|
|
Sermon – Lent 1 – March 9, 2003 – Mark 1:9-13
We know from First Century Middle Eastern studies that two particular themes* pervaded all of life at that time. The first was kinship and groupism. The second was honor and shame.
Family and group shaped the social setting. Elders decided the future for the sons and daughters of the community. One person was NOT an individual as we know and understand that word, but a part of the whole of the kinship and group that defined the individual.
The family wasn’t just a biological reality but the source of safety from violence. Without one’s network of family, one was lost, vulnerable and subject to death or slavery.
In the Middle East, honor and shame were the key values of life. Honor and shame were largely inherited, but honor could be earned through valor or exceptional skill. Honor was always subject to the test, because honor could be lost or misappropriated.
Generally speaking, honor accompanied family wealth, land and physical strength. Generally speaking, shame followed poverty, homelessness and sickness or other forms of weakness.
With these interpretive aids in mind, we zoom to the Gospel of Mark and study the dense five verses of our Gospel reading for today.
In today’s gospel John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. In that simple event, the heavens opened up and heaven and earth touched one another. The veil between the seen and the unseen was lifted, or penetrated, and the Spirit of God descended like a dove, anointing Jesus. And a voice, so rarely heard, so robust and full of love and joy announced from heaven, "you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased." Jesus is honored beyond measure.
Powerful themes from the Hebrew Scriptures are invoked in this baptismal scene. The Spirit’s descent reminds us of God’s primordial hovering over the face of the waters in Genesis 1, this was Jesus’ earthly creative blessing to be the New Adam. "You are my Son" harkens back to the Psalms sung at the coronation of the Kings of Israel.
The "Beloved" invokes the memory of Genesis 22:2 where a somber but obedient Abraham offers his "beloved" Isaac to God. The final "with you I am well pleased", reminds us of Isaiah 42, "behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights."
However satisfying it may be for us to see these connections between Jesus and the Old Testament, first century ears would still be tingling about the honor Jesus received from God. Mark’s readers, in the 1st Century, knew and believed that Jesus was worthy of these affirmations from God, and even more. BUT, they would have expected a challenge.
Honor in their world was sure to be tested and challenged and temptations to fail necessarily abounded. Like the old story of Job, someone would try to prove that Jesus was not worthy.
Mark doesn’t tell us the nature of the temptations he faced in the wilderness, they are a part of that elusive Q document that is included in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Mark simply tells us that the Spirit drove Jesus, literally in Greek "throwing him", like an athlete hurls a javelin, out into the wilderness for 40 days, tempted by Satan, with the wild beasts.
Can Jesus live up to the honor bestowed upon him by God? Honor and shame were in the blood veins and synapses of these people. Temptation was far more than a lure to a personal moral failure, it was a disaster that might befall an entire community or family. In this way of understanding the world, if Jesus failed to pass the test, God the Father would be shamed with him.
And it was more than honor and shame, it was the vulnerability of being alone in the wilderness without the family or community to protect and support Jesus. The wilderness was both physically and metaphorically dangerous, a place away from the security of home and hearth - a place where an individual could be swept away by unseen forces or gobbled up by wild beasts. First Century listeners are quite simply made anxious by Jesus’ isolation – how can he survive this without his family? After all, it was God that hurled him out to the wilderness. Had God abandoned Jesus to Jesus’s own wiles and honor?
Then, of course, the angels ministered to Jesus. He was safe, he had a kinship network after all. Jesus, together with the angels, defended his honor. Jesus was not alone.
We, the pilgrim, the journeying people of St. Matthew’s, gather here this morning, and at Camp Allen for those at our Lenten retreat for Women, and we are hurled into this First Sunday of Lent as a community.
The wilderness has long been an image for Lent. Alone in introspection. Looking within, to examine ourselves with a true light. Lent is a time for a spiritual EKG and X-Ray.
It is so important that this NOT be a time for shame and honor. Do these core first century values still permeate our culture?
King Oehmig tells this story**:
Four devout Catholic mothers were having coffee together one morning after Mass. The first tells her friends, "My son is a priest, when he walks into a room, everyone calls him Father." The second says, "My son is a bishop, when he walks into a room, everyone calls him "Your grace". The third lady responded in kind, "Well, my son is a cardinal. When he walks into a room, everyone says to him, "Your Eminence."
The fourth lady sips her coffee in silence. The first three mothers give her a not-so-subtle look and say, "well?" The fourth lady takes another sip of the coffee, folds her hands almost prayerfully, leans over the table, and with a twinkle in her eye says:
My son is six feet two, has broad square shoulders, has 10 percent body fat, has gorgeous brown eyes, dresses impeccably well, sports a seven figure annual income, drives a Jaguar, and when he walks into a room, everyone says, "Oh, my God."
Honor and shame, indeed, persist into our century and temptations abound for us. We are tested. We are tempted and tested.
We are tempted to adore beauty and wealth and position and fame and ignore the worth and dignity of all people.
We are tempted to examine ourselves NOT in light of our own powers and graces, but in light of the worst aspects of another person’s life.
We are tempted to consider ourselves "better than" another person.
We are tempted to see ourselves as "good Christians" because we read the Bible and say prayers.
We are tempted to pray with the idea that God is a power pack source of energy whom good Christians can tap and bad people cannot.
We are tempted to wrap our faith and flag together in such a way as to devalue people simply because they speak another language or live in another part of God’s world.
We are tempted to try to live other person’s lives for them, because we think we know better.
We are tempted to shrink God down to our size, imagining that God cannot love or forgive entire nations or classes of people we don’t like.
We are tempted to live our lives as if we are entirely at the center of the universe, meaning that we must be popular, powerful and perfect in the eyes of others.
Yes, we are a tempted people. We, too, live in a culture of honor and shame. And at some extraordinarily deep level, we are powerless to change, powerless to fix ourselves and our sins and self-centeredness.
So what are we to do? Turn to Jesus for help – not expecting magic but grace. The grace given by a brother who is the Son of God and has walked the path ahead of us and holds us up even now.
And rejoice, and again I say rejoice, in the universal love of God.
And practice this life-changing discipline – see and hear the image and voice of Christ in every person you encounter. Be expectant of something divine and wonderful. Listen with love.
And ask God to forgive you for your self-absorption. Ask God to help focus you away from yourself.
And refuse to see yourself as alone against the world.
As a Christian you are a part of a lovely and grace-filled community, like Jesus’ family of angels, strengthening one another for the journey.
Yes, Lent is a time for a spiritual check-up, an EKG and X-Ray. When you, so to speak, get your test results back, you may not much like what you see for we have, every one of us, succumbed to so much temptation, some much temptation, to be someone else. Lord, we need you and we need one another.
Sometimes I feel so alone in this walk of faith. I think of Jesus, alone in the wilderness, ministered to by angels.
And I realize that God hurls us, as well, into the wildernesses of our time. Not to wound or hurt us but to test us and give us opportunity to truly know our most faithful and best selves. Not by judging our worth against one another, but by joining hands and supporting one another through the trials and temptations that are certain to come.
And I thank God that I am, and we are, as he was, a part of a family, and that our last name is Christian. So we rejoice that Jesus will help us day by day.
And we pray:
Almighty God, who blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
*I primarily refer to the work offered by John J. Pilch entitled "The Cultural World of Jesus"
**I owe some of the content of this sermon to the preaching aid, Synthesis, and the words of its editor King Oehmig.
