A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter
at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
March 1, 2009
(The First Sunday in Lent)

Text: Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jor-dan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” —Mark 1:9-15, NRSV

When he was a young child, our son J.R. loved for us to read to him Where the Wild Things Are, a wonderful story beautifully written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. It’s about a mischievous little boy named Max who is sent to his room to go to bed without supper for mis-behaving. In his room in the dark of night, a forest mysteriously grows and an ocean appears across which Max sails “off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.” It is a land where he is confronted by some of the scariest, ugliest wild creatures that one might imagine. Max eventually confronts the beasts, stands up to them, and makes them his friends. They even crown Max the king of all wild things.

But eventually the beasts begin to misbehave, as wild things will do, and Max sends them off to bed without their supper. Then, from far away he smells good things to eat and gives up being the king of where the wild things are in order to return to his room. Max waves goodbye to the wild beasts and sails “over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day” back into the night of his very own room where he finds his supper waiting for him…and it is still hot.

It doesn’t take me long to figure out why our son loved this story. He was something of a wild thing himself…just like Max. But it is also intrigued him, I think, because it is a story about those dreaded figures that can terrify children when the light is turned off and they are in bed, and playthings in the room take on an ominous, spectral form. To confront those nocturnal fears, to stare them down and make them friends, this had to thrill his young heart.

Of course, most of us here this morning are adults. We are no longer tempted to scream when the lights are turned out and we lie there in the dark…at least most of us aren’t. We know that’s not really a ghost over there; it’s only our bathrobe hanging on the door. That’s not a beast crouching in the corner, ready to jump; it’s only our accustomed easy chair sitting there.

We are no longer afraid of the dark. We know that there’s nothing in the dark waiting to jump us. But as one person asked, after reflecting on Where the Wild Things Are: Are we justi-fied in not having a fear of the dark? Do our children perhaps know more than we know?

A number of years ago, a small United Methodist congregation gathered at a service of Thanksgiving for healing. A little child in the congregation had been given a rather miraculous remission from cancer.

She and her grateful family sat in the front row of the congregation. The little girl sat there, propped up against her mother. Her skin was white as a ghost, she had no hair. But she was healed—or well on her way to being healed—and the congregation gave thanks.

During one of the songs that the gathered community sang, pictures of the little girl as she was going through treatment were projected onto a large video screen. She was surrounded always by other children who were undergoing therapy—little children being put through in-credible pain and anguish—and their terrified parents. After the song, the father of the little girl said, through tears, “Forgive me my tears, but most of those children, who all became friends, have now died.”

The congregation then stood and sang again, an almost unbearably upbeat contemporary song, “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” (The Faith We Sing #2088).

The pastor who presided at that Service of Thanksgiving reflected afterwards: “All I could think about was the horror of it all, the innocent suffering of children, the grief of their par-ents, and the terrible ugliness of it all. I know I was supposed to feel gratitude but all I could muster at that moment was sadness at the gap between our upbeat, smiling, sunny, and positive worship and the sheer horror of the evil in which we stood.

“I thought of other hymns like, ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past,’ or ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,’ hymns that combined praise with honesty, gratitude with truthfulness.”

But then he and we confront today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark. It is The First Sunday in Lent and, as always on this Sunday, we are led off into the wilderness to share in the temptation of Jesus. Jesus’ temptation is part of the drama of his opening days of ministry. He is baptized, which inaugurates his saving work.

And, according to Mark’s Gospel, immediately after his baptism Jesus is propelled by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. And there he is confronted by “wild beasts.” You may recall that in Matthew and Luke Jesus is met by “the tempter” or “Satan.” Here, in Mark, it’s just “wild beasts.”

For people who lived in Jesus’ day, in that part of the world, huddled behind walls in their cities, you can imagine what “wilderness” signified for them, what these “wild beasts” meant—those forces arrayed against civilization, against goodness and peace, against the hu-mane. The “wild beasts” are the shadow side of reality, that deep, dark world of chaotic evil that bubble up from time to time and challenge us.
But not before they challenged Jesus.

So today’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus has come, not only to be our Friend, our Com-forter, and our Guide but also our Comrade in arms in those situations when we stand face-to-face and must go toe-to-toe with the “wild beasts.”

When you must walk in the wilderness where the wild beasts are—the cancer ward; the pain of injustice; the valley of the shadow of death; the places of hate and bigotry; the fearful arena of economic uncertainty—know this: Jesus has invaded it before you. You walk not alone. If we in the Church only have a word that is sunny, upbeat, bright, and cheerful, then we haven’t told the whole story of who Jesus is.

The Roman Catholic theologian, Monika Helwig, said some years ago, “If it won’t play in a cancer ward, or a shoddy nursing home for the elderly, whatever it is, it’s not the gospel.”

Or, as South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu reminds us:

Goodness is stronger than evil,
Light is stronger than darkness,
And the Victory is ours in Jesus Christ!

Amidst the wild beasts of our own wilderness sojourn, can you hear the good news in to-day’s Gospel for The First Sunday in Lent?

PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you love us at close range. You come to us as we are, in the world that we have. Although you bring us a host of benefits and blessings, something about you also evokes resistance and rejection. The “wild beasts” look at you and recognize in you an adversary. They knew, from the first, that you were not only about blessing us and loving us but also about the defeat of those hostile powers of sin and death that enslave us. The “wild things” know that you are out to defeat all that would keep us from being who you intend for us to be. And for that life-giving gift, we offer thanks and praise. Amen.
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