To
dream the impossible dream is great; it’s heroic; it helped Andy Williams sell
a ton of records. But the odds are a whole
lot better when we dream possible dreams, fight beatable foes, and run where
the brave have already gone. And we run
where Christ has bravely gone. That’s
what the incarnation does for us. That’s
how, in Christ, God expands our vision of what dreams might be possible. The one where we live forever, living holily,
intimately, joyfully with God, with each other, with the earth? That one’s been made possible again in Christ,
and we do dare dream it. In our opening
prayer, we asked to “grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and
by worthy conduct pursue their effects.”
That pursuing: that’s running where the brave have already gone. That’s uniting ourselves to this forty-day
journey Christ undertook for us, our forty days to Easter joy.
It’s a
journey that brings us back to how we were created to be, brings us back to a
world that God could look on with sheer delight, a world where creation was God’s
creation and acted like it, a world of beauty and harmony. A world where humans, made in God’s image,
dwelt in serene blissful harmony with all creatures, with every bird and
beast. Until one day we decided to stop
trusting. One day we decided that we
weren’t enough like God, that we’d succumb to the serpent’s taunt, that there
was something we were lacking, that the one thing God had prohibited his first
people was the thing they needed to become like God. And, failing to delight in already being
in God’s image and likeness, we broke that harmony and took. Put our will over the harmony and grasped.
Christ
says that we’re not stuck there, in that stance of grasping. The dream of returning to that holy intimate harmonious
living, it’s possible. So, he goes into
the desert and dwells with the beasts, recreating, if even for just forty days,
that Eden existence. And it’s not
without temptation. Mark doesn’t share
with us the details of the temptations in the way that Matthew and Luke do, as
they narrate these events. And that’s
because they’re not of ultimate importance.
What matters is that Jesus lived with the beasts, like Adam and Eve,
that he was tempted, like them, but that he didn’t succumb.
This
wilderness experience follows right after Jesus’ baptism, and immediately
before the beginning of his ministry. All
that we’ve been reading from Mark over the past few weeks: the calling of the
first disciples, the teaching in the synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law,
casting our demons, healing lepers, attracting great crowds… that all flows
from this. Jesus had already broken
Satan’s power before his ministry even began.
Then,
he needs to go and proclaim that. He proclaims:
“Repent!” Stop grasping! Can’t you see, you’re already made in the
image and likeness of God, what more do you need to grasp at? Turn from that way of life, and live,
renewed, recreated in God’s image. He
proclaims: “Believe the gospel!” Believe
that good news, that, as first Peter puts it: “Christ suffered for sins… to
lead [us] to God.” Christ has gone to
the desert and found it un-deserted. His
visiting has transformed it. Eden living
is possible once more.
To
return to Andy Williams briefly, he dared us to “be willing to march into Hell
for a heavenly cause.” Sorry, Mr.
Williams, but that’s not an impossible dream.
Christ did that! First Peter
tells us, he went even to the imprisoned evil spirits to proclaim to them the
victory of love, grace, beauty and truth over chaos, grasping, fear, sin and
death. Christ has conquered and he’ll go
to the darkest, most hopeless of places to proclaim that victory.
God
has committed from the days of Noah to not wipe us out. “Never again” he promises. But there’s more than that. He promises covenant. He promises a being with. He promises that when again he is grieved at
creation, as we grieve him still, he will neither obliterate us, nor give up on
us. So, that leaves him with one option:
enter into the world of sin and death and transform it. Renew the realm of possibility. Restore that dream of love and holy harmony
to the category of possible dreams; ones we dare to dream, and God dares to
dream for us.
Jesus’
forty day experience in the desert of tempting and victory shows us the grand
vision of what’s possible for humanity.
It also shows us it won’t be easy.
Jesus’ forty days took him from his baptism to his ministry. What can this Lent takes us to?
No comments:
Post a Comment