In Mark 1:9-15 Jesus comes out of Galilee. In a few short verses the author sketches out a picture for us: Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan. The Spirit descended upon Him like a dove. A voice declares: “You are my Son, the Beloved;' with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is driven into the wilderness to be tempted. Angels waited on Him. Jesus goes forth to preach the Gospel. Jesus then goes back to Galilee. His message is “The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” These are Jesus’ roots, they lay the foundation for His ministry: Baptism reveals Jesus as the beloved Son of God. The Temptation reveals Jesus as the Perfect Man who overcomes temptation. His preaching reveals Jesus as the great revealer of the Father whose mission is to reconcile us to Him.

This Lent I have planned a series of sermons on what not to give up for Lent. On Ash Wednesday we talked about not giving up loving our neighbors for Lent. I watched a 5-year-old kiss her mother after receiving ashes and realized I had just witnessed the meaning of Lent: The best response to our sinfulness and mortality should be to love one another.

The next thing we should not give up for Lent is an awareness of our roots. If this Gospel lesson sketches out the roots of Jesus’ life, it sketches out the roots of our path in following Jesus in three stages: Baptism (initiation,) Trial (formation,) and Ministry (activation.) Jesus' roots are our roots.

When we forget our roots we forget who we are, and we tend to fall into one of two traps. The first is hypocrisy, or saying one thing and doing another. We say we follow Jesus, but then we really don’t, and we present to the world a picture of the Church which can be rather "unchristian." For instance, we say we follow a God of love, but then we are selective in who we love, or we just conveniently find that we love all those people who are like us in our own estimation. We forget to love the ones who are unlovely. Or we say that our God is just, but then we burn more of the world's resources than 90% of the rest of the world. We imagine that the others who have no access to these resources are somehow less worthy of justice. We say that our God is a God of second chances, but then our neighbor borrows our lawn mower and doesn't bring it back right away, and even after profuse confessions of guilt we do not loan him anything from then on.

When we remember our roots we remember that we are Jesus' followers. We are Jesus' followers because God loved us before we could love Him. He went out of His way to reach out to us. We need to take the initiative to reach out to those who need God's love, you know, the ones you really don't want to associate with, the ones who are smelly or unkempt, or not very bright, the ones whose repeated mistaken choices have them in trouble over and over again, the young, the marginalized, the down-trodden. Then, perhaps, we can call ourselves Christians.

The second error is judgmentalism. We decide that others bear more sins than we do, and therefore they are somehow less worthy than we are. We look down on those who struggle with an addiction to alcohol, and we overlook the sin of over-eating. In God's eyes both are equally sin, just as guilty as hogging the remote or padding your résumé. When we remember our roots we remember that we are Jesus' followers. In baptism we were washed of sin we could not overcome by ourselves. The only way we can survive the trials of temptation is by the power of Jesus in our lives. The only ministries we have are gifts of God to us, that we offer back to Him. And no one's sin is any better or worse than anyone else's sin. None of us are worthy, all of us receive grace. None of us is whole, yet all of us are called to minister health to the un-whole. All of us are broken, we should more compassionately bind up the brokenness in peoples' lives. Making decisions that belong to God about the appropriate consequences of behavior is prideful and arrogant, and betrays the spirit of Jesus.

But when we remember our roots we walk in Jesus’ path: Baptism is our identity in Christ. Just as Jesus is identified as the Son of God, in baptism we are identified as sons and daughters of God in Christ. It is birth into the Body of Christ, and Bath that cleanses us from sin. Call it the starting point for the journey that identifies us as fellow-travelers with Jesus. Of us, too, the heavenly voice declares, “You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Temptation is the transformation of life. Just as Jesus is tempted in the desert, so we have our deserts, too. He knows how we feel when tempted. We fail, but Jesus does not fail. He can be relied on to get us through, and the end result of temptation faced (no matter what the outcome) can be a soul that is wiser and more compassionate—no guarantees, but the more humble our spirit the more compassion and wisdom we learn. Like an initiation ordeal that makes us what we are meant to be, temptation has the potential of burning away the dross and leaving the gold. Ministry is sharing in the work of Jesus. Galilee was Jesus’ home, where He grew up. He went to people with whom He had rapport and shared with them the good news, inviting them, through repentance, to become fellow-travelers as well. Baptism ordains us for lay ministry, temptation trains us. Then it is ours to share in Christ’s ministry by sharing the love of God with those around us, in our own Galilee, with those with whom we have earned the right to be heard, seen before spoken, shared before described, love shown in whatever way is natural to us, that all may come to know the love of God.

So on this first Sunday of Lent remember who you are: Someone who has been granted grace in the face of error, who has been adopted in baptism, forgiven over and over again, and who is called, like Jesus, to live out the love of God in our world.

Fr. Paul Moore+