Jeremy L. Berg

Lectionary Reflection: First Sunday of Lent

Mark 1:9-13; Gen. 9:13-15; 1 Pet 3:18-22

Our tour bus pulled into the parking lot and joined dozens of other busses carrying travelers from all over the world. Whether we were hungry souls on pilgrimage or eager shoppers on holiday was harder to say. We had arrived at the Jordan River to visit the place where Jesus was baptized by John, and where throngs of the faithful would undergo their own baptism in those waters. That is, if they could find their way through the expansive gift shop and locker rooms and observation decks to the hallowed river below. 

Peppy contemporary Christian music was playing loudly on the speakers, drowning out the occasional hymn sung in various languages by the groups being baptized down by the riverside. Those who want to participate must take a number, rent a robe, and get in the queue for their turn at the “baptism factory.” Many agree that the commercial trappings have all but stripped away the sacredness of this once wilderness place of otherworldly encounters. 

The Season of Lent is an invitation to strip away all the modern distractions and cheap trinkets of contemporary life, to make a pilgrimage into the wilderness to encounter the transcendent. This week’s Lectionary readings are pulsating with powerful mysteries and heavenly gifts waiting to be opened and considered. Churchgoers often demand that their pastor make the realities of the text relevant to their lives, when what pastors really want is to help orchestrate a collision between the sacred mysteries and our desacralized lives. 

This morning I lit a candle beneath the bust of the crucified Christ on the shelf in my study. I opened the Scriptures and began to read and meditate on the themes. Whether it was the Holy Spirit, my AG1 morning supplements drink, or suppressed emotional trauma, I burst into tears more than once pondering these Scriptures. Very familiar texts hit me with a strange and exotic potency. I thought, “These are deep mysteries and massively important truths we’re dealing with this week. We need to sit and savor these bombshells.” Let me invite you to read them and then I’ll offer a few thoughts that I pray will broadside you today as they did me.

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:9-13).

“I have set my bow in the clouds… When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” (Gen 9:13-15). 

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God….he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prisonwho in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him” (1 Peter 3:18-22).

Friends, there’s a vast wilderness to be explored in each of the following phrases. But there’s a paved parking lot full of large busses and a village of gift shops trying to remove the mystique and domesticate these themes. They include:

The heavens torn open wide…

The Spirit descending like a dove over baptismal waters…

A voice from heaven declaring one’s true identity…

Testing in the wilderness for forty days….

The company of Wild Beasts and Angels in the wilderness…

Saved through the flood (baptism) in the ark of salvation…

A warrior’s bow in the sky reminding us God is for us…

Christ enthroned over angels, authorities, and powers…

We could plunge ourselves into these passages and swim in them. Or we could read them as if standing inside the air conditioned lobby of the Jordan River pavilion, never escaping the plastic souvenirs to reach the soul-stirring waters beyond. We could talk about a forty day fast from chocolate or technology in our small group huddle, yet never step into the wilderness or dip our toes in the waters. We could remain deaf to the Voice from above, and miss the descending dove of peace amidst our conflict. We could sleepwalk through another Lent where the heaven’s remain tightly closed and the only thing torn open is that festering emotional wound and nagging spiritual itch for more. 

I don’t know about you, but I need to be splashed in the face by hallowed waters this Lent. I need to wake up to the Wild Beasts needing to be tamed in my life and let God’s angels attend me. I need to hear the thundering Voice of my Abba over the chatter of my inner tempter. I need to remember my baptism that preserves me like an ark through the Chaos Waters that threaten. When the storm clouds swirl overhead, I need to remember that God’s unstrung archer’s bow has been hung up in the clouds, and the only thing God will rain down on me is his mercy and love. This Lent I need to bow down before the Cross and worship the One who was not just crucified in my place, but who has been raised to the right hand of God and right now sits enthroned over all angels, authorities, and powers that try to thwart God’s purposes and steal my peace. 

Back in Israel, after a some of our group were baptized in the Jordan, we fought through the Disney-ish crowds of the gift ship and boarded our bus. Sitting down in my seat, I pulled  from a plastic bag the souvenir I purchased from the modern-day money changers. What gift could possibly redeem this not-so-sacred tourist trap that had robbed that ancient wilderness river of its power? I ponied up my good American cash and brought home a beautiful olive wood chalice for Holy Communion. 

As I stare at it on my shelf as I write, it’s the perfect symbol of the ability of the great Mystery to be contained in something quite ordinary. Every Sunday, we pass that cup around the room and invite all and sundry to drink in the Sacred. For some, it will remain but a drop of convenient store juice. For others, the juice just might become a portal into the holy Wilderness:  to hear the Voice, to see the Dove, to remember Baptism’s Flood and God’s Bow of Mercy, to face down the Beasts, to be comforted by Angels, and to pray Thy Kingdom Come and kiss my little corner of earth with the dew of Heaven.

On second thought, I guess a holy relic and trinket of the transcendent can be found even at a Westernized, overly commercialized little gift shop. The Wilderness of God can be found by all who seek it—especially tour bus pilgrims near the Jordan.