WHEN JESUS WAS BAPTIZED - Mark 1:9-15
Richard W. Reifsnyder
1st Presbyterian Church
Winchester, VA
February 22, 2015 – 1st Sunday in Lent
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the
wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and
the angels waited on him
Mark 1:12-13
The origin of Lent is as a season of preparation for baptism, which was always held in the early
church on Easter. So it is fitting that the reading for the 1st Sunday in Lent is that of Jesus’ baptism.
The account in Mark’s gospel is tight, compressed, focused, full of energy, as is characteristic of
the gospel. Everything happens in these few verses with an intense breathlessness. The baptism itself,
pictured so serenely in Piero Della Francesca’s painting, is described in the Bible in almost ferocious
language. As Jesus came up from the water, the heavens were ripped apart and the Spirit came crashing
down on him. He’s barely able to hear the words, “you are my beloved son, with whom I am well
pleased” before the Spirit, no sweet dove here, shoves, him, forces him, drive him out into the wilderness
to wrestle with Satan and the wild beasts.
Before he announces the kingdom, Jesus must confront the worst life has to offer and prevail.
The other gospel writers go into some detail of the nature of the temptations, but here we only
know Jesus confronted the wild beasts.
Most of you know Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. It’s the
story of a boy who in the dark of night is confronted by the scariest, ugliest, wildest creatures than can be
imagined. He eventually confronts the beasts, which turn out to be not a ghost but a bathrobe hanging on
the door, not a beast ready to pounce, but an easy chair in the corner. You can understand why children
love this story, because it addresses what are real issues, real fears. Most of us grow out of fear of the
dark, but it got me wondering whether it isn’t true that there are genuine wild beasts in our lives that
tempt and threaten us.
Could this be what Mark is addressing? Is he pointing to those temptations, those wild beasts,
those demons in our lives, which we dare minimize or dismiss only at our great peril? There is a dark
side to life, there is chaotic evil which bubbles up to confront us, there are forces arrayed against
civilization and opposed to what is good in humanity. Could it be that Mark is suggesting we serve a God
who wants to deal with us in our most troublesome places, who wants to confront the wounds, the fears,
the sins? Could it be the gospel today reminds us that Jesus has come, not only to be our friend, our
comforter, our guide, but also to be our comrade in arms in those situations when we stand face to face
and must go toe to toe with the wild beasts in our lives?
1
Maren beautifully reminded us in her Ash Wednesday sermon that Christianity is at its core a
rescue religion, and that it is not someone else who needs rescuing, not someone else who needs a heart
transformed, not someone else who needs repenting. It is you and me.
Part of the temptation we experience wanting to think that it is always someone else that is the
problem, that needs Jesus’message. I remember being disturbed to hear that the library of the divinity
school I attended had the highest rate of theft of any of the university graduate schools. (borrowing
without signing out in the days before library security lockdowns!). What? Are you kidding? These are
seminarians, training to be leaders, exemplars of the faith. Asked for an explanation, “how could this be?”
the librarian responded ruefully, “Grace. That’s my explanation, too much grace. These students
probably figure all has been forgiven ahead of time, so go ahead and take what you want. It’s not me that
must follow the rules”
That’s the temptation of relying on cheap grace, a God who is all loving who exists to meet our
needs and always in comforting rather than having expectations which might require our repentance and
transformation.
In the classic movie Charade Audrey Hepburn asks Cary Grant, “why do people lie?’ “People
lie,” he says, “because they want something and fear the truth will not get it for them.” If the movie were
about a preacher, he might have said, “People lie because they want something and fear goodness will not
get it for them.”
C.S. Lewis was once asked why in his works he often focus on the importance of resisting little
sins, “jealousies, gossip, making judgments based on appearance, refusing to give someone different than
you a place at the table.” Aren’t they trivial in comparison with the big ones—adultery and sexual
misconduct, hatred, lack of forgiveness, a selfish spirit, bigotry, injustice, violence.” In The Screwtape
Letters he offered an explanation: “It does not matter how small the sins are, provided their cumulative
effect is to edge the man (a person) away from the Light and into the Nothing…the safest road to hell is
the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without
signposts.” We are reminded as early as the story of Cain in Genesis that “sin is always lurking at the
door” (Gen 4:7)
The wild beasts in our soul may be gradual turnings away that we hardly recognize as sin, but
which may require our repentance and rescue nevertheless. Someone with whom I had a conversation
last week about all the fascination with Fifty Shades of Grey, sent me a post from a blogger—a mother of
two daughters and a son--- who was raising the question why many were seeing this film simply as a
harmless diversion, while she was thinking it ought to be an occasion to warn her children about the
dangers of any sexual practice which seemed more controlling than the liberating.
2
It is significant that Jesus’ baptism precedes his wrestling with the wild beasts in the wilderness, a
reminder that no resistance to temptation is successful apart from the presence of God. The argument is
not that we have the power to defend and deflect temptation. Nor that we are capable of taking on Satan.
We say something important every time we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “And lead us not into temptation.”
We’re not very good at resisting. I remember when we were teaching our boys to pray, one of them—
about 6 years of age at the time-- would always get to that line and say with some glee, “O I love that
temptation part.”
Lent is not one big push to do what we cannot do by our own effort. The point is Jesus goes into
the wilderness, bolstered by and confident of the presence of God. He comes not with self-help strategies,
techniques for passing the tests, fighting skills, but with the confidence provided by his baptism, that he
was not on his own. Luther, you’ll recall, whenever he felt his faith falter and temptation test him, always
returned to that core conviction, “I am baptized.” The greatest temptation suggested by this passage is
the temptation to think that we are on our own, that God is absent, has withdrawn, and thus we must live
faithfully in our own strength.
Next week marks the 150th anniversary of what many consider the most important
political/religious speech in American history---Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural (March 4, 1865). It was his effort
to make sense of God’s providential activity in the midst of the unspeakable destruction of war. Lincoln
suggests the possibility that the carnage might not be disconnected from God’s desire to rid the nation of
the sin of slavery, a sin which he is clear the whole nation is complicit and not just the south. With
unparalleled eloquence he admits that if the war continue until “all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two
hundred fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash,
shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.”
Lincoln felt it was his best speech, and would stand the test of time, even though he realized it
would not be immediately popular. After all, he acknowledged, “People (men) are not flattered by being
shown there is a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, is to deny
there is a God governing the world.”
We come to this season of Lent and to this table today, in confidence there is a God who governs
the world, who calls us to accountability, and who promises to be a very present help as we confront the
wild beasts in our world and in ourselves.
THANKS BE TO GOD WHO GIVES US THE VICTORY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST!
3