FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (2024)

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (2024)

Readings:

Genesis 9:8-15

Psalms 25:4-9

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:12-15

[When you hear the Gospel of Mark proclaimed today I can hear some great listeners saying, “I thought father said that Lent would interrupt our reading of the Gospel of Mark!”  What gets interrupted is the continuous reading, lectio continuum, of the gospel.  Indeed, today’s gospel is 50% a repeat of a gospel we heard proclaimed right after we finished the Christmas season.  When the themes of all three Synoptic gospels coalesce, the lectionary will show preference for Mark.  With the first Sunday of Lent always starting with an account of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the desert, and since this story was so important to the early church that there are three very different accounts in the Synoptic gospels, the lectionary takes us back in chapter one of Mark to the moment after Jesus’ baptism when the Spirit “drives” Jesus out into the desert.]

Noah is given the privilege of leading us into this season of Lent 2024.  The reading from Genesis recounts the very first covenant – a contract proclaiming, “I will be your God, you shall be my people” – that God makes with the Hebrew people.  The rainbow will be an immutable sign of God’s love, and ratification of that love will occur in the covenants made with Abraham and Moses.  These covenants will lead to the final and definitive covenant made by God’s Son, Jesus Christ, a covenant made with His blood shed for all people on the cross.  The flood of Noah is a baptism of sorts, which leads Noah and his family into a new relationship with God.  As the flood washes away the sins of a generation, and gives Noah and his family a chance to start anew, so too does baptism wash away the original sin of Adam, giving all on whose head the baptismal water flows the chance for new life, eternal life.  As our second reading from Peter says: baptism “is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him.”

While half of today’s four-sentence gospel was proclaimed only a short time ago, it is the first half that fulfills the lectionary’s custom of beginning Lent with an account of the devil tempting Jesus in the desert.  Mark’s version is the most succinct (and shortest) of the Synoptics, completed in one sentence, and providing few extraneous details (wild beasts and angels).  Conversations with the devil are omitted; it is enough for Mark to say that the temptation happened.  Why is it important to begin Lent with an account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert?  Because Jesus’ success is our success.  It injects hope into our efforts to tame the devils in our own lives, something we should be making every effort to do in this Lenten season that lies before us.  You will recall that Jesus’ first miracle in Mark is His healing the demoniac in the synagogue.  Part of knowing “the time of fulfillment” had come was recognizing Jesus’ power over the evil spirits.  When Jesus asks His listeners to “repent, and believe in the gospel,” their ability to do that is dependent on their faith in Jesus.

Lent is a penitential season that is meant to change our lives for the better.   It is an opportunity to excel in good deeds, to be more patient, more kind, more compassionate, more forgiving.  It is a time to recognize our connectedness to all people, not just the narrow family into which we have been born.  It is a chance to bring hope where there is so much hopelessness, to bring light where there is darkness, to bring happiness where there is so much despair and depression.  As kids Lent was just a contest of willpower, where we could deny ourselves something we liked, and if we were successful for the whole of Lent we considered ourselves rather successful.  But, how did that make us better people?  More importantly, how did it improve the lives of all brothers and sisters, especially the poor and the marginalized?

When Jesus cast out evil spirts, when He returned Peter’s mother-in-law to health, when He made the leper clean – the lives of those He touched were improved, were made whole.  Pray fervently that the lives of all those we touch in our day-to-day lives are made better.  There is a beautiful song at the end of the musical Wicked which sings, “because I knew you, my life has been changed for the better.”  May those who come in contact with us, feel the same way.