First Sunday in Lent
READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
- First reading
- Genesis 9:8-17
- Psalm
- Psalm 25:1-10
- Second reading
- 1 Peter 3:18-22
- Gospel
- Mark 1:9-15
Ivan Kramskoi,* ca. 1872
diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu
The Gospel Reading from Mark
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.”
Sermon
Pastor Stevenson looks for relationships to connect the readings in the lectionary each Sunday. The Bible is a long story. Mark in a succinct way makes a connection. There is another. The key is in the readings in 1 Peter and Mark. In Genesis, God saves Noah from the flood. The question then arises: When things have since gone wrong, why did He not again just crush everything and make a fresh start? Is it that God establishes His Creation, promises to save it, and to do that, works from the inside out. In Mark, God is working against the world. Succinctly, Jesus is baptized by John, tempted by Satan, proclaimed the Messiah and rejected by the Hebrews. God has sustained His Creation, promised to keep the world going, entered Himself into it as His own Son, and continued to a climax in the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Luther wrote that we do not know why things are, just how things are. God is at work in the world and continues in the form of the Holy Spirit to keep our faith at the beginning of this Lenten season.
*Note: Ivan Kramskoi was a Russian artist who focused on portraying the complex humanity of his subjects. The poet and cultural critic, Rainer Maria Rilke, was profoundly affected upon seeing Kramskoi’s painting of Christ in the Wilderness. “The painting portrayed a lonely Jesus sitting on a stone in a desert, lost in melancholy meditation.[from: Rilke’s Russia: A Cultural Encounter, Anna A. Tavis. Northwestern University Press, 1997. p. 77.