First Sunday in Lent Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 Matthew 4:1-11

“Somewhere over the rainbow . . .”. We all know the song from “The Wizard of OZ”, and most likely we all have seen a rainbow. They are beautiful, and even now, when we know their scientific cause, they bring to mind the lovely and mysterious. But over the centuries and even within our lifetimes, rainbows have taken on many different meanings representing many different things to different people. From today’s first lesson we know what the rainbow meant to those of the Jewish faith and still means to them and now also to us.

God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

This is God’s promises to never flood the earth again. But the rainbow has quite a history as a symbol. In ancient Greek mythology, the rainbow was a negative sign, it meant disaster. Iris, the rainbow, was Juno’s handmaid and messenger. When Juno decided to flood the earth with watery chaos, it was Iris who brought the bad news. The rainbow was thus not to be happily anticipated.

Moving into modern times, many of us remember that in 1969 we first heard about The Rainbow Coalition. This was a Black Power group established by a leader of the Black Panthers. Next came the National Rainbow Coalition (Rainbow Coalition for short) which was a political organization that grew out of Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. In 1978 the first rainbow flag was flown – and today it is considered the symbol of the LGBTQ community. The rainbow is a powerful symbol.

So on our first Sunday in Lent, we begin with a promise from God, written in the sky above us, a sign of power and of unification, but also a sign that tells us He loves us.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

Our Gospel reading today comes from Mark – the oldest and least elaborate of our Gospels. Mark shows Jesus being baptized in the river Jordan, and then being driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.

In our mind’s eye we can see the sharp contrasts. In the background are the rushing waters of the Jordan, life returning to the land at the end of the wet season. It is an icon of Creation, a reminder of the Flood, the stuff of baptism. There is a crowd of repentant sinners who have come out from the towns and villages, away from business as usual, to be cleansed by John the Baptist in anticipation of Messiah’s coming. There is Jesus, the Son of God, Emmanuel, God-with-us, the one person in the crowd who does not need to repent but who chooses to stand with the repentant sinners. He is making His first public appearance — as indeed He will make His last, on the Cross — in faithful solidarity with the People of God in all their sin. There is the voice of God, exuberant with uncontainable joy at the action of His Son: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And there is the small, fleet-winged dove, the gentle touch of the life-giving Spirit.

Mark does not say all this, of course. Unlike Luke and Matthew, Mark was not fluent in ancient Greek, the language of our New Testament, and thus his Gospel is short and to the point. Yet the background of his story, the picture he paints, the details he leaves out – all this we can picture in our mind’s eye, and it is thick with allusions and references, signaling life and hope. He moves on, immediately, as Mark himself says, to the foreground of this picture where the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.

The gracious little dove has gone, replaced by the driving Spirit, like the wind that Ezekiel heard in his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, like the rushing wind we shall hear again at Pentecost. It is the scouring wind of the great Judean desert. The crowds have gone; there is no water here. Jesus is on His own, among wind-carved rocks, in the blazing heat of desert days, in the star-filled cold of wild, bitter nights.

The wilderness of Judea was not a place where anyone went voluntarily, and certainly never alone. It was a place of danger and destruction, and if one had to go into the trackless sands it was in order to get from A to B as fast as possible, with dried food and skins of water, in caravans of company. But here is Jesus, alone, with only the wild animals for company, and angels who need neither food nor drink and suffer neither heat nor cold.

Mark does not say all this, either. And yet the picture he gives us is also rich with allusions. Jesus is in this inhuman place for forty days, says Mark, and our mind’s eye sees the Exodus people of God in their forty-year journey across other deserts, through other wildernesses.

The word itself, “wilderness,” is heavy with echoes of long dead prophets such as Isaiah: “Behold, I am about to do a new thing… I will make a way in the wilderness… and wild animals will honor me.” In the old Genesis story there were angels in the wilderness for Hagar, too, but she at least had a well.

There is no well for Jesus. Yet like Hagar, He has been driven outside and beyond all the social systems that shape and control human nature. A new highway is being built, a new thing is coming to pass, says Isaiah. Jesus is here resisting temptation, resisting Satan. Mark gives us no details of this deliberate encounter.

The picture in our minds, based on our Gospel reading, calls us into a Lent that wants something beyond the quiet, personal pieties of giving up chocolates, or whatever it is that we decide to do when we see Ash Wednesday and Lent loom up on the calendar. Mark gives us Jesus and the Spirit in sharp contrasts: the waters of life and the dry wastes of the wilderness, the gentle touch of a dove, the driving force of wind.

This is a good year to rethink our customary way of addressing Lent and our Lenten practices. Our world is filled with contrasts and we need not look beyond our borders to find them; the pandemic compared to how it was before the world became ill, the terrible weather in places like Texas where all is normally warm and safe, the strange conflicts arising in our government compared to the formal and time honoured ways of the past. We often wonder if there is anything we can do – and there always is, but it definitely involves more than giving up chocolates.

No, we can’t heal the entire world, and if we put that task before us, we won’t even try to keep a holy Lent. So, as we pray for the world, putting that in God’s hands, we can start within our own families; seek out the people and places where love and support may have turned to disagreement and friction. There are those we love to whom we haven’t spoken, for whatever reason, in a long time. Where once we were close, we may now be estranged. This Lent, this day is a good time to begin looking for the dry barren places close to home, and to begin doing something about restoring them to verdant pastures.

There are always objections to such a course, that “he” or “she” won’t respond favourably to our love, but we know that is only an excuse. We must ask ourselves if the rejection is due in part to the way we make our offering. Is our presentation to our liking but not to theirs? And we realize that offering love is not meant as a solace to our hearts, but as a comfort and support to those we love, to the other person. We realize that to live as we are commanded to do by Jesus – we much change.

Lent is a time to look for the desert places in, not only our lives, but the lives of others. Have we sent a card to someone who needs some care and support? Have we made that phone call, written that letter, said many prayers for those who have not been, and perhaps never will be, kind to us?

In this morning’s Gospel, Mark simply leaves Jesus in the wilderness, just as his Gospel originally left Jesus dead on the Cross. Mark knew, you see, just as Jesus knew, that the wilderness is where we are called to make straight in the desert a highway for our God. May we all find this Lent to be the wilderness in which, like our ancestors in faith, we may find God is still doing his New Thing and calling us to be part of that, to be the bearers and givers of His Love.

Let us pray A Prayer attributed to St. Francis: Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where here is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.