us becomes a bit more like a wilderness. Being at home with God sometimes means becoming a stranger in the world, or the world becoming a stranger to us.

Jesus is baptized. Rising out of the water, Jesus hears God’s voice assure him of his belovedness and immediately he is cast into the wilderness.

Jesus’ baptism doesn’t make everything easier.  It doesn’t immediately fix all that is wrong in the world.  It doesn’t happen at the end of his ministry.  It starts it.  

Knowing the limitless love of God turns the world around him into a barren desert where nothing is easy, nothing is assured, where the evil forces of the world do their best to undo the words God spoke to Jesus at his baptism;  words that Jesus most surely leaned on during those lonely days in the desert.  

Remember, you are my beloved.  And Jesus lasts one more day.  Remember, you are my beloved.  And Jesus lasts one more day.

While Jesus spent an afternoon in the water and 40 days in the wilderness, Noah spent 40 days in the water and the rest of his life in the wilderness.  

But each day in the wilderness of his life had, as an unwavering support, the promise God made to love God’s people no matter what.  Love as sure as the bow that appears in the sky when the scariest of storms have passed and the sun has just begun to break through.

These promises of God, to Noah, to Jesus and to us, they are not earned.  They are given freely. Jesus doesn’t earn his belovedness by lasting in the desert.  Jesus lasts in the desert because he is sure of his belovedness.

The closer we feel to God, the stranger the world becomes, and we need to know God is there, loving us, even though the world around us seems to show us little evidence of God’s grace.

There are two times in my life that come to mind when I read this Gospel story of Jesus being immediately cast out into the wilderness following a close encounter with God.

The first happened in Junior High School.  I went on a retreat weekend called “Happening.”  The weekend retreat, run by teen peers, featured talks and singing, crying and laughing.  There were lots and lots of rainbows and butterflies and piles and piles of assurance of God’s love for me in the form of notes written to me from people all over who were praying for me, without even knowing me.  It was, at the time, all very 1970’s Kumbaya, and it was everything this eighth-grader needed.  

For three days over that winter weekend, I felt as close to God as I ever had.

There was a phenomenon they warned us about on the weekend, called the “fourth day blues,” or something like that. I had a case so bad it was almost debilitating.

I remember that next Monday morning, standing in the foyer of my Junior High School waiting for the opening bell to ring.  I had spent the whole weekend surrounded by and assured of God’s love and here I was, back in the anxious sea of my peers and everywhere I looked, all I could see was pain. All I could hear was fear.  This foyer, while always a source of angst for most of us, was now a complete wilderness to me.

Remembering how I felt on the weekend didn’t make Junior High suddenly all make sense.  If anything, it made it harder to understand.

Remembering how I felt on the weekend didn’t spare me the wilderness of Junior High, but it sure helped me survive it.

The other time this Gospel passage calls to mind, and many of you have heard me tell this story, is immediately following my ordination to the priesthood.

I was ordained on the Saturday before the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, so this Gospel story was the Gospel appointed for my first time presiding at the table as a priest in the church.

Sometime the following week, I was taking the train to work and on the seat next to me was the Metro, a free daily paper handed out at t-stops.  Looking at the headlines, I became completely overwhelmed by the pain and brokenness in the world.  Looking around at the other people on the train, my heart broke imagining the stories that each soul might have to tell.  

At my ordination, as the Bishop laid his hands on my head, I had never felt so sure of my relationship with God.  I left that service feeling very much like Jesus must have emerging from the river Jordan.

And suddenly, I was thrust not into a life of comfort and ease, but into the world I had always inhabited, but that now seemed a wilderness to me.

God’s love of me didn’t spare me the challenges of the world.  If anything, knowing God’s love made me see the world with a new lens.

Over time, I could look at the Metro again.  Over time, the world as God sees it began to fade back into the world as we see it when we forget the dream behind the reality, or the hope behind the pain, the love behind the brokenness. 

So  I spend my life seeking what it is Jesus was seeking when he appeared before John.  Repentance, and newness of life.  Not because I am bad, not because God feels anything but love for me, but because, until I am with God in whatever life comes after this one, I will need repeated reminding.  I will need repeated encounters with God.  I will need rainbow after rainbow after rainbow in the sky.

That’s why we do Lent.  It is a time to remember that we are who God knows us to be; God’s beloved.  It is a time to remember that others are too.  It is a time to turn again toward the life God longs for us, rather than the life we have grown accustomed to accepting.

That is the cycle of our lives of faith.  We come from the world seeking to know God in new ways.  We are given precious moments when we are assured of God’s love for us which sends us back into the wilderness of our lives.  Spending time in the wilderness of our lives brings us back seeking to know God in new ways.

Those are the seasons of our lives of faith.  That is the season of Lent, which is, above all else, truly a season of love.

So, come, immerse yourself in the waters of God’s love for you.  Let that love break open your heart and turn the world around you into a wilderness.   Spend some time in the wilderness with that love to sustain you when you need it most.  

Let us pray.

Remember O Lord, your compassion and love.

Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions, but remember me according to your love.

Compassion and Love.  These are your ways.

Show me your ways, O Lord.  Teach me your paths.

AMEN.1

1 While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing.  Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here:  David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello