Grace to you and peace from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

The first Sunday in Lent is always a special one, dear congregation.

We began solemnly today with chanting the Great Litany, the procession will be silent during Lent, the Gloria is omitted, and the children buried the Hallelujah on Shrove Tuesday after we all sang it one last time. They put it away in a golden box which is not to be retrieved until Easter. We are dedicating a new altar cross today.

This is a time of corporate and individual reflection, prayer, and re-direction. As a child and teenager I dreaded this imposed somber, dark atmosphere. Thankfully, however, the season of Lent has taken on a fresh emphasis, having been changed into a time of reflection on the basics of faith, hinging first and foremost on baptism, connecting with traditions from the times of the early church when Lent was the prime time for baptismal catechesis, culminating in baptizing the new Christians at the Easter Vigil.

If you will, we could look at Lent as a time for a retreat, a time in which we are instructed and in which we set aside quiet time for personal reflection on our condition before God.

This year the beginning of Lent coincides with a war which, as of now, is politically waged, but military action seems imminent. It is on our minds. And I know that people on both sides of the issue dread the inevitable news of vast numbers of lives being taken and destroyed. Even if we don’t talk about it too much. Our new altar cross today will be dedicated in thanksgiving and in memory of the victims of World War II, this is 60 years ago, and is still timely.

In connection with the fear of war we also fear an even worse economic downturn than we are already experiencing. I am probably not so wrong in assuming that this wakes some of us at night. The petitions of the Great Litany have spoken directly to us this morning.

It is good to remember in this context that Lent does not mean to thrust us into a time of spiraling downwards even more, into a spiritual downturn, if you will. Reflecting on some basics of faith and the Christian community will in the end help build us up and let us come out of it strengthened.

Look at Jesus, and the steps he took in order to go out to this poor and torn world he himself being the embodiment of service and the love of God, the kingdom of God. Jesus travels from his home town Nazareth down south to the Jordan to be baptized. The spirit descends on him. Immediately thereafter, that same spirit literally throws him out into the desert, the wilderness, which begins right where the vegetation of the Jordan bank ends. Jesus remains in the desert for forty days. Tempted by Satan, tested, tried, submitted to the experience of deception, confusion as to whom to obey, Satan or God - God who had just initiated their relationship as that of Father and beloved Son. The desert is the place of test and temptation, the place where the struggle for the right conclusions is a matter of life and death.

The wild beasts are with Jesus, we are told. And what could at first sight be an indication of an additional threat, posed by the beasts standing for the evil, looks to me more like a piece of good news, of comfort, that Mark offers in his typically dry manner.

The wild beasts, the animals of the desert who could be used by Satan to scare Jesus, are actually not threatening him. Jesus was with them, with these non-domesticated animals who are not evil, but part of God’s creation. And Jesus, just having been made into a new creation in the act of baptism, is with them. This is how it was in paradise when humans and animals lived together, and this is how it will be in the Messianic end times when wolf and lamb will live together, and the cow and the bear shall graze together. (Isaiah 11).

Comfort streams forth from the existential struggle into which Jesus is thrown by the spirit of God in the desert. That struggle in the desert is necessary - but then it turns out, the beasts are no threat, but co-creatures, and the angels come and wait on Jesus. The angels serve him, they minister to him, they are in communion with each other - our Lord and the angels. And the beasts are included in that communion also.

So, to me the good news, that which makes me happy in hearing the gospel message this morning, lies again, as so often in Mark, in the unexpected. Comfort streams forth from the time and the place of trial and temptation: Relief and joy that life and communion are there, palpable as promise and as gift.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray “And lead us not into temptation. Save us from the time of trial.”
Jesus is led into temptation and trial, but we may pray, “spare us, lead us not into temptation, save us from the time of trial.” Martin Luther calls prayer and especially the Lord’s Prayer not only a duty, but also a means by which that undeserved grace of God’s freely flows into our hearts. Luther calls the Lord’s Prayer a promise and a gift of God. His explanation of the petition not to be led into temptation goes like this: “It is true that God tempts no one (!), but we ask in this prayer that God would preserve and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, and that, although we may be attacked by them, we may finally prevail and gain the victory.”
This means, each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are in the realm of direct communion with Jesus, who is tempted in the desert, prevails, and then travels back to Galilee to begin to preach and show the arrival of the kingdom of God.

In the written gospel, the unfolding of Jesus’ story and purpose has to be developed piece by piece, step after step. In our lives, however, things often take place simultaneously. While we embark on a Lenten journey of reflection and re-direction, we are at the same time in the middle of living our Christian communion, our life together at this church and as the church, we are in the middle of service and outreach and mission work.

This church, our new ministry building has begun to hum with the busy sound of people doing work for God and the work of God. Numerous groups are meeting, in Bible study, in Sunday school, in confirmation class. In the “community of hope” program people are training to become lay ministers in the area of caring and visitation, others are training to learn new ways of letting children encounter God and the traditions of faith and the church. “Godly play” this is called, and takes place in a newly furnished classroom at the end of the cloister in the kindergarten room (please take a look). A new food service ministry is shaping to build and strengthen our community through the communion, we experience in shared meals. Our music programs are alive and well. We are working to get a person for youth ministry in the summer, we are taking steps toward a ministry in which we recognize the milestones that we experience in our lives continually from birth to the time of death. There is so much going on, I am afraid I did not mention everything.

While all this is going on, the training, the equipping, the reaching out, people’s faith is built, boosted, redirected, visions are developed for the outreach and service we can do with these magnificent new facilities.
Our congregation is growing, in spirit, in its sense of mission, in commitment to witness to God’s good news. It is a joy to be here.

While we rejoice in this, we cannot turn blind on our political and economic situation. We will have to learn to use our resources wisely, to figure out the most responsible ways of operating, and of giving. But again: What a chance, an opportunity we have at hand, what potential we have to be wise stewards. We can become a beacon of hope and faith in this community, that it is indeed our will and resolve to serve Jesus Christ and God’s creation.

You may wonder why all this talk. Well, first, this is what I see, and I want to let you know how I interpret the Spirit to be at work among us, that same spirit that threw Jesus out into the desert.
Secondly, together with Pr. Fred Haman, I was made co-director of the Spiritual Life Team committee that is part of our new funding appeal at Christ the King which will start next week with the recognition of all leaders involved in it. So it is actually my job right now to survey everything that is going on here with very spiritual eyes. Training for the leaders of the funding appeal is going on this weekend - and it is my joy to greet among us Don Haven from Kairos Consultants who is conducting the training and leading us in this process. Please welcome him and meet him after the service.

In closing, dear congregation, this Lenten time of retreat and reflection can become a source of comfort and renewed strength if we are not afraid to face our questions, our fears, our struggles. Seeking out communion with fellow Christians in prayer, in service, in meals, we may all of a sudden find ourselves in communion with angels. We might also find that dividing the world into good and evil is not the way God wants us to look at his world primarily, but rather that God suggests to look at all living beings as his creatures, some of whom are domesticated and others are wild, non-domesticated. But we are all God’s creatures. After all, God has put over all of us a rainbow in the sky, made from light refracted through tiny droplets of water, in order to remind himself that he will never again be involved in wholesale destruction of that which he created.
With water we baptize, and we may remind God and ourselves of God’s promise.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.