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FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT – 05 March 2006 St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Peter 3:18-33; Mark 1:9-15 Faith Walk: Wild AND Wonderful The season of Lent hasn’t always been forty days. It began as a one or two day fast prior to the Great Vigil of Easter. Candidates for baptism observed the fast to help prepare them to receive God’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life, and to make their promises to live faithfully walking in the Jesus way. By the fifth century of the Common Era this solemn preparation time had become a forty day fast, not counting Sundays. These six weeks leading up to Easter offer us an important opportunity to focus on our own spiritual journey as well as that of our community of faith. It is a baptismal journey we are on in these days. Now, you say, but I am already baptized. That’s a good start. I was baptized forty-five years ago tomorrow, and throughout those years I have never ceased to be amazed at the depth to which my own humanity can fall, and the even greater depth to which God is willing to reach down to pick me up, dust me off, and set me back on the right path. In those years I have never ceased to be amazed as well by the breadth of gifts God has given others to use for the sake of showing me, showing the world signs of God’s gracious love. Martin Luther once said, baptism takes only a few minutes to do but a whole lifetime to finish. It’s not just a faith act – it is a faith walk. In these days of quiet meditation, as life hurries on around us, we have this opportunity to listen more intently to the call of the baptismal waters and reflect intentionally on the shape of our response. Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism doesn’t give us as much fanfare and detail as the other synoptic gospels, but in this version there are still some pretty amazing sights: the heavens open, a dove descends like the cranes at a Bosque del Apache sunset, and then there’s a voice. It’s a voice of affirmation just for Jesus, “You are my beloved.” The first leg of his baptismal journey takes Jesus to the wilderness. For forty days (in biblical terms, “a long time”) Jesus is in the wilderness tempted by Satan; “and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.” The writer of Mark doesn’t list the temptations – perhaps the journey out of his comfort zone is temptation enough. Yet it is clear Jesus doesn’t travel alone – the wild beasts and angels are with him. Wild beasts … When it comes to the great outdoors, I’ve never been the adventurous type. Years ago when Phil and I were on a boundary waters vacation we decided to take our canoe on a daylong excursion. If you’ve ever been in that area of northern Minnesota you know that the waters are abundant, bodies of water interspersed with fingers of land. There are many pristine inland destinations, but to get to most of them you need to both paddle and portage. And so we did, for a while. The last leg of our trip we decided to leave the canoe and just hike in to the next spot – I was tired of carrying that 17 foot aluminum Grumman canoe, but more than that I was ready to turn back. We were warned there were hungry bears in the backwoods and I was beginning to get quite anxious the deeper in we trekked. Don’t get me wrong -- I love my husband and trust him to protect me, but a bear is a bear and he is not. We had been hiking for a bit when all of a sudden I saw movement ahead. I jumped and screamed, causing Phil to jump and yell – just as a young hiker emerged from around the bend in front of us, porkpie hat pulled down to his ears, wondering what all the commotion was about. Phil has yet to let me live that one down. There are many wild beasts that accompany us on the journey of faithful living. In these days of quiet reflection we do well to name the dangerous ones – the beast of shame, the beast that blames others for our own failures, or the one that puts others down so we feel better about ourselves. Beasts like the need to control or intimidate can keep us from having life-giving relationships with one another; even the beast of busy-ness can jeopardize our physical and spiritual health. There are other beasts clamoring for our attention as well, “friendly” ones if you will that are longing for care and nurture. Like those wild-beyond-reason tugs to show compassion and offer solace, to acknowledge the suffering of others oceans away and become part of the solution rather than continue by virtue of ignorance or apathy to be part of the world’s problem, or even those “friendly beasts longing for our ears, longing for us to hear “YOU ______, you too are my beloved.”. Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan. Fulton Sheen once observed, “We are not tempted because we are evil, but because we are human.” Jesus’ ministry journey begins with baptism and temptation. Together with God’s affirmation they prepare him for the ministry God has called him to be about. Together they remind us in this day that God loved the world so much God took on our form – humanity – in its fullness and transformed it. And God has called us through our baptism to walk with Jesus into the new future God has in store for each of us. This is a challenging journey, a dangerous one. The smudge of ashes, the waters of forgiveness, Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ – you are dust and to dust you shall return. In the midst of this wild and wonderful paradox we journey on, finding our balance only to lose it again, stumbling in the darkness only to be surprised by the light. We walk with God, and we walk with one another We take this faith walk trusting the mercy of God. Last night I watched as Surgite, a sacred dance company, offered a powerful interpretation of the Kyrie from Ellingboe’s REQUIEM. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. The choir sings and the women dance, hands bound with rope to signify the bondage of sin. They share similar movements for a while, then one begins to turn to the cross lifting arms seeking God’s help while the other dances on seemingly in her own world, struggling to free herself only to find her arms wound ever more tightly and inextricably bound. The Kyrie ends with the freed woman dancing for joy her rope dangling from the cross, while the other has crumbled in despair. In the embracing of our humanity Christ has set us free to live, freed by a love so wild and wonderful it will not let us go. Have mercy on us, we pray, to a God whose love already has. If only we could truly trust that…. We take this wild and wonderful faith walk trusting God and supported on the arms of our sisters and brothers in Christ. About ten years ago I served a small congregation in metro Denver with an amazing mix of faithful members. Among them was Sharon, a weathered ailing woman with a wonderful smile. Sharon had helped many people in their times of trial over the years, members and neighbors and complete strangers alike, helping others even though her own resources of money and health were quite limited. When Sharon asked to talk with me I thought it was going to be about plans for her funeral. It had been some decades since she left the military with a dishonorable discharge. Sharon had been a nurse in during Viet Nam. Things were awful, horrid over there, she said, and they did what they could to cope. She made some bad choices, and paid the price. As it turned out, it wasn’t her funeral plans or her discharge story she wanted to share with me. Sharon pulled a battered case out of her tote bag. In it was a medal of honor she had received for service to the dying on the field of battle. She hadn’t shown it to anyone at the church, ever. She kept it hidden, Sharon told me, because of her shame: she lied to a dying man. As I listened to Sharon recall that day, the picture emerged of a woman of faith, broken and forgiven, doing what she could for a young man mortally wounded. Doc, he had asked her, Doc – am I going to be okay? Yes, Sharon told him, you’re going to be fine. He closed his eyes and died in her arms. “How can I ever be forgiven for lying to a dying man?” The pain in her heart was visible in the tears streaming down her face. Forgiven? You gave him hope. He didn’t die alone… Susan’s health continues to deteriorate yet her faith walk is as strong as ever. The medal has a place of honor in her home and she shares the story with all who visit. For her, that medal – indeed, her own story -- has been transformed from a symbol of disgrace to a sign of grace. There is a wisdom story attributed to the Cherokee people, a story that has a word for us as we begin this journey through Lent. It seems a Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me…it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
There is a terrible fight going on inside of me between these two wolves. The same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person too.” The grandchildren thought about this for a while, and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win, grandfather?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” “The time is fulfilled and the reign of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.” |