The Time is Now
Text: Mark 1:9-15
Today is a rather unique challenge. As part of our work with the Nurture Committee, we wanted to have an opportunity to have “family” worship services… to be a bit intentional of having everyone involved and present for the whole service. I remember when I was in Sunday school, my least favourite time of the worship service was the sermon. God has a wonderful sense of humour… I will do my best to keep this part interesting… but it will be a challenge. Why? Well… Today is also the first Sunday in Lent, which short of Good Friday is perhaps the gloomiest of all possible days in the church calendar year. Given that Presbyterians have a reputation of being a bit glum, in theory we should be right in our element… but I would hope otherwise. I’ll be honest, I think I have to practice in front of a mirror to get the right, dour expression. Maybe this is a good thing, but I can never hold it for very long without my face getting sore.
So… a bit of a history lesson first: The season of Lent was a practiced by the church as early as the second century. It became more formalized in the fourth century as the forty days leading up until Easter. Originally it was a time of thinking, where people who after years of learning were finally getting ready for their Baptism at Easter. They would spend time in quiet prayer, examining their relationship with God, and the meaning of taking this next step. Eventually all everybody in the church joined in, all Christians used this as a time of anticipation in advance of Holy Week. It was a shared time for people to reflect on what God gave up for us, what Jesus gave up for us. Often people give up something as a conscious reminder of the cross that Jesus carried… It’s certainly not required, but it can be helpful in developing one’s spirituality.
On this first Sunday in Lent, the story that we most often tell is the experience of Jesus in the wilderness. Following his baptism, Jesus disappears into the wilds for forty days. Mark’s storytelling is very simple; saying that during this time Satan tempts Jesus, that Jesus was with the wild beasts, and that angels waited upon him. Luke and Matthew’s versions are a bit more elaborate, visualizing the details of what that encounter must have been like. Mark, on the other hand, is very simple, and this period of time in the wilderness was a time for Jesus to prepare for what was to come.
Mark seems far less concerned about temptation as he is trying to sum up the message that Jesus proclaimed. The storytelling style moves Jesus through the wilderness quickly, bringing Jesus back to Galilee. Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days, Satan tempts him, he lives with the wild beasts, and angels wait upon him… Bang bang bang bang… It all happens in one sentence. Jesus goes out… and comes back… Mark is really not all that concerned about the details.
Upon his return in the story Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!” For Mark, this was the gospel summed up all in one place… it wasn’t so much that Jesus said this once, but it was the underlying theme of all he said and did. The trouble is, the English translation is a bit dry, and tends to take the edge and the enthusiasm off of it. A better translation might be Jesus says, “The time is now! Here is the kingdom of God! Change your ways, and live the good news!”
Mark spends very little time on the preparation that Jesus makes, pushing ahead to his ministry. Jesus says, “the time is now!” The time is now! Right now! a very active, very present kind of thing. Mark understood Jesus as proclaiming the kingdom of God being right in front of us, and all we had to do was open our eyes… it just requires a change of heart and one could live out the good news right now! This is an awfully joyful message for the first Sunday in Lent!
The trouble, of course, is that we’ve been well educated in self-denial. Confronting temptation is not a bad thing by any measure, and is part of our life as Christians. Yet we have become so focused on it that we tend to forget the rest of the story. Even the way we translate this passage into English tends to over-emphasize this sense of feeling sorry for ourselves so much that we miss the joy of Jesus’ message. The traditional word we have learned is “repent” –feeling so sorry about something that we’ve done that we are moved to make compensation. Yet it may seem strange on this first Sunday in Lent, but there is no sense of regret in what Jesus teaches… not in this passage. When Jesus says “the time is now! Here is the kingdom of God! Change your ways and live in the good news!” This is a radically different message than the doom-and-gloom than what we’ve come to expect. Doomsday preachers were and are a dime-a-dozen, but the message that Jesus proclaimed was fundamentally different. They would say, “the end is near!” but Jesus says “the time is now!”
In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus was all about seeing and experienced God in the present. The time is now, here is the kingdom of God, change your ways, and believe in the good news. For Mark, the most important thing for us is to open our eyes, to see God in our midst, and to live each day with that sense of hope. From the Gospel of Mark it does mean making a change in one’s life, but not so much by what we give up, or turn away from, but by doing something new. The time is now, here is the kingdom of God, change your ways, and live in the good news! Oddly enough that is what Lent is about, changing our ways… making something new out of our lives. It doesn’t need to be so serious or sad.
It may be interesting to note that there are forty days of Lent, but FIFTY of Easter. In the early church, the fifty days of Easter were far more important than the forty days of Lent. In fact, Lent was simply the time in which people were to get ready for the celebrations at Easter. If you’re going to have a fifty day party, you need quite a bit of time to plan for it!
In the same way that Advent is preparing for the gift of Christmas, Lent is preparing for the great celebrations of Easter. By nature, this season does remember the road the cross, we remember what Jesus gave up for us… but there something released here. Jesus already bears the cross for us, God already understands what it is to be human, and through the Holy Spirit, God continues to be in our midst, point us toward hope.
A few years ago, there was a film released that was set against the backdrop of the Lenten season. Set in a small, conservative French village in 1959, a young single mother and her daughter open up a chocolate shop across from the local church… right at the beginning of Lent. The film is called “Chocolat,” –perhaps you’ve seen it. One the characters is a young priest, Father Henri. While he doesn’t play a central role, he gets the best line in the film. For much of the story, the stodgy Mayor of the town writes this priest’s sermons. Henri delivers them nervously, and without a real sense of conviction. When circumstances change, I’ll let you see the movie as to how, he delivers his first sermon with these words:
I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do - by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include. –From Chocolat (2000)
When Jesus spent those forty days in the desert, he was preparing for a joyous message of God’s kingdom in our midst. So instead of this time being one of denial, make it a time of preparing for joy. As Jesus proclaimed, the time is now! There is no better time to be about the work of God’s kingdom! Live in this good news!
Amen.
Today is a rather unique challenge. As part of our work with the Nurture Committee, we wanted to have an opportunity to have “family” worship services… to be a bit intentional of having everyone involved and present for the whole service. I remember when I was in Sunday school, my least favourite time of the worship service was the sermon. God has a wonderful sense of humour… I will do my best to keep this part interesting… but it will be a challenge. Why? Well… Today is also the first Sunday in Lent, which short of Good Friday is perhaps the gloomiest of all possible days in the church calendar year. Given that Presbyterians have a reputation of being a bit glum, in theory we should be right in our element… but I would hope otherwise. I’ll be honest, I think I have to practice in front of a mirror to get the right, dour expression. Maybe this is a good thing, but I can never hold it for very long without my face getting sore.
So… a bit of a history lesson first: The season of Lent was a practiced by the church as early as the second century. It became more formalized in the fourth century as the forty days leading up until Easter. Originally it was a time of thinking, where people who after years of learning were finally getting ready for their Baptism at Easter. They would spend time in quiet prayer, examining their relationship with God, and the meaning of taking this next step. Eventually all everybody in the church joined in, all Christians used this as a time of anticipation in advance of Holy Week. It was a shared time for people to reflect on what God gave up for us, what Jesus gave up for us. Often people give up something as a conscious reminder of the cross that Jesus carried… It’s certainly not required, but it can be helpful in developing one’s spirituality.
On this first Sunday in Lent, the story that we most often tell is the experience of Jesus in the wilderness. Following his baptism, Jesus disappears into the wilds for forty days. Mark’s storytelling is very simple; saying that during this time Satan tempts Jesus, that Jesus was with the wild beasts, and that angels waited upon him. Luke and Matthew’s versions are a bit more elaborate, visualizing the details of what that encounter must have been like. Mark, on the other hand, is very simple, and this period of time in the wilderness was a time for Jesus to prepare for what was to come.
Mark seems far less concerned about temptation as he is trying to sum up the message that Jesus proclaimed. The storytelling style moves Jesus through the wilderness quickly, bringing Jesus back to Galilee. Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days, Satan tempts him, he lives with the wild beasts, and angels wait upon him… Bang bang bang bang… It all happens in one sentence. Jesus goes out… and comes back… Mark is really not all that concerned about the details.
Upon his return in the story Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!” For Mark, this was the gospel summed up all in one place… it wasn’t so much that Jesus said this once, but it was the underlying theme of all he said and did. The trouble is, the English translation is a bit dry, and tends to take the edge and the enthusiasm off of it. A better translation might be Jesus says, “The time is now! Here is the kingdom of God! Change your ways, and live the good news!”
Mark spends very little time on the preparation that Jesus makes, pushing ahead to his ministry. Jesus says, “the time is now!” The time is now! Right now! a very active, very present kind of thing. Mark understood Jesus as proclaiming the kingdom of God being right in front of us, and all we had to do was open our eyes… it just requires a change of heart and one could live out the good news right now! This is an awfully joyful message for the first Sunday in Lent!
The trouble, of course, is that we’ve been well educated in self-denial. Confronting temptation is not a bad thing by any measure, and is part of our life as Christians. Yet we have become so focused on it that we tend to forget the rest of the story. Even the way we translate this passage into English tends to over-emphasize this sense of feeling sorry for ourselves so much that we miss the joy of Jesus’ message. The traditional word we have learned is “repent” –feeling so sorry about something that we’ve done that we are moved to make compensation. Yet it may seem strange on this first Sunday in Lent, but there is no sense of regret in what Jesus teaches… not in this passage. When Jesus says “the time is now! Here is the kingdom of God! Change your ways and live in the good news!” This is a radically different message than the doom-and-gloom than what we’ve come to expect. Doomsday preachers were and are a dime-a-dozen, but the message that Jesus proclaimed was fundamentally different. They would say, “the end is near!” but Jesus says “the time is now!”
In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus was all about seeing and experienced God in the present. The time is now, here is the kingdom of God, change your ways, and believe in the good news. For Mark, the most important thing for us is to open our eyes, to see God in our midst, and to live each day with that sense of hope. From the Gospel of Mark it does mean making a change in one’s life, but not so much by what we give up, or turn away from, but by doing something new. The time is now, here is the kingdom of God, change your ways, and live in the good news! Oddly enough that is what Lent is about, changing our ways… making something new out of our lives. It doesn’t need to be so serious or sad.
It may be interesting to note that there are forty days of Lent, but FIFTY of Easter. In the early church, the fifty days of Easter were far more important than the forty days of Lent. In fact, Lent was simply the time in which people were to get ready for the celebrations at Easter. If you’re going to have a fifty day party, you need quite a bit of time to plan for it!
In the same way that Advent is preparing for the gift of Christmas, Lent is preparing for the great celebrations of Easter. By nature, this season does remember the road the cross, we remember what Jesus gave up for us… but there something released here. Jesus already bears the cross for us, God already understands what it is to be human, and through the Holy Spirit, God continues to be in our midst, point us toward hope.
A few years ago, there was a film released that was set against the backdrop of the Lenten season. Set in a small, conservative French village in 1959, a young single mother and her daughter open up a chocolate shop across from the local church… right at the beginning of Lent. The film is called “Chocolat,” –perhaps you’ve seen it. One the characters is a young priest, Father Henri. While he doesn’t play a central role, he gets the best line in the film. For much of the story, the stodgy Mayor of the town writes this priest’s sermons. Henri delivers them nervously, and without a real sense of conviction. When circumstances change, I’ll let you see the movie as to how, he delivers his first sermon with these words:
I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do - by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include. –From Chocolat (2000)
When Jesus spent those forty days in the desert, he was preparing for a joyous message of God’s kingdom in our midst. So instead of this time being one of denial, make it a time of preparing for joy. As Jesus proclaimed, the time is now! There is no better time to be about the work of God’s kingdom! Live in this good news!
Amen.
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