First Sunday in Lent - March 9, 2003
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:3-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-13
The Gospel of Mark does not beat around the bush. Two sentences in this mornings readings link the story Mark is telling with our purpose here this morning. In the first, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness. In the second, Jesus stays there for 40 days. There’s very little more than this: a couple wild beasts, some angels to keep Jesus company. The 40 days that Jesus thus embarks upon are, I suppose, the same 40 days that we find ourselves beginning in this season of Lent.
There’s more to the story, though not much. Jesus comes from Nazareth, is baptized by John, and the heavens open. But why? Why put this reading here? Why baptize Jesus at all? I thought part of his God-ness was that he was without sin; so what does he need baptism for?
It is interesting to note, if not particularly enlightening, that the sign of divine approval was a standard part of ancient biographies. Jesus being tested in the wilderness is another ancient biographer’s trick; the ancient hero is always shown divine favor, and always tested before his great mission. It is also interesting to note, and again not particularly enlightening, that Jesus in the wilderness can be paralleled with Adam in the Garden. Both are surrounded by wild beasts, and are safe from them. Jewish mythology holds that angels tended to Adam in the garden, much as they accompany Jesus in the wilderness. And both these men are the unfallen creation of God, although we know how Adam turns out.
Upon further review, I cannot find anything particularly enlightening in today’s gospel reading. At least nothing that sheds light on the season of Lent in which we are newly involved. Let us turn then, to Genesis, and Noah.
From the book of beginnings comes the story of God’s second great covenant. This one is made with Noah, whom, along with his family and menagerie, has only recently emerged from the ark on dry land. In verses 1 through 7, which immediately precedes the portion we heard this morning, God reestablishes the created order. It is as if God is saying the words he said to Adam in the garden again. This time, however, Noah is there to hear the words, and things are not quite the same. When God speaks to Adam, God speaks to the perfect unfallen creation. God is older and wiser with Noah. The extent of humanities ability to practice evil has become apparent.
In verses 8 through 17, which we heard this morning, God makes a promise to Noah, his children, and their children for all of time to come. Never again will God destroy the earth. Knowing full well the capacity of humanity to perpetrate evil upon the face of the earth, God eternally self-limits, and the sign of this promise will be the rainbow.
The ancient Israelites had seen rainbows before, of course. The rainbow is a common symbol in the ancient near east for divine wrath. The bow was the weapon of the gods, and the lightening bolts their arrows. The God of the Israelites vows to hang up his bow, and to practice violence upon humanity no more forever.
The bow is a complicated symbol. In the psalms a broken bow is a symbol for peace. Yet God has not broken his bow, merely hung it up. The covenant with Noah is not the end of judgment; it is the end of God’s direct enforcement of morality. If it is to be an eye for an eye, then humanity will have to enforce the rules on its own.
Another interesting piece of the symbol is that the rainbow appears only when storm clouds have gathered. The gathering of clouds, especially ominous, dark ones, was another well-known symbol in the ancient world. They signified the building anger of the gods. Again the God of Israel manipulates the symbol. It is still possible to anger God, for the storm clouds to gather. It is precisely when the clouds begin to build that God will see his bow hung in the sky, and his wrath will be turned away.
On one level, it is good to know that God’s wrath has been eternally put away. I’m sure that the human race has deserved another flood at least a hundred times between the days of Noah and today. And I for one am glad that God refrains from drowning our sins in water and death. And yet, such a restrained God also presents some difficulties.
The difficulties for the Christians who read the first letter of Peter for example. This letter, written to the small and isolated Christian communities spread across Asia Minor, found its recipients suffering. While full-blown persecutions, complete with lions in the Coliseum and burnings at the stake, were rare, the early Christians often suffered from the more common afflictions of ostracism and exile. The Christians in Asia Minor were particularly afflicted, suffering derision, prejudice, and contempt from others living near them.
And so the first letter of Peter, and particularly the piece of it read this morning, sets forth the life of Christ as the normative story for Christians in exile. The suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ are to be for the Christian community the story and guide in their dark hours.
Verses 18 through 22, read today, particularly emphasize the suffering of Christ on our behalf, a fitting thought for Lent. These verses come at the end of a section that more generally endorses non-retaliation in the face of evil. The Christians are called to endure suffering rather than return it in kind, to suffer for what is right rather than to return evil for evil.
Such advice comes under heavy criticism. It is to this very concept that Karl Marx objected when he called religion the opiate of the masses. It is to this concept that slave owners turned when they wished to maintain their oppression of African slaves. And yet a close reading of first Peter, and indeed all of Jesus’ sayings regarding non-retaliation, reveals a more nuanced intention.
Christians are called to suffer if need be, but not to suffer silently. The refusal to act unjustly is not the same as the willingness to accept injustice. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are modern day icons of suffering and non-violence. And yet they are also icons of intense resistance to injustice.
And so we have a picture of a God who has hung up his bow of war, and yet retains his anger. And we have a picture of God in the form of a man whose very life is a refusal of violence, and yet protests injustice until he is killed for it.
By now, I imagine, you will have begun to make some of the connections I made when studying these texts this week. You will have begun to think, as I do, that these lessons have something very directly to say about the state of world politics today. I have heard people I respect argue for military action in Iraq. I have heard people I respect argue against it. I have also heard people for whom I have very little respect remaining make pompous pronouncement after ridiculous platitude about “going to war in Iraq”. Whatever your own thoughts and feelings about the course of recent world events, may I suggest that as faithful Christians we are obligated to consider carefully the witness of our Holy Scriptures, and the lessons contained therein about how to stand against injustice in the world.
And still we are left with the gospel. I still have nothing particularly insightful to offer you about Lent based on these few short verses. Perhaps there’s something Lenten about that all by itself. I don’t know what the Gospel has to say. I can’t tell you what Jesus meant by what he did. I leave you with these words. Something Mark might have written had he been a poet instead of an evangelist: