Mar_01

In only six verses Jesus moves from Nazareth of Galilee, to the Jordan, to a 40 day wilderness journey and back to Galilee where Jesus begins his short three year ministry -“The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God has come near.”

A lot is packed in to those few short sentences. I’ll try to unpack them and place them within our 21^st Century Lenten Journey that began last Wednesday and takes us to Easter on April 12^th .

There was something in the Press about Catholics and pancakes. And when I was in Court House this past week everything was pretty much the way it always is.. a few folks at the shelter across from Cape Regional waiting for the next bus… In the parking lot at McDonalds the proletariat were rushing to redeem their two for the price of one coupons…

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday. It was also the night the president addressed the joint session of congress.

He did his best to put a positive spin on a recession that is growing worse by the day.

No one said anything about this being Lent or that the Kingdom of God has come near.

From the OT lesson we might get the impression that when God goes into action everyone takes notice. The rainbow is a beautiful thing… but it is fleeting and ephemeral. From the book of Genesis we learn that it is a peace symbol between God and our world.

Except for a few places - most of the events in the Bible are rather local and mundane.

Nations more prosperous and prominent than Israel left their mark on the ancient world: Assyria, Greece, Babylon and Egypt. For the most part they have come and gone. Pyramids stand as a reminder of the transitory nature of all things.

What has remained are the stories that originated from a little rag-tag army of nomads that later became a not much less rag-tag settlement called Israel.

Yet, their tales of warrior queens like Deborah and Shepherd Kings like David still excite our imagination. While the stories of Homer and Cicero of ancient Greece are reduced to required reading in the English department of some colleges.

“In those days, Jesus came form Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan..”

The way Mark tells the story; it was not a public event. Only Jesus heard the voice from heaven that gives him an A+ and a 40 day journey of temptation – of wilderness, angels, animals and temptation - then back to where it all began in Galilee.

Jesus begins his ministry by announcing that the time is now… the kingdom is near, repent and believe the Good News.

2000 years have come and gone since these events related by Marks’s Gospel happened in some remote place. hardly anyone noticed.

Josephus, the 1^st century Jewish historian who wrote an anthology of Jewish history. He only notes that a man known as the Messiah was executed by Rome for alleged insurrection.

But something did happen. Unless you are a student of that period my guess is that you have never heard of Josephus.

As I said, the traffic in Cape May Courthouse last Wed. was pretty much the mess that usually is.

Devout Catholics and devout Lutherans did not escape without a smudge on their foreheads… so life goes on.

I say this, because beneath the mundane, beneath the coming and going of the ordinary of birth announcements and the obituary page;

Between the Society page and Fashion News – between doing the laundry and the laughter of a good joke or the shed tear that hardly distinguishes an onion from a broken heart.

The God who announces that Jesus is his Son whom he loves - calls to us even now…

Ecclesiastes the Teacher said it well, reminding us that there is a time for everything under heaven.

The ancients called it kyros - time as opposed to Kronons time…vs. 14 in today’s Gospel reads the time is fulfilled – KYROS is the word that is used as opposed to kronos…

What the Mark is telling us is that with Jesus’ arrival, clock time had run out and God’s time had begun.

Then as now, we are living in a Kyros time.. .a time when Clock time seems to have warped into overtime and like Einstein’s law of relativity we seem to speeding into a new age where the old laws no longer hold true…

Deepening financial crisis is calling into question the economics Allen Greenspan which benefits the wealthy at the expense of the struggling many..

The assumptions that there is no connection between unbridled consumerism and the environment is now no longer unquestioned…

I am convinced that the stories of the Bible are not just stories of a long ago time and long ago place but they are also stories about today and our time..

Those of us who make MLC our spiritual home will be voting on where we will be …

We will vote whether we will stay put or move on… whether we will live or die..

I fear that there are still too many of us who see our connection with MLC more as convince that a commitment… meaning that too often worship takes second place to the pressing agenda of social and familial priorities…

As I said last week, whether we will grow both in number and in our spiritual strength will depend not so much on a building but on how deeply we are in love with the Lord whom God called his beloved…

It seems to me that weekly celebration where Jesus is the host and we are his guest is the place to start.

Lent is a time that we are called to again re-dedicate our lives to Jesus and weekly worship, where we meet him in word and sacrament.

This will determine whether or not MLC will grow.. As we have heard before, God’s word is both Law and Gospel.. The Law is the truth about our human condition.. that we are selfcenterd – “incravatus in se.. “ wrapped up in self, Luther said.

that the Gospel is Bad news before it is good news. It is the news that we are sinners (to use an old word), that we are evil in the imaginations of our hearts and that when we look into a mirror what we see is not good.. that is the tragedy, but it is also the news that we are loved anyway. Cherished and forgiven – bleeding to be sure but also bleed for … that is comedy.

A journey that too few in to-days world seem to care much about. Or for that matter even in the world of the Bible.

The decision made this day will have little impact on those who write history books but it will, in one way or another be the most important decision this congregation will make.

As Lutherans we believe that God has given us a message and it must be told to our children and to the children who are yet not born – it is the story of the Flood but also the RAINBOW..