“WILD”

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Give us, we pray, O God, thoughts higher than our own thoughts, prayers better than our own prayers, powers beyond our biological possibilities, that we may spend and be spent in the preaching and hearing of Thy Word. Amen.

Open your ears and your hearts to hear The Word of the Lord. Mark 1.9-15.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And 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. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” ¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

  ¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good newsⁱ of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

Mark’s wilderness story. The years that the lectionary provides Mark as the gospel of choice for the first Sunday of lent is always a frustrating one for pastors, especially this pastor. There is so little there.

I have this book, it is called A Harmony of the Gospels by Ralph Heim. You can see how little Mark covers. Matthew and Luke go a page plus each. Mark is two verses. The only thing Mark covers that the others don’t which is an oddity for Mark, is wild beasts. In Matthew, as well as Luke, Jesus is in the wilderness, the only other mentioned being is the tempter. But in Mark, who gives only sentences when his counter parts give pages, places wild beasts and angels with Jesus.

Are the beasts simple background figures? Did Mark know the place and include the detail because everyone knew that wild beasts were rampant there? That’s all you give us Mark? You can see why Pastors lament having to preach Lent 1, Year B.

Perhaps the beasts can sound echoes of Advent for us, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” That is Isaiah 11.6, regularly part of Advent reading. And I think that is just the tip of the iceberg as a means of prophetic fulfillment.

With the Chronicles of Narnia at a pinnacle in its popularity, the movie out last Advent, and the books regaining popularity because of the movie, this is what I am reminded of when we read about lions and lambs. True transformation is unpredictable. Azlan is not a tame lion. Our journey with God can be hazardous, and, well, wild. At times, even bizarre.

Mark writes that the wild beasts are more than just scenery, Jesus is “with them.” What is the significance of being with wild beasts?

After the tsunami in Asia at the end of 2004, many news outlets reported anecdotal evidence that animals sensed the impending disaster before it happened. National Geographic reported that elephants ran for higher ground, dogs and zoo animals covered indoors, and certain birds fled from their low-lying breeding areas. Very few animals were found to have died, apparently tipped off by a “sixth sense” of trouble on the way.¹ Perhaps Jesus’ wilderness pilgrimage represented a spiritual shift – the line between heaven and earth had been crossed, a controversial and world-altering public ministry was soon to begin, and then the veil between heaven and earth would be torn apart. Heaven was about to break loose. Wouldn’t Jesus do well to be in tune with the wisdom of the wilderness, even its wilder aspects?

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as a pastor looking to forge connections that may be faint at best. But in two weeks, we will be in the Gospel of John, and witness a stunning turn of events. Then it will be Jesus himself who is wild, cracking a homemade whip, flipping tables onto their backs, dumping stacks of coins onto the temple floor, and freeing the animals held there captive. Those animals are docile animals, sheep, cattle, and doves, the antithesis to a fierce, unhinged Jesus. Perhaps his wilderness experience might have helped shape him for this intense prophetic display. And let us not forget the end of this wild journey; the Garden of Gethsemene and the hill of Golgatha. Neither of them are tame or bland experiences, not by any means. This journey will be wild from beginning, to middle, to end, and even beyond the end.

We sometimes sing hymn 298, There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. But I think there is also a wildness in God’s mercy, a wildness akin to wild beasts, that cannot be domesticated.

The passage in Mark moves on to Jesus’ baptism. Jesus is about to start this wild journey, and he goes to the Jordan, and hears a wonderful affirmation before his journey.

I like to wrestle with my daughters. And in fact, it is one of Kayla’s favorite games. She calls it wrestling, I call it rasslin. In a day and age where there is so much inappropriate touching we hear about in the news, or perhaps know someone who has experienced abuse of some kind, and knowing that the reports say that 25% of women have personally dealt with physical abuse, and another 25% have personally dealt with rape, I think that it is important for me to show my girls that touch can be a good, appropriate, loving thing. Touch doesn’t always have to carry harm, and it is important to me that they know the difference between appropriate and playful touch, and inappropriate touch. One day, they will be 16, and it is important to me that they know what appropriate touch is.

Anyway, it is one of my favorite games too, since Kayla and Murphy both get really big smiles when we do it. Murphy has the most deadly move. See, what she likes to do is stand over my head. She’ll see me on the floor, get this big smile, and wobble on over, and stand over my head. This in and of itself is not a deadly move. But if a diaper is dirty, it is a show stopper.

In our wrestling, the way you win is that you get someone down, and then give them three kisses. After this, you get a hug, and an “I love you” from the winner to the, well, I can’t bring myself to say loser in this scenario. It’s the closest thing that I can come to describing what was going on at Jesus’ baptism. Verse 11, “Then there came a voice, out of the heavens: “You are my wonderful son, you make me very glad.”²

And then Jesus heads off and starts. He calls some disciples, and the journey is started. He ministers, he heals, he acts as a prophet, he turns over tables and lives, he gets captured and beaten, he dies, he rises, he lives again. Does that sound like a nice Sunday drive to you?

We too are on the familiar journey of Lent. It is, as we know from our past experiences, a wild journey, following an undomesticated God. We start immediately with a message from God, saying that we are beloved children of God, and that we have made God glad. We experience that message not in Baptism today, as did Jesus, but in the other sacrament, the Lord’s Supper. Here we experience God saying “I love you, you are my wonderful child, you make me very glad.”

As we experience the wild journey of lent, let us be resolved, as Jesus was, to follow through to the end. It will be a difficult path, perhaps, but we will find comfort and strength in the fact that we are God’s wonderful children. Amen.