First Sunday in Lent (Year B)
(Hymn suggestion: Auden's He Is the Way 463/464)
Blessings
Trinitarian Blessing
May God who made the world, make a wilderness for you in this world. May God whose Spirit descended on you at your baptism, drive you to that wild country. May God the Son, who walked amongst us, travel with you always and may his angels tend to you. And the blessing of God almighty, our creator, redeemer and sustainer, be always with you.
Simple Blessing
May God almighty bless you and keep you from all danger but God himself.
Meanders
Promise and trust. Compassion and mercy. But also destruction and exile. Like a lot of spiritual journeys, this year’s start to Lent begins with confusion and contradiction. And where the other gospels choose to expand this formative experience at the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry, Mark disposes of it in a few brief words, A story worthy of Félix Phénéon, a novel in three lines:
“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
A good sermon is about two things, Truman is reputed to have said: About God, and about seven minutes. Mark brings that down to 45 seconds.
Human beings expect our experience of God to be linear, logical, and grand. To me today, it feels as though Mark is letting us know -- hey, crazy crazy irrational mystical stuff happens around the Divine. I can't explain it and I'm not going to try. It happens. When it happens to you, roll with it. The Holy Spirit is up to something, and we can't fight it any more than Jesus could.
Don't fight it? What an un-American notion. We fight everything! My mother, when she was diagnosed with cancer, felt so exhausted by the idea that she had to "fight" her cancer. She wasn't a fighter. She was a tough woman, but she was a storyteller and a charmer and a saleswoman. She didn't fight her cancer - she didn't want to give her cancer that much attention. Instead, she lived, irregardless of her cancer. She told stories and she created and she thrived, cancer be damned.
“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
God has a mad, difficult, unique adventure for you. Don't fight it -- run with it!
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