TEXTS: Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15
I have said that Mark has two purposes for his Gospel: first, for us to see, hear, and learn who Jesus is; and secondly, what it means to be his follower. During Lent, in particular, the appointed lectionary readings focus our attention on Jesus, and who he is, and will be, for us. So let us bring our own imagination to Mark’s brief story.
Perhaps there had been a terrible storm the night he left home, and the next morning, with water still standing on the hard packed desert earth, perhaps he saw a rainbow in the sky, or one in a shallow puddle. Maybe it was the rainbow that finally brought the moment. The calling and the haunting, the restless nights, are about to end, but this involves one more agonizing decision.
In the south, 80 or 90 miles away, a new voice has been attracting attention. It is harsh and strident, yet commanding. It speaks of a time for decision and commitment. In a distant sense his own blood is calling, because if Luke is right, John is his cousin. They call him “the Baptizer”, because he demands that simple but effective action as a response to his message. In the brown swirling river, the symbol of all chaos, of terrible destruction, and yet the means of washing off the grime and watering the plants that feed–in that rushing water one must fall back in trust on another. There is the momentary panic of submersion, the flash of death, and then the drawing of breath again in the bright sunlight, a sense of newness, of rising, of birth.
For this he leaves Nazareth. Perhaps there were people then who said that this Baptizer and his sermons are all foolishness, risking temple condemnation or Roman spears. Perhaps there was an inner voice that said: “you are responsible to those who depend on your work and your help here in the carpentry shop. What are you thinking about?” Perhaps he thought this was the call he had been expecting, or wondered if it was a delusion to be avoided. The decision to go, and the going itself must have been costly to him.
Mark doesn’t give us much: our imaginations concoct the story from the threads we pick up from Matthew and Luke. In its starkness is the harshness of the choice itself. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” He went south, a stranger, as all Galileans were in this blazing hot valley leading to the Dead Sea. We wonder if their eyes met and the longing for certainty in Jesus’ eyes might have been mirrored by an ambivalence in John’s. But for both of them it is beyond going back. They move into the water.
Again, Mark is terse–as if words cannot capture this moment. Presumably Jesus has related the experience more than once ,that when he comes up from that transitory burial under the water, it seems as if his world ignites and shines with validation and certainty. He is right. The journey has brought him home! Wave upon wave of peace and wholeness descend on him, calming, resolving, dove-like. Thundering in his consciousness are the intimations of the truth about himself and his vocation. He feels the affirmation AND the terror of being in the presence of God by whom he is called my Son, my Beloved. At this point, only he hears these words.
We all know the agony of leaving our Nazareths. We know the ambivalence of all encounters with change. We know those moments when conversations and advice must end and we must decide for ourselves. We have all walked the hilly miles to the place of decision and commitment.
And perhaps, most important, we will have that experience again, because the saying of our Yes, the ending of the search, the alighting of the dove, is something that must be experienced again and again if life is to retain energy, openness, horizons. Aristotle once said that “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not a single act but a habit.” So it is also with our spiritual lives.
In our spirituality, inner work, in our relationships, we are always approaching boundaries of partial growth and achievement. But we have a choice. We can stop at the boundary, put down our roots and opt for Nazareth. Or we can decide to go further.
There is a mystery here, you see. NO matter how much we resist our calling, no matter how self-centered or just plain distracted we are, the love of God will often drag us kicking and screaming into the waters of our rebirth, into the chaos of confusion, of doubt, of loss of faith, of the metaphorical 40 days and nights of terror–for our own purification, but more for the wholeness God has always envisioned for us.
And beyond that river of decision lies always the wilderness of implementation. It did for Jesus, and it does for us. For him, perhaps getting to the place of baptism was a struggle–no less than intellectual comprehension, or being apprehended by God, are struggles for us. Knowing that the wilderness cannot be avoided, Jesus moves into it.
Mark says that the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness…this same Spirit which had given him such a feeling of validation. So too for us: at time the Holy Spirit of God may comfort us, may reassure us, may validate our sense of who we are and where we are going at some new stage of our lives. And at the same time, this Holy Spirit of God may afflict us, may make us so uncomfortable that we have to be honest about ourselves.
Carl Sandberg opens a poem: “Can we be honest for five minutes, even though this is Chicago?” (One wonders if he had some foreknowledge of the current presidential primary process!) Actually, most of us, on our own, can’t be honest for 5 minutes. We lie a lot–particularly about ourselves.
“I’m not that well off, not rich” we say, lying in the face of the plain facts compared to 95 % of the world’s people, compared to 100% even of our American ancestors. Even in this long recession, those of us here have more disposable income than any group of people in the history of the world. We will live, most of us, at least 25 years beyond our 65th birthday, in amazing vitality.
But back to our lies: “I’ll worry about these extra pounds and do something about my health tomorrow.” “I’m a person who thinks of others before self.” “Anyone would have done the same had they been in my situation,” we reassure ourselves when we fudge a little, when we back off from doing the right thing because it will cost us more than enduring the wrong. “Everyone does stuff like that when they are teenagers.” “I didn’t deserve what happened at work today.”
Self-deception comes naturally. Perhaps that’s why the Spirit drives Jesus–and us–into the wilderness. Sometimes the wilderness is marked by the name: “Procrastination.” Sometimes it is marked by the name: “Denial”. Sometimes it is marked by the name: “Lonely, lost, empty space.”
Mark doesn’t tell us the nature of the temptations he faced. This earliest of our gospels finds some things too distasteful, too personal for sharing. Matthew and Luke think up three good temptations: the temptation to bring economic benefits to all the people–be a bread giver; the temptation to use power and strength to force people to be good, to live in community; the temptation to use transcendent magic to prove the reality and existence of God, of saving power. These last two temptations may be just what people are seeking in their politicians in this presidential electoral cycle, by the way, and in their religion, as well.
And so it is, we enter our wilderness and discover the demons of insecurity, of time pressures, of self-doubt, of distraction. There we find our lies about the good we think we do, or of the injustices we think we have suffered for which we may at least share more culpability than superficially we are willing to admit. The name of these demons is Legion.
In Lent, we recall the One who walked into the wilderness before us. Remembering him each year, as he taught and healed and ministered, on a journey that led to a cross on Jerusalem’s garbage heap, may make it possible for us to see, too, that in the wilderness there are angels that minister to us, that it is in the living, and praying, and serving, and loving that we find life, life abundant, life eternal…over which death will have no dominion. Which is why I no longer worry about whether there is or isn’t life after death…because you discover on this holy journey, this pilgrimage from call, to validation, to doubt, to self-examination, from guilt to redemption, one finds the good news that he came preaching: “The time is fulfilled.” NOW.
The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain’s orthodox Jews, tells this story: A young man, having worried over the question, asks his father: “Why does the Messiah not come? Maybe in former times the Jews were not ready, but now, having endured the Holocaust and returned to Israel, surely they are ready.”
“I will tell you, my son,” said the Rebbe. “How could the Messiah come? Consider: if he were a hassid of one sect, the hassidim of the other sects would not recognize him. …. If he were Orthodox, the Reform Jews would not recognize him. If he were religious, the secular Jews would not recognize him. How then can he come?’
“’And now,’ continued the Rebbe, ‘I will tell you a great secret.’ The Rebbe dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘It is not we who are waiting for the Messiah. It is the Messiah who is waiting for us. He has been here all the time. It is we who are not yet ready for him.’”
The kingdom of God has come near. It is within our grasp…and in moments, those glorious moments I talked about last week, we touch it or it touches us. Repent, he says. Turn around from ignoring this claim on your life. Turn around from your evasion of the wilderness places where the Spirit would drive you and where you would find the angels to minister to you. Turn around from your distractedness, and turn toward God and neighbor. If you aren’t sure where to find God, then just turn toward your neighbors. Our neighbors, by the way, are the people Jesus told us about in his parable of the Good Samaritan. So, again, if you aren’t sure where to find God, just turn toward your neighbors and be a neighbor. Trust me: God will turn up. “Believe in the good news.” Amen.
