2/18/24 Lent 1 Sermon

Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

I told you last week that I’m quickly approaching 2 years here and have been reflecting on that.  In fact, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday was my first Sunday in this pulpit as your pastor. But two years ago, that was a little later in the year than it was this year.  I think next week is technically 2 years.  I feel like coming here was a culmination of decisions I made.  When I look at it, the choices that led me here were all mine. But when I reflect back, I can’t help but think that God was guiding me on this journey and guiding me here.  I mean it really has been a journey to get to where we are today.  Maybe its good to stop and pause and think of our journeys throughout life from time to time in order to see where God has led us and where God may be leading us.  After all, we often refer to this season as the journey of Lent…

The funny thing is that all of us got here through some kind of journey.  We’ve all been through things that have led us here to this moment where we now move into this Lenten journey together.  Sometimes the journey that’s led us here has been a hard journey.  Sometimes it’s been easier than other times. And If you’re at all like me, sometimes you may wonder how the journey has even led here.  There are days I wake up and start my day totally confused as to how this ended up being my life.  And I can think back to friends I’ve known who didn’t make it.  Friends who didn’t even get to live this long due to violence or drug abuse or illness or accident.  Sometimes this journey comes with survivors guilt.

Others I’ve known are still doing the same things we did as teenagers or just couldn’t get their act together.  Sometimes they were told they wouldn’t amount to anything and they believed it.  Other friends I have never were really given the chance or opportunity to even have life be a journey and they’ve stayed in the same place doing the same things. What about them?

What about those of us who wake up finding our lives not being something that we would want or choose?  What if the journey we seem to be on is almost too much to bare?  Did God make or choose us for this?  What if the path we’re on seems to have gone horribly wrong and we don’t like who we are or where we’re heading?  I mean, wouldn’t the statement that God guides our journey seem vindictive to those of us in that situation? I bet it would…

We could say that God gave us free will and it’s just that we’ve chosen to ignore what God is trying to form us into or that we’ve chosen our own paths, but sometimes life seems so far out of our control or out of our choosing that it doesn’t really seem fair to make that assessment. Yes, there are times when we make truly horrible and dangerous decisions.  Yes, I can point to my own life and to the lives of many of my friends where our decisions came with terrible consequences and we had no one to blame but ourselves.  But that isn’t always the case.  I’ve known people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and I don’t believe that our choices can control when illness strikes or what happens when it does. As I think about how lucky I am, and how happy I am on the road I’m on.  But I know that there are many people who don’t feel the same way about their journeys with good reason.

For me, it’s a wilderness experience thinking about things like this.  I get lost sometimes wondering about the role God truly does play in life because I truly do believe that God plays an active role in the world.  Oh sure, it’s never the one I’d like God to play.  God doesn’t intervene how I’d want God to intervene and God doesn’t always fix what I think God should fix. The world always seems to be broken to me and I wonder why God doesn’t just fix it.  But it DOES seem that one of the prominent messages when we read the Gospels and the Bible in general is that the world is broken.  For some reason, Brokenness is a part of life. It’s an important part of life.  And for me, I can find myself out in the wilderness wondering what to do about that brokenness.  Because I myself, am still broken.

And When I see all the brokenness in this world and I realize that I too am broken, it drives me out into the wilderness wondering what to do about it all.  If there’s anything TO do about it or if anything can be done.  And I do, I really wonder what to think about God in the midst of all the brokenness of this world. I don’t think I have to stand up here today and give you examples of the ways in which the world is broken.  Many atheists will give you sound ways the world is broken and tell you that only a vindictive God would allow this to happen.  And they’ll ask us, if that’s God why believe in a God like that?

In Mark’s Gospel, this is the first time we meet Jesus.  He appears out of nowhere, gets baptized and begins his ministry.  People ask me from time to time where was Jesus and what was he doing before this.  And the honest answer is we don’t know.  I certainly don’t know.  And I don’t know how theologically sound this is, but I’d like to think he was living life.  He was experiencing what it was like to be human.  He was struggling. I don’t know, maybe some things in his life were out of control.  Maybe he even sinned.  Maybe he was even broken like us.

Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus is tempted with in the Wilderness either.  The other gospels do, but Mark doesn’t.  And no one tells us why really.  Why Jesus went out there. Or why he was tempted.  But I’d like to think maybe it’s because Jesus struggled with the same things we do.  After all, he was human.  He was fully divine, but we also believe he was fully human.  And maybe he just didn’t know what God was shaping him to be yet.  Maybe at the moment of baptism when God told him who he was, Jesus was driven out there wondering why he would be so blessed in a world where everything around him was so broken.  And when we read the other accounts, we could understand the temptations that Satan offers him, as ways to fix that brokenness.  After all, they WERE temptations. They would have been things he really wanted. Cupcakes tempt me to break my diet but liver and onions don’t.  But that’s because I WANT cupcakes.

And maybe Jesus realized something out there.  Maybe Jesus realized that there’s nothing in this world to fix the brokenness of the world and nothing Satan could tempt him with could really accomplish what Jesus truly wanted to do.  Maybe Jesus realized out there that The only way to fix the brokenness of this world.  The only way to fix my brokenness and your brokenness, the only way to straighten the path on this journey, is for Him to become truly broken for us.  And then once that was done, to rise again made completely whole and a new creation.  Maybe why the wilderness is so important is that out there Jesus discovered that maybe you fix brokenness by being broken - and then taking those pieces and using them to make the world whole.

I don’t know.  Sometimes I think what Lent allows me to do is to remember.  I remember how broken I’ve been and how broken I still am.  But also to remember that even in my brokenness, God is asking me to let my heart be worked on and molded and formed into more of God’s heart.  To let my life reflect just a little bit closer the life of Christ.  To remember that the brokenness and the lostness isn’t where I have to be left.  That despite tragedy and loss and heartache, I can be defined by and guided by something different.  To remember that It isn’t up to me or you to fix what is broken and maybe some things are broken for a reason. Maybe the suffering we all experience, maybe the scary parts of the journey all have their reasons.  After all, the journey we’re on leads to Good Friday and the Crucifixion, but it doesn’t end there.  It doesn’t even begin there.  Because after everything seems broken and lost and the darkness has won, the Sun rises and Easter comes and a new creation and a new life begins.

And so here we are on this journey.  Here we are together.  Here we are gathered as a broken people in a broken world thinking about a man who was broken on a cross and we have the audacity to think that somehow among all this brokenness that God is using it to make the world whole again, but THATS. EXACTLY. WHAT. GOD. IS. DOING!

Maybe what Lent is asking us to do, maybe what journeying out into the wilderness is all about is remembering the hope given to us so long ago that the world doesn’t end in brokenness.  That it might be broken now, but Easter is coming.  We might feel lost now, but Easter is coming.  We might want to give up now, but the Miracle is just about to happen.  That somehow even though we’re both broken, together we’re made whole.  Somehow God remains in our brokenness.  Somehow God walks the wilderness with us.  Somehow the world will one day be better if we stay together and walk this journey together.  Somehow this too shall pass and we will be made new creations.  That our broken Lord rises again made whole.  And we too, with him will be made whole as well.  We just aren’t there yet and the trials we face today are a part of God forming us to be right where we need to be in order to help someone else in their brokenness too.

So this Lent, may you look at your own brokenness knowing you ARE. BEING. MADE. WHOLE.

May you not give up five minutes before the miracle.

May you rely on our Broken Lord who emerges holy and whole because somehow and in some way God is taking all of these broken parts and broken people and is using them to make the world whole.