First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Peter3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
grace and peace to you
from the one who moves with us through water to new life. Amen
This Lent we are spending time
with stories of wilderness wandering and coming home
as we remember Jesus’ last days
moving with him and the disciples
through the story to the cross and the grave
and ultimately to the new life of Easter morning.
On Ash Wednesday
we heard God call us home to the heart of God
through the transforming of our own hearts.
Today we have stories of transitions
moving from the end of a wilderness time to a new home,
and moving from an old life into a wilderness time
and out of the wilderness into the next phase of life.
And all of these transitions are marked by water,
in fact many of the major life transitions
we hear about in the Bible
seem to have water as a component.
We still have water as a sign of new life and transition.
We enter the community of the body of Christ
through the waters of baptism,
and at important times and transitions
we return to the font to affirm our faith
gifted to us at our baptisms
and recall the promises of God.
Just because life is new
doesn’t mean it is easy.
In fact, that’s probably why water
is such a powerful symbol of transition
because water is both necessary for life
and can easily take life away.
We see this paradox in the story from our first reading.
The part of the story we heard
was of God welcoming Noah and his family to their new home.
But prior to our reading
they had just spent a long time with a lot of water,
water which God used to wipe out all flesh on earth
except those on the Ark.
Those on the Ark just spent a long time faced with the dangerous reality of water,
not only the forty days and forty nights of the storm
but also another one hundred and fifty days
while the waters subsided and the ark came to rest on the mountains,
and after that it took another forty days
before Noah worked up the courage to even open the window of the ark
and then a couple more weeks
before the dove he sends out comes back with a new olive leaf,
and then one more week
just to make sure
the water was really gone
before setting foot outside of the ark.
And then the first thing Noah does
is to build an altar and make a sacrifice to God-
the God who saved Noah yes,
but also just wiped out everything else on earth,
Noah is treading carefully.
And we hear that “when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, ‘ I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”
and having made this resolve
God sets out to reassure Noah and his family
that it is safe to move forward.
“Be fruitful and multiply”
God tells them with a blessing and command
and then makes covenant with Noah
to never destroy all flesh by the waters of a flood,
and as we heard God makes a sign,
both for God and for Noah,
when clouds come over the earth,
clouds that bring rain,
and a bow appears
God and Noah will remember this covenant,
this promise of no more worldwide floods.
Water that has been used to destroy
is also used to create the sign of the promise.
And it’s a good thing that God has come to this realization about humanity
and made this covenant
because the first thing that Noah
does with his new life post Ark
is to prove that even he, the most righteous of humans,
is fatally flawed.
Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent,
and when Noah finds out that his son Ham has treated him with disrespect
during the time he was out
while his other sons covered him up and took care of him,
Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan,
and just like that the peoples of earth are divided against one another.
How easily we repeat the mistakes of the past,
even with a fresh start,
how quickly we need to return to the promises made to us by God.
This is especially true if the new life we are entering is a wilderness time.
We see this in our gospel,
John has been proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins
and people are coming to mark a new start to life with this baptism.
Jesus comes to the waters and is baptized by John,
the next phase in his life is about to start
, and as he comes up out of the waters
the heavens are torn,
the spirit of God comes down,
and the voice of God blesses Jesus.
And then Jesus is driven from the waters of promise and blessing
by that same spirit out into the wilderness
where he is tempted by Satan and surrounded by wild beasts.
But the promises of God are with Jesus in this time,
and at the end of the time angels wait on Jesus
and armed with the blessing of God
and the knowledge that he has faced temptation and resisted,
Jesus is prepared to start his ministry,
he goes to Galilee and begins proclaiming the good news of God saying
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Just because the news is good, doesn’t make it easy.
The very act of repenting
means admitting we were wrong about something
(often a painful experience)
and committing to change our ways
(often a difficult experience).
It means saying goodbye to our old selves
and hello to new life.
It is in a way
an experience of dying and being reborn
and we wouldn’t be able to go through it
without the promises and guidance of God.
The promise
that like with water
death and life are inextricably linked together
and that God will be with us
in the death and in the life,
and that with God,
with Christ,
death is always followed by new life.
This is a way of life we must practice,
that is what wilderness wandering time is for
this is why each year we return to the season of Lent
to practice living faithfully and in hope during the difficult times
so that when we face our own wilderness times
whether as individuals or communities
we enter them armed with the blessing of God
and the knowledge that we have practiced and prepared for such a moment.
and even then as we saw with Noah
it is easy to fall back on old habits,
and when we do,
Jesus brings us back to water,
to remind us that in our baptisms
we were made dead to sin and alive to Christ,
and promised that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God,
not even ourselves.
And then Jesus brings us to the table
where we will always have a place,
and welcomes us home
feeds us,
forgives us,
and reminds us of the promises of God,
then sends us back out
to proclaim the good news,
to baptize and teach others,
to new life. Amen
Comments