Lent—our collective annual sojourn to the desert

Homily for February 22, 2015 (First Sunday of Lent)
Genesis 9:8-15; Psalm 25; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Rainbows are one of nature’s masterpieces.  Can you remember the first time that you beheld that beautiful sight?  Perhaps you were peering into the brightening sky following a thunderstorm; admiring the sheets of mist emerging from the crashing power of a waterfall; or more mundanely, staring back at the sprinkler we had just jumped through on a hot summer day.  Regardless of how we behold a rainbow, there are three elements that are essential:  sunlight, water droplets, and looking at them from the proper angle or perspective.

The scripture readings the Church has given us for this First Sunday of Lent give us those three elements:  light, water and perspective.  Our first reading from the Book of Genesis showed God giving to Noah a light of a solemn promise:  “there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”  This covenant extended not only to Noah and his descendants but also to “all bodily creatures” and indeed the entire planet.   It reminds us that we are all part of the same ecosystem, the same network of life.  Perhaps when we next gaze upon a rainbow we might think of the great stewardship that we have as humans who have been given charge of the earth and its creatures (Genesis 1:28).

In the Bible, the rainbow is also seen as a sign of divine warfare—the instrument that sends forth lightning bolts, thunder and rain as is its arrows (cf. Lamentations 2:4, Habakkuk 3:9-11).  It is thus a symbol of death as well as life.  In our second reading, Peter noted a similar dichotomy with the waters of baptism.  He called the time that Noah spent in the ark while the rains and flood waters destroyed and cleansed a sinful world a prefiguring of baptism.  Our immersion in the waters of the sacrament, he noted, “is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  We are indeed saved in baptism; but just as critically, we are saved for a purpose.

That purpose is succinctly summed up in our passage from the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus, having just submitted to baptism by John in the Jordan River, was driven by the Spirit into the desert, where he remained “for forty days, tempted by Satan…among the wild beasts.”  This was a time of immediate preparation for his ministry; but in biblical times as today, the desert was not a place most people want to be.  There was little water and a lot of danger, not only from wild beasts but also from criminals and demons.  It was a place where one expected to be tested, even severely, just as the people of Israel were as they made their long and meandering journey of freedom from Egypt to the Promised Land and just as the prophet Elijah was when he fled from the murderous designs of Jezebel and Ahab (cf. 1 Kings 19).  But Jesus was not alone:  “angels ministered to him.”  Thankfully, God makes sure that we aren’t alone, either.

Lent is our personal and collective annual sojourn to the desert—a time in which we allow ourselves to be tested a little more in order to gain the clarity of perspective of what our lives as disciples of Jesus are about:  proclaiming the Good News of God’s kingdom, in word and deed, so that all may be part of the covenant of life in this world and in the one to come. +