First Sunday in Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today’s gospel lesson shares with us the beginning of Jesus’ journey of faith, from his baptism to his temptation in the desert to his first public ministry, preaching the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ journey of faith in today’s gospel, short as it is, includes three very different phases.

In and after his baptism, Jesus experiences cosmic and violent action. The heavens are torn open. Jesus is cast out, propelled, driven into the wilderness. It gives the feeling of being tossed around, a victim amid scary, much bigger events.

Jesus experiences the loneliness of the desert. He is out there in the wilderness for forty days, all by himself, with no human company. Only animals surround him. What a desolation that creates, the feeling of being lost and abandoned.

Finally, Jesus experiences the closeness and promise of God. God’s own voice pronounces Jesus to be God’s Son, and a well pleasing Son at that. How that must have filled Jesus’ heart with joy and hope and assurance. The angles are waiting on Jesus, bringing him comfort. And then he begins his ministry, calls disciples, and has wonderful news to proclaim: The Kingdom of God has come!

It is interesting that we can find the same three stages of a journey of faith in the story of Noah and his ark.

There is cosmic violence. The gates of heaven and the wells of the deep open up, and the whole world is flooded. Noah and his family are caught up in events beyond their control. The water is rising, destroying the life they had known. They are tossed about by the current. How scary that must have been. Was there agony in seeing neighbors drown? Was there survivor’s guilt? Was there the desperate helplessness of not being able to do a thing about the situation? It definitely was a time of traumatic upheaval for the whole family.

Then there are forty days when Noah and his wife, their three sons with their wives, and all the animals are floating in the ark. The rain has stopped. Water covers everything. There is no mountain or tree or building anywhere. There is only water. A wilderness of water as far as the eye can see. On that water floats the boat, where the Noah Family is safe, but all alone. Nobody else to talk to. No sense of how long this journey will last. As desolate time.

But then the ark lands, and we get to today’s reading. There is hope and promise. The family and animals can finally leave the boat. There is land; there is new plant growth; there is new possibility for starting life over. Relief and hope and joy are in the air. To top all that off, God adds his promise to the scene. Never again, God says. Never again will I destroy the world like that. Never again will you have to be afraid that I am out to kill all humanity. Never again do you have to fear that natural disasters like floods are sent by God to punish you. Never again will I lash out at my people in this way.

God is making a covenant with Noah, a covenant of pure promise: God comes to Noah and vows to hang up his weapons of war and never strike out against all creation again. God ties his promise to a sign: the rainbow. Every time Noah sees the rainbow, he and God are reminded of this covenant. Noah doesn’t have to do anything but receive this promise and say: Thank you. It’s pure grace on God’s part, a grace bringing hope and joy and a future to Noah’s life.

So both Noah and Jesus experience different phases on their faith journeys: violence and upheaval, loneliness and desolation, and assurance and hope.

My guess is that most of us have been through these phases ourselves. We can relate. We can tell stories of times in our lives for each of these stages.

How about experiencing violence, feeling like we are victims in larger events we cannot control, suffering the upheaval of life as we knew it. I grew up with my family’s stories of going through the Second World War: escaping the Russian front, leaving behind everything except for what fit into one backpack, and walking towards the West. Violent international forces tossed my grandparents and parents around, and I know that the war affected many of your families in just such a violent way.

Wars are still going on. Daily, the news show us images of people suffering fear and separation and life interruption caused by the call of duty or when war enters their home towns.

Other ways our lives are tilted out of control are when we are diagnosed with a severe illness or disability, when we lose a job, when death strikes a person we love out of the blue, when our marriage falls apart, when our teenagers are succumbing to eating disorders or addictions, when our retirement funds disappear in a stock market collapse.

Yes, we know what Jesus and Noah went through, for we have been there; maybe we are there right now. It is a scary, frightful place to be.

We also know about loneliness and desolation. What have your wilderness experiences been? Was it starting college and not knowing a single person to talk to for weeks? Was it coming into a new job and feeling cut out by the comradery of your new colleagues? Was it losing a pregnancy and seeing all the happy parents and babies around and feeling so left out? Was it being caught up in depression so deeply that we felt nobody would understand, nobody could reach us? Was it having to move to a retirement home away from your community of birth, losing many contacts with friends and the church community?

Yes, we have been there, in the lonely places, the deserted places, floating along alone with no end in sight.

But we have also been in moments of joy and hope. We have seen the rainbow. We have heard God call us his beloved sons and daughters.

In baptism, God came to us and claimed us as his children. God gave us his love, gave us the Holy Spirit, gave us the promise of salvation. God promised to be with us always, until the end of the world. All these promises God offered us and tied them to a sign: water. By water and word, God made us his.

Just like Noah didn’t have to do anything to receive the promise, so we didn’t do a thing. Except to thank God and rejoice in his love and respond to his grace by faithful living.

We have experienced God’s love when we were able to make a new beginning, like Noah after the weeks on the ark. We were able to take a new direction, a new job, a new relationship, a new volunteer position, a new ministry, a new meaning for our lives.

We have experienced the joy of hearing the good news that the kingdom of God has come. We have participated in the Lord’s Supper, a foretaste of the feast to come, a hint at what life in the kingdom will be like: a community of peace sharing meal and mission.

What, then, helps us through the trying times, when we are not so filled with hope and joy? What can we learn about that from scripture today?

These are points of the Bible stories that help me weather the scary and desolate times:

I read in the gospel that God tore the heavens apart. The language implies real force and violence. Yet this force and violence was used by God to remove all barriers between God and people. God tore the heavens so that his voice and his spirit could come down to us. The end result of the violence was that people could be closer to God.

I have found this to be true in my life. As much as I hate times of upheaval and major change, it is at those times that rely on God most heavily. And so it is those turbulent times that reconnect me with God and intensify my relationship with God all over again.

When the waters of the flood rose in the flood story, God provided a safe place for Noah and his family. That has been my experience of God’s care, too. No matter how hard the trials have been, there has always been a safe place where I could go. There were friends I trusted and in whose presence I could let down my guard. There were support groups of people with issues like mine where I found complete understanding. No matter what my crisis, God has always provided a safe place, a lifeboat, to help me survive.

Jesus enters the wilderness and the time of temptation because God’s Holy Spirit drove him there. I learn from that that being desolate and being tempted does not mean we have lost faith. It does not mean we are in the wrong place. Desolate is not the same as God-forsaken. On the contrary, God’s angels are right there ministering to Jesus while he is in the wilderness.

For me, that takes a huge burden off my soul. Our faith journeys will include such times. Even Jesus’ journey took him to be tempted and alone. Thus, experiencing such a time is to be expected, is normal, is part for the course of life as a Christian. God will be there with us through the Holy Spirit, seeing us through and restoring us to community.

This is good to know as we are entering the time of Lent, the time when we ponder the things that tempt us, the things that want to rule our lives and drag us away from God. I encourage you to fully engage in this holy season. Ponder the issues of sin and death. Search for the ways God is accompanying your journey. Use devotionals, daily Bible readings, prayer, worship, Lenten services, and this community of believers to make these seven weeks a fruitful part of your faith journey.

In the end, on Easter morning, this journey will lead us all to the moment of greatest hope and joy, the moment of new beginnings, the moment of rainbows and divine promises.

May God bless your journey. Amen.