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

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

I make “to do” lists…  lots of them…  some of them I write out…  some of them I type out…  the hand-written ones are usually what I have to do on any particular day…  at least try to…  calls I need to make…  an appointment I need to schedule…  or something like asking Joel when the kids are coming to visit again…  I almost always start each day with a new list…  and copy onto it the things I couldn’t get to the day before…  and then I add any new tasks for that day…  ] the ones I type on my computer are more long-range…  things I need to do weeks or months out…  like paying monthly bills…  or projects that I’d like to work on when I have the time…  like organizing piles of paperwork…  and I often ask Siri to remind me…  ]  the lists I make help keep me accountable…  help keep me focused when I’m distracted by other things…  I see them on my list…  and I’m reminded to do them…

In our reading from Genesis…  God establishes a covenant with Noah and his sons…  and says that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood…  and God establishes a sign…  a bow in the clouds…  and God says that when there are clouds…  and a bow is in them…  and God sees it…  God will remember the covenant that’s between God and every living creature…  and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy them…  so the rainbow is a reminder for God…  like a string tied in a bow around God’s finger… ]  it’s hard to imagine that God needs to remind Godself about decisions that God has made…  but the reason God gives for this promise is found in 8:21 when God says…  I’ll never curse the ground  again because of people…  I know that from an early age…  they have this bent toward dishonor…   but I’ll never again kill off every living thing as I’ve just done… ]  in other words…  in an unexpected twist…  God’s strategy towards us does a one-eighty…  we remain the same…  but God’s response changes…  from… I will destroy them…  to… I will never destroy them…

And there are other examples in scripture about God changing God’s mind…  in Exodus 32:14 for example…  when the Israelites made the golden calf…  God’s wrath burned hot against them…  so much so that God was about to destroy them…  but Moses implored God…  and the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people…  ]  and in Jeremiah 18:8…  when God’s word came to Jeremiah… and God said…  I may choose to break down and destroy a nation or kingdom…  but if it turns from its evil…  I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it…

The Gospel says that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days…  and even if no one marked each day off on a calendar…  we’re meant to understand that it was a very long time…  and it reminds us of Israel’s trials…   as they tried to be faithful to the God of their liberation…  during their wilderness journey…  but largely failed… and because Jesus was driven into the wilderness immediately after his baptism…  it’s also helpful for us to remember that the baptismal gift of Spirit does not exclude us from…   but is the basis of a struggle…  because the awareness of being loved…   immediately unfolds into the awareness of being faithful…  ] and because the Gospel is not simply good news…  but it is good news in a broken world…

And the mythological character of Satan is not just one more character…  Sa-tan…  the Accuser…   should not be imagined as encountering Jesus in physical form…  Satan is the inner…  invisible energy…  which inflicts suffering on God’s children…  like those who are responsible for the death of Alexey Navalny…  this adversary of God manifests itself through people…  groups…  and social and political systems…  and turns them into wild beasts…   who devour God’s good creation…  because they actively keep people alienated from God…  and divided among themselves…  ] while it’s Jesus who actively seeks to unite people to God…   and to one another… 

In the summer of 1971…  I spent eight weeks in Israel…  three of them…  on an archaeological dig in Be’er Sheva…  in the northern part of the Negev Desert…  we hiked up to the top of the dig site before sunrise…  and stopped working at about 11:00…   because by then it was already 105°…  but sometimes…  I’d go back up in the afternoon… just to experience the heat…  and the wind…  and the sheer silence…  it was the kind of environment where there were no distractions…  where you could come face to face with your inner demons…  with the wild beasts of your mind…

And years later…  when I was coming out… it was like being back in that desert…  back in that heat…  and wind…  and silence…  but this time…  I was aware of God’s Spirit…  of God’s presence…  and we were going out into the wild – er – ness together…   to a place I had never been…  and I left behind everything I knew…  because I believed that when I arrived at the other side of my symbolic desert…   I’d be better off for it…  but even so…  throughout that journey…  the wild beasts told me this was a mistake…  yelled at me that this couldn’t work out…  shouldn’t work out…  told me not to trust my inner voice…  told me that I didn’t deserve to be whole…  but I heard God’s voice more clearly than theirs…  ]  I like to think that I was waited on by angels…

The wild beasts are the voices which tell far too many of us that we don’t deserve to be content…  to have forgiveness…  or grace…  or love…  the wild beasts are the voices which tell us we’ll never amount to anything…  that we don’t deserve the goodness for which we’ve been created…  the wild beasts challenge God’s every word…  because they know who Jesus is…  ]  and they sense Jesus’ opposition…  and move against him…  but it doesn’t have to be this way… 

Lent is a penitential season…  a season of penance…  of looking inward and making amends for the wrongs we have done to each other…  and to ourselves…  of fostering at-one-ment with God and with each other…    it is a time to focus on prayer…  on fasting from things like negative attitudes…  so we can focus more on God…  and on almsgiving…  ]  but throughout much of Christian history…  Lent has embodied a somber…  somewhat severe tone…  often steeped in self-denial…  and in some cases…  of beating oneself up with damaging self-talk and criticism…  of listening more to the wild beasts than to Jesus…  but in the Late Old English period…  the word Lent simply referred to the season of spring… and what is spring but a time of new growth and new birth…  of new life bursting forth…  of light and warmth and hope…  and what hope that is…  because we will sin…  we will miss God’s mark for us…  and we affirm in our Eucharistic prayer…  that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are…  yet did not sin…   and even now…  God remembers who we are…  and loves us…  has set a bow in the clouds as a reminder that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood…  it’s we who have forgotten that for which we and creation were created…  we have forgotten how interconnected we are…  so maybe putting it down on a daily prayer list…  a to do list of sorts…  will help remind us… and once we are reminded…  once we remember…  we will show our neighbors…  that we love them…  as well as we love ourselves…  Holy God…  make it so…