Beloved

1 Lent Year B – February 18, 2024
Mark 1:9-15

         This Sunday’s gospel consists of three episodes: Jesus’ baptism, his temptation and his inaugural preaching.  Mark is brief and to the point.

         We are now in the church season of Lent, which began this past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, when I shared about dust. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. It’s a statement about God’s faithfulness to us, about God’s love for us, God’s promise of eternal life.

It means we look at the reality of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. The Church is not saying remember that you are nothing but dirt. Instead, we are being asked to remember that our life begins and ends in God. We are to recall that God scooped together handfuls of sacred dust and breathed God’s own life into the dust. He breathed us into existence. God has chosen us to be the containers of His divine breath, His divine life.

         The Church invites us to the observance of a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. This is the journey back to our dustness. These are the practices that point us to God.

          Today, at Jesus’ baptism, we hear God’s voice saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”   And then immediately, Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan.  And then, Jesus begins his ministry.  This story certainly looks to be about identity.

          The identity test for Jesus is not so much a test of who he is, but how he will live out his identity as Son of God. The devil does not question who Jesus is. The devil knows perfectly well who Jesus is, but tries to get him question who he is — and Jesus doesn’t fall for it. It’s no accident that Jesus’ genealogy is narrated just before this identity test.

         Perhaps the one parallel between Jesus’ testing in the wilderness and the tests of our own lives is the identity test — that who you are, who you have chosen to be, who God has called you to be, seems to be a truth that is tested often. In fact, probably every single day.

         A friend once received a postcard.  He said, “On one side was a picture of a teddy bear standing in a garden beside its wheelbarrow, trowel in paw. This bear had produced a bumper crop of carrots and lettuce that filled the wheelbarrow.   Then, as he turned the card over, he found himself looking no longer at a garden but instead at a barren wilderness. The note read, do you think we could talk sometime? I’m going through a time with a lot of doubts, and it makes me very uneasy.   

         From garden of delight to awful wilderness with the flick of a card.   It doesn’t take much to turn the most luxurious garden life into a very lonely wilderness, does it? We are, all of us, just a turn, just an event away from the wilderness of testing and temptation.

         Wilderness times challenge us, not just by showing us that we don’t have all the survival skills we would like, but by calling into question our very identity.

The wilderness doesn’t ask us, What can you do about this situation? It asks us, Who ARE you in this situation?   Which is why we try to avoid the wilderness.   Which is why Jesus DOESN’T avoid the wilderness!   Which is why the Spirit won’t LET him avoid the wilderness. 

         Jesus’ temptation is not some theological conversation with the devil. Instead, it is a forty-day, life-or-death, Spirit-authorized struggle in a place of vulnerability. Wild animals show up. Angels wait upon him. The temptation in Mark is not words, but a real struggle that Jesus survives.  In the loneliness of the wilderness Jesus discovers in his own experience that he is not really alone – that God goes with him – that the angels care for him and with the aid of God’s word, he can survive – and in fact prosper – no matter what the situation.

          Imagine God saying something like this to us, now:  “I walked with Moses and the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years. I brought them to the land of promise. I walked with Elijah for forty days and nights in the wilderness on the way to Mount Horeb. I called him to new purposes in life. I walked with my beloved Son as he encountered Satan in the wilderness. I raised him up from even the darkest hour. I will walk with you through the wilderness as well. I have a land of promise for you. I have a mission for you to accomplish. I will raise you from every darkness.”

         Out there on the backside of the desert, a new garden is created. A new Israel emerges. A new Adam arises. A new possibility is born.

         As Debi Thomas writes: “Back near the beginning, in the Book of Genesis, seeing evil pervasive throughout the world, God sent a flood. God also chose to save through the ark. Afterward, God gave a promise: I will never destroy like this again. I choose you and all living creatures forever. 

         As we begin our journey into Lent, may we experience the companionship of the Christ whose vulnerability became his strength.  May we enter with courage the deserts we can’t choose or avoid.  May our long stints amidst the wild beasts teach us who we really are — the precious and beautiful children of God.  And when the angels in all their sweet and secret guises whisper the name “beloved” into our ears, may we listen, and believe them”.

         I close with a blessing written by Jan Richardson, entitled     Beloved Is Where We Begin

If you would enter into the wilderness,
do not begin without a blessing.

Do not leave without hearing who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One who has traveled this path before you.

Do not go without letting it echo in your ears,
and if you find it is hard to let it into your heart,
do not despair. That is what this journey is for.

I cannot promise this blessing will free you
from danger, from fear,
from hunger or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun or the fall of the night.

But I can tell you that on this path there will be help.

I can tell you that on this way there will be rest.

I can tell you that you will know
the strange graces that come to our aid
only on a road such as this,
that fly to meet us bearing comfort and strength,
that come alongside us for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.                               

  Amen.