Lent 1B And Angels waited on Him Mark 1:9-15
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, February 18, 2024
“Wild animals were his companions, and angels took care of him.” 1
They hide behind an assembly of desert shrubs, but their overpowering presence cannot be easily concealed. They are overwhelmed by the Spirit’s recent assignment. The dust of the wilderness is particularly holy ground in his presence. The awe of his holiness fills the slightest breeze that passes by his stilled body.
The angels feel like intruders in the presence of their God, known as the Word, now an exhausted person tempted by all the evil the world can muster. This holy one has taught the angels that Love is the way,/ the unconditional love that enfolds and reaches out from God the Father, God, the Spirit, and God, the Word.
The Angels attempt to whisper a plan among themselves but cannot utter a word. They are motionless, their wings folded as close to their bodies as possible. This is their God, but they have never seen the God of Love so up close in this form. They instinctively take off their sandals and kneel as their white robes and bare feet dust the ground. He lies motionless with an occasional shallow breath, raising the thin woven garment over his chest ever so slightly. His unkempt black hair is matted and wringing wet with sweat. His head rests on a nearby flat rock, and his body lies lifeless, extended on the cold ground./ He is not yet aware of their presence.
The Angels have observed his forty-day fast from afar. They remember the fast of Elijah, Moses, Esther before their great struggles. The Angels hold their breath each time the devil tempts him. They hang on to his every answer. They also hear his inner voice echoing, “Serving the God of love is why we are born. Love is the way.” 3/
The angels’ proximity to the physical presence of the most holy in human form continues to render them paralyzed. They have served this God of love since time began. Now, their God is in great distress after an unbelievable ordeal carrying all humanity to his appointment with all the world’s evil, not just personal temptations of the flesh but a confrontation with the collective economic, religious, and political realities who claim godlike powers.4 Their holy one, now human, has collapsed after this physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal. The animals, the lion, the leopard, the foxes, move in beside him, keeping him warm as the desert temperature drops dramatically as night approaches.
Suddenly a synapse, a whisper, a sticky note on one side of their brains uniformly brings them back to the reality of why they are now in this wild desert. They are to minister to him, revive his body,/ heart,/ and soul. But for a last moment, they remember the holiness of their God of love, becoming human and tested almost to the point of death. Also, they recognize the privilege of being called by the Spirit to care for him./
Jesus slowly turns his head toward the Angels, and they intuitively rush with fluttering wings to his side carrying all the nourishment, herbs, spices, and balms known to heaven. They surround his body with their wings, protecting him from any more harm. But the greatest healing power comes in the unconditional love from the multitude of Angels who take turns caring for Jesus./ The more usual circumstance is his ministering to them. ///
On this first Sunday in Lent, we always observe Jesus taking an outward-bound wilderness excursion. We honor the God who created us and remember the depth of God’s reckless love, where God becomes one of us so that God might know all our trials and temptations. How else can God relate to us unless God walks in our shoes? Our creator loves us beyond our comprehension and is reckless with the generosity of his love, even when we treat that love with rejection.
The Angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness are icons of the holiness of this event. They are messengers reminding us that the Spirit will likewise send angels to us whenever we encounter suffering./ Buechner writes that angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to let us know how much God loves us. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t. An angel spreads its glittering wings over us, and we say things like, “It was one of those days that made you feel good just to be alive,” or “I had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right,” or “I don’t know where I ever found the courage.” 5
Martin Luther King Jr. preaches that Jesus, in this Lenten story, gives us a new norm of greatness. Jesus models what it is like to be a servant minister, keeping a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.6 Servant leaders differ from the smartest, the greatest, or those needing to control or looking for admiration from others. Servant leaders build up others, not polish the system or the leader’s self-importance.7//
Some may have seen the recent documentary, A Case for Love, inspired by the teachings of Bishop Michael Curry. His question to us is, “Can unselfish love serve as the healing force needed to mend our fractured society?” Bishop Curry writes about this love ministered by Angels in his book, Love is the Way8. Curry describes God’s love in his journey from childhood to becoming the presiding bishop. Like Jesus, and dare say all of us, he struggles and suffers but is always ministered by angels whose nourishment is God’s love. There is Josie Robbins, who stops by his father’s church to drop off a neighbor’s children before she goes to her own Baptist church. (12-13). When Bishop Curry’s mother has a stroke and his father, an Episcopal priest, is overwhelmed, Josie steps in and becomes Michael’s surrogate mother. Cousin Bill takes a teaching job in Buffalo to help care for Bishop Curry and his sister. (31) A local dentist and his wife care for the children during the week whenever Bishop Curry’s maternal grandmother from Yonkers cannot come. (32) Erna Clark, the Sunday School superintendent, picks up the children from school every day and later helps Bishop Curry decide on colleges. (32) Curry’s seminary encourages him to preach in the style of his grandfathers, instead of telling him that emotional preaching is a sign of inferior intelligence. (107-108). Others teach Curry how to receive anger without giving it back. (181). Perhaps this explains why our presiding bishop knows so much about God’s love being the way.
Bishop Curry teaches us a Jewish proverb, “Before every person, there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘behold the image of God.’” (95-96).///
Can you now remember the angels who dropped or marched into your life at difficult times? Give thanks for them this Lent./ If these angels are still alive, call or write./
Always remember how Curry becomes an Episcopalian. His father comes from a long line of Baptist ministers. His mother becomes a devout Episcopalian while at the University of Chicago. When the couple becomes engaged in the 1940s, she takes his father to an Episcopal church outside racially segregated Dayton, Ohio. When Curry’s black parents are offered the common communion cup along with the whites at the Eucharist, his father knows this is where angels live. (34). Imagine the difference in our lives if his parents had gone to an Episcopal church where the cup was segregated!/
At his mother’s funeral when he is 14, Michael Curry is surrounded by all these angels who wipe the tears from his eyes and remind him of St. Paul’s words, “Love never dies.” 9 Love builds,/ hate destroys. (89) “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” 10
Bishop Curry writes about that day. “Community is love…… And so, at fourteen years old, I did not conclude that the world is a broken, bitter, and ruthless place. I am not abandoned—I am loved.” (43).
“The way of Love will show us the right thing to do every time.” (27).
We will be ministered by Angels as Love leads the way.
1 Eugene Peterson in The Message Study Bible, Mark 1: 12-13.
*2 Stephen Mitchell in Parables and Portraits, p. 34.
3 Eugene Peterson in The Message Study Bible, Matthew 4:1-11.
4 Kris, Rocke, and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace in InwardOutward February 2, 2021.
5 Frederick Buechner, “Seeing Angels” in Wishful Thinking and Beyond Words, Harper &Row (1973).
6 Martin Luther King Jr in “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.
7 Bennett Sims in Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium.
8 Bishop Curry in Love is the Way (Avery 2020).
9 I Corinthians 13:8.
10 Martin Luther King in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com