Forty
Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15

March 5, 2006


Thomas Long of Candler School of Theology relates about the bunch of teenagers being regaled with exegetical wisdom by a Biblical scholar. He was referring to the incident in this same runaway train-paced chapter one of Mark of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan. When the baptism had taken place, the scholar wanted these teenagers to know in no uncertain terms that the phrase, “the sky was opened,” actually had a much stronger force in the original Greek. It meant something like being ripped open, rather violently for that matter.

“Do you get the point?” The scholar was on a roll, he thought, with these young people. “When Jesus is baptized and the sky is ripped open that used to separate us from God, we are now able to get to God. Because of Jesus, we have access to God; we can get close to God.” He thought he had said that pretty well, and pretty forcefully.

But there’s always one of those kids who sits in the back with arms folded, trying to act more-disinterested-than-thou. Suddenly, that did get him and he said to the scholar, “That ain’t what it means.” “What?” That startled the scholar. “I said that ain’t what that means,” the teenager repeated. “It means that the heavens were ripped open so that now God can get at US anytime he wants. Now nobody's safe!”

Nobody is safe when it comes to dealing with a Gospel-wielding God. Being enmeshed in Mark’s take on the Good News is like being part of that “Shakespeare in Five Minutes” routine - it’s all there, but you can’t blink or breathe or else you’ll miss something awfully critical. Jesus goes to John the Baptist down by the Jordan to be baptized, goes out to the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan, and goes off preaching the Gospel throughout Galilee - all in seven verses. Somehow forty days and then some passed in rapid fire. We have a brief moment to catch our breath before moving on with him.

God establishes a covenant with Noah and his descendants, promising never to flood the world again, and to make the rainbow the sign of God’s commitment to humanity. It took forty days of wet to get to this talking point. Forty days and a lot of death. The Flood was a kind of Biblical rebirth of the world. The waters of the Flood accomplished the same chaos and death as the shapeless waters of the deep without form and void. Then God praised Noah and promised to make humanity fruitful again, and ended up by saying, “for God made humans in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). Creation is starting all over again. But this time neither six nor forty days are mentioned.

Forty days and forty nights are not short, in many situations a foretaste of eternity, or worse, purgatory. Nobody told Noah how long it would rain. Nobody told New Orleans how much it would rain, how much chaos and death it would inflict. You don’t need forty days to wreak chaos, and the people of the city are finding out that the new creation after the flood does not happen as smoothly or as quickly as they would like.

Somehow, forty days is not long enough to accomplish what Jesus was driven out into the wilderness to do. We definitely can’t do it at the fast forward speed of Mark, because among other things, Lent is not an event. It is simply a liturgical season of discipline preparing Christians for the passions of Holy Week and Easter. Forty days of fasting, yes; but six Sundays of feasting interrupt our spiritual momentum. Forty days are, however, the optimum length of such a discipline. Short enough that you can still say, “I could do that with a lot of effort”; and not so long that you would simply rule out any possibility of ever accomplishing the task.

You and I need more than forty days and forty nights to get ready for Holy Week and Easter: we need forty years, and perhaps then some. This may be discouraging to younger people, but it takes most people forty years to get anything close to right. Forty years is not too long to develop a good enduring and durable personal relationships, whether it be in the workplace, in the church, in a marriage, among close friends. These relationships certainly find their share of temptations, Satanic opponents, wild beasts, and a few angels offering aid at the least expected times.

Does it not take forty years to perfect the perfectible and resist the tempt-able? Give me an auto mechanic of forty years experience to listen to the groans and sighs of my car; or a doctor who has seen it all, but knows immediately when this is something new that must be dealt with now; a cook who no longer needs a cook book after forty years. It takes a good preacher forty years to listen to the Word intently and patiently enough to preach a sermon worth coming out of the wilderness. Love requires decades to perfect in order to get rid of all of our little and big self-interested loves. Agapé love, love for the sake of loving another, takes time for most people to develop. Paul summoned us at the end of Second Corinthians to “greet one another with a holy kiss.” It takes forty years to learn how to kiss that well.

But let’s keep in mind what we are trying to do in Lent or any other holy season - there is no unholy season in the Christian year, by the way. A brother went to see Abba Poemen and ask for advice and confirmation. “I have committed a great sin and will do penance for three years,” he told the old man. “That is a long time,” Poemen responded. “Are you telling me to do penance for one year then?” the brother asked. “That is a long time.” There were a bunch of other people hanging around and straining hard to overhear and they suggested, “How about a penance of forty days?” Again Poemen said, “That is a long time.” This time he added, “I think that if someone is wholeheartedly penitent, and determined not to sin that sin again, God will accept a penance of even three days.”

A God who encourages us to wander forty years in the wilderness learning how to kiss divinely is not a safe God. Lent is not a time to hunker down and hide from the requirements of the Good News. Lent is too short anyway, only 46 days. That sullen teenager was absolutely right: God is not through with us when Lent is over. God keeps coming after us anytime God wants. It’s not forty days we live in the discipline of the Gospel; it’s forty years - or three days - and then why should one ever stop?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan