Lent 1B (Mark 1:9-15)
I
like Mark’s telling of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. It may seem odd, but I like it because of its
sparseness: “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was
with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”[1] That’s it. Only in Matthew and Luke do we get
an elaboration of the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness. And while these elaborations certainly offer
up some vivid images – Satan inviting Jesus to turn stones into bread, Satan
setting Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple and commanding him to throw himself
down, and Satan offering Jesus a view of all the kingdoms of the world that can
be his if we will only just worship Satan – the images, at least for me, cause
me to lose sight of the context.[2] And so I am grateful for the simplicity of
Mark: “Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was
with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” And when that’s all I get, it is easier to
see what surrounds this moment – on one side, Jesus baptism in the River Jordan
and, on the other side, Jesus going to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of
God – the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
This
short reading also provides a neat outline for what our worship during Lent is
about. We begin by singing to God: tahr ah hearnah; tahr ah hee; come,
Lord, come thou Being.[3]
Then, we continue with a simple call and response:
Presider
|
Blessed be the God of our salvation:
|
People
|
Who bears our burdens and forgives our
sins.[4]
|
We invoke
God’s name and offer up our thanks and praise – Blessed be the God of our salvation. This thanksgiving looks forward to the Great
Vigil of Easter when we be reminded that “through the Paschal mystery, dear friends,
we are buried with Christ by Baptism into his death, and raised with him to
newness of life.”[5]
Through the waters of baptism we enter into God’s plan for salvation. “Blessed
be the God of our salvation: who bears our burdens and forgives our sins.” “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. . . a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.’”[6] Do you understand this? No matter what
happens next. No matter what happens after we’ve emerged from the waters of
baptism, no matter what we do (or do not do) next, God is our Savior. We belong
to God. That is where we begin our
worship.
And
only then – with this reassurance before us – only then do we confess our
sins. Nearly every time we gather for
worship, we confess our sins. But, throughout the Sundays of Lent, our worship
will begin with confession. And throughout Lent, you will hear, week after
week, a very particular invitation to confess, an invitation grounded in the
promises we’ve made in baptism. And so
this morning we were invited to “remember the covenant of our baptism and test
our hearts and conscience to know how faithfully we have persevered in resisting
evil, and whenever we fell into sin, have repented and returned to the Lord.”[7]
Jesus
is baptized and immediately faces temptations.
You and I are baptized and yet, again and again, we fall short of the
promises we make as we come face to face with our own temptations, our own
demons. On Ash Wednesday, our confession
took an even longer form in the Litany of Penitence where we prayed for God’s
mercy as we offered up, in some detail, all the ways in which we as individuals
and we as the Church have fallen short of God’s will for us. Pride, hypocrisy, impatience; self-indulgent
appetites and exploitation of other people; anger that stems from frustration,
envy of those who are more fortunate that ourselves; our love affair with
worldly goods and comforts, dishonesty in our daily lives and work; negligence
in prayer and worship; blindness to human need and suffering, indifference to
injustice and cruelty; uncharitable thoughts, prejudice and contempt for those
unlike ourselves; waste and pollution of creation and lack of concern for those
who come after us.[8] That’s quite a list – and some parts of that
list may cry out to us more loudly than others – but the point of it is this: despite
our baptism, we are daily faced by temptations and, unlike Jesus, we fall short
of the goal of the promises made in our baptism. And that falling short tells us at least two
things: one, that we are not God and two, that we are constantly in need of
repenting and returning to the Lord.
If
ever you doubt this, look at the violence that took place in Parkland, Florida
on Wednesday and the hours and days of going numb to the pain, hours and days
of finger pointing and of blame– it’s the NRA’s fault, it’s congress’ fault, it’s
the lack of security in our schools fault, it’s Nikolas Cruz’ parents’ fault,
it’s the fault of our mental health system - hours and days – no, years and
years, of thoughts and prayers without action.
The fact is laid bare before us: “now three of the 10 deadliest mass
shootings in modern U.S. history have come in the last five months.”[9]
And, since Sandy Hook in 2012, there
have been an average of “five school shootings each month, including episodes
that were not mass shootings.”[10]
The
facts cannot be denied. They are displayed before us in plain sight – all of the
ways in which we have fallen short of the glory of God through our sinfulness –
through our action and through our inaction, through our speech and through our
silence. And so we confess that we have
fallen into sin and we repent.
But
then, as that baptismal promise goes on to say, “we return to the Lord” and
that is what the rest of our worship is about.
The returning once again. We
return to the Lord as we hear again our scriptures and listen for God’s message
within. We return to the Lord as we
remind ourselves through the words of the Creed what it is our hearts have been
and ought to be set upon. We return to
the Lord as we, with gladness, offer ourselves – “our life and labor to the
Lord” through the offertory.[11] We return to the Lord as we are restored in
God’s image through the gift of Christ’s body and blood.
Like
sinning and repenting, returning is also a word of action. Returning to the
Lord finds it’s parallel in the final line of our Gospel passage for today – “Jesus
came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” Returning to the Lord is about proclaiming
the good news. “Now send us forth a
people, forgiven, healed, renewed; that we may proclaim your love to the world
and continue in the risen life of Christ our Savior.”[12] Those words from our postcommunion prayer are
words of returning to the Lord.
Jesus
left the wilderness and returned to the Lord, proclaiming the good news of
God. And, after this week’s events in
Parkland, Florida, what might that look like for St. Mark’s? If we think the problem is gun control, it
might involve joining with others who are working to move legislation forward for
common sense gun laws. If we think the problem is the mental health system, it
might involve working with local mental health care providers and organizations
to see what can be done to strengthen those programs. If we think the problem
is security in our schools, it might involve working with our local schools and
asking, “how can we help?” And if we think the problem is parenting or troubled
youth, then we can work with parent groups and youth groups to strengthen the
reach and impact of their programming. How we respond will not always be clear –
we may not even all agree on what response is appropriate or necessary. It may
not be evident that our responses are making a difference because change
happens slowly – so slowly. But what is clear
is that no response will make no difference and no response is not the way our faith teaches us to proclaim the
Gospel.
When
we leave here today, Deacon Scott will have invited us to enter the rest of our
week with the words, “Let us bless the Lord.” And, let us be certain that our
response of “Thanks be to God” is more than just words.
“Bless, O Lord, us your
servants. . . Grant that what we say with our lips, we may believe in our
hearts, and what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth in our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”[13]
Then and
only then will be ready to renew our baptismal vows at the Great Vigil of
Easter saying, “we have persevered in resisting evil, and whenever we fell
into sin, have repented and returned to the Lord.” Yes, we have, with God’s
help, we have. May these words become flesh in our lives.
[1] Mark
1:13.
[2] Matthew
4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13.
[3] The words
“tar a thighearna, tar a thigherna, tar a
thighearna, tara thi” [phonetically tahr
ah hearnah; tahr ah hee] come from a Celtic chant from the order of Céile
Dé and have been set to music by Ruthin Cunningham (in Music by Heart: Paperless Songs for Evening Worship: A Collectino of
the New Music Project (New York: Church Publishing, 2008), p. 119.
[4] Opening
Acclamation in Enriching Our Worship 1:
Morning and Evening Prayer, The Great Litany, The Holy Eucharist (New York:
Church Publishing, 1998), p. 50.
[5] The address
for the renewal of baptismal vows, The
Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 292.
[6] Mark
1:9-11.
[7] This form of invitation to confession is from
the
Primate’s Task Force, Anglican Church of Canada, Becoming the Story We Tell: Renewing Our Engagement with Christ
Crucified, and Risen, revised 2018 (Toronto, Canada: Anglican Church of
Canada, 2018), p. 28, https://www.anglican.ca/primate/tfc/becoming/,
accessed February 15, 2018.
[8] “Litany
of Penitence,” The Book of Common Prayer,
1979, p. 267.
[9] Audra
D. S. Burch and Patricia Mazzei, “Death Toll Is at 17 and Could Rise in
Shooting, The New York Times, February
14, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/us/parkland-school-shooting.html,
accessed February 15, 2018.
[10]
Jugal K. Patel, “After Sandy Hook, More than 400 People have been Shot in Over
200 School Shootings,” The New York
Times, February 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/us/school-shootings-sandy-hook-parkland.html,
accessed February 15, 2018.
[11] “Offertory
Sentence,” The Book of Common Prayer,
1979, p. 377.
[12] “Postcommunion
Prayer,” Enriching Our Worship I, p.
70.
[13]
Adaptation of “The Choristers’ Prayer,” The
Royal School of Church Music, https://www.rscm.com/music-and-resources/liturgy-and-worship-resources/the-choristers-prayer/,
accessed February 15, 2018.
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