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First Lent B, March 9, 2003
H O M I L
Y G R I T S
The
First Sunday in Lent
Year B - March 9, 2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted
by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations;
and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you
mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Genesis 9:8-17 God said to Noah, I am establishing my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
Psalm 25 Ad te, Domine, levavi
or 25:3-9 Vias tuas, Domine, notas fac mihi
1 Peter 3:18-22 Baptism now saves you--not as a removal of dirt, but an
appeal to God for a good conscience.
Mark 1: 9-13 The Spirit immediately pitched him out into the wilderness
(tò pneuma aùtòn ekbállei eìs)
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 9:8-17 as above
Psalm 25:1-10 Ad te, Domine, levavi - To you, O Lord, I lift my soul
1 Peter 3:18-22 as above
Mark 1:9-15 as above
Valid Baptism, with living water and the Trinitarian formula, is not a
repeatable Sacrament, like Holy Communion,
or Penance (now called the Ministry of Reconciliation), or even
(nowadays) Holy Matrimony. But liturgically, today, we hear once more of
the Baptism of Jesus, 'though we waded through this water on the first
Sunday after the Epiphany, when we
got our feet wet on the way. The verses from Mark spoke to us and showed
us Who the Baby in the Bucolic Bovine Bassinette really was. We were
there with John the Immerser, who said he wasn't worthy to kneel down
there and untie the Baby's booties. But we need to have our own shoes
untied, leave our timidity ashore and immerse ourselves once more in
that mystery called Baptism that we share with Jesus of Nazareth, who
leads us bravely ever more deeply into its rising flood.
Today again the heavens opened for an instant and we overheard the Spirit
whisper to the Beloved, before he is pitched into the desert. The Greek
word for what the Spirit does to Jesus is the word used for throwing a
ball. So he was "highballed" from Baptism into Battle. He was as it
were snatched from the Jordan and thrown out of the Font into drydock,
into wilderness and scarcity. He was not tested first, then told he was
Beloved, and his Baptism was not a graduation ceremony or a retirement
party. Instead, he was told he was Beloved first, in Baptism, as were
most of us baptized as infants, and then he was tested and tried. He was
appointed to High Office, then abruptly asked to jump through hoops. He
was first clothed with glory, then stripped for action. Hired first,
placement test next. Just as the mad Queen in Alice in Wonderland
ordered, "No! No! Sentence first, verdict afterwards" John asked
everyone to be baptized, not just converts to Judaism, for whom it was
customary. Not just strangers to Torah, outlaws from the Love of God,
Gentiles and heathens from their benighted world. For a long time, Jews
had immersed god-fearing folk who came to join the Covenants with Noah
and Abraham and Moses. Now the Baptizer preaches that Jews, too, must
come to Baptism: Believers, who need to renew their Covenant status.
Baptism, Peter says, is not just the removal of dirt from the body (or
the "soul") but is an appeal to God for a clear conscience. It is a
pledge, a community renewal, a splash party for "ins" and "outs" alike.
Water is the great leveller (it always, as someone has noted, seeks the
lowest place), and it floods to crest so that it can include all in its
unitary bath. It is a common tub, distasteful to those who want
privilege and a private perfumed pool, a warm jacuzzi.
For centuries, Lent was only for proselytes, for catechumens. As we
heard on Ash Wednesday in the Lenten bidding,
converts from the pagan world were bidden to prepare for their Immersion
and Illumination at Easter. Lent was the
hoop they jumped through before the Bath, but in time the Church came to
see that the way of John with Jesus, the Way of the Spirit with Jesus,
was a better way: That even we, the Chosen people, the Church, we who
have already been immersed and anointed unto glory, already named in
God's hearing, should also with Jesus be "pitched" like hardheads and
hard balls into a wayside wilderness for training, for askesis, and for
testing, to "improve our Baptisms," to renew our commitments, to immerse
more of ourselves into the healing waters of this Spa of Salvation, this
Sacrament of Lent and Paschaltide. We find that there are crosses on the
way to crowns, briars on the way to blessing, that there is weight to
glory. In one of the oldest images of Baptism, we go into the Ark with
Noah, who went not to save himself and his kinfolk alone, but all living
things, including animals and in-laws, two-by-two.
"From Syria unto Rome I am fighting with wild beasts by land and sea, by
night and day, bound to ten leopards, that is, a bunch of soldiers, whose
usage grows still harsher when they are liberally treated. . . May I have
joy of the beasts that are prepared for me." So the testimony of the
testing of Ignatirus of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom sometime between
110 and 115 C.E.
"From my house you could hear the roars at dawn. When they were hungry,
every morning, Somoza's private zoo. At that time we didn't know that
the prisoners were with the beasts." So the testimony of Nicaragua's
priest-poet, Ernesto Cardenal, in Oracle in Managua, 1973.
"The Spirit pitched Jesus out toward the desert. . He was with the wild
beasts."
So the testimony of Mark's good news, 70 C.E.
The mythic ancestors of these wild beasts came out of the Ark with Noah
and the human family, for Noah went into the ark with all the beats from
aardvark to zebra, covenanted with him to save the Earth and its
creatures. It is written that the world before the flood was full of
violence and after its forty days and nights Yahweh declared a reckoning
would from now on be required for the lifeblood of humans, and that even
the animals who took human life would be required to give a reckoning for
their violence. So Francis of Assisi catechized the Wolf of Gubbio and
promised to feed him regularly if he would stop his terrorism. It is a
way that the Empire has not tried with the starving of the earth.
We are now coming to see that animals and plants share in the "soul"
life of creation, and have rights to survive and prosper. Old Noah still
swims against the tide of violence, carrying his Covenant with God to us,
the God with whom he walked. In Noah's Covenant we are pledged to
nonviolence towards each other and the Ark put us in the same boat with
all the beasts, to whom we have miserably failed our pledge to safe
passage. The Dove descends upon all of us in this Covenant, bidding us
come ashore in Peace, and cease our violence.
"I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and
self-contained," wrote Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass.
"I stand and look at them long and long. . . not one is dissatisfied--not
one is demented with the mania of owning things. . . they bring me tokens
of myself. . . I wonder where they get those tokens? Did I pass that way
huge times ago, and negligently drop them?"
When Jesus was pitched out of Baptism, he turned and lived with Whitman
and the animals, and angels brought him tokens of himself. What beasts
were there with him? Did he hear the howling of jackals, the laughter of
hyenas in the night? Did he see leopards, lynxes, bears? These creatures
have long since disappeared from Palestine, hunted down and hung for
hides, as other creatures will disappear from the planet if our human
lust for their hides and hideouts has its way. They escaped the flood
with Noah, but will they escape the fires we set upon the earth, the
bulldozers we have sent to the rain forests? Will we learn from Jesus
and the saints that the real beasts that threaten humankind are terror
and panic and greed? There is an antelope in us that flees from danger,
but there is also a hyena of impatience, a jackal of envy, gathering at
the smell of blood and hovering to tear the flesh of humankind. The
Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza called "The Monster", put prisoners
and wild beasts into his zoo together and starved the beasts into
hungering for the humans. Who was the enemy of the human race, the
panther or the president? Ignatius saw that the Empire's soldiers had in
them the ferocity of leopards, and so looked forward to the Arena, saying
"May I have joy of the beasts." What did Jesus meet in the
wilderness? What varmints came to call--were they all satans, accusers?
Did the wily serpent of Eden who spoke to Eve come to strike there at his
heel? Or were some of those beasts really angels unawares who ministered
to him the messages of God? Was there meaning in Jesus' sojourn with
wild life? The ministry of angels is communication, understanding,
meaning---that's what they still come to feed us with. Jesus may indeed
have had "joy of the beasts."
Lent is a time for listening to animals and angels, to be with
wilderness and wisdom. St Peter writes that God's patience waited in the
days of Noah, during the building of the Ark, and that Baptism
corresponds to this. So the days of Lent correspond for us to
Ark-building. The whole of creation now, threatened by humankind's abuse,
may not come when called to board the Ark, indeed may not be there at
all. These days are a time for us to take the tools of askesis, to begin
construction once more of the Ark, not of wrapping our houses with
plastic and duct tape in the wacky response to George W. Bush's
terrifying "alarums" and panic attacks each time he and his cobbled
together cabinet of crazies wants to take us to war.
Once a year, the Old Ship of Zion goes into dry dock, for patching up,
and God's patience waits for us to get seaworthy once again before the
Exodus of Easter, our sailing date when the captain will shout, "All
aboard that's going aboard."
Lent is our time to pay attention to the dimensions God requires of a
Church big enough to hold all of the human community, with a religion and
theology big enough for all the denominations, two by two, and all the
populous Faiths and minuscule sects and cults, and all the furry and
finny fishy folk as well, for a place in the Peacable Kingdom. Grownups
and children alike ask, "Will there be room in heaven for the animals?
Is there a paradise for poodles, a heaven for the birds and beasts?" A
prior question is: Will there be room on earth for them? Not only the
alien races of Arabia and the archipelagos, of Korea and Japan, of
Abraham's Ur in Iraq, of Noah's Mount Ararat in Turkey? Will there be
berths for aardvarks and zebras, with whom we share the planet? Will we
learn to "turn and live with the animals" and find ourselves then, too,
"placid and self-contained", tamed and in harmony with the planet and all
its passengers.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 2nd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
I wrote an earlier version of this homily for the February 21, 1988 issue
of Celebration, and accompanied the homily with General Intercessions,
which I add here.
Leader: Our God has covenanted with all of us for life, promising never
to devastate our home, the planet earth. Let us ask God's strength
that we may keep our covenant.
Let us pray for the Church: that it may be an ark of covenant with the
Creator, that it may be renewed in this season of Lent in its purpose to
bring all to new life:
We pray to the Lord.
Let us pray for our country and for all nations, that we may live in
peace and harmony, honoring the dignity and respecting the differences of
all:
We pray to the Lord.
Let us pray for our community: that the Kingdom may come for us all--the
poor and the privileged, the weak and the powerful:
We pray to the Lord.
Let us pray for all living things upon the earth: for animals and plants
that give us food and clothing, for all that is beautiful in earth and
sky and sea:
We pray to the Lord.
Let us pray for the earth itself: that we may use its resources wisely,
for the common good and the common wealth of humankind and all of life.
We pray to the Lord.
O God, you have set the rainbow as a sign of promise for the hopes of the
human community. We pray that we may keep faith with you, our Creator,
in our care of this world and all its inhabitants. Renew this faith in
us during these days of Lent. We ask this through Christ the Lord.
Amen.