Lent 1 Year B 2012 Sermon
Waited On by Angels Text: Mark 1: 9-15 Mary A. James
How many of you were brought up to believe that you have a guardian angel? It is a very powerful and appealing idea. In the Catholic tradition, there is even a little prayer that one is taught as a child, which directly addresses one’s guardian angel:
Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, please ever this day be at my side—to watch, to guard, to rule and to guide. Amen.
Angels are mentioned in a number of places in scripture, and while the way in which angels have been understood in the biblical narratives changes a bit in emphasis over time, it is clear that there has been a belief in their existence on the part of our ancestors in faith from ancient times. [1] From very early times, to one degree or another, angels have been seen as messengers from God or as guardians watching over people. In our Gospel reading from this morning, we are offered the lovely image of angels waiting on Jesus. In Mark’s portrayal, we are told that immediately after his baptism, Jesus was driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit; he remained there 40 days. Mark mentions Jesus’ temptation, his residence with the wild beasts, and then, reassuringly tells us “the angels waited on him.”
What do we make of the narratives of angels, those in scripture, and those that seem ubiquitous in our culture even today? Angels appear in movies and in television, and in popular literature. More compellingly, for any who have served in hospice roles or as chaplains, folks will often have stories of mysterious visitations that are comforting, or loving interventions by beings that seem to be from another world. We can probably all agree that we sure do hope angels are real.
Roma Downey is an Irish born actress who played the part of an angel on television for nine years in a show called Touched by an Angel. I have never seen it; have any of you? As I was pondering the scriptures for this Sunday, an article about her in Guideposts (yup, my Mom and Dad subscribe to it for me) caught my eye.[2] She writes about the experience of running in to people who would stop her on the street and say, “You’re that angel!” to which she would always reply: “No, I’m an actress who plays an angel.” Roma humbly did not want anyone to confuse her for a real angel.
But then again, have you ever referred to someone who helped you at a critical time in your life as an “angel?” Have you ever been called an “angel” by someone you helped at a crucial time in their life? Let’s keep these questions in mind as we consider angels.
The lectionary usually offers us this narrative of Jesus being tested in the wilderness for the first Sunday in Lent. Mark does not give us much detail, but Matthew and Luke give us a whole dialogue between Jesus and the figure of the tempter (Matthew) or the devil (Luke). Jesus is hungry, thirsty, and alone, seeking to encounter the very deepest spiritual places in his being and perhaps to find whether he has the strength to carry out the ministry to which he feels called. His depth of holiness is so vast that he is able to resist the persuasive arguments of the tempter and to endure the rigors of the wilderness for all that time. This is the invitation offered to us during Lent: to get down to the bare bones of our spirituality, and to find there a well of peace and strength that is proof of God’s abiding and loving presence in our lives.
It is a beautiful thing that our tradition offers us a whole season through which to go to our wilderness places, because the denial of those wilderness places in exhausting and depleting. We are all invited on this Sunday to find a rhythm for ourselves during Lent that involves a regular, intentional encounter with our God, in which we enter the wilderness of our broken places with the Holy Spirit, and ask God to mend those places of pain and brokenness.
On last Wednesday night, a small group of folks came to our Ash Wednesday service, and, as part of our worship, placed some bare branches and stones and purple and white ribbon in the sanctuary to prepare this space to be a place in which we can all safely encounter our wilderness places during Lent. Purple is the church’s chosen color for this season, a deep, rich hue inviting us to look deep within ourselves at those places of brokenness that keep us from fully living into our love of God and God’s love for us. White is the color representing purity of heart, a quality we seek during Lent, with the psalmist who calls out: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” The stones you see represent those hard wilderness places that God can make smooth, and the bare branches represent the call to present oneself to God pared down, naked, just as we are. The clear glass items in the window sills invite all of us to throw open the windows of our souls to God in this time, that God might enter in and heal and love and sing and smooth and touch and teach and lullaby us back into a state of peace and grace. So, think of our small group on Wednesday night as angels of sorts, preparing this space for the Lenten sojourn for all of us. They were angels, waiting on us all.
As the television show Touched by an Angel grew in popularity, the actress Roma Downey and her co-star Della Reese were flooded with letters of invitation to visit hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. Roma decided, as an act of faith, to act on some of these invitations, and one day she visited the children’s section of a hospital. She tells this story about that day:
“A woman came out of her daughter’s room, obviously grief stricken. She looked at me in tearful amazement. ‘Monica!’ she said. ‘I prayed for an angel and you’re here.’ She threw her arms around me…. ‘Yes,’ I murmured, not sure how to handle his. I prayed with her, of course, and I tried to comfort her as best I could. But I was unsettled by it all. I called Della and told her the story. ‘Don’t be upset , baby,’ she said. ‘You were there for her.’ ‘I feel bad. This woman asked God for an angel and she thought he sent me.’ Della paused and then said, ‘And who says he didn’t?’
When was the last time any of us even let God send us an angel, let alone recognized one? We New Englanders are so do-it-yourself. The last thing any of us wants to do is to ask for help. We are gonna do it all, we are not going to take help, we are not going to let anyone see us weak, we are self-sufficient. We want to be the givers, not the receivers. But during Lent, it’s time to throw ourselves out into the wilderness of confronting our fears, our sins, our disconnection from ourselves and one another and God, and seek the help we need from the God who so wants to help us. We all want to see an angel, don’t we? And it’s when we ask for help, when we admit we can’t do it all alone , that the angels do show up.
One of the lovely angels among us is Kirk Jones, a pastor and professor who has written a lovely book called Say Yes to Grace: Burning Bright Without Burning Out.[3] Kirk is one who knows how to ask for help, how to lean on God, and how to shine brightly with God’s love because of his great ability to receive God’s grace and acceptance. He posts daily pieces of wisdom on Facebook for meditation and prayer. Here are a few of his recent offerings:
“No matter how deep the hurt, God’s love is deeper.”
“The storm doesn’t have to stop for God’s peace to start.”
“When it comes to God there is no getting around the mystery; but, the little we do know is enough to take our breath away.”
“God in you is greater than anything against you.”
Sounds like the voice of an angel to me.
This Lent, let us ease our schedules and make a space for God to shake us up and put us back together again. Do you have a daily talk with God? If not, now’s the time to start. Do you have someone you trust to share your concerns and fears with, and to pray with and for you? Look around. There are lots of options for that right here in this place. Have you thought lately about the preciousness of all your days, the ways in which our mortality is a gift, and the deepest purposes of your life? Have you let yourself know and hear how much God loves you, values you, wants you to be healed and whole? Lent is the time to suspend any disbelief about your own worthiness, your own preciousness. It’s settled already. God wants to tell you about it, even send you angels to wait on you as you struggle to believe it.
Amen.
[1] For a good discussion on this topic, please see the entry under “angels” in Richard R. Losch’s book All the People in the Bible published by William B. Eerdmans of Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K., in 2008, beginning on page 36. The information in this book informed this sermon.
[2] Roma Downey’s article The Kindness of Angels can be found in the March 2012 issue of Guideposts.
[3] These quotes from Kirk Jones are posted on his Say Yes to Grace Facebook page.