Year B
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I make “to do” lists\u2026 lots of them\u2026 some of them I write out\u2026 some of them I type out\u2026 the hand-written ones are usually what I have to do on any particular day\u2026 at least try to\u2026 calls I need to make\u2026 an appointment I need to schedule\u2026 or something like asking Joel when the kids are coming to visit again\u2026 I almost always start each day with a new list\u2026 and copy onto it the things I couldn’t get to the day before\u2026 and then I add any new tasks for that day\u2026 ] the ones I type on my computer are more long-range\u2026 things I need to do weeks or months out\u2026 like paying monthly bills\u2026 or projects that I’d like to work on when I have the time\u2026 like organizing piles of paperwork\u2026 and I often ask Siri to remind me\u2026 ] the lists I make help keep me accountable\u2026 help keep me focused when I’m distracted by other things\u2026 I see them on my list\u2026 and I’m reminded to do them\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In our reading from Genesis\u2026 God establishes a covenant with Noah and his sons\u2026 and says that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood\u2026 and God establishes a sign\u2026 a bow in the clouds\u2026 and God says that when there are clouds\u2026 and a bow is in them\u2026 and God sees it\u2026 God will remember the covenant that’s between God and every living creature\u2026 and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy them\u2026 so the rainbow is a reminder for God\u2026 like a string tied in a bow around God’s finger\u2026 ] it’s hard to imagine that God needs to remind Godself about decisions that God has made\u2026 but the reason God gives for this promise is found in 8:21 when God says\u2026 I\u2019ll never curse the ground again because of people\u2026 I know that from an early age\u2026 they have this bent toward dishonor\u2026 but I\u2019ll never again kill off every living thing as I\u2019ve just done<\/em>\u2026 ] in other words\u2026 in an unexpected twist\u2026 God\u2019s strategy towards us does a one-eighty\u2026 we remain the same\u2026 but God\u2019s response changes\u2026 from\u2026 I will destroy them\u2026 <\/em>to\u2026 I will never destroy them<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there are other examples in scripture about God changing God’s mind\u2026 in Exodus 32:14 for example\u2026 when the Israelites made the golden calf\u2026 God’s wrath burned hot against them\u2026 so much so that God was about to destroy them\u2026 but Moses implored God\u2026 and the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people<\/em>\u2026 ] and in Jeremiah 18:8\u2026 when God’s word came to Jeremiah… and God said\u2026 I may choose to break down and destroy a nation or kingdom\u2026 but if it turns from its evil\u2026 I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gospel says that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days\u2026 and even if no one marked each day off on a calendar\u2026 we’re meant to understand that it was a very long time\u2026 and it reminds us of Israel’s trials\u2026 as they tried to be faithful to the God of their liberation\u2026 during their wilderness journey\u2026 but largely failed\u2026 and because Jesus was driven into the wilderness immediately after his baptism\u2026 it’s also helpful for us to remember that the baptismal gift of Spirit does not exclude us from\u2026 but is the basis of a struggle… because the awareness of being loved\u2026 immediately unfolds into the awareness of being faithful\u2026 ] and because the Gospel is not simply good news\u2026 but it is good news in a broken world\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the mythological character of Satan is not just one more character\u2026 Sa-tan\u2026 the Accuser\u2026 should not be imagined as encountering Jesus in physical form\u2026 Satan is the inner\u2026 invisible energy\u2026 which inflicts suffering on God’s children\u2026 like those who are responsible for the death of Alexey Navalny\u2026 this adversary of God manifests itself through people\u2026 groups\u2026 and social and political systems\u2026 and turns them into wild beasts\u2026 who devour God’s good creation\u2026 because they actively keep people alienated from God\u2026 and divided among themselves\u2026 ] while it’s Jesus who actively seeks to unite people to God\u2026 and to one another\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the summer of 1971\u2026 I spent eight weeks in Israel\u2026 three of them\u2026 on an archaeological dig in Be’er Sheva\u2026 in the northern part of the Negev Desert\u2026 we hiked up to the top of the dig site before sunrise\u2026 and stopped working at about 11:00\u2026 because by then it was already 105\u00b0\u2026 but sometimes\u2026 I’d go back up in the afternoon\u2026 just to experience the heat\u2026 and the wind\u2026 and the sheer silence\u2026 it was the kind of environment where there were no distractions\u2026 where you could come face to face with your inner demons\u2026 with the wild beasts of your mind\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And years later\u2026\u00a0 when I was coming out\u2026 it was like being back in that desert\u2026\u00a0 back in that heat\u2026\u00a0 and wind\u2026\u00a0 and silence\u2026 \u00a0but this time\u2026\u00a0 I was aware of God’s Spirit\u2026\u00a0 of God’s presence\u2026\u00a0 and we were going out into the wild – er – ness together\u2026\u00a0 \u00a0to a place I had never been\u2026\u00a0 and I left behind everything I knew\u2026\u00a0 because I believed that when I arrived at the other side of my symbolic desert\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019d be better off for it\u2026\u00a0 but even so\u2026\u00a0 throughout that journey\u2026\u00a0 the wild beasts told me this was a mistake\u2026\u00a0 yelled at me that this couldn’t work out\u2026\u00a0 shouldn’t work out\u2026\u00a0 told me not to trust my inner voice\u2026\u00a0 told me that I didn’t deserve to be whole\u2026\u00a0 but I heard God’s voice more clearly than theirs\u2026\u00a0 ]\u00a0 I like to think that I was waited on by angels\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wild beasts are the voices which tell far too many of us that we don’t deserve to be content\u2026 to have forgiveness\u2026 or grace\u2026 or love\u2026 the wild beasts are the voices which tell us we’ll never amount to anything\u2026 that we don’t deserve the goodness for which we’ve been created\u2026 the wild beasts challenge God’s every word\u2026 because they know who Jesus is\u2026 ] and they sense Jesus’ opposition\u2026 and move against him\u2026 but it doesn’t have to be this way\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lent is a penitential season\u2026 a season of penance… of looking inward and making amends for the wrongs we have done to each other\u2026 and to ourselves\u2026 of fostering at-one-ment with God and with each other\u2026 it is a time to focus on prayer\u2026 on fasting from things like negative attitudes\u2026 so we can focus more on God\u2026 and on almsgiving\u2026 ] but throughout much of Christian history\u2026 Lent has embodied a somber\u2026 somewhat severe tone\u2026 often steeped in self-denial\u2026 and in some cases\u2026 of beating oneself up with damaging self-talk and criticism\u2026 of listening more to the wild beasts than to Jesus\u2026 but in the Late Old English period\u2026 the word Lent simply referred to the season of spring\u2026 and what is spring but a time of new growth and new birth\u2026 of new life bursting forth\u2026 of light and warmth and hope\u2026 and what hope that is\u2026 because we will sin\u2026 we will miss God’s mark for us\u2026 and we affirm in our Eucharistic prayer\u2026 that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are\u2026 yet did<\/u> not<\/u> sin<\/em>\u2026 and even now\u2026 God remembers who we are\u2026 and loves us\u2026 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\u2026 it’s we who have forgotten that for which we and creation were created\u2026 we have forgotten how interconnected we are\u2026 so maybe putting it down on a daily prayer list\u2026 a to do list of sorts\u2026 will help remind us\u2026 and once we are reminded\u2026 once we remember\u2026 we will show our neighbors\u2026 that we love them\u2026 as well as we love ourselves\u2026 Holy God\u2026 make it so\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2026 speak your truth\u2026 I make “to do” lists\u2026 lots of them\u2026 some of them I write out\u2026 some of them I type out\u2026 the hand-written ones are usually what I have to do on any particular day\u2026 at least try to\u2026 calls I need to make\u2026 an appointment I need to schedule\u2026 or something like asking Joel when the kids are coming to visit again\u2026 I almost always start each day with a new list\u2026 and copy onto it the things I couldn’t get to the day before\u2026 and then I add any new tasks for that day\u2026 ] the ones I type on my computer are more long-range\u2026 things I need to do weeks or months out\u2026 like paying monthly bills\u2026 or projects that I’d like to work on when I have the time\u2026 like organizing piles of paperwork\u2026 and I often ask Siri to remind me\u2026 ] the lists I make help keep me accountable\u2026 help keep me focused when I’m distracted by other things\u2026 I see them on my list\u2026 and I’m reminded to do them\u2026 In our reading from Genesis\u2026 God establishes a covenant with Noah and his sons\u2026 and says that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood\u2026 and God establishes a sign\u2026 a bow in the clouds\u2026 and God says that when there are clouds\u2026 and a bow is in them\u2026 and God sees it\u2026 God will remember the covenant that’s between God and every living creature\u2026 and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy them\u2026 so the rainbow is a reminder for God\u2026 like a string tied in a bow around God’s finger\u2026 ] it’s hard to imagine that God needs to remind Godself about decisions that God has made\u2026 but the reason God gives for this promise is found in 8:21 when God says\u2026 I\u2019ll never curse the ground again because of people\u2026 I know that from an early age\u2026 they have this bent toward dishonor\u2026 but I\u2019ll never again kill off every living thing as I\u2019ve just done\u2026 ] in other words\u2026 in an unexpected twist\u2026 God\u2019s strategy towards us does a one-eighty\u2026 we remain the same\u2026 but God\u2019s response changes\u2026 from\u2026 I will destroy them\u2026 to\u2026 I will never destroy them\u2026 And there are other examples in scripture about God changing God’s mind\u2026 in Exodus 32:14 for example\u2026 when the Israelites made the golden calf\u2026 God’s wrath burned hot against them\u2026 so much so that God was about to destroy them\u2026 but Moses implored God\u2026 and the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people\u2026 ] and in Jeremiah 18:8\u2026 when God’s word came to Jeremiah… and God said\u2026 I may choose to break down and destroy a nation or kingdom\u2026 but if it turns from its evil\u2026 I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it\u2026 The Gospel says that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days\u2026 and even if no one marked each day off on a calendar\u2026 we’re meant to understand that it was a very long time\u2026 and it reminds us of Israel’s trials\u2026 as they tried to be faithful to the God of their liberation\u2026 during their wilderness journey\u2026 but largely failed\u2026 and because Jesus was driven into the wilderness immediately after his baptism\u2026 it’s also helpful for us to remember that the baptismal gift of Spirit does not exclude us from\u2026 but is the basis of a struggle… because the awareness of being loved\u2026 immediately unfolds into the awareness of being faithful\u2026 ] and because the Gospel is not simply good news\u2026 but it is good news in a broken world\u2026 And the mythological character of Satan is not just one more character\u2026 Sa-tan\u2026 the Accuser\u2026 should not be imagined as encountering Jesus in physical form\u2026 Satan is the inner\u2026 invisible energy\u2026 which inflicts suffering on God’s children\u2026 like those who are responsible for the death of Alexey Navalny\u2026 this adversary of God manifests itself through people\u2026 groups\u2026 and social and political systems\u2026 and turns them into wild beasts\u2026 who devour God’s good creation\u2026 because they actively keep people alienated from God\u2026 and divided among themselves\u2026 ] while it’s Jesus who actively seeks to unite people to God\u2026 and to one another\u2026 In the summer of 1971\u2026 I spent eight weeks in Israel\u2026 three of them\u2026 on an archaeological dig in Be’er Sheva\u2026 in the northern part of the Negev Desert\u2026 we hiked up to the top of the dig site before sunrise\u2026 and stopped working at about 11:00\u2026 because by then it was already 105\u00b0\u2026 but sometimes\u2026 I’d go back up in the afternoon\u2026 just to experience the heat\u2026 and the wind\u2026 and the sheer silence\u2026 it was the kind of environment where there were no distractions\u2026 where you could come face to face with your inner demons\u2026 with the wild beasts of your mind\u2026 And years later\u2026\u00a0 when I was coming out\u2026 it was like being back in that desert\u2026\u00a0 back in that heat\u2026\u00a0 and wind\u2026\u00a0 and silence\u2026 \u00a0but this time\u2026\u00a0 I was aware of God’s Spirit\u2026\u00a0 of God’s presence\u2026\u00a0 and we were going out into the wild – er – ness together\u2026\u00a0 \u00a0to a place I had never been\u2026\u00a0 and I left behind everything I knew\u2026\u00a0 because I believed that when I arrived at the other side of my symbolic desert\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019d be better off for it\u2026\u00a0 but even so\u2026\u00a0 throughout that journey\u2026\u00a0 the wild beasts told me this was a mistake\u2026\u00a0 yelled at me that this couldn’t work out\u2026\u00a0 shouldn’t work out\u2026\u00a0 told me not to trust my inner voice\u2026\u00a0 told me that I didn’t deserve to be whole\u2026\u00a0 but I heard God’s voice more clearly than theirs\u2026\u00a0 ]\u00a0 I like to think that I was waited on by angels\u2026 The wild beasts are the voices which tell far too many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[90,305,304],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons","tag-lent","tag-penance","tag-temptation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/temptation2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2382,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions\/2382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}