February 18, 2024 at Saint Finbarr Church in Naples, Fl
Genesis 9: 8-15 + Psalm 25 + 1 Peter 3: 18-22 + Mark 1: 12-15
The Gospel of Mark just proclaimed to us says that the Spirit Drove Jesus into the desert. It is the same verb used to describe what Jesus did to unclean spirits and how Jesus cleansed the Temple. There is something powerful about that verb with a sense that there is a great force at work here, and that idea carries all through Mark’s Gospel when it comes to the ministry, the intensity, and the force driving Jesus back and forth across that lake, from Galilee to Judea, from one Synagogue to another, from one town to another, up mountains and out to the desert. If you ever really step into Mark’s Gospel, it isn’t long before you begin to see and understand that this driving force in the life of Jesus was both a powerful desire to do the Will of his Father, and a fire of compassion and love for those around him.
This Sacred time we call, Lent, might well give us cause to examine just what it is that drives our lives or maybe ask if anything at all is driving us. There some who sit around all day flipping from channel to channel on TV driven by nothing at all. Sometimes I wonder what is driving some whose whole life is planned around dinner parties or Tee Times at the Club. For others it’s clear that ambition, greed, and an insatiable desire for approval are the forces driving their lives. Whatever, this season offers a chance to examine the force that drives us, and when that force drives us might be worth some examination and review as well.
The force driving Jesus was first took him to Baptism. Some might wonder why the Holy Son of would need that. Sin couldn’t be the reason. In Mark’s Gospel it is clearly a way of expressing the incarnation, the very reality that Jesus Christ, the Son of God was one of us experiencing and doing what we do, one with us in everything. Then, just in case that point is missed, he goes to the desert where he lives between beasts and angels, the bad and the good, being tested, not tempted to make sure he has the strength or the force to do what is asked of him by his Father.
Some force drove you here to this church today, and it was not your Lincoln, Escalade, Honda, or Toyota. Some force is at work in all our lives to awaken lazy compassion or drive us out of self-serving, pleasure seeking comforts. There is a reason for us to be here. There is something for us to do here that will transform our lives, lift us out of our over-privatized, individualistic fake worlds, and plunge us into the truth of who we were meant to be, awaken us to what our lives ought to be about, and stir up our dreams about what God had planned for us from the beginning.
There is a force in our church called: Liturgy, and that force is way more than the rituals we experience here week after week. It is a force that can drive us home – drive us back into the arms of God – drive us back into Paradise. Yet, too many have no clue about how it works, what it needs, and what we can expect of it. Don’t ever think you came here to get something. The force of liturgy does not give you something, it takes you somewhere, and it makes something of your ordinary and sometimes dull lives.
I’m going to talk about that the next three nights. I will come to talk about the reason the force of the Holy Spirit has driven you here so often and for so long. Hunger is a force that is driving people all over the world to get up and move looking to be fed. Those of you who are hungry need to get up the next three nights and let that force open the pantry of our church’s traditions so that once like the one who feeds us here, compassion and love, service and sacrifice will drive us home and into the arms of our loving God.