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First Sunday of Lent B
February 26, 2012
Reading I: Genesis 9:8-15
Reading II: 1 Peter 3:18-22
Gospel: Mark 1:12-15
On the St Louis website http://liturgy.slu.edu/1LentB022612/theword_indepth.html Reginald H. Fuller introduces the Sunday readings for Lent thus:
The purpose of the Lenten readings is to prepare the people of God for participation in the paschal feast...
The gospel readings of year B begin with the Marcan temptation and transfiguration stories on the first two Sundays, which are traditionally associated with those events. Then follows a series of readings from the Fourth Gospel containing predictions of Christ’s death on the cross and interpretations of its meaning.
And commenting on the gospel he sums up:
...Perhaps there is [...] the thought here that Christ is the second Adam, who restores the harmony of nature previously destroyed by Adam’s fall. Satan put in his usual claim to a son of Adam, but this time he met his match.
...for all its brevity, the Marcan form of the temptation narrative is particularly rich in meaning. Mark is not interested in the psychological experience of Jesus but in proclaiming him as the new Israel, the new Moses, the new Elijah, the righteous man of God, and the new Adam, through whom the powers of evil are defeated and the peace of paradise restored.
Once again I am intrigued by the implications of the metanoia proclaimed by Jesus. Most translations have 'Repent', or 'Turn away from sin'. Preaching to the converted most homilists will suggest a renewed effort to do a little better what we are already committed to. On Ash Wednesday Timothy Schmaltz gave the lie to this approach: 'too childish, too much chocolate milk, giving up candy, and being more patient with my sisters. It all seems too safe.' http://www.catholica.com.au/gc2/occ2/087_occ2_230212.php
In Mark's gospel, Jesus is presented as the New Adam, tempted as was the first Adam by Satan. This time 'the powers of evil are defeated and the peace of paradise restored'. But as Mark will show before the end of the story, this is no peaceful restoration.
To interpret metanoia as a call for renewal in which we will try a little harder to do a little better hardly does justice to the work of a second Adam. Renewal - improvement - is not adequate to the idea of a New Creation.
I wonder could we take a closer look through the very modern lens of evolution. In the language of evolution, Metanoia is radical. it is like a genetic mutation. In physics, like a quantum leap.
If intelligent life is the highest reach so far of evolution, and if the Creator, through Jesus, calls for this masterpiece of intelligence to make a quantum leap, I wonder what he is getting at?
Jesus was a Jew, speaking to people who saw themselves called out of slavery to the full freedom of God's people. But their best efforts went into faithful obedience to the law. Evolution had reached a plateau, and stalled.
As Jesus explained it, metanoia is a new start for the individual and for the community. It is a new way of seeing both the moral or ethical dimensions of life and the potential for human development. It is a new creation - Paul is explicit, and the gospels imply as much in their opening chapters.
Those who were subjects are to be subjects no longer. If you are not a subject you are a citizen in your own right, autonomous, self-motivating, self-moving, self-directing. By comparison, subjects are subjugated like slaves, told what to do and how to do it and when to do it. Their best virtue is obedience.
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Early on the people who followed the way of Jesus lived as a new creation. Meeting for their communion meal in their gatherings [ecclesia], they searched the scriptures of their Jewish background for enlightenment, even while they saw themselves as born anew and following the way of self-giving beyond the Law, beyond any law.
With changing times and circumstances, the ecclesia became an institution, the 'Church', and new creation was put on hold. Maintenance once more became the main concern. Evolution stalled again.
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Having experienced every form of 'christianity' imaginable, every excess of zeal for good and ill, having been enriched by an explosion of knowledge since 15th century enlightenment, through scientific, industrial and educational revolutions, flowering in the space age and the current communications revolution, evolution again calls intelligent beings to make that quantum leap.
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How does this make me feel? Confused? Yes, bewildered, as were those who first heard Jesus teaching. He seems to say I should be totally my self. He seems to challenge me to open my eyes, and my heart, and my mind to look at what I am and what I could be.
I am not going to remain a subject/slave/prisoner/cripple. I am not going to spend this, another Lent, saying sorry to appease my sense of guilt and shame. I am not going to subjugate my body by harsh treatment as if physical punishment could heal the spirit. I'm going to do something much harder, more dangerous, risky. I'm going to believe / trust what Paul says, that 'everyone who is in Christ is a NEW CREATION.' I'm going to take full responsibility for myself, for being myself.
What would happen if we all lived every day the truth of what we are, truly? Nearly all of us know roughly what that means, once we are adult enough to live independently. We have plenty of rules and laws to guide us at the extreme edges. We hold back because mostly we are still afraid to live our true selves. Instead we live a role of make-believe packed in comforting compromise.
What if we forged ahead in being our true selves, alone and with our partners?
Just to say 'Good morning' to my partner whom I love is perhaps the most thorough challenge of the day. I have to push aside the curtains of feined love, denounce in myself the self-importance that puts my partner into second place, and go out to her as ever on a new day of discovery.
In driving, what if I kept to the legal speed, not for fear of getting zapped by a speed camera but because it is a good speed to travel at along suburban streets or on the highway as the case may be? What if I were courteous in the supermarket not for fear of being frowned at but out of genuine respect for that other person sharing this space and this brief meeting in time?
What if I were self-motivated in every thing, doing the good thing, the better thing, just because it is good to do good? I would be a totally free agent. I would be acting from my own self motivation. I would have no restraint on what I do. I would be slave to no one. I would be free as the Creator designed me to be. I would be evolving along the lines of the Creator's plan. I would be reaching a new level of being. I would have made a quantum leap from servitude as a way of thinking, to autonomy as a way of being. I would be a new creation.
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If evolution is the engine driving the development of life on this planet, including intelligent/human life, then to move from beings subject to law - subject to being told, subject to supervision and control, subject to always being governed in everything, to beings who are intelligently self-motivated, self-actuating, self-controlling and self-determining is surely the step we are trying to take.
I wonder why, after 2000 years, so few have made the step! The reason is the same as the resistance Jesus met face to face during his three short years of teaching about it. Paul understood eventually and proclaimed the freedom of a new creation, but his teaching itself was soon made subject to the law and effectively knackered.
Now is the acceptable time.