Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent

Hi all,

Here is tomorrow's sermon, assuming it doesn't snow and we can get to church. The readings for the 1st Sunday in Lent are found here, although I will use only the Gospel reading: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=955.

Peace be with you,

Pr. J


3-1-2009, Lent 1B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville
Mark 1:9-15
Adagio for Christ

“And it happened in those days: he came, Jesus, from Nazareth of the Galileans, and baptized was he in the Jordan by John.”

The opening line from today’s Gospel reading taken word for word straight from the Greek text.
That’s the way it would have sounded to you had you been alive 2000 years ago, living words for living disciples of Christ. It sounds different from the more familiar phrasing we’ve grown up hearing, but it says the same thing: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

I personally like the reading straight from the Greek text better, because one can see in the simple wording of the text, in the very placement of the words in the sentence a much older, living, informal, come-as-you-are story underlying the more formal story about the baptism of Jesus.

Mark’s story goes on. “And at once, coming up from the water, he saw ripped asunder the heavens, and the spirit like a dove came down into him.”

Once again, straight from the Greek text, and it does sound a little different. Here the spirit of God does not just descend like a dove and alight on Jesus’ shoulder; rather it comes down from God and enters into Jesus.

I prefer this reading because the way we’re used to hearing it you kind of get the image of a pidgeon sitting on Jesus’ head while he’s standing there in the river dripping wet – kind of silly, don’t you think? What a sight that would have been! Here it’s clear that the spirit of God, a spirit like a dove, the spirit of peace so to speak, as well as a sign of salvation and deliverance – remember the story of Noah and the dove? - enters into Jesus, and this will shape his whole mission from this point onward.

What I especially like about this reading is the image of what happens to the heavens, a spiritual reality that you can not see with your eyes or touch with your hands as opposed to the literal sky and infinite space over our heads where we fly in our airplanes and where we send spaceships to the planets. Mark uses a dramatic Greek word to portray the heavens being absolutely and violently and permanently ripped asunder, as if it were a huge sheet and two huge hands somehow grabbed hold of it and ripped it in two and you can hear it going “schiiiiiiiiiidzk!”

This same image, in fact the same word Mark uses for this image comes back in the Gospel story much later at the crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:38), where we read that at the time of his death on a cross the curtain in the Temple, THE Curtain, the one separating the Holy of Holies from the Sanctuary in the Temple, the one that was supposed to hide the presence of God from the world, was violently ripped in two and torn its whole length from top to bottom. The significance of something like that is that there is no barrier between us and God. God’s presence can not be hidden from us, God will not allow it; Jesus will see to it that God is revealed to us.

Here, at the baptism of Jesus, the impenetrable heavens, the unbreachable spiritual walls between us and God, have been ripped apart, the spiritual barrier between us and God, a spiritual wall that I think has been put there more by us and our own prideful sin than by anything else, has been completely sundered and torn apart in such a way that it can never be restored so that nothing separates us from God, not even the heavens themselves.
And then, after the heavens are ripped apart and the spirit of God comes down into Jesus, we once again meet the mystery voice the Jews have called bat kol since before the time of Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark continues in its own unique voice: “And a voice was born from the heavens, 'You are my son, the beloved, in you I am very pleased.’”

I think if they were to make yet another Jesus movie this would be the perfect place to begin Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” It could cut in a different places throughout the movie right up to the point where the curtain is torn in two in the Temple and we have come full circle back to the images of Jesus’ baptism.

Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is a piece of music written for stringed instruments that can be played on the organ and was played on the organ throughout Lent at my intern church in Chicago back in 1990. It was a very somber change from the usual type of music that Paul Manz played during, before, and after worship. Paul was known to the ELCA at that time as the Dean of Lutheran church musicians, but to the people at St. Luke Paul was better known as Papa Smerf, and if you ever saw him you would know why - he looked like a smerf.

Old Papa Smerf had a habit of playing very energetic and rousing pieces as prelude and postlude music – Bach, Mozart, Handel, Vaughn Williams, Holst, Copeland, as well as show tunes and commercial tunes cleverly disguised as church music. Who says Lutherans don’t have a sense of humor?! But then in Lent he departed from his normal routine and began playing the “Adagio for Strings,” all 7½ minutes of it, not just once, not just twice, and not just as prelude and postlude music, but every time the church was open and he was playing the organ, which was quite often during Lent, before, during, and after worship. It seemed Papa Smerf was on a Samuel Barber binge.

Some people might get tired of that. But most people did not. For most of the people at the Church of St. Luke the music clearly defined the spiritual atmosphere of the season, Lent, and they thought that was very fitting. It’s music that just kind of grabs you and doesn’t exactly let you go, especially when it is played with as much depth and as much feeling as Old Papa Smerf could play it on the pipe organ -

and you just have to ride with it and experience it and feel it and it really takes you for an emotional ride that somehow leads you first through the depths of despair, an incredible well of pain and sadness which you suddenly realize is all your own and then takes you soaring high above all the world’s pain up to the heights of a heaven that is felt with the soul rather than seen with the eyes and which you suddenly realize is a gift of sheer undeserved compassion from God-

and in the process you have heard, as well as felt the kingdom of God come near to you, and you know in that moment at the height of the music that there are no barriers at all between you, just as you are, transparent before God with all your failings and imperfections, and an infinite cosmic God holding out overwhelming mercy and compassion for you for no other reason than that God can, and God does. It almost defies words. We needed Old Papa Smerf and his pipe organ.

And that is what Lent is about. I think maybe it finally hit me one Sunday, while I was assisting with communion at the Church of St. Luke way back in 1990 (but it took me years to figure out how to express it because it does almost defy words). I had witnessed the pain and hurt that went on behind the scenes, and knew the people’s pain, and watched all 500 of them coming down the long aisle of that modern cathedral church, some of them really crying as Old Papa Smerf played the Adagio for Strings and they let go of their sins and their pain and their despair before the altar and received the assurance of forgiveness in the bread and wine, the body of Christ given for them, blood of Christ shed for them. This is what Lent is like.

And that is what it should be like for us.

Lent, and the whole Christian life from beginning to end, should be like listening with our full attention to a piece of music like the Adagio for Strings, while the Holy Spirit leads us where it will, taking us from the dark depths of human despair, lifting us up and up and up, ever higher with Jesus as he rises from the waters of his own baptism and bringing us up to the very heights of heaven, rending open all the barriers between us and God so that nothing, nothing at all stands between us and God and there, at the height of the music, we see God revealed to us in the face of Jesus newly risen to meet us.

Thanks be to God.