Mark 1:12 - 15
I was the oldest child of parents who themselves had been children during the Great Depression. My parents were hard-hit by having seen their own parents losing homes and property and even jobs. My mother often told the story of how just before the wheat harvest on her parent’s dryland farm, a hailstorm knocked down all the wheat so that it couldn’t be harvested. She remembers her father locking himself in his work shed, and her mother telling the children to go gather hailstones so that they could make ice cream. It takes a lot of perspective to find the good in a situation like that.
Anyway, against this background I think I became an overachiever. I never wanted to be second, and if I knew I couldn’t be in first place, I didn’t want anything to do with it. That went for sports, where I was much less coordinated than the star players. It went for hunting and fishing, because I knew I’d never surpass my dad and grandfather in those skills, nor did I want to. But in Boy Scouts, that was another story. I rose quickly through the ranks, and ultimately became an eagle scout. There was an organization that was part of scouting called “The Order of the Arrow” which was kind of secretive, and unlike the regular ranks, which you achieved by getting merit badges and fulfilled requirements, the Order required an invitation. So we sat around the campfire as the members of the order walked around behind us and picked a few of us to be inducted into the secret society. And I wasn’t picked. That hurts, even to this day. And that brings me to three lies we tell ourselves:
I am what I have. I don’t feel complete until I get something I want, and that doesn’t last long.
I am what I do. And that’s me. I define myself by what I become, by what I accomplish.
I am what others think about me. And I think we all know people like that; and some of us are people like that.
Just before today’s gospel from Mark, Jesus learns who he really is -- ‘’ God’s beloved Son”. Jesus, who up to this point has lived a pretty ordinary life, and has really done nothing noteworthy, is made to know his true self.
At the first Eucharist “Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples….” Henri Nouen, who wrote the book “The Beloved Disciple” about his own experiences as a priest and a counselor, says that we all are taken (we become sons and daughters of the Father) blessed (we are declared beloved by the father) broken (we are tempted and put through all kinds of testing during our lives) and given (we are called to share in the good news with others that they are beloved sons and daughters). And we see this happening in this first part of Mark's gospel.
Jesus is taken - taken out of his ordinary life. He is blessed -- the Father himself calls him “beloved son”. He is broken - He is driven into the wilderness where he will be tempted -- but angels will minister to him; there are always angels when we are tempted. And he is given, because he takes up the mantle of John the Baptist and begins to spread the good news and call for repentance.
And as we know, Jesus meets with failure. In his home town Mark tells us, “he could not work any great deeds because of their lack of faith.” He meets with misunderstanding -- when Peter and the other apostles never seem to get what Jesus is talking about. He meets with hostility, from the people in his hometown, from the religious authorities and even the government; and he meets with denial and abandonment when his followers all desert him at the cross.
And what sustains Jesus, what always brings him back to the calmness and acceptance of these things, we might even say, he always returns to a center of joy -- is that he knows his true identity -- it does not lie in what he has, what he accomplishes, what others think about him; it lies in the full and certain knowledge that he is the beloved Son, and that as long as he is carrying out the will of the Father, the Father will sustain him, the Father will never abandon him. And today on this first Sunday of Lent, you and I should recall that we are each beloved sons, beloved daughters, of the same Father that sustains Jesus, and we should ask ourselves, which of those three lies govern the way we see the world? And we should ask ourselves, do we really believe we are beloved sons and daughters? And do we see how God shapes us and breaks us and gives us to others to spread the good news that they are beloved as well?
