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SERMONS

First Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2009

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

            Genesis 9:8-17
            Psalm 25:3-9
            1 Peter 3:18-22
            Mark 1:9-13

If someone were to make a movie of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, I think they should call it, “The First Temptation of Christ,” with apologies to Martin Scorsese. The temptation of Christ in the wilderness is Jesus’s first big scene in the gospel of Mark! It follows immediately on the heels of his baptism by John in the River Jordan. So that the baptism of Jesus ends and the temptation of Jesus begins with no apparent space in between.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all include the temptation of Christ in their gospels. But Mark’s version is the by far the shortest  -- Matthew and Luke go into much more detail in their versions. There’s dialogue between the tempter and Jesus, and there’s even movement in the story, as the tempter shows Jesus the prizes that could be his, if he’d just cast his lot with the devil. It’s a little like Let’s Make a Deal.
                                                           
By contrast, Mark’s version of the temptation scene includes almost no detail. Mark’s version is a minimalist version. And I am not unsympathetic to Mark: I think this would be a tough story to tell with much real drama, since most of the action in a temptation story really takes place really in the heart and mind of the person being tempted. The real struggle here is the interior struggle of Jesus to resist the very tempting offers the tempter puts before him. That makes it a hard story for a writer to tell effectively, just as it would be a difficult scene to stage effectively. It’s just hard to do, But that is what Mark tries to do here, and he uses very few words to do it.

Mark tells the story of the temptation of Christ in just two sentences: “And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”  (Mark 1:12-13) As one commentator put it, Mark’s version of the testing of Jesus “is telegraphic in comparison to the elaborate dialogue” in the parallel scenes in Matthew and Luke. (Donahue 65)

Since Mark is so economical in his use of language to tell this story, it seems fair for us to look carefully at the words Mark did choose. Mark tells us that the Spirit “immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.”  (1:12) The Greek verb “drove” is a vigorous one. Craddock 21) It is the same Greek verb Homer uses in The Iliad to describe the shooting of arrows in battle! (Black 1)  So we get this mental image of God drawing back his bow and kind of “shooting “ Jesus into the wilderness, (Black)

Now I don’t have a lot of experience shooting arrows with bows, but I did take archery at summer camp in North Carolina as a girl, and I have to tell you that it took a lot of strength to pull that bowstring back, and then, when you let the string go, that arrow would go flying, and,
with any luck at all, hit the target with a satisfying thwump!

Mark’s language suggests Jesus was thrust into the wilderness with “real force.” Although “[t]ranslators and commentators [have] sometimes attempted to soften this picture,” the fact remains that the word used here is the same word Mark uses later to describe Jesus “casting out demons.” (Brueggemann 198) So I think we can safely conclude that Mark wants us to see this was no gentle action.

Jesus was “cast” ‘into the wilderness by the Spirit. The Spirit “drove” Jesus into the wilderness, like an archer shooting an arrow into a target. It also makes it sound as if the archer was the one choosing the target, and the arrow just along for the ride!

So it is there in the wilderness that Jesus find his adversary, the tempter, and the temptation of Christ commences. Jesus spends forty days and forty nights, being tempted in the wilderness. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that the number forty is significant in the Bible. It rained for forty days and forty nights in the story of Noah and the ark. (Gen. 7:4,12,17) It took Elijah forty days to flee to Mount Horeb where he met God on top of the mountain. (1 Kings 119:4-8) (Brueggemann 199)

And one of the things that these stories seem to have in common is this: a person chosen by God had his life preserved or saved in the midst of great danger. Noah and his family and his animals were the only ones spared by the flood. Elijah, remember, was fleeing for his life when he fled to Mount Horeb, and Elijah was protected from danger, at least temporarily. So maybe Mark is trying to align the temptation of Jesus with these other dangerous situations in the Bible where a person sought divine protection and God came through. (Brueggemann 199)

Speaking of Noah, I have to back up a minute. Noah and the ark is one of those familiar Bible stories that we were probably told as children. The truth is that the Noah story is probably not fit forchildren, because it’s so violent! We know that “Noah and his family were spared” when the flood waters came. (Copenhaver 21) “God seemed to think that they represented everything that was good and worth saving about creation. When [Noah, his family, and the animals] were safely aboard the ark, God sent a flood until the world was immersed in a cleansing bath, so that new life could begin” on the earth.  (21) “But while Noah” and the rest of them “were still wobbling around on sea legs, God said, ‘I am establishing my covenant with you.’  That is, ‘I am committing myself to you. I am going to stick with you no matter what. And as I am my witness, I am never going to send a flood like this again. In fact, I am going to give myself a reminder of this promise. I am going to hang up my bow in the sky.” (21) Interestingly, “the word in Hebrew refers to the kind of bow that shoots arrows.” The bow represented God’s promise not to shoot any more “arrows” like that ever again. (21) The bow in the sky was a reminder to God of his “nonagression treaty” with the Hebrew people (Schowalter 147) Again with the bow and arrow! It was God’s promise to his people to lay down one’s arms. (Fretheim 400) That’s an interesting way to look at God’s covenant with Noah. (Schowalter 148)

So, the bow in the lesson from Genesis stands for God’s promise not to shoot any more “flood” arrows at the Hebrew people. The rainbow in the story represents the archer’s bow and the archer’s promise to put his bow down. And then in the gospel from Mark we have Jesus hurled into the wilderness by the Spirit, as if the Spirit were an archer and Jesus were the arrow. And it is on the first Sunday in Lent that we find Jesus in the wilderness, being tempted, and we find ourselves there, too, in a way, as we commence our Lenten observance.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that Lent is a time to do some spring cleaning in our souls.  It offers us 40 days and 40 nights to pay attention to whatever our own personal  pacifiers are and how quickly we pop them into our mouths at the first sign of discomfort. Forty days to “open [our] eyes to” what might happen if we didn’t go straight for the pacifier in such a hurry. “Forty days to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone.” (66) Because that’s what Lent invites us to do.  Lent invites us “[t]o enter the wilderness.” Lent invites us to leave “those pacifiers behind,” and nothing is too small to give up. Even a chocolate bar will do. 

For forty days, simply pay attention to how often your mind [goe]s in that direction. How often you crave that chocolate bar… “Try sitting with the feeling instead of fixing it and see what you find out.“Chances are you will hear a voice in your head that keeps warning you what will happpen if you give up your pacifier. …” (68) And if the voice doesn’t convince you to go ahead and eat that chocolate, chances are, that voice will take another tack: “’If God really loves you,’ the voice will say, ‘you can do whatever you want. Why waste your time on this dumb exercise?’”

“If you do not know whom that voice belongs to, read [Mark’s] story again.” Then decide whether you’ll obey that voice, or obey God. And fall on your knees this Lent to pray to “the Lord your God,” and seek to serve no one else. “Expect great things, from God and from yourself [this Lent]. Believe that everything is possible. Why should any of us settle for less?” (68) Amen. 

Works Cited

Black, Ruth.  Comment at Commission on Ministry meeting.  March 4, 2006.

Brueggemann, Walter, et al. Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Comentary Based on NRSV -- Year B. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.

Craddock, Fred B., et al. Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year B.Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press Int’l., 1993.

Craddock, Fred. “Test Run.” “Living by the Word.” Christian Century. Feb. 22, 2003. 21.

Copenhaver, Martin B. “Starting over.” “Living by the Word.” Christian Century February 21, 2006.  21.

Daniel, Lillian. “Living by the Word.” Christian Century February 24, 2009. 18.

Fretheim, Terrence. “Genesis.” New Interpreter’s Bible. I. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

Harris, James H., Jerome C. Ross & Miles J. Jones.  Proclamation: Interpretting the Lessons of the Church Year (Lent, Year B). Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

Schowalter, Daniel N. “The Season of Lent.” New Proclamation 2006.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. “Lenten Discipline.”  Home by Another Way.  Cambridge:  Cowley Press, 1999. 65-68.