Lent 1

Lent 1 (Mark 1:9-15)
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

The old life cannot support the new way of living.

The old life is the life we inherit from Adam and Eve. We inherit the original choice Adam made to separate from God. And, we choose to live our lives from the foundation of that choice. That foundation produces a way of living that is characterized by fear, self-will and pride, the triad of separation.

The triad of separation leads to sin, rebellion against the call to worship and rejection of the Love of God. The end result of sin is the death of the body and the eternal exile of the soul from God.

Jesus came into the world as the second Adam. He came in the fullness of time. He came following centuries of religious conflict in the midst of a culture convulsed by religious conflict. He came into a world united the military might of Rome. He came into a world united by Greek culture and language.

Jesus came at a time when the books of the Old Testament had taken their final form as we know them today. The Dead Sea scrolls prove that the Old Testament we know today is the same as the people in Jesus’ day knew over two thousand years ago.
Jesus came into a religious culture that finally, after centuries of struggle, embraced monotheism.

These things are part of what the scriptures mean when they say Jesus came in the fullness of time. Jesus also came into a world obsessed with religion and defined by religion.

Judaism had divided itself into over a dozen competing and conflicting sects. Pagan religions emerged and vanished every few years. Philosophers had developed a bewildering array of contradictory visions of the “good life”.
Over all of these things, everyone in the ancient world felt the fear and the despair of death.

People all understood the bad news confronting humanity. The Bad News is separation. The worst news is death. People argued over the causes and the possible solutions to the problem. But, they understood the nature and depth of the problem.

They blamed government, culture, economics and each other for the problem. They sought solutions in power, knowledge, superstition, mysticism and law. None of it answered the basic question. None of it offered a real practical and immediate solution.

Jesus was and is the solution.

Mark records the briefest account of Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness. The purpose for these brief accounts is to emphasize that Jesus is the Son of God and how Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved in human flesh. It is by this eternal love that Jesus overcomes the temptation of Satan in the wilderness. And, it is within the context of this eternal love that Jesus begins his three year public ministry.

The actual details of the public ministry are less important to Mark than the reality of the person. Jesus just doesn’t preach, teach and heal. Jesus is the fullness of divine love in human flesh. Jesus is the new humanity who lives from the divine center of steadfast holy unconditional sacrificial love.

The solution to separation cannot be law, knowledge, power or even religion. The solution to separation is reunification. God unites His divinity with our humanity in Jesus. That is why Jesus himself is the solution to separation. His words and deeds testify to who he is but in some ways are less important than who he is.
God recognizes the old way of being human and its terrible consequence of sin and death. God’s solution is to provide a new way of being human. There is no quick fix to the problem. There are no minor adjustments to the problem. The solution is the new life.

The new life is a gift. No one can earn it. No one has any inherent right to claim it. All we have to do is receive it. We receive it as a gift by faith that Jesus is who he claimed to be, who the apostles experienced, who God the Father declared and who the Holy Spirit bears witness to in the lives of the faithful throughout the world and across the centuries.

The old life cannot support the new way of living.

Satan met Jesus in the wilderness. Satan tempted Jesus by quoting and misquoting scripture. Jesus met Satan with the steadfast holy unconditional love of the eternal Trinity. This is the way we can meet temptation.

Our minds can always find ways to justify particular sin. We don’t need Satan to deceive us. Jesus offers to renew our minds in the clarity of divine love.
Our hearts can always find ways to justify particular sin. We don’t need Satan to interfere in order to lead us into sin. Jesus offers to transform our hearts by the outpouring of divine love from his own sacred heart.

Our wills rebel against external standards and external authority. The old life impels us to live by the motto “my will be done”. We believe that the assertion of our individual will to power produces freedom. Moses and the prophets tell and show us that the assertion of our individual will to power only leads to slavery.
The slavery of the will to power is the slavery to fear, anxiety, frustration, pride and eventually despair. Jesus offers to set us free from this slavery through the prayer his mother taught him and he now teaches us: “Heavenly Father, not my will but Thy will be done.”

Surrender to divine will produces free will. Free will is the liberation of the soul from the distortions of sin.

As we begin Lent consider where you are still in slavery to sin. Where do you use your intellect to evade the simple and direct truth of God? Where are your emotions distorted by disordered desires for short term pleasures that will only produce long term pain? Where do you bring forth to other people and even to God a demand backed by a threat?

Which particular sin is God calling to your attention through the Litany, the Liturgy and the readings? That awareness of personal sin is your invitation to invite the Holy Spirit to transform that sin back into its original virtue through the infinite power of eternal love.

No one can resist the subtle temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil apart from the new life Jesus offers. That new life is union with the infinite and eternal love of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit That eternal love embodied in Jesus Christ is the very power that created the universe and each of us.

It is by love, through love and with love that we are able to make the real choice to reunify with God. And, it is that unity with the Divine that can produce a new way of living here and now. Jesus reveals the new way of living in his life. Jesus is the new way of living in each choice we make to surrender sin to be transformed into virtue.

The time is fulfilled. Now is the time. Now is the moment to make that real choice to live in the Real Presence of the Divine. Now is the moment to transform our minds, hearts and wills by the principle, power and person of Divine Love: Jesus Christ.