“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15)
Okay. It’s Lent—forty sacred days (not counting Sundays, of course) of
fasting and prayer and almsgiving. In Hebrew numerology, forty is a pretty
special number. You’ll notice it pops up a lot in the Bible. There’s the forty days
and nights of the great flood in Genesis (relating to the First Lesson in the
Revised Common Lectionary for Lent 1, Year B: Genesis 9:8-17), the forty years
Moses and his crew wandered around in the wilderness, and the forty days Jesus
spent out in the desert being tempted by Satan as referenced in our Gospel
lesson this week (Mark 1:9-15).
So what’s up with forty? I’ve been told in Hebrew numerology four is the
number of earthly completeness (note for points of the compass and four seasons
of the year[i]).
If you stick at zero after four, you've got something that’s really complete—more than enough
complete. It may not mean an exact number, but it means a good long time.
Let me start by saying a little something about the First Lesson with
Noah and the rainbow. I have an old buddy from my Lutheran youth group days
(over forty years ago—see how I worked that number in?) who spent some years
doing oceanographic research with the US Merchant Marines. He told me that he’d
spent over a thousand days of his life at sea, and I just tried to imagine what
that would be like. I mean, what’s it like to get up in the morning, look out your
window, and see nothing but sky and water? Imagine being in the middle of a
vast nowhere. There’s nothing but the
position of the sun to give you a clue as to what direction you’re moving in. There’s
nothing on the horizon to aim at. Imagine dealing with that for forty days like
Noah did.
Do you ever wonder what Noah might’ve been thinking? “What if the water never goes away? What if it never rains
again, and we have no water to drink? How would we know where the land is—assuming
this big barge is even capable of being steered?” I’ll bet he was scared.
Jesus might’ve had it a little easier spending forty days in the
wilderness, but I don’t think it was much
easier. Many years ago I went camping with a friend in Joshua Tree National
Monument in southern California. It’s a desert. They trained the Marines there
for service in Iraq. Unlike the ocean, there’s plenty to see in the desert, but
it all looks alike. No landmarks. I remember getting a slightly creepy feeling
out there. I thought if the trail washed out or if I should run out of gas I’d
have no way of finding my way back to civilization (and this was in those Dark
Ages before the cell phone!).
It’s in such deserted places—on the flood waters or in the wilderness—that
temptation lurks. Our evangelist Mark is in too much of a hurry to describe the
battle of wits between Jesus and the devil as Matthew and Luke do, but he does
include the detail that Jesus was with the wild beasts in the wilderness. It
was and is a place of danger. When you’re in a place where you’re all alone (or
you feel all alone) and completely
uncertain, some pretty weird thoughts might start running through your head.
What kind of deserts do we find ourselves in? What times of testing and
transition? Illness? Pandemic lockdowns? Losing a job? Retirement? Death of a
loved one? Needing to move? Changing social norms? Changing times for the
Church? All those times when we can’t seem to anchor ourselves or see to the
end—that’s when the freakiness in our heads starts to run loose. We don’t need
the devil to whisper sweet nothings in our ears. We make up our own temptations
to anger or despair or overeating or boozing or…you get the idea.
Perhaps the biggest temptation of all is to forget the presence of God.
Noah got a dove with an olive branch and a rainbow. The olive branch told him
that there was dry land somewhere. He
might have to wait a while before it appears, but it’s out there. The rainbow
was his reminder that God was still in charge. God saw and knew and felt with him,
and God promised never again to confront human violence with more violence of
his own. Whenever the rainbow appeared, Noah could be reminded of the mercy of
God.
Mark’s Gospel tells us Jesus wasn’t alone in the wilderness. Satan was
there, but so were angels—God’s messengers. These messengers, depending on how
you translate the Greek word, served Jesus, ministered to Jesus, or waited upon
Jesus. In some way they provided for his needs in that lonely, frightening,
dangerous place. God doesn’t stop being present just because we temporarily fail
to experience that presence.
What are your messengers? What brings God’s presence to your mind and
heart when you find yourself alone or adrift? And how are you different once you’ve
come through your own “forty days?”
Jesus emerged from the desert and got to work telling everyone that God
was not far away. God had not forgotten or abandoned them. God’s kingdom was
right there where they were. They could forget their despair, self-pity, or
inaction and get to work themselves. All they had to do was believe.
Keep believing, my friend. Thanks for stopping by and leave me a note if
you wish.
[i] If
you want to get really wonky about this—and why wouldn’t you?—four as a number
of earthly completion goes back, according to Biblestudy.org, to the fourth day
of creation when God had the infrastructure of the universe in place. Forty is
usually used as a time of probation, waiting, or transition. It occurs 158
times in the King James Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment