The First Sunday in Lent, 9 March 2014

“Entry”

The First Sunday in Lent

9 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Santa Clara, California

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7


Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19


St. Matthew 4:1-11

INI

Baptismal Entry

A few days ago, at my first meeting at Saint Mark’s with the search committee, your Senior Warden, Kim, graciously took me on a tour of the campus.  As we entered the parish hall, a group of women was doing something in the kitchen, when I heard, “Are you the new guy?”  A pause hovered in the air.  “I don’t know yet!” I quickly replied.  Well, I guess that I am the “new guy”, and together we will be beginning a journey not only into Lent but also into a sojourn, of some together, while I help you discern what it is that you want to be during this interim period, where it is that you would like to go, and with whom you would like to take the subsequent journey.  That will be some hard work, and it will take sufficient time for the Spirit to work within us as well.  So let us walk together.  Next Sunday, we will do some praying over this, to enable our common journey.

I asked the altar guild to put the Baptismal Font at the entry to the church.  Are we having a baptism?  No.  But it will serve as a useful touchstone for us as we try to remember what we are all about here.  This is good for our interim status, as we ground ourselves into our on-going status as God’s baptized and redeemed people, and it is good for our Lenten journey that ends at the Great Vigil of Easter where we will renew our baptismal vows and take on the baptismal reality.  So, when you greet the font, remember your forgiven and redeemed self, full of God’s goodness and grace.

What follows Baptism?

Jesus had an extraordinary baptism.  First he had to convince John the Baptism that he even needed to do it.  In Matthew it is a deeply interior experience that Jesus has.  The voice from the heavens is only known to him, and the dove that descends upon him is only seen by him.  How much easier it might have been had the crowd seen and understood these actions, but they are known only to Jesus.  In the center of his being, he has to confront the ministry that is now thrust upon him.  This deeply personal wrestling which Jesus does reminds me of a passage from Nikos Kazantzakis’ book The Last Temptation of Jesus.

“’Someone came last night in my sleep,’ he murmured under his breath, as though he feared the visitor were still there and might overhear him.  ‘Someone came.  Surely it was God, God…or was it the devil?  Who can tell them apart?  They exchange faces; God sometimes become all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle.”[2]

The muddle, as Kazantzakis calls it is discerning who is calling us to do what.  We live in a world of constant temptation.  Our culture is based on it.  Open a magazine or turn on your television and you will be tempted to consume all sorts of things.  This is a template for our life after baptism – what to do next, what to taken on, what to leave behind.

Jesus’ intentions, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, are to follow the example of Israel.  Thus, like Israel, he is driven into the wilderness.  Israel walked through the waters of the Red Sea (please get the baptismal inference), and then had all kinds of new realizations as they navigated the wilderness.  They grew hungry, they depended on God’s protection, and at the end, they inherited a new land.  These distinctions will become important for us as we struggle to understand the Jesus who is tempted in the wilderness by the Devil.  It is the devil, you see, who takes Jesus’ intentions and turns them into an invitation to turn away from God.  Israel was hungry, and Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread.  Israel was protected by God, and Jesus is tempted to do extreme things to test God’s desire to protect.  Israel was promised a land of “milk and honey” and Jesus is promised “all the kingdoms of the earth.” 

All of this Jesus puts aside, but in it he understands the human dilemma.  In a desire to “know good and evil”, both Adam and Eve test God’s intentions about the tree.  They soon learn both good and evil within their very own bodies.  It becomes a question of what to do next.  (A very similar question to our own situation here at St. Mark’s).

Enabling a Baptismal Life

I’d like to get back to that “new guy” idea.  Whoever it was that asked that of me was onto something really quite important.  In his explanation to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, Martin Luther has this to say in his Small Catechism,

What does such baptizing with water signify?

It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man or woman daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Saint Paul has a similar notion in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans:

“We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

There’s that new guy and gal thing again.  It is what we are called to be first and foremost.

As we discern together, and as we think about what God is calling this parish to both be and do, the foundation of baptism will serve us well.  It is that fountain from which so much understanding springs.  We need to begin with ourselves, and then look beyond to the other.  If we can have certainty about our own righteousness through Jesus, then we can have an equal certainty about what we might be called to do.  Psalm 32 says it well:

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; *

I will guide you with my eye.”

If we follow the logic of the psalm we will arrive at a status of blessedness, or put more accurately, a status of happiness.

So, while were here together, I promise to do some things for you.  I will always remind you of your baptismal status.  I will always feed you with the Eucharist.  I will always be about the business of forgiveness and grace.  I will listen to your story and I will share my own.  I will challenge and I will be challenged.  I will pray for you, as I hope you will pray for me.  Most importantly I will gather with you as a common family around Word and Sacraments as together we await the Spirit who wishes to breathe new life into us.

Life after baptism can be a hard business.  It is, however, never done alone.  It is done accompanied by the prayers of the saints and the faithful.  That will be our business together.  The new guy.  The new people.  A new life!

SDG