Mark 1:9-15
Lent 1 - Year B
One of the important issues in life is that of assurance. You can read here a paragraph on Justification and Assurance from the United Methodist Book of Discipline.
Apart from the holy language of that snippet, it might be more helpful to look at what it means to come up out of the water. Finding our experience to be that of coming forth at creation can be a high moment of the assurance that leads to a new creation.
Here the swing is from chaos (water) to assurance ("you are marked by love") and taking that assurance back into the chaos (wilderness) to shape life anew (tested in the presence of angels) and to affect the present (proclaiming).
Where have you experienced your baptism lately? No I am not talking about rebaptism (liturgically) but about reassurance (experientially). Have you come through a drowning time? Where did you again know you were loved - an internal sense, a word by family/friend/church, a symbol of "dove"?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/march2003.html
How would you summarize a turning point in your life?
Here it is: beloved, tempted, near.
The nearer the presence of G*D is the more easily and clearly we find our own belovedness and our own temptations.
This sort of direct correspondence steadfastly offers a new way out of old difficulties.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html
Just as Joshua and the boys had to take a step into the Jordan before they found it was actually going to back up for them to cross, so Jesus had to leave the baptismal waters to receive the blessing of belovedness.
Often we visualize this as a dunking style baptism (though you may be interested in most of the early depictions of this scene show a standing Jesus with water being pour or sprinkled over him). In this we associate the descent of the spirit concomitant with or immediately upon the completion of the baptismal water ritual.
Suppose for the moment that the baptismal ritual of John was the baptismal ritual of John and Jesus was simply doing his best to continue paying attention to G*D. Everything went according to plan and it wasn't until Jesus had fully completed the ritual and was stepping back onto dry land that the rainbow insight came that the threat of destruction, even by fire, was really over and done with. Redemptive violence was no longer to be the way of G*D. No wonder he was encouraged and enlivened to proceed to test whether that really was going to be the way (each of the traditional temptations can be read as variations on the theme of violence) and to practice it at the end (in Mark everyone runs away from Jesus' death as it didn't prove a rejection of violence against another would avoid violence done to one and in Luke we hear the sometimes attested words of Jesus to forgive even those who don't understand what they are doing).
Is belovedness separable from repentance? Can I still be beloved, though yet unrepentant? Can I call another beloved while they are yet unrepentant?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html
For many the radio stimulates the imagination more than does television. This is in part the way we receive the two senses. Mark's silence on the temptations brings more possibilities to mind than the traditional three in Matthew and Luke. Mark also reminds us that this was not Jesus and Satan, mano a mano, but Jesus was attended by angels even during temptation (not just to soothe afterward).
If so attended, what does this do to the hunger and jumping off temptations mentioned elsewhere?
A connection with angels connects us with time beyond ourselves (you may want to refresh your reading of some of Madeline L'Engle's supposed children's books - her Wrinkle in Time series).
If we are connected beyond one current time, we might begin to wonder about Christ suffering once and salvation through water (Noah and baptism) as singular events.
During Lent we may wonder about what it means to be a sign of reconciliation between G*D and creation. Whether that is a one-time sign or repeated, it is a lifting of soul - ours and many. One sign is not shying away from temptations that we might slyly defeat them through avoidance, getting overly busy with something else, or nit-picking the language of the temptation.
- - -
it has been said
we are built to buffer bad news
defense mechanisms are a gift from God
trying to make bad news Not True
requires a special attitude
this-isn't-happening-to-me
now comes an intriguing question
can even this situation be turned around?
facing it is a first step to saying Yes
[this prayer fragment is based on a bit of Unbinding the Gospel, pages 24-25]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
In long years gone ago, while traveling to High School sports games there would be the opening of bus windows and loud singing –
Everywhere we go people want to know who we are,
so we tell them, we are MG [school name or initials], mighty, mighty MG.
Last week we were on a mountain top singing this same rowdy ditty transformed to a meditative mantra,
Everywhere we are we still want to know who we are,
so we say we are beloved, very, very beloved.
[The cadence changes an emphasis upon "we" and places it upon "are" – will have to consider whether this is helpful or not, but for now I'll let it stand hope someone will clean it up.]
This week, about as low down as we can get on the surface of the earth, we are still singing this love song. You are still singing it from last week, right?
When the dearly beloved was asked a week ago about listening to 38 years of my sermonizing she was quick to respond, "each sermon is new, and yet each sermon is the same." When further queried, the clarification was that each sermon was crafted for its setting, even when preached three times in a row on a Sunday morning, but that it always said the same thing, "We're beloved, now how are we going to transform the world."
Presuming there is more truth than not in such an affirmation, it is amazingly mysterious how many changes can be rung from such a beginning point. So, let's sing it again . . . .
Everywhere we are we still want to know who we are,
so we say we are beloved, very, very beloved.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
Last week we heard these “Beloved” words on a mountain top. Today we move back in time and lower in elevation to the entrance to the Dead Sea.
Wherever we are, it is holy ground. Wherever we are, we are beloved.
Simple concepts difficult to embody. We keep getting sidetracked by what feels like wilderness times. Every temptation is a variation on “how might I lose my sense of belovedness this time?”
Thank goodness Sundays were never a part of the penitential approach to spirituality. Even if our experience of life is six-sevenths penance, there is still a kernel of belovedness available to grow into the fruit of our life.
Remember on these Sundays that the goal of Lent is deeper discipleship, not restricted living.
“It is birth time. G*D is present in my life. Make a difference. Trust hope.” [New Revised John]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/02/mark-19-15.html