April 15, 2006

Romans 6: 3-11 + Mark 16: 1-7

Eight verses tell the whole story in Mark’s typical style: quick, to the point, embracing the whole spectrum of human emotion from despair to fear from hesitation to joy. It takes Mark only four words to embrace the whole divine activity from abandonment to the fulfillment of Covenant promise freeing from sin everyone from Adam till today.

Four short words, easy to miss because we know the story: easy to miss because of the characters, easy to miss because of the intense emotion and the drama, easy to miss because they state a fact that is so obvious.

If we hear them this night with the dullness of twenty centuries, we shall miss the radical reversal of eternity they hold for us. If we hear them with the complacency and filter them with the casual way we relate to the Holy in this post-Christian Western world, we shall miss the explosive experience these words had on those women. That angelic proclamation in all its simplicity is what has kept us so busy for the past 90 minutes and kept us so focused these last forty days. Those words transformed the grief of those women and changed the whole reality of creation.

HE IS NOT HERE!

“Of course not.” we think. “We know that.” And so, we trivialize the power of the resurrection. But these words are not trivial. They may not be dismissed because we know the story. They are the story! The story is not just that there was an empty tomb, that the one crucified cannot to be found among the dead, nor that somehow a great stone was rolled back. These words will not be dismissed because heaven and earth were turned upside down by them, and nothing is the same ever again. These words say as much about us as they do about an empty tomb. They also say as much about God as every other word Mark has written before them.

It takes no degree in theology, no dogmatic apology, nor any kind of orthodox amplification to get the point. No stone was too big and no tomb too secure to hold or restrain the Messiah of God. Even the power of death cannot stop the purposes of God. Simply put, Christ who was crucified and was buried is not where the world expected him to stay. The message is simple and unmistakable: four words. HE IS NOT HERE.

With those words, we tell the whole story of what God has planned and is doing for us. It is nothing short of a new creation. Tonight we witness that new creation which like the first began in chaos and darkness. We shall see the water spring to life. Water that once threatened us is now water that will cleanse us. We have just proclaimed a new Adam who has risen by the breath of God’s Spirit. But we are not witnesses who stand to watch, we are witnesses who have been a part of it, for we are of this new creation. You who are soon to step into the waters of Baptism will rise into this new creation with hearts and lives made new by love; born again in Spirit and in Truth.

This is new creation. Should any come looking among the dead for those who have been born in this new creation, lived in it with faith, and died in it by baptism: the same will be said of them that was said of Christ: “They are not here.” “They have risen.”

April 14, 2006

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 + Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9 + John 18:1-19:42

Pilot is the man of the day in John’s Passion. He has the power. He has the facts. He has a moment in life to make a decision, and he does. His decision is not simply about guilt or innocence. He makes that one, as you notice. He finds Jesus innocent; then, goes on with his life. We have no idea what his life was like after that decision. He fades away. Secular history does give us some clues that he fell out of favor, was removed from his distant and unimportant post in the Empire, and then he’s gone.

The decision he faced was not really about innocence or guilt. It was a decision between two Kingdoms, and the innocent man who stood before him offered him the choice. He made the choice, and that was it.

Each of the four Gospels touches in its own way this issue of Kingdom. Only John makes the point that this Kingdom Jesus preached is non-political. John has Jesus distinguish between the Roman and the Jewish notions of kingship: one is profoundly political, the other deeply religious. Only those who belong to the “truth” can understand in what sense Jesus has a kingdom and is a king. Pilot was not “of the truth.” In that sense, he become symbolic or this world. His choice is not simply his personal choice any longer.

It is a choice we shall make at some point in our lives.

With that thought, this day is not only about remembering the death of Jesus Christ, it is a day that puts before us a choice and calls into question the choices we make day in and day out.

Perhaps we could call this day “TRUTH FRIDAY” instead of “GOOD FRIDAY”; observing that it is the day that distinguishes those who are of the truth from those who are not of the truth.

Standing before this cross, we must choose which Kingdom is ours. “You cannot serve two masters.” He told us. If in faith we belong to the “Truth” we can then see in this defeat, this suffering, this death, the way to life, to peace, and to victory. But we cannot have it both ways. For those who belong to the truth, service out of love, forgiveness, and obedience to God’s Will is the only possible choice.

When we make it, the innocent will no longer be abandoned and left to suffer, power will give way to compassion, greed and the desire to consume, to look good, and be “successful” in the eyes of this earthly kingdom we give to lives of commitment, gratitude, and love.

Then the veil will once again be torn in two, but this time, not the veil of some earthly temple, but the veil that hides the presence of the Kingdom of God, and finally, Pilot’s choice will be undone, and the choice of Jesus will at last complete his work on earth.

We adore you, O Christ, and we Bless You. For by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world!

April 13, 2006

Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Was that conversation with Peter really about washing feet? I don’t think so.I think it was about relationship, about intimacy. Peter wanted to make it about washing, at least at first. Then, slow to catch on as usual, he got it. His feet were not dirty. It was not about washing. It was about the two of them: their love, their relationship. The whole action was not about dirty feet. It was an invitation to intimacy.

That towel and that basin were not taken up by the usual servant who would never have looked at them, would have taken no time to see who it was, who was expected and would have been hired for the service as a typical sign of hospitality. This was the host. Something different is going on here.

In asking them to bear their feet to him he asks them to be vulnerable, like intimate friends. He asks them to let him kneel before him and touch them perhaps in a way they have never been touched before. The disciples are being invited into intimacy with the One who loved them so much he would lay down his life for them.

Brothers and Sisters, it is not only those apostles who are invited into this intimacy. “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” He says to them. He would have us look at each other, notice each other, touch each other deeply, emotionally, spiritually, be bound up with each other perhaps in a way never known before. It is something new, and perhaps slightly uncomfortable. Like Peter, we might at first object, but now not because we miss the point; but now because we are afraid and sometimes want to keep our secrets, hide our shame, and avoid the needs of another. None the less, the invitation still stands. We are asked to become a people who love and care for each other. We are asked to become vulnerable to each other; to be willing to wash each other’s feet, to risk pride, position, power, live, everything for each other. But he took a towel and a basin.

Christ calls us to do the same. He calls us also to take bread and bless it and break it and eat it together. He calls us to take the cup of wine, give thanks for it and drink it. What is more intimate than drinking from the same cup? Yet, it is not only about bread and wine, just as the washing of the feet was not about washing up. It is about remembering who died for us, that we might live for him. It is about sharing in his life as he shares in out life, all of it, even the worse of it.

Again, it is about intimacy: coming to this table. It is about coming into intimacy with the God who has promised to be really present among us, blessing us, strengthening us, giving us life abundant and eternal. No random gathering of strangers here. When we share the holy food of this table, we are invited into the intimate community of friends who love and care for each other: no longer strangers, no longer servants, but friends. It is the covenant of friendship and love.

It is the covenant of service and care. How could we ever miss or skip the gift and the promise we are given here? Come, let us adore. Come, let us give thanks.

Come, let us rise to this new life.

April 9, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Mark 11:1-10 + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 14:1 – 15:47

Peter, James, and John: two great apostles privileged to share in the great moments and swell with pride and ambition, promise and pleasure are with us today. They climb the mountain in the company of Jesus and witness the transfigured Christ wanting to build tents and stay there in his company. What promise there is in such a one! They arrange for and joyfully share in the meal of Passover with a whole city clamoring to see their friend and their leader. They broke bread with him and drank from the cup as a sign and promise of unity forever. When they need him for anything, food, healing, instruction, shelter, company, respect; he is there for them.

And then he says to them: “Keep watch with me.” They sleep! When his company may bring danger or suffering, they can’t be found. But this day and this Gospel are not only about us as much as we may see ourselves in them. This day and this Gospel does raise questions about us, but also finally provides answers about Jesus.

There are a lot of people in this Gospel, and each of them might attract our attention. But of all, Simon is worthy of the greatest attention. Unable to bear the weight of the cross on his own, Jesus needed help, the help of a stranger to complete the mission. The hard, painful work of salvation is a work in which God chooses to depend on human beings. With all God’s glory and power, God still chooses human participation and help. God needs us to proclaim and live the Good News. Every time we break out of our false need for self-sufficiency and dare to ask for help, a new community emerges, a fellowship of the helped and the helper, the weak and the strong. This is a true community of hope for a broken world.

The question for us is whether we can step out of the crowd which seems so intent on taking care of itself first and lift our share of the cross.  The question about Jesus gets answered in this Gospel. Who is this? What is he doing? What is this suffering all about?

Not until the moment of his being “lifted up” is he clearly and unmistakably the Son of God, Savior. If Jesus, in whom we believe and whom we have chosen to follow is fully himself only in suffering and death, then that is the very place where we shall find ourselves.

Think of those who have shown themselves faithful and proven their Christian identity in suffering. Ancient ones, martyrs who in their suffering and death bore witness to Christ. Think of John Paul II whose sufferings and illness made him an even more worthy and more credible as a messenger of the Gospel. Anyone who has suffered greatly knows the transforming power of that suffering. They discover as Jesus did their truest selves.

What is suffering for? It is for discovery. Why did Jesus suffer? To discover and reveal who he is: to reveal that God is found in suffering and present to those who suffer. God’s revelation in human history is not fulfilled in signs of power and divine greatness but in the humiliation of the divine being in Jesus’ death on the cross. It is the crucified Jesus who is the Son of God, not some wandering wonderworker. It is the crucified Jesus who is the Son of God, and not until then does the world in the words of a centurion recognize and affirm who this is. In that discovery anyone who bears pain and suffering also discovers Jesus,

and in uniting ourselves to his suffering we shall become not just our truest self but a part of redemption, begun by Jesus

continued in us until he comes again.

April 2, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 31:31-34 + Hebrews 5:7-9 + John 12:20-33

Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally Jeremiah have led us to the threshold of the week we call “Holy.” It is the week of Covenant. The week of Promise. It is the week that determines and tests our identity, our true communion, and bears witness to the covenant we have with God and the promise upon which it rests. In the covenant with Noah the goodness of all creation is affirmed, and the all-embracing love of a Creator-God is expressed in a promise fulfilled as the “dry land appeared.” The covenant with Abraham required a human response: obedience. The covenant with Moses required obedience to the law. The covenant Jeremiah promises is written on human hearts, not tablets of stone.

In its largest sweep, the covenant affirms that the God who created the cosmos has made an abiding commitment of fidelity to a chosen people. This commitment is grounded in nothing other than God’s resolve to be in the relationship. This very desire of God; this initiative of God makes us a holy people, the beloved people of God. The prophet who speaks in our midst today is not some voice from the past.

Jeremiah stands in the midst of this assembly speaking to us and raising a question about trust, because trust is an essential element of any covenant.

The Israelites to whom he speaks having finally gotten to the Promised Land had shifted their trust in the God who led them there to their own political alliances.

Their story is all too familiar and embarrassingly like our own. We Catholics have made it to the “promised land” of power, influence, and wealth, and we too have shifted our trust to our own clever capacity and productivity. Trust in God is not so much a way of life for us as it is an ideology. It is a nice pious thought that has little to do with how we behave. We pay our taxes, perhaps with some grumbling,

but a tithe to the church is for the Protestants. If Father even mentions money once a year or less, “that’s all he ever talks about.” We priests know that we can talk about sex, justice, gossip, or anger all day long, but don’t talk about money. That’s too sacred, too personal, and too private. We wouldn’t think of missing work lest we lose our jobs, but coming to church is a matter of convenience. We get to work on time if our pay depends on it and we would be very cautious about leaving work early, but we casually stroll in and out of here as though it made no difference whatsoever.

Covenant is what we are about. It is what define and identifies who we are. It is the very structure and shape of our identity with God, and it is the way through which God has chosen to relate to us.

In one week, the church will celebrate, renew, and initiate people into the Covenant: the last and final, full and complete Covenant of all human history. The Gospel today speaks of planting with the metaphor of seeds. Yet what John is expressing is the truth that God in Jesus Christ has planted himself among us. “Where I am, my servants will be.” says Jesus. The consequence of these words is that we are to plant ourselves in the community of believers, and that Christ is to be found in that assembly.

Membership in the church is not like joining the “Y”. You belong to the “Y” because you pay your membership fee and carry a card. You don’t ever have to show up. You belong to the church because you plant yourself in the assembly when it gathers. The relationship we have with God is expressed, lived, and celebrated in the relationship we have with each other every weekend in this place around this table, sharing the broken body and poured our blood of Christ.

But we’ve made it to the “promised land.” Like the Israelites who survived on the manna in the desert, what happens here doesn’t seem like enough. But the mystery of our God and that God’s hunger for us goes on. The Covenant he would have with us is still an option, is still extended, is still to be found and lived in Jesus Christ whose presence is the Eucharist. Our witness to that presence is our own presence, nothing else will do. The crucified Christ is not an abstraction, but the ultimate revelation of how far love will go, what measure of rejection and pain it will endure, how much selfishness and betrayal it will withstand. The unconditional love of God, fully expressed in Jesus being nailed to a cross does not flinch at our perversity or turn way for our indifference and our sin. This is the essence of the covenant established with us through Christ Jesus. Absence from the profound mystery celebrated in the three days of Holy Week we have come to call Triduum raises deep and profoundly serious question about our identity. Three hours of agony on a cross freely given, and we find it hard to give three nights in church in his memory. People, listen to the prophet.

March 25, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23 +  Ephesians 2:4-10 + John 3:14-21

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah are before this Lent because it’s all about covenant. Jeremiah comes next week. Now the pattern is broken this weekend in order to highlight an important moment in Israel’s historic covenantal journey with God. From a covenant with all creation through Noah, to a Covenant with Israel by Abraham, we have moved from a covenant of love without conditions to a covenant expressed in the law of Moses. It’s final expression in the Old Testament will be put before us next week, just as we move toward the Passion of Christ.

This week, we reflect on what happens when the covenant is broken. The first reading tells us of Israel’s stumble in her journey with God. This reading from 2 Chronicles narrates the circumstances that led God to force Israel into Babylonian captivity in the 6th century B.C. Israel had broken the terms of the Mosaic covenant that God established with her ancestors. Israel was no longer a holy and separate nation. All of Israel, the princes, the priests, and the people were “practicing all the abominations of the nations.” Despite God’s compassion and repeated attempts to have his people change their idolatrous ways, Israel refused to listen to God’s call to conversion.

As Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians, Israel had become “dead in our transgressions.” But “God, who is rich in mercy…brought us to

life with Christ.

The covenants that God established with Noah, Abraham and Moses called Israel into a deeper and more committed relationship with God so that Israel could have eternal life. But sin cut the journey short and forced Israel to stumble. Yet God’s response to this infidelity and sin was His Son, Jesus Christ. “That the world might be saved through him.”

The story of Israel’s journey with God is our story. We stumble again and again.

Like Nicodemus, we simply do not “get it. ” We toy around with taking the Word literally while failing to see what God is doing and who is in our midst. There is more here than a message. There is presence. There is more here than something for the brain and the intellect. There is also something for the heart and for the soul.

As the Gospel episode today concludes, we know nothing of how it goes with Nicodemus. But he returns again much later to stand at the cross. He stands before us today in this liturgy to bring us along, to move us to understanding.

At first, it is all about listening to the Word. and then it turns into action as he takes the lead to bury the crucified Jesus and obviously comfort to the grieving disciples.

Rembrandt did an engraving of the gospel scene of removing the body of Jesus from the cross. In that scene, Nicodemus is of course, responsible, having gone to Pilate to ask for the body. He stands there in fine robes looking on. Shafts of light come from the upper right part of the frame onto the body of Christ reflecting brightly onto the face of Nicodemus. The one who came at first in the night uncertain and full questions now stands for all to see in the light of God’s presence.

This is the heart of our liturgy this weekend. The mission of Jesus is not to condemn, but to save. Like Nicodemus we find this hard to understand. The harsh reality of life in this world would harden our hearts with terrorism, torture, corporate downsizing, and ethnic cleansing. It is an open invitation to be the judge, but our faith in Jesus Christ calls us not to be the judge, but to be the witness.

March 19, 2006 At Saint Philip Neri Church in Midwest City, OK

Opening of Parish Mission at Saint Philip Neri Catholic Church

Midwest City, Oklahoma

Exodus 20: 1-17 + 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 + John 2: 13-15

“All of us are engaged to one degree or another in a personal, ongoing battle with sin and vice, although we may not think of the conflicts with our nature in those terms. Although our anger doesn’t make most of us murders, our lust doesn’t make most of us rapists, and our greed and envy don’t make most of us outright criminals, they together with gluttony, arrogance, and sloth, often make us and those who have to live with us miserable. Moreover, when we give in to our low passions we debase our humanity. Our failure to live up to the best we can morally be is as tragic as the unhappiness our evil causes.”[1] There is a social dimension to all of this as well for which we are responsible. It works its way through our commerce our entertainment, and our whole culture. Pride, greed, and anger profoundly influence domestic and foreign policy. If we truly had generous and compassionate leaders who were imbued with the value of social stewardship rather than greed and ambition, we would not have tolerated the corporate scandals we have endured in the last ten years. “Every deadly sin fuels harmful social phenomena: lust-pornography; gluttony-substance abuse; envy-terrorism; anger-violence; sloth-indifference to the pain and suffering of others; greed-abuse of public trust; and pride-discrimination.”[2]

These sins are about what it means to be human and humane, not about what it means to be perfect or “holy.” This is basic stuff. It concerns the core of what we are, of what we can become, and most importantly, of what we should aspire to be.[3] In the end, the question of what we want to be has an answer most of us would quickly give: happy. We want to be happy. What those of us who share a common faith believe is that happiness is not dependent upon physical or material pleasure. In fact it is often hampered by it. “Our culture teaches that pleasure and possessions are happiness with the result that pleasure is often substituted for happiness and meaning in life.”[4] When a crisis comes along that pleasure cannot resolve a secular person runs to the psycho-therapist. It is not so for us. We have a treasure of wisdom and tradition, teaching and revelation that leads us to a life of virtue and balance, holiness and joy. It is not that pleasure is inappropriate, but that it comes from character and virtue, and a right relationship of one’s self to others. That is where we shall find pleasure.

“If we do not take seriously our capacity for evil, we are unable to take seriously our capacity for good.”[5] There will be no taking credit for the good that we do if we fail to accept the blame for the evil. The tradition we shall reflect upon from now until Wednesday, “The Seven Deadly Sins” does not allow us to compartmentalize our lives. It reminds us that our lives are ours to make. Unlike our bodies so influenced by our genes, our souls, our spirit, and the lives they animate are free to be shaped by our choices. We can choose to be whole. There is more and better in us than we have chosen to become. Accepting the fact that we sin is a summons to life. [6]

We are always inventing gods. It seems to be a characteristic of our age and perhaps every age. The god most popular this day is a god who does not demand much of us, is certainly not a god that punishes, although we don’t mind a reward now and then. The sentimental god of most sappy religious pop music is a god that just pats us on the head like grandpa and sends us on our way. With a god like that, there is certainly no need to trouble one’s self about the devil but there’s the trouble. The devil’s best trick is to convince us that there is no devil.

We recognize evil in others, but if we ever want to see the face of sin, we must look in the mirror. All we see in others is it’s reflection from ourselves. The honest among us know that what we always criticize first in another is the very thing we dislike in ourselves. Sin is our secret from others. Only we know where and how deeply it has taken root in us. Saint John says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

The last words of today’s Gospel speak the truth about us. We are sinners. Sin is in our nature, and so John says: He needed no one to give him testimony about human nature. He was well aware of what was in man’s heart.”[7] When we recognize and confess that sin and our inclination toward it is a part of our nature, and that we alone will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem just futile and absurd. We can make sense of our lives because the existence of evil presents us with moral choices, and in making those choices, we form our character. We have been given our nature, but we choose our character. When we say someone is a good man or a good woman, we do not suggest that they are people in whom there is no inclination to evil, but rather that they are people who have wrestled and still wrestle with it and never give in because their quality and their goodness comes from the struggle. Those people are truly noble.

“Morality is like art, said G.K. Chesterton, “it consists of drawing a line somewhere.”[8] We live in an age in which no lines seem to be drawn at all, or those that have been there are being erased. As a result, our humanity is losing much of its real glory and beauty. It is less and less a mirror of the creator. I want to propose to you that if we can take our sinning seriously we might at least find that we can be interesting again, and so can life itself.

I invite you to give four evenings this week for the sake of the truth, four evenings  in this church in front of the mirror for the sake of life itself, your life. Tonight it will be about Pride and Envy. Monday night about Anger and Sloth.  Tuesday night about Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.  That leaves one night left over, Wednesday for the sake of repentance and healing, for the sake of committing ourselves to the virtues with which we may oppose those sins, and in so doing, rise to life again. 7:00 o’clock.

March 12, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 22:1-18 + Romans 8:31-34 + Mark 9:2-10

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah stand before us in Lent’s first four weeks,

because it’s all about covenant. Last week the first covenant was our source of reflection; a covenant made without conditions with all of creation, a covenant of promise that sustains our hope for creation restored. And now it is Abraham.

This time there are conditions to the covenant.

The story of a father willing to kill his son in a sacrifice and the thought of a God who would as such a thing is so shocking and troublesome that we risk missing the point. It is not about a father nearly killing his son. It is not about a cruel trick from God. It is about obedience in the richest sense of the word.

The point is that Abraham has been thinking that his future lies in Isaac. The culture of the time prizes the first-born above all else. Abraham’s very identity is there in Isaac, and that is what he is really being asked to sacrifice: his plans for the future, his way of doing things, his expectations about how things are supposed to be. What God is really asking is, “Will you do it my way?” “Will you be obedient, to what I say even when you don’t understand, or it seems as unthinkable as killing your own first son?”

The same request is made in the Gospel: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” The voice does not say: “Hear” him, it says: “Listen”. It is an active response that is expected. It is not just a matter of hearing him the way he just “heard” the gospel. It is a matter of doing what he does and doing what he says, “obedience.”

In our power centered world, we do not always get the point about obedience. We confuse obedience with submission, and they are not the same thing, especially when it comes to virtue. “Obedience” for a disciple of the Lord, is a desire and willingness to look for the will of God in decisions, to listen for the voice of God in what is asked of us. Young people here, when you are obedient to your parents, you are practicing being obedient to God. When you do what your parents or your teachers ask, you getting ready for the day when you can begin to discover what God is asking of you with your life. When Saint Paul suggests that spouses should be obedient to each other, it is the same thing; an effort to see the goodness of God, the will of God, and the presence of God in the other.

Obedience is the condition for the covenant with Abraham. It was the bond between the Father and the Son, and so it shall be with us as well. A willingness to set aside one’s own way, a readiness to abandon one’s own expectations of how things ought to be or how we want them to be, and trust that the Lord will provide all that is necessary is the way into Covenant with God.  Seeking what God asks, listening for God’s will in the scriptures, In the teaching of the church,

and in the depths of one’s own conscience is the beginning of Obedience.

“Will you do it My way?” God still asks. Will you make peace by forgiveness rather than violence? Will you live by dying to yourself? Will you give away what you have to discover what I can give you? Will you choose trust over certainty? Will you believe what you cannot see or cannot prove? Will you trust I know what is best for you?

Consider again, what Abraham did. He did not understand at first, but he was obedient, and after that came his understanding. The disciples did not understand what was going on up on the mountain. Yet, once they began to listen, once they entered into the life of Jesus, the understanding came, and they moved into final and lasting covenant For a people of covenant there is no other way.

March 5, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 9:8-15 + 1 Peter 3:18-22 + Mark 1:12-15

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah all stand before us in Lent’s first four weeks,

because it’s all about covenant. Those of us who have marked ourselves with the sign of fire as I spoke of on Wednesday are a people of covenant, and these forty days all lead to the three holy days that establish, confirm, and seal the covenant we have with God, the covenant made with the blood of Christ in the Eucharist. With the wisdom of the church’s readings for the first four week of Lent, we can clarify our sense of this relationship, renew its purpose, and more profoundly realize our identity as God’s chosen ones.

The covenant with Noah is very simple and primitive. It is the first. It is a covenant with all humankind and all creation, everything in the ark, not just Israel. That will not come until next week with Abraham. A flood brings up memories and images of chaos, the kind of chaos we can imagine at the time of creation. In fact, as the flood ends, the story in verses prior to today’s reading reminds us of the third day of creation, when “the dry land appears.” In other words, the goodness of first creation is restored. Creation is repeated. Creation is restored. Along with it, the goodness God proclaims over His creation.

In the simplicity of Mark’s Gospel account today, we get a glimpse of Paradise restored, and with it a hint of what shall come of the life and ministry of Jesus. He lives in harmony with the wild beasts. It is like the beginning of creation before the sin when in that garden, all creation was in harmony and peace.

This is the promise God first makes to this “Settler”, for that is what “Noah” means: “Settler”. He resettles the earth, and then he give thanks. After that, God makes a promise. There is something of a Noah in us all. We are all settlers on this earth, survivors of chaos and sin, called in obedience (Build and Arc) to resettle this earth as God created it.

Forty days and nights for Noah; forty days and nights for Jesus; forty days and nights for us in Lent. We too are a people possessed by the spirit, “driven”, not “led” as Matthew calls it, but “driven” in this life to radical dependence upon God. In that desert, the mission of Jesus awakens in him. His victory over Satan reverses Adam’s defeat and begins the process of restoring paradise. In the desert of this season, a mission must awaken in us as well. We are possessed by the Spirit too. We have just marked ourselves with the sign of it: ashes remaining from the fire of Pentecost!

A people of covenant are possessed by the Spirit, not possessed by Satan, as Mark calls “evil.” That Spirit empowers our deepest, best selves to reach out in warmth, hospitality, healing, hope and deep care for those around us. Like Jesus, our lives in the embrace of God, wrapped in a rainbow reminder, lead us to bring God near to others.

When Noah finally realized what God was doing all he could do was give thanks, and at that moment God made a promise kept for all ages. So it must be for us: obedience, deliverance, gratitude, and a relationship with God in covenant; spirit led, trust in God, living in harmony, sharing in mission. In these forty days, the mission awakens in us, the immediate presence of God changes everything,

and the Spirit drives us into this world on fire with love, armed with forgiveness,

and confident of our identity as God’s Chosen People.