Homily for Lent 1: St. Paul’s 2/18/2018
lectionary
See what I mean about Mark’s gospel. How hard it is to move through it? Here we are this Sunday still in Chapter 1. We were reading from this part of the gospel back at the beginning of Epiphany. But today we begin a different cycle within a cycle. We follow a Lenten pattern for the season of Lent, then a separate cycle of readings during Easter season.
Jesus’ experience in the wilderness by tradition begins the Lenten season. It so happens that this Marcan account of the wilderness experience, following the baptism, is the shortest of the 3 versions of the Synoptic gospels. In abrupt fashion, not unusual for the gospel of Mark, he tells what went down, there in the wilderness, and moves on with his Gospel.
The wilderness experience is deeply associated with Lent. I learned on Wednesday that you have a tradition of keeping a little desert in the holy water fonts during Lent. A reminder for us of this basic association of Lent and barrenness, desert dryness, danger of de-hydration, etc.
The other 2 lessons today are in themselves striking passages. They have the same kind of effect Mark wanted with his gospel. Mark wanted the hearers of his gospel to wake up like with a slap and take notice. So the reading from Genesis and the reading from 1st Peter cause me stop, think, and wonder, “What’s going on here?”
The 2nd reading is most striking with its short vignette about Jesus traveling to “spirits in prison” and making reference to the “8 persons” who were rescued with Noah and saved by the very water that had destroyed so much of the earth and those spirits in prison. The author points to one of the basic ways that early Christians interpreted Old Testament passages in the light of the Gospel being preached by those like Mark. They understood the passages as a kind of “pre-figuring.”
And, of course, we begin our scripture readings with the very end of the long passage from Genesis that recounts that episode of Noah. The ark, the animals, the flood, God’s regret at having made human beings. Then saving a few and making a covenant never to do it again. A covenant that was signed with a rainbow.
The theme of water. Its power to save as well as destroy. Its prominence in baptism which is itself most deeply associated with Easter. Water as the source of life. Water that takes down a great American city in flood.
All this is introduced to us in these lessons. Desert, water, sin, redemption, Jesus as the agent of salvation, … That sounds like the basic Christian story. And we begin it, in fullness, this Lent 1.
The challenge to Hear with new ears
I think has been with us since Jesus himself announced that that’s what he had come to do. He came so that the blind could see and deaf could hear. We are the blind and the deaf. Today I want to hear these selections from scripture with new ears.
I have known people who have collected vast arrays of Noah’s ark objects. When I talk to my beginning Old Testament students, they regularly report that the 2 stories they are familiar with from the whole Old Testament are: Adam & Eve and Noah and the ark. These all-too-familiar passages are in danger of being heard only at a surface level. We run the risk of listening to them with the ears of a child as we had when we first learned them.
We have heard from the end of the Noah story. The covenant that God makes with the survivors of the Flood. The whole account is really rather extraordinary. God has lamented that he ever made human beings – they’ve made such a mess of things.
Now that in itself is an extraordinary point to try to internalize and understand. God having the same kind of emotions that I have when I look back over the points in my life that were clearly bad choices at the time. God in the process of having a do over. I try to get my students to abandon the notion that they can have do-overs on my assignments to them. Accepting consequences – we want that in grown up adults. But here God is doing that on a global scale.
Messiness of animals
Then God directs Noah to gather the whole dirty, noisy, uncontrollable animal and plant kingdom that God made – so that a remnant can be saved to start again.
Last week Mary Pat and I were talking about the messiness of farm animals and I thought back to the time when I had goats and chickens. I’m sure some of you know a whole lot about farm animals.
Possible to see this as something much more than a fun story, worth collecting about? What’s going on here?
Rainbow given to Noah as sign of covenant
Cacophany of the animals, the mess and toil of caring for them, – God makes a covenant with them. And with this family of Noah – God makes a covenant with them. He says here, this bow in the clouds, is a sign of the covenant that I make with you this day. I will never do anything like this again. For all future generations … “I will set my bow in the clouds.”
In other words, God decides that he’s never going to regret having made human beings again. He’s going to take a different approach.
Rainbow Warriors of Hawai’i.
Rainbows are produced by water in the air and the sun shining through it. They play a significant part in Hawaiian culture. UH mascots are known as Rainbow Warriors & Rainbow Wahine: In the past some of the teams were simply known as the “Rainbows” or the “Bows”
I used to regularly climb an extinct volcano on O’ahu. You would get to the top and be able to look down on the partial cone of the volcano. On more than one occasion I was treated to the most extraordinary display of God’s rainbow. Once I witnessed a rainbow that didn’t end at the horizon – like every rainbow I’d ever seen before. It was a 270° rainbow – someone from airplane a 360° ring. The colors were extraordinary, vivid, alive. Another time I looked out over the channel between Molokai and O’ahu. There were little squalls going on in several places. Little patches of rain. But what I saw were 3–4 isolated patches of rainbow colors, bubbling and dancing on the water, like little patches of fire. I was just in awe.
We need to hear the gospel with ears and eyes that are ready to kneel in awe before the glory and the majesty of a God who is prepared to do anything to save us. No more black and white seeing. We must see with rainbow eyes. [1]
After water – the wildernes
God sees with the original rainbow eyes. He looked at his noisy messy creation, animals, humans and said it was good. The rainbow helps remind us of that. He had to have a plan, then, after having made the rainbow covenant. The plan was named Jesus.
So the plan began with Jesus in the water – his baptism – and then the immediate next step was a time in the wilderness. Today’s gospel.
We imagine this as a desert. If you travel east toward the Jordan River, you will travel through dry, barren, desert-like land. The wilderness, though, can be anywhere. Even the wilderness of Palestine wasn’t always desert.
Since before Jesus there has been a process of desertification going on. Fewer trees and vegetation. Less water retained in soil. Hotter, drier. Cf. this link
But the kind of “wilderness” Jesus needed to visit wasn’t dependent on being wet. It could have been in a rainforest. In fact my 2 youngest children got stranded in a rainforest. A family friend took them on a hike that should have been a simple trail. Instead, they left the well-worn path and found themselves unable to go forward and unable to go backward. They ended up being rescued by the fire department.
Jesus had to go the wilderness where he would meet the demons he needed to meet. As with so many things, Jesus showed us the way that all of us must travel. Facing our demons. Where there is no going back and going forward means to deal with our most fierce demons. It is confronting fears. It is getting past the things we are trying hardest to avoid. It is hurts that seem unforgivable. It is formative experiences that can’t be re-done. All of it can only be redeemed. The Father’s eyes see with rainbows. He knows that it can all be redeemed.
Some of you in this congregation have experience with centering prayer. You will have received the teaching that is a basic part of contemplative prayer. It is that when one enters deeply into prayer, very often if not inevitably one conjures up dark forces – like the demons I have mentioned. As with so many things, Jesus leads the way for us.
When I mentioned the tv show This is Us a few weeks ago, some of you resonated with it. You too have enjoyed the show. In an episode this season we witnessed a small breakthrough in Kevin’s treatment for drug addiction. It had very much with him facing his demons. It was his wilderness. summary
- demons of our past are a barrier to the joy the future holds for us
- making peace with our demons of the past is the way forward
- we must transform them into gateways to peace a dynamic of psycho-therapy
That is our invitation in Lent. Come, follow this path, pioneered by Jesus. You are invited into a peace which passes all understanding. Because the demons – our demons – will be vanquished.
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cf. The Watkin Path: An Approach to Belief [by his daughter Magdalen Goffin] is a panorama of twentieth-century social and political history seen through the life of E. I. Watkin (1888–1981). The interplay of love, frictkion, war, politics and money, together with a relentless search for religious truth, makes this book read more like a novel than a biography blog on Watkin ↩
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