First Sunday in Lent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Theme For The Day
Let us rejoice in the covenant God makes with us, by sheer grace, beyond our deserving!
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 9:8-17
The Bow In The Clouds
"I establish my covenant with you," says the Lord to Noah, "that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood ..." (v. 11). Then the Lord gives Noah the rainbow sign: an emblem of a new covenant of peace. Because of the quaint image of animals walking two by two, we often relegate this story to the world of children's tales, but in fact it is an example of what biblical scholar Phyllis Trible calls a "text of terror." The Almighty, here, is fierce and dangerous. The gently curving rainbow is quite literally, God's bow, God's weapon (v. 16). To the ancient Hebrew people, it is only God's covenant that saves them from destruction, that prevents the Lord from taking down the celestial bow, stringing it once again and wreaking havoc with creation.
New Testament Lesson
1 Peter 3:18-22
Preaching To The Dead
Many people are baffled by the phrase in the Apostles' Creed, "he descended into hell." This passage is the biblical basis for it: "He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison ..." (vv. 18b-19). There is further elaboration in 4:6: "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does." Matthew 27:52-53 describes how, at the moment of Jesus' death, many of the righteous are raised from their graves. Ephesians 4:8-9 may also refer to this early Christian belief. Medieval Christian art frequently portrays this theme in the form of "the harrowing of hell," an iconic image in which the risen Christ triumphantly tramples down the gates of hell, allowing the righteous whose lives predated Jesus' earthly life to walk right past their demonic jailers to freedom. The modern pastoral message in this text is akin to that of Romans 8:38: "... neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The Gospel
Mark 1:9-15
Baptism, Temptation, Proclamation
For a third time, the lectionary returns us to Mark's account of the baptism of Jesus (see Advent 2, p. 14, and The Baptism Of Our Lord, p. 37). Today's selection continues further, however, to include Mark's sparse account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness -- a traditional way to open the season of Lent -- and on from there to describe, in equally laconic terms, the beginning of his preaching ministry (we've also seen this passage previously, on the Third Sunday After The Epiphany, p. 46). These three brief pericopes present preaching challenges precisely because they are so brief. Mark provides very little narrative detail on which to hang a sermon. It may be worthwhile to reflect on all three at once, examining what Jesus has to go through before he is prepared to share the gospel. First, he must be baptized -- publicly acknowledging who his Lord is. Then, through his wilderness temptation experience, he must learn to rely utterly on God for survival -- realizing who his Savior is. The basic Christian confession of faith is that Christ is both Lord and Savior. Having these three brief passages displayed in sequence reminds us that Jesus' spiritual journey here on earth was similar to our own.
Preaching Possibilities
"I have set my bow in the clouds," declares the Lord to Noah, "and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth." The bow God places in the clouds is not so much a colorful decoration, as a weapon. The Hebrew word for "bow," used here and in other, more martial settings, is exactly the same.
Most of us find this image of God with a bow and arrows difficult to accept. It's far more comforting to imagine the Lord as a talented celestial artist, paintbrush in hand, festooning the heavens with all the colors of the rainbow. It's jarring, to say the least, to picture God as a sweaty, musclebound warrior, weary from battle, unslinging the bow from across his shoulders and hanging it high.
Yet that's precisely the image of God enshrined in this Hebrew text. We've simply forgotten what it means -- so familiar have we become with all those sweet nursery school paintings of Noah in his ark, rejoicing that the storm clouds have passed. How easily we forget that it's God who sent the storm clouds in the first place -- who savagely unleashed the flood waters, obliterating nearly all of creation.
The first thing the bow in the sky tells us is that God is dangerous. "Our God is an awesome God," church youth group members proclaim -- but this doesn't mean "awesome" as in "really cool," the way most people use the word today. It means "inspiring fear." It's not popular, these days, to think of God as dangerous. God has become, for many, a friend, a buddy, a congenial traveling companion. God is My Co-Pilot was the title of a book, written by a WWII Army pilot. He found it comforting, as he flew into mortal peril over China, to imagine the Lord of heaven and earth sitting in the seat beside him. Soldiers in wartime are entitled to take comfort wherever they can find it -- but from the standpoint of Noah, that book title seems just a trifle presumptuous. The God who places the bow in the clouds is not anybody's co-anything!
The second thing we can observe about the God who hangs the bow in the clouds is that this all-powerful God wants to be in relationship with the human race. The particular relationship God establishes with Noah is the covenant. There are many types of covenants in the Bible. The covenant with Moses, for example, takes the form of what the scholars call a suzerainty agreement; it's laid out according to the same format as the treaty a conquering emperor would impose upon a newly defeated king. There's an element of negotiation to it: "I'll do something for you, and you do something for me in return."
This covenant with Noah is different. It's what biblical scholars refer to as a "royal grant." In a royal grant covenant, a king rewards a loyal subject by granting an office, or land, or an exemption from taxes. In a royal grant covenant, it's only the superior party who is bound by its terms. There are no conditions imposed upon the inferior party. The covenants God makes with Noah, Abraham, and David all fit this pattern. In each of these cases, it is God alone who chooses to make covenant, to be bound by a solemn oath.
Why does the Lord do it? Out of love. There's no other explanation. There's no one on earth who could disarm this fearsome and mighty warrior; yet the warrior voluntarily chooses to hang up the bow, resolving to practice war no more.
There's another example of this kind of covenant in the Bible -- a covenant leading to a deeper relationship. It happens in the New Testament, at the Last Supper. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," Jesus proclaims. "Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." Here, God's covenant with Noah enters a new, and even surprising, phase. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, goes far beyond merely laying aside his weapons: he delivers himself up to be crucified, for the sins of the world. He buys a new relationship with humanity at the price of his own blood.
Prayer For The Day
When we are sad and despairing, O God ... show us the rainbow.
When we are racked with doubt ... show us the rainbow.
When we fear we are all alone ... show us the rainbow.
When we find ourselves believing sin has won its final victory over us ... show us the rainbow.
In the name of Christ, who by his cross brings us redemption. Amen.
To Illustrate
In C. S. Lewis' much loved children's fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, the figure who's symbolic of Jesus Christ is the fierce lion, Aslan. The two girls, Susan and Lucy, are getting ready to meet Aslan for the first time. They admit to Mrs. Beaver, who's preparing them for the encounter, that they're feeling a bit anxious. "Is he quite safe?" asks Susan. "I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie," replies Mrs. Beaver. "And make no mistake, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without his knees knocking, he's either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then isn't he safe?" asks Lucy.
"Safe," said Mr. Beaver, "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you!"
***
A rainbow itself is made of tiny droplets of water, suspended in the air. The sun shines through these drops of water, and its light is refracted, as through a prism. It is this refraction, this splitting up, of white light that creates the rainbow's bands of color.
In a certain sense, therefore, the rainbow is made up of the storm itself. The water that once cascaded down upon the earth, sweeping everything before it, has now become a sign of grace. The dread reality that once called forth only terror is transformed into something beautiful.
We can see a similar thing in certain churches and shrines that are renowned as places of healing. Displayed on the walls of such places are items like canes and crutches: cast aside by confident people who believed God had healed them. A cane or a crutch is not often a symbol of hope; rather, it is a mark of sadness, a reminder of human limitations and the frailty of the flesh. Yet, when hung upon the wall of a church where people come for healing, that very thing is transformed into a symbol of hope: and all by the power of God.
The same is true of relics of the Berlin Wall. Before the collapse of Communism, the Wall had been the very icon of political oppression, a symbol of despair before the stifling power of the totalitarian state. Yet, after that giddy night in 1990, when demonstrators, realizing the guards had departed, hoisted themselves upon it, smashing it with sledgehammers -- the wall was transformed into a symbol of freedom. The Germans broke it into tiny pieces, and sent the pieces all over the world, so freedom-loving people everywhere could rejoice in their new, hopeful reality.
The same may be said of another symbol, even better known to us than the rainbow, or any other image. It's the symbol that occupies the central place in our sanctuary: the cross.
***
The journalist, Bill Moyers, produced a television series for PBS several years ago, called Genesis: A Living Conversation. On one of the shows he asked the guests on his panel what kind of headline each one would write to describe the Noah story. A newspaper editor responded with something predictable, like "God Destroys World." One of the other panel members was the Reverend Dr. Samuel Proctor, for many years pastor of the great old Abyssinian Baptist Church, the leading African-American church in Harlem. Proctor suggested an alternative headline: "God Gives Humans Second Chance."
Proctor then went on to share something of how he had learned the Noah story: from his father, a Sunday school teacher. "Sometimes we laughed at the ridiculous aspects of it," he said, with a smile, "[but] we didn't try to rewrite it. We drew from it what it said right then to the people and went on. Every Wednesday, though, my daddy would press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club rehearsal. These sixty black guys -- table waiters, coal trimmers, truck drivers -- would give one big concert a year to the white population. [We] couldn't sit where we wanted to, even though our daddy was singing -- we had to sit in the back. But in the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And do you know the song they sang at the close of the concert? They sang, 'Yesterday the skies were gray / but look this morning they are blue / The smiling sun tells everyone come / Let's all sing, hallelujah/ for a new day is born / The world is singing the song of the dawn.' Noah! Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the 1920s, with lynching everywhere and hatred -- 'n____' this and 'n____' that. But they had something we need to recover right now. I can't turn loose this story of Noah and the flood because after all of the devastation ... there's a rainbow ... I'm not going to live without that kind of hope."
Let us rejoice in the covenant God makes with us, by sheer grace, beyond our deserving!
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 9:8-17
The Bow In The Clouds
"I establish my covenant with you," says the Lord to Noah, "that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood ..." (v. 11). Then the Lord gives Noah the rainbow sign: an emblem of a new covenant of peace. Because of the quaint image of animals walking two by two, we often relegate this story to the world of children's tales, but in fact it is an example of what biblical scholar Phyllis Trible calls a "text of terror." The Almighty, here, is fierce and dangerous. The gently curving rainbow is quite literally, God's bow, God's weapon (v. 16). To the ancient Hebrew people, it is only God's covenant that saves them from destruction, that prevents the Lord from taking down the celestial bow, stringing it once again and wreaking havoc with creation.
New Testament Lesson
1 Peter 3:18-22
Preaching To The Dead
Many people are baffled by the phrase in the Apostles' Creed, "he descended into hell." This passage is the biblical basis for it: "He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison ..." (vv. 18b-19). There is further elaboration in 4:6: "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does." Matthew 27:52-53 describes how, at the moment of Jesus' death, many of the righteous are raised from their graves. Ephesians 4:8-9 may also refer to this early Christian belief. Medieval Christian art frequently portrays this theme in the form of "the harrowing of hell," an iconic image in which the risen Christ triumphantly tramples down the gates of hell, allowing the righteous whose lives predated Jesus' earthly life to walk right past their demonic jailers to freedom. The modern pastoral message in this text is akin to that of Romans 8:38: "... neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The Gospel
Mark 1:9-15
Baptism, Temptation, Proclamation
For a third time, the lectionary returns us to Mark's account of the baptism of Jesus (see Advent 2, p. 14, and The Baptism Of Our Lord, p. 37). Today's selection continues further, however, to include Mark's sparse account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness -- a traditional way to open the season of Lent -- and on from there to describe, in equally laconic terms, the beginning of his preaching ministry (we've also seen this passage previously, on the Third Sunday After The Epiphany, p. 46). These three brief pericopes present preaching challenges precisely because they are so brief. Mark provides very little narrative detail on which to hang a sermon. It may be worthwhile to reflect on all three at once, examining what Jesus has to go through before he is prepared to share the gospel. First, he must be baptized -- publicly acknowledging who his Lord is. Then, through his wilderness temptation experience, he must learn to rely utterly on God for survival -- realizing who his Savior is. The basic Christian confession of faith is that Christ is both Lord and Savior. Having these three brief passages displayed in sequence reminds us that Jesus' spiritual journey here on earth was similar to our own.
Preaching Possibilities
"I have set my bow in the clouds," declares the Lord to Noah, "and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth." The bow God places in the clouds is not so much a colorful decoration, as a weapon. The Hebrew word for "bow," used here and in other, more martial settings, is exactly the same.
Most of us find this image of God with a bow and arrows difficult to accept. It's far more comforting to imagine the Lord as a talented celestial artist, paintbrush in hand, festooning the heavens with all the colors of the rainbow. It's jarring, to say the least, to picture God as a sweaty, musclebound warrior, weary from battle, unslinging the bow from across his shoulders and hanging it high.
Yet that's precisely the image of God enshrined in this Hebrew text. We've simply forgotten what it means -- so familiar have we become with all those sweet nursery school paintings of Noah in his ark, rejoicing that the storm clouds have passed. How easily we forget that it's God who sent the storm clouds in the first place -- who savagely unleashed the flood waters, obliterating nearly all of creation.
The first thing the bow in the sky tells us is that God is dangerous. "Our God is an awesome God," church youth group members proclaim -- but this doesn't mean "awesome" as in "really cool," the way most people use the word today. It means "inspiring fear." It's not popular, these days, to think of God as dangerous. God has become, for many, a friend, a buddy, a congenial traveling companion. God is My Co-Pilot was the title of a book, written by a WWII Army pilot. He found it comforting, as he flew into mortal peril over China, to imagine the Lord of heaven and earth sitting in the seat beside him. Soldiers in wartime are entitled to take comfort wherever they can find it -- but from the standpoint of Noah, that book title seems just a trifle presumptuous. The God who places the bow in the clouds is not anybody's co-anything!
The second thing we can observe about the God who hangs the bow in the clouds is that this all-powerful God wants to be in relationship with the human race. The particular relationship God establishes with Noah is the covenant. There are many types of covenants in the Bible. The covenant with Moses, for example, takes the form of what the scholars call a suzerainty agreement; it's laid out according to the same format as the treaty a conquering emperor would impose upon a newly defeated king. There's an element of negotiation to it: "I'll do something for you, and you do something for me in return."
This covenant with Noah is different. It's what biblical scholars refer to as a "royal grant." In a royal grant covenant, a king rewards a loyal subject by granting an office, or land, or an exemption from taxes. In a royal grant covenant, it's only the superior party who is bound by its terms. There are no conditions imposed upon the inferior party. The covenants God makes with Noah, Abraham, and David all fit this pattern. In each of these cases, it is God alone who chooses to make covenant, to be bound by a solemn oath.
Why does the Lord do it? Out of love. There's no other explanation. There's no one on earth who could disarm this fearsome and mighty warrior; yet the warrior voluntarily chooses to hang up the bow, resolving to practice war no more.
There's another example of this kind of covenant in the Bible -- a covenant leading to a deeper relationship. It happens in the New Testament, at the Last Supper. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," Jesus proclaims. "Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." Here, God's covenant with Noah enters a new, and even surprising, phase. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, goes far beyond merely laying aside his weapons: he delivers himself up to be crucified, for the sins of the world. He buys a new relationship with humanity at the price of his own blood.
Prayer For The Day
When we are sad and despairing, O God ... show us the rainbow.
When we are racked with doubt ... show us the rainbow.
When we fear we are all alone ... show us the rainbow.
When we find ourselves believing sin has won its final victory over us ... show us the rainbow.
In the name of Christ, who by his cross brings us redemption. Amen.
To Illustrate
In C. S. Lewis' much loved children's fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, the figure who's symbolic of Jesus Christ is the fierce lion, Aslan. The two girls, Susan and Lucy, are getting ready to meet Aslan for the first time. They admit to Mrs. Beaver, who's preparing them for the encounter, that they're feeling a bit anxious. "Is he quite safe?" asks Susan. "I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie," replies Mrs. Beaver. "And make no mistake, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without his knees knocking, he's either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then isn't he safe?" asks Lucy.
"Safe," said Mr. Beaver, "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you!"
***
A rainbow itself is made of tiny droplets of water, suspended in the air. The sun shines through these drops of water, and its light is refracted, as through a prism. It is this refraction, this splitting up, of white light that creates the rainbow's bands of color.
In a certain sense, therefore, the rainbow is made up of the storm itself. The water that once cascaded down upon the earth, sweeping everything before it, has now become a sign of grace. The dread reality that once called forth only terror is transformed into something beautiful.
We can see a similar thing in certain churches and shrines that are renowned as places of healing. Displayed on the walls of such places are items like canes and crutches: cast aside by confident people who believed God had healed them. A cane or a crutch is not often a symbol of hope; rather, it is a mark of sadness, a reminder of human limitations and the frailty of the flesh. Yet, when hung upon the wall of a church where people come for healing, that very thing is transformed into a symbol of hope: and all by the power of God.
The same is true of relics of the Berlin Wall. Before the collapse of Communism, the Wall had been the very icon of political oppression, a symbol of despair before the stifling power of the totalitarian state. Yet, after that giddy night in 1990, when demonstrators, realizing the guards had departed, hoisted themselves upon it, smashing it with sledgehammers -- the wall was transformed into a symbol of freedom. The Germans broke it into tiny pieces, and sent the pieces all over the world, so freedom-loving people everywhere could rejoice in their new, hopeful reality.
The same may be said of another symbol, even better known to us than the rainbow, or any other image. It's the symbol that occupies the central place in our sanctuary: the cross.
***
The journalist, Bill Moyers, produced a television series for PBS several years ago, called Genesis: A Living Conversation. On one of the shows he asked the guests on his panel what kind of headline each one would write to describe the Noah story. A newspaper editor responded with something predictable, like "God Destroys World." One of the other panel members was the Reverend Dr. Samuel Proctor, for many years pastor of the great old Abyssinian Baptist Church, the leading African-American church in Harlem. Proctor suggested an alternative headline: "God Gives Humans Second Chance."
Proctor then went on to share something of how he had learned the Noah story: from his father, a Sunday school teacher. "Sometimes we laughed at the ridiculous aspects of it," he said, with a smile, "[but] we didn't try to rewrite it. We drew from it what it said right then to the people and went on. Every Wednesday, though, my daddy would press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club rehearsal. These sixty black guys -- table waiters, coal trimmers, truck drivers -- would give one big concert a year to the white population. [We] couldn't sit where we wanted to, even though our daddy was singing -- we had to sit in the back. But in the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And do you know the song they sang at the close of the concert? They sang, 'Yesterday the skies were gray / but look this morning they are blue / The smiling sun tells everyone come / Let's all sing, hallelujah/ for a new day is born / The world is singing the song of the dawn.' Noah! Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the 1920s, with lynching everywhere and hatred -- 'n____' this and 'n____' that. But they had something we need to recover right now. I can't turn loose this story of Noah and the flood because after all of the devastation ... there's a rainbow ... I'm not going to live without that kind of hope."
