FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT – B
Genesis 9:8-15
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:12-15
Some of you might remember a thing called newspapers. In the newspaper there was a page of cartoons. One popular cartoon back in the day was by Shel Silverstein (who, by the way, studied at Roosevelt University.) It depicted two men in a cell, shackled hands and feet to the wall. They’ve obviously been there for some time – their hair is scraggly, their clothes are tattered, their bodies are gaunt. One of the prisoners turns to the other and says “Now, here’s my plan.” We laughed (I laughed anyway) because how could anyone in such desperate straits have a plan? However, the gospel for this first Sunday of Lent portrays Jesus doing something similar. He lived in desperate times. His country was occupied territory controlled by a hostile, foreign power, the Romans. The previous king, Herod, had bled the country dry with his building projects which included ten palaces scattered throughout the country. The local populace was divided because the Romans had hired locals to serve as tax collectors who were looked upon as collaborators with the enemy. And these imposed taxes had wrecked the local economy so that even a skilled craftsman, like Jesus’ father Joseph, was not able to keep his family out of poverty. The religious establishment was divided with some seeking to work with the Romans, some actively resisting them and some just trying to ignore them. To top it all off, a new prophetic voice, John the Baptist, who had given the people some hope and inspiration in those desperate days had just been arrested. It was exactly at that moment, when things seemed darkest that Jesus announced, “This is the time of fulfillment.” It’s almost like the old general who addressed the troops: “The enemy has us surrounded. They are on our right. They are on our left. They are behind us and they are in front us. We have them just where we want them. They can’t get away from us now.” Jesus announced that the desperate moment was the time of fulfillment.
Jesus was no Pollyanna. He wasn’t dreaming about pie in the sky. He had a plan to bring the fulfillment to pass. “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Repent. We use that word most often in English to mean being sorry for something. We go to confession to repent of the sins we have committed. We repent (after the fact) for eating three slices of pecan pie. But in the Bible repent has a different meaning. To repent means, literally, to change your mind – change your mind not in the sense of “I think I’ll have chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla.” Maybe a better translation, to exchange your mind. To take your stinkin’ thinkin’ and trade it in for a new, improved model. In calling for us to repent, Jesus says we must learn to look at things, to evaluate things, to decide about things, to act on things in a whole new way. We repent when we don’t see things from a human point of view but from God’s point of view. We repent when instead of asking “what do I get out of it” we ask, “what does God want?” We repent when we replace “me” with “we.” This new way of thinking requires, according to Jesus, us to “believe in the gospel.” At least in this instance the word “gospel” does not specifically mean the message and teaching of Jesus. It is more generic. We could translate it as believe in “good news.” Yes, things aren’t going all that well. Yes, we live in desperate times. But we still believe news that God isn’t finished yet, that the plan and purpose of God are unfolding, that love is stronger than death.
The message of Jesus – this is the time of fulfillment — is particularly timely in our day since we too live in a desperate age. When we look around we see a broken political system, an economy geared toward the rich getting richer, a planet which is slowly being cooked, people being displaced from their homelands and not able to find welcome elsewhere, a society which has racism baked into the structural fabric. We see a country which lacks the will to deal with gun violence, homelessness, hunger. And, in our personal lives, we see illness, family troubles, financial worries, scandals. We begin the season of Lent with the message of Jesus aimed squarely at us. Repent, look beyond the distressingly obvious and see things as God does. Learn that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of peace and justice is at hand. And believe the good news that having Jesus in our lives can make a way out of no way, can bring down the fire of God’s love which makes all things new. Instead of clinging with all our strength to any tiny ray of hope, we throw ourselves into the arms of our God who loves us more than we can hope or imagine.
How? How do we move beyond desperation to good news? The same way that Jesus did – by getting off the merry-go-round of current events and focusing on God. St. Mark tells us that Jesus reached the point of being able to preach the good news only after he had spent the time in the desert for forty days. This Lent is our time to do the same – to spend forty days where we are actively and specifically focusing on God and the things of God. Our Lenten practices are geared toward eliminating anything that distracts us from finding God at the heart of all that we are and all that we do. As an old country song puts it, blow up the TV, throw away the paper, move to the country – do whatever you have to do during these forty days to keep your eye on the prize, your eye on God. Then the rainbow of God’s promise will shine upon us.
