March 5, 2006
First Sunday in Lent

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

 

Discussion of the Texts:

The season of Lent grew out of the ancient church’s practice of holding baptisms at Easter. Prior to their baptism, converts to the faith were expected to go through an intensive period of repentance, self-examination, prayer, and preparation for their new life in Christ. That period could sometimes last as long as three years; but the final forty days before Easter were always the most important. Our lessons for the First Sunday in Lent reflect those central themes of baptism and preparation for new life.

The reading from Genesis is the finale of the Flood story, when God makes a covenant with Noah, his offspring, and every living creature that accompanies them off the ark. God had originally called for the Flood because of the corruption and violence on earth: the Flood was meant to be a cleansing and healing process for creation. But the Flood itself was also tremendously destructive. In this new covenant with every living creature, God promises never again to use destructiveness as a creative tool. Much more than simply marking a cleansing from past sin, this new covenant marks the beginning of a more creative relationship between humans, non-human creatures, and God.

The Psalm is not directly connected to the Flood story, but it does reflect the central theme of cleansing from past sin and beginning a newly creative relationship with God. The Psalmist pleads with God, “ Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions”; yet at the same time the poet is confident that “Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way that leads to life.

The passage from 1 Peter is clearly chosen to parallel the Genesis passage, and makes an explicit link between the post-Flood covenant with Noah and the new covenant of baptism in Christ. Jesus overcame sin not by flooding it or destroying it, but by transforming it through his own death and resurrection. “He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,” so that now “angels, authorities, and powers” are “made subject to him”; the very constitutive processes of the cosmos are changed, not by being destroyed and remade as in the Flood, but by being redirected to new ends in Christ. To be baptized is to be taken up into this re-creative work in the world.

The cosmic dimensions in 1 Peter are given more concrete reference in Mark’s story of Jesus’ baptism and sojourn in the wilderness. Mark’s account is far more spare and terse than either Matthew’s or Luke’s, so the lectionary can accommodate the baptism story and the wilderness story in a single reading. This helps make explicit the connection between baptism and the new quality of life in creative relationship with God that is at the heart of Jesus’ mission. Especially interesting in this regard is the final detail Mark offers in his account of Jesus’ fast. Though Mark has none of Matthew’s and Luke’s three specific temptations laid before Jesus by the Enemy, he does note that in the wilderness Jesus “was  with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Jesus in the wilderness is in a similar position to Noah after the Flood: human, non-human, and spiritual creatures are depicted as living together without fear or predation or alienation or violence. We might say that in his wilderness sojourn Jesus reenacts the Noachic covenant and gives it additional new meaning as a prefiguring of the Reign of God whose coming near Jesus returns from the wilderness to proclaim.

Process Theology and the Texts:

The link between baptism, covenant, and new life is a clear instance of creative transformation. In promising not to use destruction as a creative tool, God (or, perhaps better, the human authors’ understanding of God) takes a step away from coercive power and toward persuasive power. God’s work in the world is characterized not simply as sweeping away the old, but as taking up and reincorporating the old in new possibilities for creative transformations. Human sin, as bad is it truly is, need not be an ultimate barrier to participation in the redeeming and re-creating work of God in the world. Those who respond to Jesus’ call to repent, to turn anew, and to believe in the Good News, can indeed take their part in co-creative work with God in the real conditions of the world.

Preaching the Texts:

The most striking connection between these texts is the link between baptism and new covenant-life with God. A sermon could explore the meaning of the whole season of Lent as preparation for baptism—or, for those already baptized, as preparation for the renewal of baptismal promises—at Easter. The texts provide powerful images with which the preacher could invite the people to keep a holy Lent.

Another sermon might explore God’s renunciation of destructiveness in the Genesis passage and compare it to the call to non-violence in our own political, social, and religious spheres. If God persuades rather than coerces, if God will redeem sin rather than destroy it, should we not strive to do the same?

Another sermon might begin with the image of Jesus in the wilderness with wild beasts and angels, and explore its implications for ecological spirituality and care of the earth in our context. Fasting, abstinence, self-denial, living lightly on the land, could be seen not only as traditional Lenten spiritual disciplines, but as spiritual attitudes that foster a less consumptive, more sustainable relationship with the planet.

Father Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, MN and canon theologian for the Diocese of Minnesota. He is co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.

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