Readings: Genesis 9:8-17 Mark 1:9-15
I have recently taken up classes in weaving – it is a pleasure and
something I have long wanted to learn to do properly. Our teacher, Christine, is very patient and
has much knowledge which she is keen to share.
And every now and then during a session we hear the words ‘teaching
moment!’ when someone forgets to add a different colour to the warp winding,
when the very fine fabric gets tangled, when someone is lost in the middle of a
pattern – and we gather round and learn something new or remind ourselves of a
way to be a better weaver.
A teaching moment arose at the Leadership Sub Committee meeting I was
at on Friday too – we were presenting the completed report on Women in
Ministry, we had a very positive response but I wasn’t sure of the take-up when I said that it’s not
enough to just agree with the principle of gender equity (that in itself a
loaded term) but also to educate everyone as to how to live it out. It was immediately after this discussion that
one person, talking generally about ministers,
said something like ‘….but as a minister he needs to….’ And there were
two people in the room who said immediately ‘he or she’ and I added the option
of ‘they’ – a teaching moment if ever there was one – and the learning was
impactful on a person who was still learning the living out required from a
principle.
Maybe this is an approach that we can take to the reading for today
from Mark - what are the teaching moments that help guide us on our faith
journey in the midst of a world that desperately needs us to be knowledgeable
in and committed to the way of Jesus.
That needs us to understand the teachings of Jesus and live them out in
a way that transforms the world.
The poet Caitlin Curtice[1]
puts it like this:
O God, this morning when we woke to your
presence in and around us, we also woke to a heavy world,
and in this world, we can’t make sense of all the things
that are wrong and should be made right.
We cannot fathom that people are judged on the colour of their skin,
that lives are worth less because their pockets are empty,
that violence is an everyday occurrence, and it seems that no place is safe.
So when we wake to the sunrise and know that you are still good, teach us what it means to seek goodness when the world is dark.
and in this world, we can’t make sense of all the things
that are wrong and should be made right.
We cannot fathom that people are judged on the colour of their skin,
that lives are worth less because their pockets are empty,
that violence is an everyday occurrence, and it seems that no place is safe.
So when we wake to the sunrise and know that you are still good, teach us what it means to seek goodness when the world is dark.
O God, teach us what it means to live in
grace — not just for ourselves, but for the collective whole.
Teach us.
Teach us because the future depends on it.
Remind us, we pray.
Teach us because the future depends on it.
Remind us, we pray.
The world that Noah lived in was dark, and it was out of a few people’s
faithfulness to God that a re-creation of the relationship between the world
and God emerged – a rainbow the symbol of God’s desire to for reconciliation
with a broken world and a promise to never give up on us, ever.
The world that Jesus came to was dark – the people had lost their way,
the religious leaders were mostly blind and deaf to the teachings of God, the
promised land was in thrall again, this time to the Romans. Jesus came to teach us that we might again be
reconciled to God.
He came as Messiah – to once and for all exemplify the meaning of grace
and love and righteousness and truth. He
came to teach us with his very life that we are the beloved of God. A principal the people might have grasped but
not remembered how to live it out.
In a sense, the abruptness of Mark’s gospel encourages this sense of an
explosion of Jesus into our world – in the baptism there is no small talk about
who should baptise who for instance. Nor
is there a confession of sin or a call to repentance – rather we are straight
in to the baptism as something that simply had to happen – a given. Jesus is signalling that his former life has
ended and that, in this new beginning, his living out of God’s rule, he is most
definitely turning his face to the cross, to death. For he knew that in the teaching us how to
live in love and justice and grace, he would be violating just about every
political, social, economic and faith principal that the world held dear. And what happened at this moment - the
heavens split asunder, the boundaries between heaven and earth dissolved at
this moment. Teaching moment – baptism
places us in that same relationship with God through Jesus and on the same path
of radical disruption in the name of Jesus.
Our old life is put aside and our new is begun.
Mark likewise gives barely two sentences to the wilderness experience,
leaving us to read other accounts of the temptations and hardships that 40 days
of desert living could bring. Instead we
hear that the same Spirit that has come into him at his baptism now drives him
immediately into the desert for forty days.
And the early Christians who read these words would have understood
perhaps more than we do the symbolism of Jesus retracing Israel’s journey into
the wilderness with Moses where, to be honest, they pretty much stumbled and
staggered and rebelled and deviated from the path that God had set them
on. Jesus on the other hand – Jesus
withstands whatever the wilderness throws, Satan and all – and rewrites the
story of God’s people as that of victory over all that is evil.
He emerges to proclaim that the kingdom has come near – God’s rule in
here, the old ways are gone and the good news is being lived out now and in
this way. Another teaching moment for us here perhaps – everything that is good
comes from God, and Jesus, as God’s son, is the teacher and exemplar of all
that living in the good news means.
The world that we live in is a dark place. Wherever we look we see senseless killing and
violence and war, desperate need in the shadow of bloated excesses, ethnic and
religious and cultural arrogance and deep grief at the way we are destroying
this world we live in.
The words from Curtice again: ‘Teach us how to seek goodness when the
world is dark, O God. Teach us because
the future depends on us.’
Perhaps the first teaching is to remind us that we cannot be bystanders
– our baptism puts us on a path to revealing the good news of Jesus Christ not
only in our declaration of faith and our attendance at church but in our daily
everyday lives. Have we taken that on with the determination
and understanding and focus that Jesus showed when he rose from those waters
and began his ministry? Might we take some time in Lent to consider our
participation in the life of faith and whether we might find some new beginnings
that God is asking us to step out into.
And the second teaching might be that our wilderness experiences are
our best learnings – for when it is on God alone we depend then that distance
between heaven and earth is at its thinnest.
Could we spend some time over the next few weeks reminding ourselves of
the times when we have encountered the living God in our silences and our
difficulties and our temptations and how that continues to shape us as the
people of God.
And finally the teaching of trust – Jesus fully and completely
entrusted the direction of his life to his Father. He knew that everything came from God and
everything he did and said and lived was for God. He came, he taught, he suffered and he died,
trusting in God to make good that which was evil, to bring new life out of the
darkness that is our world. Might we
take time this lent to learn to trust again that we live in the light of a
faithful God, a rainbow God, so that in confident faith we can be the grace and
the truth that is Jesus Christ in this dark world.
Margaret Garland
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