Sermon: 1st Sunday in Lent
21 February 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
Genesis 9-8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; and Mark 1:9-15; NRSV
Welcome to this first Sunday in Lent! While Sundays are not traditionally part of the Lenten journey,[1] they do act as touchstones on our pilgrimage from Ash Wednesday through to Easter. Today’s touchstone are the words from Mark’s Gospel, “… repent, and believe in the good news.”[2] You will doubtless recognise these words from the Ash Wednesday service, intoned as a cross of ashes is imposed on our foreheads. They give intention to the Lenten journey, a broad focus to our pilgrimage. Most of us will have taken this Lenten journey many times over the course of our lives, and it may be tempting to think that we have done the work. However, while the victory over death and sin may have been won through the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, we know that embracing the reality of this gift is a daily endeavour. The touchstone of repentance and belief requires that we engage afresh with the challenges of our times and the vagaries of our lives.
In my sermon last week I suggested our image of Jesus – his life, purpose, calling, and ministry – needs to be transfigured for our times in order that our lives and our world may be truly and substantively transformed and renewed, thus enabling us to wholly embrace the fullness of life Jesus came to awaken us to. It is within this context that we need to reflect on the call to “… repent, and believe in the good news … ,”[3] a call that is preceded by Jesus affirmation that the “[t]he time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near … .”[4] It is for God’s people in every age to make this good news a reality, and no less our responsibility in 2021.
Our 2021 Lenten journey began on Wednesday with Jesus injunction in Matthew’s Gospel that in order to give life to this good news the ongoing commitment of people of faith to alms giving, prayer, and fasting are to be practised in apparent secret. A public show of religiousity will not bring about the transformation our world so desperately needs, but the deepening spirituality developed within a more personal space of God-focused relationship has every opportunity of success. Religiosity too often is motivated by our desire for public affirmation, and while claiming to be for God’s glory it rarely is. On Ash Wednesday we were called to a fresh commitment to God-focused lives where God’s awareness of our devotion to giving, prayer, and fasting is sufficient affirmation.
Today’s touchstone moves us out of the personal focus of Ash Wednesday into the collective action of Lent. The words repent and believe are plural verbs in this passage,[5] and therefore indicate a community, rather than individual, response. Our image of community also needs transfiguration: today’s reading from Genesis is very clear in stating the community God is in relationship with is “… me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations … .”[6] Too often we limit community to our faith community, our Christian denomination[7], or to Christianity itself; if we’re brave we may include other religions. Here in Genesis God is clear: it’s is every living creature; it is all future generations. God is in relationship with Creation as a whole, not just humanity, and not just one grouping of humanity, but all human beings. In this very broad context what does it mean to repent and believe?
It may be helpful here to consider why Jesus joined the throngs being baptised by John? Osvaldo Vena[8] shares the helpful insight that “… people coming to be baptized were simply expressing their readiness for the promised kingdom of God. Their repentance and confession pertain to social sins, not innate, personal ones, for which they had a recourse through the Temple rites. [Their baptism] was an admission that they had somehow participated in a system of oppression and that now they were ready to change in preparation for God’s reign.”[9] The baptism John offered “… was a visible sign of that attitude [and thus] … it was natural for Jesus to identify with this popular movement and do the same.”[10]
This insight into the early verses of Mark 1, which we’ve already visited twice before this year,[11] is perhaps a disquieting one as it asks us to reflect on the oppressive systems of our time, and acknowledge our participation in those systems, and further act to redress the destructive nature and deep pain these systems have placed on ourselves and others. It asks us to take collective responsibility for the problematic spiritual, social, ecological, economic, and political problems of our time, and make a personal commitment to participating collectively in bringing the good news that, “[t]he time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near … ”[12] in practical and purposeful action. We are all more than aware of the social fault lines that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, both in our own Nation and globally: do we as people of faith have the courage to act, to renew our commitment to becoming every more fully God’s transformative agents in this Creation that God so loves?
Let us pray,
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