Lent Week 1

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-10 
Old Testament: Genesis 9:8-17 
Gospel: Mark 1:9-15 
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:18-22

Welcome to the first week of Lent. I hope you have had time to reflect on what this season means as we draw closer to God. We went to an Ash Wednesday service at our Church, and the speaker said something that I think is important to say at the beginning of season such as Lent where we, humanity, act and strive to grow closer to God. It may seem like we are trying to earn God's love or blessing. Or maybe like we are trying to convince God to truly love and accept us. But all of this is not the case. The speaker said that it is not God who changes during Lent; it is us. God loved us the same on Tuesday as he did on Ash Wednesday as he will next Thursday. God's love never fails and never gives up, as our church sang this morning. What changes during Lent is our awareness of who God is, his great love for us, and our great need for him. As we move through Lent, we are made aware once again of our sin and desperate need for God. We intentionally arrange our lives so that God can encounter us. And as we move towards Easter, we prepare our hearts and minds again to receive God's overwhelming mercy and love given to us on the cross. We fast, we repent, we serve, and we worship, not so that God loves us, but out of our great gratitude for what God has done for us through his son Jesus. So I hope you recognize Lent as the gift it is to us from the Church so that we are fully able to celebrate Easter when it arrives.

Our Gospel reading this week invites us to explore the theme of the wilderness. After Jesus is baptized, he is immediately sent, or compelled, to go into the wilderness. It is strange that immediately after Jesus' baptism, with this great pronunciation of God's acceptance and pleasure, he is sent into the wilderness. My pastor spoke on this passage this morning and expressed how if he was Jesus, he would want to jump right into the healing and teaching thing, not into the wilderness. The wilderness seems like opposite of usefulness and proclivity.  By its very definition, the wilderness is lonely, often barren and void of life. It is the far from people and the center of power. Yet it is to the wilderness that Jesus goes before he does anything else.

 The question we must ask ourselves is why Jesus is sent into the Wilderness? We all know that while Jesus was in the wilderness he faced three temptations from the devil. From the very beginning of Jesus' ministry he deals with the devil through faithfulness to the Father. The temptations were in some sense about Jesus doubting the pronouncement of love he had received from the Father at his baptism. They devil was tempting Jesus to prove he was the Son of God. The devil says, "If you are the Son of God...then perform these miracles, show your power, and revel in your earthly authority. Prove to us that you are God's son."  But Jesus resists the temptation and rests assured in the knowledge of his relationship to the Father.

At the beginning of Lent, then, we are invited to join Jesus in the wilderness. We each must face the devil's temptations ourselves and recognize our standing before God. We can't, nor do we need to, justify and prove God's love for us. God's love for us never fails, it never gives up. I have to quote my pastor one last time because I was struck with this thought which I have never heard before. He said, "We need the wilderness to deal with the evil inside of us, before we can be sent to deal with the evil and injustice of the world." In the wilderness, where we have to rely on God, God can deal with our sin and our junk. We can come to understand God's love for us independent of anything we can or have done. Jesus died for us 2,000 years before we were even born. God loved us before we even took our first breath. In the wilderness this can be seen more clearly as we seek, striving and trying to prove our worth. In the wilderness we are able to just rest in the arms of God's provision and love and hear his words, "I love you."

During Lent, as we enter into our own metaphorical wilderness and time of fasting (or maybe you find yourself in a more actual wilderness due to sickness, loneliness, persecution, financial hardship, or something else), let us listen to God's words of guidance and love. Let us use this time in the wilderness so that we may become instruments of God's purpose.

Grace and Peace.