As we approached Lent this year, I was unsurprisingly thinking about repentance. Repentance is the act of turning around, a significant theme during the season of Lent. As I thought about this theme this year, I found myself singing the song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. The song repeats the phrase "turn around" over and over again. And then the singer talks about feelings that oddly seem to fit our experience of both Lent and life in general.
I was surprised as I continued to sing this song in my head to note how well the song fits with our scripture lessons for Lent this year. Today, we return to Jesus' baptism as told by Mark, continuing through the next few verses to consider Jesus' time in the wilderness to prepare for ministry as well as the words with which that ministry started (Mark 1:9-15). As I considered the words that Jesus spoke at the start of his ministry, I wondered about the good news that he was bringing and how people might feel about the inbreaking kingdom of God.
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Some of you may have noticed that this is the second time we have read some portion of these words in the last few weeks. As I noted before, Mark packs quite a bit into relatively small spaces. So we return again to the scene of Jesus’ baptism which we heard at the beginning of January.
Even if we had not read it so recently, I am sure this passage is familiar to most of us. We have here the story of Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan River. As he comes up from the water, the heavens are split open, and a voice from heaven claims Jesus with similar words to those we heard again last week on the mountaintop. “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness” (Mark 1:11, CEB).
The wording is slightly different from what we heard last week, but obviously related. The words at Jesus’ baptism are directed at Jesus himself, claiming him as the Son of God. You may recall on the mountaintop that the words were directed outward to the disciples, reminding them that Jesus is the Son of God.
Immediately following this voice from heaven, our text tells us that the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness. In fact, our translation today begins the very next sentence with the words, “at once,” to make it clear that there is no time between the two events. Jesus is baptized and then immediately begins his forty days in the wilderness.
One of the things I find interesting here, however, is that this particular text does not directly mention fasting. It says instead that Jesus is tempted and that the angels took care of him. The idea that Jesus spent that time fasting comes from Matthew and Luke. Given the connection that we make between the forty days of Lent and the forty days that Jesus spends in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, it is interesting that we in the Church tend to focus on fasting as a key part of Lent, though the earliest of the gospels does not record that this is what Jesus did.
Sometime after his time in the wilderness, Jesus comes into Galilee announcing the good news of God’s kingdom: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” (Mark 1:15, CEB) While this announcement does follow immediately after his time in the wilderness here in our gospel reading, the text says that this took place after John was arrested. This is an undisclosed amount of time, but the gospel writer apparently does not feel like anything else important occurs between the two events.
On the one hand, this can be a touch of good news for us. While we often think that Jesus was baptized, fasted for forty days, and then began his ministry in earnest, this may not actually be the case. Perhaps those of us that feel like we should be better Christians already, that we should see an immediate change as soon as we are baptized or as soon as we commit ourselves to following Christ, can take some comfort in the possibility that Jesus did not immediately take on an active ministry. Maybe this allows us some room to not only be a little more graceful with ourselves, but with others as well.
On the other hand, there is an immediacy to Jesus’ announcements. Here Jesus feels like the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures making pronouncements about the kingdom of God. In fact, I had flashbacks to Jonah making his way through Nineveh as I read these words. The one big difference here is that while Jonah spoke judgement, Jesus considers the coming of God’s kingdom to be good news.
Even so, I imagine Jesus’ words filled some with anxiety rather than joy. Jesus tells us that the kingdom is now, not in some far off future. Jesus suggests that the kingdom comes into being through hearts and lives changed in ways that make God’s kingdom present here and now.
So why should this fill us with anxiety or nervousness? Most of us aren’t bad people. We are kind to others. We give when we can to those ministries and organizations that are important to us and that do work that we feel needs doing. We do our best to live lives worthy of the name “Christian.”
At the same time, most of us are comfortable. We don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want anything to upset the delicate balance we have built up around ourselves. So when we hear Jesus coming into our world announcing that not only is change coming, but it is coming now, it is understandable that this might fill us with a certain amount of anxiety. What will this change mean for us? How will our lives look different? What will we have to give up?
The recent Disney/Pixar film, Inside Out, helps us consider the ways in which we attempt to deal with change. In the story, a girl and her family move from Minnesota to San Francisco. The girl, Riley, has to leave behind everyone and everything she has ever known.
The film gives us a look inside Riley’s head to experience what she is going through in a different way. We glimpse the five emotions that the story suggests we all carry inside of us -- Happiness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness. These emotions together help Riley navigate the world and the core memories that make up her personality. Because her earliest core memories are all happy ones and all of these core memories were made in Minnesota, Riley has a hard time adjusting to life in a new place. Happiness, who thinks that she is meant to be in control because she was the first emotion that Riley experienced, sees her job as making sure Riley is always happy and that all her core memories are happy ones as well. With the stress of the move, Happiness no longer knows what to do.
Over time, the emotions learn that they do in fact have to work together. While change can be daunting, they can manage the experience and the feelings together. You can be happy and sad at the same time. You can be angry and disgusted at the same time. Few things in life are simply one thing or another.
Looking at our own lives, we know that change is not always easy for us. At the same time, to live is to change. Still, we like the comfort of the things that we know. The unknown can fill us with anxiety.
Into our lives, Jesus comes saying, “Now is the time!” The good news of God’s kingdom coming in the present may not always feel like good news. It can fill us with anxiety, nervousness, and fear. Like Jonah, we may want to run from what is to come. Like Peter, we might feel the need to deny it when things get too intense. Like Jesus, we may need some time alone to build ourselves up and prepare for what the kingdom of God will mean for us.
But however we react, we can know that God wants to be with us and in relationship with us. We can know that we can always look to the life of Jesus to see what our life and ministry can look like. We can know that God’s grace is ever available to us. For God has claimed us as surely as the voice from heaven claimed Jesus.
Change doesn’t have to be scary. We are all here because God claimed us and pointed us down a path that might be different than the one we would have chosen for ourselves. With Jesus, we too announce the kingdom of God. Sometimes we announce it with words, but more often we show it with our actions.
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For our closing hymn today, I chose a hymn that touches on the themes of baptism and change and following the path God has set before us. This hymn speaks to all that we receive through our participation in the important sacrament of baptism, including the changes that may come into our lives as a result.