1 Peter 3:18-22 (NRSV Updated Edition)
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
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"The Gospel account is very interesting: “And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.” “Cast” Jesus out into the wilderness. So again we have the Spirit doing things which we don't normally associate with the Spirit. But here, what is the Spirit doing? The Spirit is causing Jesus to re-enact Adam. Adam was cast out, driven out - the Greek verb is almost exactly the same - of the garden, after he'd failed the testing from Satan. He failed. But here Jesus is driven out, so he undergoes the expulsion first and then he's going to live into the period of the garden so as to become Adam, and he's going to be getting right what Adam got wrong. That's very much what's in the background here, a little hint of that. And what is ... the link between this wilderness and the expulsion? Well, the wilderness is the route back and it's the place of sifting so that the one coming back can be sifted through from all the things that caused them to be remained outside.
...
"So here, what we have, is Jesus going through the being sifted on behalf of all of us, on behalf of Adam, on behalf of the people of Israel, on behalf of the whole of humanity along with Noah - is going through all of this being sifted so that he is able not just to receive the Word but to be the Word, which is what he is to be. He is to be the Word, and it's him going to be speaking that into being, and revealing through the whole of his life, being shown that he is the Holy One of God, the actual internal logic and structure of creation. That's what hinted at in these stories.
"St Peter talks about this in the same way... He refers to [the flood] as a prefiguration of our baptism. Remember that baptism means undergoing the wrath, death in advance so as to be able to live freely and openly as part of a son or daughter, alive in an entirely peaceful, an entirely violence-free creation, one brought into being with that promise of the covenant of peace for humans, for animals, learning how to live together as God's image which was what God commanded Noah to do.
"So, lets just think a little bit about this sifting, because sifting, if you like, is the work of Lent for us... It's a question of working through all the ways in which we are involved in fight or flight, shame, gossip, violence, throwing out the good one, not trusting the goodness that is before us but complaining and wanting to shrink back into lesser selves. And Lord alone knows how each of us has a history of this, a history of not having been able to stand up and become the human being we are called to be.
"This I think is what Lent is about: us accompanying our Lord as he goes through the sifting that will enable him to become the true Adam, the first High Priest, the one who shares his priesthood and thus his good conscience with us, so that we may have the conscience of sons and daughters of God, being able to step out of the violence, the corruption, the hatred, the depression, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of loss - all the ways in which those things grinds us down - and start to become, instead, the bearers of the Word, the livers of the Word, the reflectors, if you like, the witnesses, of the true dynamic of creation made utterly alive."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the First Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1yAfj-O8mU)
[For discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent1b/]
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