PREACHING THE LECTIONARY: THE McGREGOR PAGE
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Lent 1
March 9, 2003
Genesis 9:8-17
Ps. 25:1-10
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
The sights and sounds of evil are pervasive in our society. We are exposed daily to the willful abuse of one human being by another. The news displays crimes against persons. As if we didn't get it, TV dramas act it out. The emphasis on sexual images does violence to the fully human nature potential in people.
Alas, we are people of unclean thoughts, and we live in a land of unclean thoughts, to paraphrase Isaiah. Is there a remedy short of dropping a hot coal on our brains? When Eve and Adam coveted God's ability to know good and evil, it must have been the knowledge of evil that most intrigued them. We are now so full of the knowledge of evil that our minds and hearts yearn for a moment's rest. We need to call a Time Out.
Could we find rest from the knowledge of evil by meditating on baptism? Could we find, in treasuring our own baptism, a cleansing of our minds? Would it help to take the immediate memory of our baptism into the wilderness with us the way Jesus did? The season of Lent invites us to do just that.
God took a Time Out from the evil of the human race once. The Flood Story is about God's blowing the whistle on the whole enterprise. Peter connects the Flood Story with Baptism -- says it "prefigured" baptism. God saved eight people from the evil generation around them by means of water. God saves us from the evil generation around us by means of water through Baptism.
Then, does Baptism replace the destruction of the human race as God's response to evil? When I was baptized, was I participating not just in my own salvation but in the salvation of the whole race? Was I actually doing something on behalf of all of us? Peter describes baptism as we normally think of it, a benefit to the one being baptized, "as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ..." But, could "good conscience" not apply to both the individual and the race? Baptism permits God, in good conscience, to allow human life to go on in spite of our continuing rebellion.
So, instead of furtive glances at the heavens to see if it is today that God's wrath will descend; instead of thinking that the gaping hole in the ozone layer and the disappearance of green frogs and the emergence of bacteria resistant to all antibiotics are harbingers of death and pestilence, we might direct our attention to baptism as Jesus did, not just an act for our own sakes, but for the sake of the whole world.
Lent is a Time Out to remember our baptism and to rededicate ourselves to the salvation of the world.
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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