Suppose that you’re trying to learn a new language, and in the language learning app, you’re faced with a sentence divided into segments. Some of the segments are complete phrases, others are just a couple of words. The segments of the sentence are scrambled, and you must use your knowledge of syntax, vocabulary, and grammar to arrange the pieces into an intelligible, complete sentence. When doing this exercise, if you’re really in a bind, you can always rely on the segment that begins with a capital letter to get you started. At least you know where the beginning of the sentence begins. But all the other segments must be connected by the rules of the language and put together in a particular order for the sentence to mean anything.
If we were to scramble events in the first chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, like a language learning exercise, how would we reconstruct it? We might even ask the question of whether the order of the events is all that important, aside from the historical sequence in the life of Jesus. Would it be possible for us to construct a convincing narrative by rearranging the events in a different order than the one Mark gives us? Maybe, but something crucial would be lost in doing so. Theologically speaking, order is everything. And because order is everything, we find ourselves today on the First Sunday in Lent revisiting the baptism of Jesus that we heard just a few weeks ago.
Let’s return to our imaginary exercise of confronting a scrambled version of chapter one of Mark’s Gospel. We find ourselves looking at several events. We have Jesus’s Galilean ministry, the call of the first disciples, his temptation in the wilderness, and his baptism by John. Of course, this isn’t the correct order, and we’re searching for a clue as to what comes first. Where’s the capital letter in all these segments? We need a clue to confirm what should come first.
Why couldn’t the call of the disciples be first? Or the Galilean ministry? And wouldn’t it make sense for Jesus to be tempted before being baptized and proclaimed as God’s beloved Son? In this way, the baptism and designation as God’s Beloved Son would affirm his weathering of the wilderness trial.
But in trying to reassemble the theological sentence of chapter one of Mark’s Gospel, the capital letter can only be found in the segment dealing with Jesus’s baptism. That’s where the sentence begins. The baptism must come first, not because Jesus needs to be washed of sin in any kind of way or even because he needs some kind of spiritual affirmation before he faces the wilderness temptation. The baptism must come first because who Jesus is explains why he is able to withstand the desert temptations. And the pattern of his self-emptying life seen in those wilderness trials must precede the call of his disciples, who are then to take up that cross-shaped pattern and follow him.
This order is important for us, too. If we’re looking for a capital letter to help us assemble the scrambled sentence of our lives, we need only look to who Jesus is. He’s the Beloved Son of God, the One who stooped to experience the greatest trials of the human condition and didn’t sin, who emptied himself even to death itself, and then journeyed into the depths of hell and brought all of humanity and creation up into the Godhead. And in doing so, he put the capital letter on the beginning of the sentence that God is writing for our own lives.
But there’s something more to the ordering of Jesus’s life that helps us reassemble the sentence of our own lives. To see that ordering, we must go back with Jesus to the wilderness. Unlike St. Matthew and St. Luke, Mark gives us a unique look into Jesus’s time in the wilderness. There’s no dialogue with Satan. We’re only told that Jesus was there for forty days and nights, tempted by Satan. He was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. Although this was undoubtedly a deep spiritual struggle, we don’t see him fighting with Satan. There seems to be no violence to this scene in the wilderness. Jesus simply shows who he is: God’s Beloved Son in steadfast, confident holiness, enduring the wiles of the devil and coming out on the other side as the victor. And because that victory has been won, our future has been prepared by God.
Do you see now that the order of things matters a great deal? Because of who Jesus is, he’s able to suffer the dregs of the human condition without succumbing to retaliation or violence. Because of who Jesus is, God invites us in our own temptations and trials to face the darkest moments of our existence, knowing that they have no power over us.
We don’t know exactly who the wild beasts were in the desert with Jesus, but we might imagine them literally as dangerous animals and also as the horrible, accusing thoughts that Satan used to assail Jesus. And rather than fighting them, Jesus only refused to give them the power they longed to have. And in doing so, he emerged as the victor.
Could it be so with our own Lenten journeys? What are we afraid of this Lent? Who are the wild beasts among us? Are we afraid of the dark emotions that have nestled in the bottom of our souls? Are we afraid of the anger that borders on murderous rage at times? Are we afraid of losing control? Are we terrified of the envy that causes us to loathe others? Are we scared of the accusing thoughts that tell us we’re not talented or smart or wealthy enough to receive God’s love? Are we assailed by a nagging pessimism that tempts us to question the viability of our own futures? What are we afraid of this Lent?
And when we recognize this fear, what happens? They say that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Are we spiritually armed with a perpetual hammer that makes us want to smash the living daylights out of all those emotions and thoughts that terrify us? Do we run from them? Do we employ yet more rage against them? This, it seems, is so often the Christian approach to perceived evil. We want to smash it to smithereens. We behave as if it has more power over us than it really does, and in doing so, we betray who we really are. We become people who react and fight in fear. But God calls us to endure and act in love. We have no need to fight. We only need to exist in the confident hope given to us by the capital letter that begins the sentence of our lives.
And this is precisely why the order of things matters. If we’re looking for a capital letter to help us reorder the scrambled sentence of our spiritual lives, we need to look no further than the defining event and truth that makes sense of it all. It all starts with who Jesus is and what he has done for us. As God incarnate, who deigned to undergo the trials of the human condition and emerge victorious, the evils that continue to vex us in this life have no power. Because the Crucified One was raised from the dead and now lives among us risen and glorified, the tempter and enemy of our natures has no power over us. There’s no need to fight. There’s no need to use violence. There’s only a need to rejoice in the fact that with faith and trust in God, there’s nothing that can change the divine ordering of our lives. It starts with what Jesus himself has done for us and who he still is for us. And while there may be wild beasts among us, the angels are ready to minister to us as well.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday in Lent
February 18, 2024