Preaching Paths 18 February 2024

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

Most of the verses comprising today’s lection, Mark 1:9-15, are familiar. We’ve encountered vv.9-11, Jesus’ baptism and divine commission, on the Sunday of Baptism of Our Lord. John the Baptist’s arrest and the inauguration of Jesus’ preaching ministry were read on Epiphany 3B.  Today’s new material, vv 12-13, presents Mark’s telegraphically brief account of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness (vv.12-13). Mark’s account omits the details we find in Matthew and Luke, where Satan dangles before Jesus enticements to self-satiation, celebrity status, and indomitable earthly power. No wonder preachers are tempted (!) to abandon Mark and seize upon the other Synoptics’ cinematic scenes. But if we do, we will miss Mark’s unique, epoch-shifting, apocalyptic message.

Two startling features in Mark’s wilderness account grab our attention. First, the very Spirit that descends on Jesus while a divine voice blesses him immediately “throws” or “thrusts” him into battle in the wilderness!  Second, Mark sketches the wilderness experience with unmistakably apocalyptic, symbolic imagery. Jesus is confronted by no less an adversary than Satan himself, Jesus is “with” wild beasts, and he is sustained by angels. The presence of the master Deceiver, wild beasts, and angels marks this wilderness as the site of cosmic, earthly and heavenly power struggle.

Apocalyptic passages in both Jewish and Christian literature envision the new heaven and earth God will one day bring about (Isaiah 65:17ff;  Revelation 21:1). Yet, these and other sources insist that God’s remaking of heaven and earth will take place only after prolonged battle, earthly and heavenly. Revelation describes wave upon wave of struggle between angelic beings and evil forces figured as grotesque beasts (chs 4-20). Mark’s readers would be familiar with such tropes and would recognize Mark’s wilderness as an apocalyptic battlefield. Mark’s Jesus is no ordinary “folk hero” facing the traditional test of his mental and physical worthiness. No: Jesus is the divine agent propelled by the Spirit into the domain of evil to begin God’s take-down of the age-old Deceiver and enemy of humankind.  At the end of forty days (mirroring Israel’s forty years in the wilderness), and concurrent with the silencing of John the Baptist by Herod (v 14), Jesus takes up John’s message. The reign of God has arrived on the field of battle! A cosmic power-shift is unfolding before us.

On this first Sunday in Lent, one could deliver a spine-tingling vision of Jesus in hand-to-hand battle with evil beasts, spiritual and earthly. Some listeners would be impressed.  More to the point would be preaching that invites the congregation as a whole, or its individual members, to trust the Spirit as they find themselves confronting their own wildernesses. Many congregations find themselves stumbling in a landscape in which their identity and vocation are no longer clear. Social media outlets deliver a confusing brew of Christian-sounding rhetoric wedded to self-righteous political power-grabbing. We can help our listeners recognize distorted versions of faith. In the gospels, Jesus relentlessly aligned himself with people being dismissed today as contagious, impure, and undesirable. He denounced every effort by his followers to position him for political dominance. At the individual level, many in our pews wrestle with their own wildernesses, stalked by “wild beasts” of fear, confusion, and self-reproach.  Mark makes clear that God, too, battles for us in the wilderness, helping us confront our wild beasts of fear and doubt.  And all about us in the swirling dust are ministering angels who, when we are weak, strengthen and sustain us.