Who was baptized in the Jordan and tempted in the desert.
Who alone can judge,
Who alone can save.
To the only One who holds grace and truth in perfect tension.
Amen.
The lessons today are more or less about water. We begin with the great Flood and end with the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. And the Epistle is the segue. So something tells me my sermon needs to be wet.
Now, perhaps I've done things that might cause you to say that I am all wet. Today, let me be purposefully so.
As part of our whirlwind tour of the Holy Land, the members of the clergy group I was with had the opportunity to renew our baptismal vows in the River Jordan.
The Jordan is not an impressive river and in some spots it looks more like a creek than a river. No one knows at what spot on the Jordan Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, his cousin.
The spot where they offer people the opportunity for baptisms is a bucolic setting complete with large trees hanging over the water.
But the reality of my visit to the Jordan was that it was only 50 degrees outside and the water was absolutely frigid. I am convinced that Jesus was not baptized in February.
We had a limited amount of time for this visit. About a third of the group went and changed into white smocks and swim suits. The smocks gave everyone a nice blank image, the garment equalized us at least visually.
I was proud when a United Methodist pastor pulled out his pocket sized Book of Common Prayer and read through the renewal of vows questions on page 303. These were familiar words indeed. It was cold, so we read quickly.
Next we gathered in the murky water and as we were all clergy, no one needed to take the lead. We all dunked each other.
In the photo of me being dunked, I have noticed that my fists are clenched. This must be somewhat it feels like to take the Polar Plunge.
So, unfortunately I did not have a nice leisurely dunking during which I could imagine how Jesus felt right after his baptism.
For him, the heavens were torn open, the Spirit of God alighted on him in the form of a dove, and that voice from heaven declared, "You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased."
What Jesus and I did have in common, however, was that neither of us had the luxury of relishing the moment.
I was shivering and eager to get out of my wet smock and into my street clothes.
Jesus was, according to our reading from the Gospel of Mark, immediately driven into the wilderness.
One of the attributes of the gospel of Mark is his use of dramatic language. In the other gospels, Jesus is "led" by the spirit into the wilderness. Mark has him being driven into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan himself and surrounded by wild beasts.
In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we hear more specifics of Jesus' time in the wilderness, but Mark just tells us all about it in just one sentence.
Forty days...one sentence.
I think we can take some comfort in Mark's honesty about how Jesus ended up in the wilderness.
We don't generally enter the wilderness on our own volition either. When was the last time you heard someone say, "See ya later honey, I'll be out in the wilderness for a few weeks."?
Nor are we usually gently led there by the Holy Spirit. Most often, we are thrown into our wilderness. Can you relate to this?
A shattering of a relationship, the sudden loss of job or health or home, a fault line opening up in our ground of being--any of those things can land us in a desolate place, or...land a desolate place...within us!
Mark doesn't tell us much about Jesus' inner struggles until we get to the Garden of Gethsemane.
Instead, Mark's Gospel primarily focuses on an external conflict: Jesus' ongoing battle royal with Satan and/or the forces of evil.
This is sort of like round one in the wilderness bout for Jesus.
In the Old Testament, Abraham was tested with what seems like too much to ask of anyone: the sacrifice of his son Isaac. That spot was then made sacred for all time and is the mount on which the Temple and the focus of three major faiths in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem then, is THE memorial site for our wilderness experiences.
After Abraham comes Moses and the 40 years of wilderness in which God provided daily bread for the children of Israel, but they came up short in their struggle to trust their future to God.
No one will ever know exactly what Satan did to tempt Jesus during his wilderness experience. We assume it was non-stop for the forty days.
It seems to me that that experience for Jesus and our own wilderness experiences can be like that old Verizon television commercial.
Here we are, out in far flung parts and God is on the other end of the cell phone reception asking, "Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me say that you are my beloved son now, when you see that this struggle with Satan isn't a one-time event, but of long duration?
Jesus heard that, unlike Isaac, he would not be spared, but offered up for the sin of the world.
For both Jesus and ourselves, God is saying, "Can you hear me in the angels I send to wait on you? Can you see and hear in them the assurance that I will sustain you?"
Can you hear me now? God also asks us.
Can we hear that the one who was with Jesus is also with us for the long haul, even when we're in the wilderness?
Can we recognize our "angels" who are sent to wait upon us?
Can we hear God's call to BE the angels who accompany others in their lonely and desolate places?
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Every now and then, I hear a phrase that sticks with me. I pay attention to this, as more often than not, it is a phrase that needs to be mined for its meaning.
I happen to hear this phrase in the context of a sermon preached at St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem. But it continues to have meaning for me this Lent.
The phrase is this. God is always calling us back to Eden. God is always calling us back to Eden.
In the wilderness that Jesus is being expelled into today, he encounters the wild beasts. They represent the real dangers of survival in a wilderness.
I read that the battle with the wild beasts began with Adam but now Jesus has finally subdued the beasts and is restoring paradise.
In the faithfulness of Jesus, the peaceable kingdom is being ushered in.
God is always calling us back to Eden.
We know the rest of the story. God's Spirit drove Jesus to continued encounters with Satan--the forces of evil--that finally culminated on the cross.
In Mark's Gospel, Jesus utters only one word from the cross, a cry born out to complete desolation. "My God, my God," Jesus asks, "why have you forsaken me?"
His words are not original. They come from Psalm 22 which he would have known. The psalmist in that passage speaks of being encircled by wild animals.
Jesus encountered the worst wilderness of all--the sense of abandonment by God.
Needlessly, we sometimes allow ourselves to know that feeling too.
"Can you hear me now?" God the Father asks.
For a moment, Jesus can't. For our sake, he bears the silence just as he bears our sins, so that for us forsakenness and abandonment will not be the last word. He has been there, done that...for us.
Jesus' first stop after his resurrection is revealed in our 1 Peter reading; he descends to hell's gates and rips them open.
It is his victory speech over the forces of evil in this world, over all sin and death, proclaiming release to the captives held prisoner. That's us!
"Beloved, you there in the wilderness; can you hear me now?" Jesus asks us, sounding a lot like his father.
Can we hear him now? Lent is a very good time to work on our listening skills. God is always calling.
Amen.
Scriptural Texts: Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
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