Worship As Resistance I - A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent February 18 2024
GOSPEL: Mark 1:9-15
The holy gospel according to Mark.
Glory to you, O Lord.
The Spirit that comes upon Jesus at his baptism sustains him when he is tested by Satan so that he might proclaim the good news of God’s reign.
9In 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.”
12And 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.
14Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
I offer to you the first instalment of a Lenten preaching series
I am calling “Worship As Resistance”
This series is inspired by Rev. Dr. Chad Rimmer
who presented “Resurrection as Faithful Resistance”
to the Alberta & BC Synod study conference earlier this month.
Lent is about resistance.
Resisting Sin.
Resisting temptation.
Resisting coffee or chocolate for 40 days plus Sundays
But I’d like to invite us into something a little deeper
than just giving up chocolate for Lent.
The phone rang much earlier than I’m comfortable with that morning.
This was before the gift of the
“do not disturb” feature on my cell phone.
I recognized the name on the caller ID.
I knew what was happening
before I cleared my throat said
“Hello, this is Pastor Aaron.”
“Pastor, can you please come to the hospital?
Mom died this morning.”
I knew the family well.
We prayed.
We heard hopeful scripture.
They shared a couple stories of Mom.
The family knew what had to happen next.
They would have to walk across the street
to the funeral home and make arrangements,
plan the service,
book the caterer,
and all the other things on the to-do list
when a loved one dies.
They’d been there before
when Dad died years earlier.
There was also the reality of the busy hospital.
That bed would need to be prepared
for the next patient in need.
Anyone who has been at the bedside when someone dies
knows that these are holy moments,
and this was no exception.
You can’t rush holy moments.
For a while we just sat there with death,
much like our Jewish neighbours do,
sitting shiva,
just being present amidst the grief and sadness.
The nurse came into the room,
and the family knew what she was going to say
and they started grabbing their jackets and bags.
The nurse surprised the grieving family;
“Stay as long as you need.”
What a gift to the family;
the gift of time,
to remain,
to linger,
to say goodbye,
to mourn.
When a loved one dies,
we need to grieve,
Yet our culture and context makes demands of the grieving family
when what we really need is to feel their feelings:
those in mourning need to mourn.
You can’t rush holy moments.
Yet that’s what seems to be happening to Jesus.
The holy moment of Jesus’ baptism,
the tearing open of the heavens
the Spirit descending,
the voice from the heavens,
You are my Son, the beloved,
with you I am well pleased.
And immediately the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.
Boy that sure escalated quickly.
Jesus is ushered from one holy moment to the next,
from the font to the wilderness.
It is God - it is God’s Spirit
who decides that it is the right time
for the wilderness - immediately.
Not unlike Jesus’ baptism,
The wilderness is a holy moment
and there is no rushing it,
40 days of temptation
40 days of living with the wild beasts.
Perhaps Jesus too needed the time to feel the feelings,
temptation being one.
A couple thoughts on time.
We tend to understand time chronologically,
The Greek word is chronos.
Chronological time says it is Sunday February 18, 2024
it is approximately 10:20am.
Chronos time says you work from 9-5,
that it will take 22 minutes to reach your destination,
that the movie will last 2 hours,
Chronos time gets moved by humans up or down an hour
every spring and fall with daylight savings time.
There’s an anonymous saying,
often attributed to Indigenous wisdom about this:
“Only the government would believe that
you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket,
sew it to the bottom,
and have a longer blanket.”
We have a mediocre relationship with time.
We try to control time
when time is out of our control.
We can’t slow or speed up time.
God doesn’t operate on chronos time,
God operates on Kairos time.
Kairos is the right time,
the right moment,
the fulfilled time
the holy moment.
This is the word used after the death of Jesus’ relative
John the baptizer,
The time is fulfilled - Kairos
The kingdom of God has come near.
Jesus’ baptism,
Jesus’ temptation,
Jesus’ ministry
all happens in God’s perfect time.
Worship is resistance
to humanity’s poor relationship with time.
Like a grieving family at the bedside of a loved one,
like Mary sitting at the foot of Jesus, her Rabbi,
or Nicodemus at night,
God invites us into holy moments
here in this place.
We might start chronologically 10:01am,
but worship is about God’s time.
Some of our calendars are fairly empty,
some of them are filled to the margins
with too many places to be,
yet together we can worship
and sit at Jesus’ feet
allowing time to march on
while resting in God’s time.
The western world seems to have a productivity problem,
as though our worth depends upon how well we use our time
and how much we accomplish.
Jesus is faced with this - there is an urgency,
immediately, immediately
Mark’s Gospel will repeat,
yet Jesus doesn’t skip the wilderness,
Jesus allows the right time of preparation
for Jesus’ ministry.
Together, sitting at the feet of our Rabbi,
sharing the Meal,
we are prepared by God in God’s time
for ministry that awaits us outside those doors.
You can’t rush holy moments.
Worship is our resistance to the world’s
unhealthy relationship with productivity.
Your worth is not determined by the world’s standards.
Your worth is determined in baptism.
Baptism is about resistance.
When we are baptized,
when we affirm our baptism
as our Confirmation students are preparing for,
we are invited not only to confess our faith in God,
but to reject - to resist
evil and all its forms:
In baptism we promise to resist and reject
the powers of evil that defy God,
the powers of this world that rebel against God,
the ways of sin that draw us from God.
With baptism,
we are freed from the power of sin, death and the devil,
And we promise to strive for justice and peace in the world.
Baptism is about resistance:
we resist the idea that we aren’t good enough,
we resist the idea that forgiveness doesn’t change the world,
we resist the idea that evil wins the day.
Many of God’s faithful are struggling right now
with the realities of church decline.
I hear conversations
lamenting that Sunday School is often 1/10th the size it used to be.
I hear conversations
lamenting that the pews aren’t as full as generations past.
I hear a report out of the Anglican Church of Canada
that based on current trends,
that church body may cease to exist as of 2040.
I hear some people say to this problem,
why even bother with church anymore?
Our worship is resistance to apathy.
We worship, we hear the Gospel
as a resistance to this idea
that the Gospel doesn’t matter anymore.
My friends, the Gospel does matter.
We worship to resist the power of death
and proclaim the power of the cross and resurrection.
Worship is resistance to the so-called good news
that the empire and the Caesars bring,
Worship says Jesus is real bringer of good news.
Baptism is resistance
to the powers of empire,
the powers that separate.
Jesus’ ministry, particularly in Mark’s Gospel,
is about exorcisms,
or better,
a resistance to the evil spirits that inflict God’s people.
Jesus speaks
and the unclean spirits no longer possess the child of God.
Jesus speaks and exorcises evil,
and the child of God is re-membered,
restored to community,
no longer on the outside as unclean,
they are welcomed and included and treasured
in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ ministry is resistance to the idea
that some are in and some are out.
Our worship is resistance
to the ways of this world that separate.
Think of Jesus’ wilderness temptation as resistance,
and not just resistance to temptation.
Mark doesn’t tell us what tempted Jesus.
Luke and Matthew do.
I’ll borrow from the other versions here,
and highlight Jesus’ temptation to turn stones into bread.
One thought is Jesus resists the temptation to not be hungry.
God can use hunger can move us and change us.
Jesus could have turned stones into bread.
Why not, this is God in the flesh.
I don’t think it would be sinful to eat.
But the wilderness is preparation for Jesus,
and that might mean spending some time in faithful hunger.
I think there’s another temptation for Jesus
with turning stone to bread.
I think there is a temptation for Jesus
the Creator who sets free,
to operate with dominance over his creation
rather than to live in harmony with creation.
We read that Jesus was with the wild beasts.
Jesus could have killed to remain safe,
or Jesus could have built some kind of fence
to keep safe in the wilderness.
Instead Jesus was with - in - a part of creation.
Worship is resistance
to our lives being lived separate from creation.
By being with creation,
with the wild beasts,
with hunger,
Jesus resists the idea that humans are here to dominate creation.
We worship to resist this as well,
we resist the ways of this world that dominate
and instead we find our place at the burning bush
where all ground is holy.
As creatures, as created beings,
created for relationship,
with one another,
with other creatures,
with all creation,
we worship to remember that
we are not separate or above creation,
rather we are one with creation.
The best part of Lent is when it is over.
the best part of the wilderness is when we find our way out.
Jesus resists the idea that suffering is just to be avoided.
Jesus is a good Jew,
Jesus knows the story of the people Israel.
God uses the wilderness to prepare:
like the prophet Elijah,
like John the Baptizer,
out in the wilderness.
Ancient Israel was prepared for the promised land
through their wilderness journey.
Jesus resists the idea that all suffering is to be avoided.
Jesus allows for preparation to happen in God’s time.
May we worship our God in these holy moments
resisting the temptation to dominate and control.
May we worship to resist the idea that we are not good enough,
and allow God’s Spirit to prepare us
for ministry in Jesus’ name.
May we worship to resist the ways of this world
that draw us from God,
and instead find our rest with Christ
in these holy moments.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
