Sermon: Out of the Water, Into the Desert

Like Noah marooned on that ark with all the animals, Jesus is at sea in a desert, a wild soul among wild beasts. When I imagine the scene from Mark’s scant description, an immediate association arises. Where else do we find Jesus with beast and angels? Yes, in the crèche, at the nativity. And it’s a fitting association, because this is a new birth. Through his baptismal experience, Jesus is born again, given a new awareness of his identity and purpose, a new sense of who and how God means him to be.

Mark says Jesus was tempted by Satan, but he doesn’t provide any dialogue as the other evangelists do. We tend to fill in the blanks from the other versions of the story, But this version is fruitfully silent, leaving us to our imaginations. Consider how Noah must have felt, alone on the watery waste, wondering what God had in store for his family and their zoo. Jesus must have been pondering what had happened at the river, what John had meant by it, the significance of the wingbeating dove, the thrill of direct address, the voice still reverberating within the heart. What is this gift, this invitation? What is being asked of me?

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Last Sunday, in between the services, from the courtyard you could see a full rainbow over Sharon heights. It was splendid. The rainbow has been a symbol of hope for ages, because it happens when the sun begins to peek through the clouds. It signals that the storm is ending, that shades of gray will give way to the colors of the spectrum.

Today, we’re given the story of Noah and the flood. The rainbow is a symbol of hope in this story too, but its basis is in ancient imagery of God. The storm god was arbitrary and irascible. When clouds gathered, God was angry. When lightening struck, God was raining down arrows. Judgment and punishment were central to the relationship between deity and devotees. Creation myths featured the waters of chaos. What makes the story of Noah and God so exceptional is that God is depicted as neither petty nor punitive but rather willing to self-limit, to redirect power to the work of salvation.

God hangs up his bow on a hook in heaven, signifying that he’s put away his weaponry. What is more startling is that God almighty decides of his own accord to make a unilateral treaty with his creatures. God promises to exercise benevolence towards all flesh. In this sense, the story of Noah is a story of a God who repents, and that was news for the ancient world, and it’s still news today. Some are offended by the idea, but it excites me. I can imagine God’s incessant creativity to include learning.

In the Old Testament tradition, Noah is cited as a new Adam, reversing the fall, in that he heeds God’s warning, obeys God’s instruction, and cooperates with God, to save creation for a new start. Now, in the ecological movement, there is talk of biological arks, places where divers flora and fauna are preserved to later repopulate areas of environmental calamity and collapse. In the Noah story, the dove does just that. Whatever homing device God gave the creature, the dove senses leafy green foliage above the level of receding water and flies off to build a proper nest, to begin the next generation. Shouldn’t a mate have gone along?

Later, as the young church pondered the meaning of Jesus, he began to be called the New Adam, meaning that he had righted the original sin of disobedience, allowing humankind to begin anew with God, to become a new creation. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is experiencing his own kind of inundation. John has submerged him in the waters of the Jordan River in the new rite of baptism. As Jesus’ surfaces, the heavens open. We can imagine the heavens opening in the Noah story, as they did also last Sunday, when the rainbow appeared over us. The clouds part, and blue sky appears.

Then out of the blue swoops down a dove, seeking a leafy green soul in which to nest. The dove is here a symbol of God’s wild peace. Sometimes when we use the word, it sounds calm and still, but we are told of the peace of God that is no peace, the full meaning of shalom, a more motive and active expression of peace, the creative engagement of peacemaking. Sure enough, the gentle bird harries Jesus up and out of the water, leaving John behind, and driving Jesus deeper into the wild.

Before the parting of John and Jesus, let’s stop to notice that Mark’s version of this story is spare. There is noone else described with them in the scene, to witness the baptism. We aren’t even told whether John sees and hears what Jesus does. As far as we know from what we are told, we the audience are overhearing Jesus’ interior perception of his baptismal experience. Jesus knew himself as the beloved child of God, and he felt the wild peace of that, the kind that propels him into something new, something born of spiritual insight and impulse. Jesus is coming to consciousness about his vocation.

Like Noah marooned on that ark with all the animals, Jesus is at sea in a desert, a wild soul among wild beasts. When I imagine the scene from Mark’s scant description, an immediate association arises. Where else do we find Jesus with beast and angels? Yes, in the crèche, at the nativity. And it’s a fitting association, because this is a new birth. Through his baptismal experience, Jesus is born again, given a new awareness of his identity and purpose, a new sense of who and how God means him to be.

Mark says Jesus was tempted by Satan, but he doesn’t provide any dialogue as the other evangelists do. We tend to fill in the blanks from the other versions of the story, But this version is fruitfully silent, leaving us to our imaginations. Consider how Noah must have felt, alone on the watery waste, wondering what God had in store for his family and their zoo. Jesus must have been pondering what had happened at the river, what John had meant by it, the significance of the wingbeating dove, the thrill of direct address, the voice still reverberating within the heart. What is this gift, this invitation? What is being asked of me?

And what of Satan, always an intriguing figure for us? We’re given little to go on here. Remember from Old Testament imagery, Satan is a member of the heavenly council who serves as God’s agent provocateur. Think of Satan sent to put Jesus through a stress test. Or picture Jesus in an interior struggle with his alter ego, the interior dialectic peppered with yes buts. Either image gets at the reflective process, the function of clarification. I am convinced that Jesus’ example is paradigmatic of God’s invitation to us and God’s desire for the world through us. Lent is the gift of a wilderness season. We do well to withdraw from the fray, to listen to the voice of God, to take counsel within ourselves as to its meaning, its call to us. We are to do Jesus did.

And what can temptation mean for someone as evolved as Jesus? Don’t run to one of the other versions now. Stay in Mark. Certainly, it could mean nothing trivial, but rather something substantive. Jesus wants to get his head straight out there, far from the madding crowd and the swarming expectations. Jesus wants to hit the mark, to get clear about God’s promise to him and God’s hope through him. The stress test is to teach Jesus how to stay grounded in God and focused in mission. It is accomplished. His work flows from this watershed in his life. All he says and does from that moment forward arises from the blessed assurance of God’s love and the wild passion to enact its call.

After he has appropriated his baptism, he departs from the wilderness and returns to Galilee, where he hears that John has been arrested, his cousin’s work ended. Jesus immediately takes up his own work of preaching and teaching. Now is the fullness of time, the right time, the promised time. The kingdom, the reign of heaven is come near. He should know. Recently the heavens have opened and addressed him. Believe, that is, trust God, who is benevolent, who is unilaterally faithful. God has chosen to be for us and with us. Jesus’ unswerving message, is made plain in word and deed. He knows how to be about his Father’s business, to help people take hold of heaven on earth, how to extend God’s grace, having recovered themselves as God’s beloved children.

The first epistle of Peter comes late in the New Testament period. It’s message for us this morning is that Christ suffered for sins to bring sinners home to God. Jesus chose to bear the consequences of sin, in order to convey God’s loving benevolence, in spite of sin. How else could the message find its mark in us? How else could our hearts be pierced by the arrows of love, shot from the bow of hope? There is a native American image of God’s mouth as the bow and God’s words as the arrows. So it is that God’s utterance finds its home in us. Jesus is a straight shooter, and his story pierces us to the core. God loves us into the remembrance and recovery of who we are and how we are to be. God’s grace enable us to extend the wild peace, the reign of goodwill. The angels are waiting. Otherkind, our relatives, are waiting. Heaven and nature are waiting on us.

The psalmist shows us what Jesus must have felt in response, as he comes up from the river. To you, abba, I lift up my soul. I put my trust in you. Show me, teach me, lead me, he prays. And so the Spirit does just that. Guide me into what is most right. All your paths are faithfulness and love. Whether in the wilderness or on Golgotha, even the stress tests are accomplished in the blessed assurance, in the powerful embrace of abba’s love. God keeps faith with all who trust in him.

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is the ark, who will save humankind and also otherkind, who will deliver  all flesh to another shore, into a newly emerging landscape, where a new creation can begin. The prophecy of Joel foretells of the inundation of the Spirit. The second great flood is the flood of grace from heaven. These are the waters of creation rather than destruction. And Jesus is also the rainbow, the sign of God’s benevolent promise, the prismatic array of God’s glory. Don’t be anxious, o my people,  don’t fret, says the Lord. I love you no matter what. We’ll keep doing this until we get it right.

AMEN

- The Rev. Dr. Katherine M. Lehman, March 1, 2009