I had the privilege of being with God’s people gathered as Bethany Lutheran Church and First Presbyterian Church in Lyons, Nebraska on Sunday February 18, 2024 thanks to the invite from the congregations and their current interim pastor, Pastor Bob Oleson. I was invited to come and preach on stewardship, bring greetings to the congregations from Bishop Johnson as well as on behalf of the ministry cluster and their Dean, Pastor Allison Siburg, and share conversation before and after worship. It was a beautiful morning to be with the two congregations. Pastors and pastoral candidates, if you’re looking for a great ministry call in the ELCA and PCUSA, this is one that I would highly recommend. What follows is the majority of the manuscript that I preached from (without the greetings and announcements that were shared elsewhere in worship) based on the appointed stories from the Revised Common Lectionary for the First Sunday in Lent (Year B): Mark 1:9-15; Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; and 1 Peter 3:18-22.
Grace and peace from God in Christ, who is with you, for you, and who loves you. Amen.
Situating in the Story
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[1] That’s where our story ends for today. God is up to something. God has come near. John the Baptist has baptized Jesus.[2] A voice has proclaimed, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”[3] The Spirit has immediately swept Jesus out into the wilderness for forty days as we always remember on the First Sunday in Lent.[4] And now Jesus is on the move. John’s been arrested, and Jesus’ time has come. Jesus’ earthly ministry is happening, and he knows that time is of the essence. And all that just happened in seven verses.
The Gospel of Mark is strange. We know that it is light on details. It’s just the bare bone facts. But even for Mark, this week’s gospel story is something. This is the shortest version of the temptation of Jesus in the four gospels. Two verses which cover 40 days of Jesus’ life. The passage is so short, that today it’s connected with Jesus’ baptism that precedes it, which leads to the Spirit “Immediately” sending Jesus out into the wilderness, and then with the news of John’s arrest, Jesus proclaims, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[5]
The Gospel of Mark does this though because to the gospel’s writer, time is of the essence. There isn’t time to waste. It’s why we hear over and over again, “Immediately” in Mark. Jesus’ eyes are set squarely on the events to come in Jerusalem, and because of that he knows that he has to get right to the point. To teaching, preaching, healing, and pointing to the kingdom of God. There isn’t time for the other stuff. This matters. It’s life and death. Not just for Jesus or his original twelve disciples, but for all people of all times and places. Including you and me.
Baptism, Wilderness, and Vocation
This life and death thing is very much a part of our Lenten journeys as we might be wandering in our own wilderness during these forty days ourselves. But it’s not just that. This life and death thing is part of the thread in this week’s stories we just heard read. The thread of baptism. Where we see and remember Jesus’ baptism according to Mark for the third time in the last two months. Where in remembering Jesus’ baptism again, we also remember our own. Where promises are made by God and God’s people. Where we die to sin and rise to new life in Christ, once and for all. Where we know we’re not just being sprinkled with water, but that God is doing something in it, through the Water and the Word together. That through that, we’re marked and sealed with the cross and the Spirit once and for all. The same Spirit which drives Jesus immediately into the wilderness and begins Jesus’ three years of ministry.
The same Spirit which fills us all and leads us out into our daily lives and vocations. The Spirit which calls and sends, fills, confronts, comforts, reconciles, and sustains. All of this is true. And all of it embodies God’s promises. The promises that we hear in baptism, but also in today’s stories. Promises like God makes to the Son, “You are my Son, the Beloved,”[6] a claim that in baptism God also says to you, “You are my Child. You are beloved.” God loves you. That’s a promise. That love is part of our very identity. Because of God’s love, we are known and claimed once and for all as a Child of God and no one can take that away.
We hear too today that God is with us, that God is with you and with me. And God remembers that promise to be with us, Emmanuel, that we celebrate each Advent season in part because of the story that God remembers right back way near the beginning of our story as God’s people. Where God says to Noah, “I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you.”[7] That covenant that established a relationship between God and God’s people that continues today. That covenant which has as a sign and reminder to this day of a rainbow in the sky. A reminder that God won’t bring about the devastation of the flood again. A reminder that when we are baptized, we are baptized from death into life with God in Christ.
And we hear the promise that God is for you. As the second lesson says, “And baptism which this prefigured, now saves you…”[8] This notion that God is for you, is proclaimed and repeated as a promise we hear in the sacraments, like around this table, “This is my body given for you…. This is my blood, shed for you.”
These three promises that God loves you, God is with you, and God is for you- make life possible. They make the wilderness times of life hopeful, and not prone to just despair and giving into fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and temptation. They also lead us out. For when we are baptized, the Spirit intercedes and acts. God is up to something. The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness as soon as he had been baptized. It’s not quite as dramatic usually for us today, thank goodness. But the Spirit does act. It fills us. It leads us into our daily life. It calls us forth into our unique experiences, perspectives, and passions, and helps us discern vocation. Where God entrusts to us all that we are, gives us meaningful purpose, and helps us, at least in some ways help our neighbors through what God has first entrusted us with.
Discipleship and Stewardship
The Spirit is what creates the first movement through baptism, and that leads next to the invitation to discipleship. An invitation that Jesus himself makes this week when he says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[9]
To repent means to turn towards God. That is at the heart of our Lenten practices. But then once we turn towards God, we remember who God is, whose we are, and who we are, we remember that we follow Jesus as disciples. And that act of following means going where God invites. It means asking questions. Pondering. Making sense. Being stretched. It means not only seeing our neighbors, but doing what we can with what God provides to meet them where they are at as signs of God’s love and promises. And that’s precisely where stewardship comes in too.
Stewardship is a part of discipleship. It’s a big thing, really, as part of our daily lives and walks with Jesus. When trying to describe it, I always start with the psalmist who proclaims in Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”[10] Putting it simply, everything is God’s. You are God’s. I am God’s. All that we have, and all that we are, are God’s. And all means all here. That means your lives, health, bodies, hearts, and minds. Your time, talent, treasure, assets, and finances of all kinds are too. Your passions, strengths, vocations, gifts, ideas, dreams, stories, and even questions. And all of creation that is entrusted into your care back at the beginning of Genesis. All of this and more is God’s. And God chooses to entrust it into our care because God wants life to go well for God’s people, and God wants to be in relationship with us.
God does this and so much more, for you. And this is just a starting point. God will go even to the point of death on a cross for us. We know this. We know that God coming to be among us through the incarnation and the birth of Jesus, through Jesus’ earthly life and ministry which flows out of his baptism, and of course through his death and resurrection. We know this through the salvation which God promises and provides. All of this, God does for you, for me, and for all of God’s beloved. This is pure gift and grace we could never earn or deserve. And that is Good News, news which is at the heart of the Gospel.
It does invite a question though. How do we respond? That’s the stewardship question. How do we respond? Do we respond by going about daily life seemingly unchanged? Or do we respond by being so moved with joy and gratitude for what God has done, will do, and promises to do for us, that we can’t help but give our thanks and praise with the psalmist. And even join in with the psalmist in the fervent hope and prayer to God, “Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.”[11] In truly being filled by God, we can’t help then but be so swept up in thanks and praise, joy, and gratitude, with the Spirit’s nudging that we join in with God in some of God’s on-going work here and now. The work of the Kingdom of God today. That work that is made real through our lives, vocations, and all that we are. This is what stewardship is all about. It’s the response of living life as a steward forever changed by God’s love, forever growing as a disciple. It’s the response of being so moved, that we lean in, and step up, as part of God’s work, here and now today.
Go and Love
When Jesus proclaims that “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near,” he is calling the world to take notice. To come and see that the Lord is good. To witness. To wonder. To imagine. To hope. To dream. To join in. And to embody God’s love made real.
A love that is borne out of promises and a desire for relationship between God and God’s beloved. A love that is borne out of a promise that God walks with God’s own and is always for, all of God’s own. And as Jesus says this and begins his ministry, he does so calling and inviting disciples of all times and places to Come and to Go, to Come with Love, and to Go out and Love.
Don’t be confused and think this is love like we might celebrate on Valentine’s Day as we did this past week. It’s that, but it’s more. It’s a love that makes possible the duality of Valentines and Ash Wednesday together as we observed on Wednesday. It’s a love that helps a young dad like me, be able to walk with his kindergartner daughter. And even when she has had a hard day like she had at school this past week, is able to help her know that she is not alone. That she is seen. That she is known. And that she is loved, just because of who she is.
It’s kind of what I see and know about you as God’s people here in Lyons. You gather together as Children of God. You do so as Lutherans and Presbyterians, siblings in Christ. Christians. Beloved. Partners in the Gospel. Not everyone nor not everywhere are people so willing to work and gather together for worship, witness, and to join in with God’s kingdom building work here and now. But I see it. I see it in you. I sense it in your Spirit. I have heard about it for a long time. I have witnessed it through the years as your neighbor to the south in Fontanelle and have seen it in the ways your congregations have been part of the Logan Creek and now the Fremont Area ministry cluster of the Nebraska Synod. You gather and bring your unique stories as two congregations together, and come together through the Water, the Word, and the Meal as God’s people bearing love, and going out from here to share love with your whole community.
This love is made possible and made real through Christ. Through Jesus’ declaration that, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[12] This Lenten season, lean in as God’s people. Lean into God’s promises with your full selves and Go and Love through all that you are and all you do. For it’s through that love, that the work of the Kingdom of God happens even today. Through you, and with you, because we know that God in Christ is with us, for us, and loves us. Always. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Citations and References:
[1] Mark 1:15, NRSV.
[2] Mark 1:9.
[3] Mark 1:11.
[4] Mark 1:12-13.
[5] Mark 1:15, NRSV.
[6] Mark 1:11, NRSV.
[7] Genesis 9:9, NRSV.\
[8] 1 Peter 3:21, NRSV.
[9] Mark 1:15, NRSV.
[10] Psalm 24:1, NRSV.
[11] Psalm 25:4-5, NRSV.
[12] Mark 1:15, NRSV.