The First Sunday in Lent-Year B

Lent 1B February 18, 2018 Today is the first Sunday in Lent. And every year, on the first Sunday in Lent, we get the same story in our lectionary cycle: the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. But this year, we get Mark’s version. And what does Mark have to say about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness? Where Matthew and Luke give us 12 and 13 verses respectively, Mark gives us 2 verses: “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.” Not a whole lot for a preacher to work with! But here is what Mark does give us, because there is so little detail about Jesus’s time in the wilderness, we get the full story today—how Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, the heavens are torn open, the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove and a voice from heaven pronounces that Jesus is God’s beloved son, with whom God is well pleased, and then the same spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness. The same spirit that descends upon Jesus also drives him out into the wilderness. And we can only assume that the time in the wilderness was not easy for Jesus. We read this story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness on this Sunday of every year to help us see the connection between Lent and Jesus’s wilderness experience. Both are 40 days; both times emphasize how what he does in his active ministry leads to his crucifixion and death. This year, I think it is especially helpful to have Mark’s abbreviated version because it drives home for us the connection between being claimed as God’s beloved in our baptism, driven out into the wilderness to wrestle with demons and temptation, and then coming back to do ministry. It shows that wilderness times can be an important part of each of our lives and our faith development and can spur us on to action, to the ministry that we accept in our baptism. What Mark’s gospel reminds us today is that wilderness times are a normal part of life for followers of Jesus. It’s not something that we talk about on those glorious days that we baptize babies or new converts to the faith, and perhaps we do a disservice in this. Because following Jesus does not mean that we will be exempt from hardship, from suffering. In fact, he promises his disciples quite the opposite on numerous occasions. As followers of Jesus, we too will experience times in the wilderness, times of suffering, times of temptation, times of testing. Our wilderness experiences are different for each of us. They can be prompted by illness or loss. They can be a result of disappointed expectations or frustration. They can be a part of an epiphany, a realization that you no longer fit in your old life anymore. They can be a result of standing up for what you believe in and being rejected for it. What is important to remember is that God doesn’t cause our suffering, but God does work for us and through us in our wilderness times. In the midst of wilderness times and seasons, our prayer could be “Even though I did not wish for this, God, how might you be at work through this difficult period?” My own wilderness time did not end as I expected or hoped it would. But I was given a promise that I have since seen fulfilled. God promised me that what others mean for evil, God means for good. (It’s actually a line of scripture from the Joseph story in Genesis that was given to me by the Holy Spirit during my time in the wilderness: Genesis 50:20 toward the end of Joseph’s story, after he is reunited with his brothers he says this to them.) And you all have actually been a part of the fulfillment of that promise for me in ways I would have never expected, asked for, or imagined. This week, we marked the beginning of Lent by observing Ash Wednesday. One of the most challenging parts of Ash Wednesday for me is when I make the sign of the cross on your forehead in ash and say to each of the “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” As hard as that is for me to do for each one of you, as much as I struggle, the hardest is when I do it for the children, making the sign of the cross on those unblemished foreheads and saying to them those wilderness words. And this year, after doing that, I came home to the news of the latest school shooting with 17 dead at a high school in Florida. 17 people, many of them children, beloveds of God, whose lives have been snuffed out by one senseless act of violence. Truly, we as a culture are in the wilderness. And nobody knows the answer to this problem: how to stop our children from being murdered at school. The voices clamor and blame. Each political party blames the other. We bicker and fight among ourselves, and nothing seems to change, and children continue to die. We are lost, wandering in the wilderness. What would happen if we remember our baptism, especially the part where each and every one of us is God’s beloved? What would happen if we hold fast to the promise that God is present with us, even in the wilderness, and if we, as a whole people, all agreed to lay aside our opinions and personal and political agendas and say to God: “Look, none of us meant to choose this world where children are murdered at school. God, how can you work through us, through this difficult period; show us the way out of this wilderness and give us the strength to come together and to follow you.”? This season of Lent, this wilderness time, and really any wilderness times in our lives, can be an opportunity for each of us to reconnect with the truth of our baptism, that each of us is God’s beloved who is claimed by God for the purpose of doing God’s work in this world. Lent is also a time to remember that God is with us in the wilderness, that God does not cause our suffering, but God does work in and through it. So whether it be for your own personal wilderness that you find yourself in or whether it be as a part of our cultural wilderness, your invitation this week, this season, is to ask God: “Even though I did not wish for this, God, how might you be at work through this difficult period?” And then to lay aside our personal biases, and selfish agendas and listen and follow.