FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR "B"

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

Cycle “B”: Gen 9, 8-15

Mark 1, 12-15

One day a little girl came home from school with shock and puzzlement written all over her face. “Mummy”, she blurted to her mother, “teacher told us a horrible story, about how God drowned all mummies and daddies and children and their pets, and all the animals and birds. Why was God so angry?” Her mother, sensing that her teacher had stopped the story in the middle, asked her little daughter, “But what happened at the end?” It turned out that the little child knew nothing about the rainbow and God’s promise. She knew it only as a zoo story and how God had drowned all but a few animals and people.

The teacher had missed the whole point of the story. The point is that God recognises that he has blundered in punishing the human race so severely and he establishes a covenant with Noah and all his descendants by promising not to do it again. So the purpose of the rainbow is to remind God that when it rains, he should not let it go on for as long as he did in Noah’s time. Such is the poetic charm of the story. But the real lesson of the story is that God knows the difference between good and evil. He cannot tolerate evil, yet is always ready to forgive and allow us sinners to start anew. The rainbow, once again, is a constant reminder of this.

Noah’s 40 days in the ark and Jesus’ 40 days in the desert had the same intent: to be tested for their faith in God. Consider Jesus in the desert. He was accosted by Satan. Jesus and Satan hurl bible passages at each other like two old Rabbis, and it is Jesus who gets the best of the argument. He will not feed himself from stones, he will not look for fame by impressing the crowds, and he will not worship corruption in order to gain political power. Instead, he comes out of the desert to live the life with which we are now familiar. A life that will attract the common people’s faith and conversion, but also a life that will elicit opposition, torture and a criminal’s death, yet a life ultimately vindicated by God. Jesus lived and died in God.

St. Mark, the author of today’s Gospel, leaves out all the detail and tells us only that the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness. The reader must work out what it was all about. But it was there that Jesus met with God, formed his vocation and set his goals. What it led to eventually was a renewal of God’s covenant. We followers of Jesus are the ministers of the new covenant.

We now have what I take to be the dominant themes of this month’s readings. We are called to go back to the desert; there we risk meeting God; there we realise that repentance is demanded of us, but forgiveness of sin is promised.

I am not advocating wallowing in the sludge of self-recrimination and the disturbing remembrance of our sins. Listen to Psalm 37 that begins like this: “Fret not thyself...”

And Ps 84,6 reads, “If you are going through a vale of misery...use it like a well...and early rain fills it.” Using our misery for a well means for us today going deep into the waters of prayer, of scripture reading, of changing direction by making a re-commitment to Jesus Christ. Out of these experiences will surely emerge profound change. Gradually we shall find our prayers moving away from our self-centred concerns; away from selfish requests for holy electrical energy to come down and help us fulfil our purposes. Instead, you will slowly turn from self-centred to God-centred prayer.

One day a little girl (another one) was asked, “What were you before your conversion?”

She answered, “I was a sinner.”  “And after your conversion, what are you?” She answered again, “I am a sinner.”  “What difference did conversion make to you, then?” She answered, “Before my conversion, I was a sinner running after sin. But now I’m a sinner running away from sin.” That’s the mark of a saint. Seeking goodness is all we want.

PRAYER:  Lord, take my offering of self-denial this Lent, as a sign of my great longing for you. I hunger for your presence in my life, and I thirst for your love. I hunger for justice for those who are wronged and oppressed, and I thirst for your peace. I hunger for a glimpse of your glory, and I thirst for your stillness in my heart. God of giving, God of longing, Healer-God of pain, I hunger for you.