Discernment - Hearing God in Our Lives [Mark 1: 9-15]

Didn’t we just hear this Gospel back in January on the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany? Yes, but of course then we read it to hear about the Baptism. Today the emphasis is more on the after Baptism.

We are all, each of us, you and me, discerning, all the time. God is always in communication with us. But his voice is sometimes not what we expect to hear because he often speaks to us through one another and we are not always good listeners or his voice is drowned out because we are so busy speaking ourselves that we can’t hear him at all.

Hearing God that long ago day does not seem to have been a problem for Jesus. I think he was expecting something to happen when he went across the Jordan and met up with John and was baptized but even so it is possible that God had to get even his attention in a dramatic manner and skies opening, Spirit descending and God’s voice sounding are pretty dramatic.

We don’t usually think of Jesus as a discerner. We often think that he was born knowing everything he ever needed to know but when we think that we are being heretical. Jesus was just as human as you and me and spent every bit as much time and energy in listening for the voice of God as we do or as we should.

Mark tells us that immediately as Jesus rose from the waters of the Jordan, he heard the voice of God telling him that he was God’s beloved Son, the Son who pleased God. And he felt the Spirit. Mark says the Spirit descended like a dove – I don’t think he means that Jesus had a sensation of feathers and beak, but rather the dove description implies gentleness. The Spirit descends with a gentleness that is in sharp contrast to Mark’s next description of the Spirit as a force, a driving force that compels Jesus into the wilderness, into a new life.

Jesus hears God describe him as beloved and then he goes off by himself to discover what that means. He goes off alone. But he isn’t alone for long. Solitary discernment doesn’t happen. Everyone needs others to help out and a place and space for reflection. Jesus has 40 days and his place is the wilderness.

The time he spends in the wilderness has many meanings. One is that it is a reinterpretation of the forty years Israel spent between Egypt and the Promised Land – the community’s time of discernment – of learning what it means to be the people of God. And this passage from Mark tells us is that like the Israelites, Jesus spends his time in the wilderness in discernment. He enters the wilderness alone – not in a discerning community but while he finds this communitiy - he is among the “wild beasts” and is ministered to by angels. The wild beasts might have but don’t have to be real – they could be Mark’s way of describing the tests that Matthew and Luke tell us about– they could be desires to be mastered – yearnings to be powerful and wealthy and in charge – to find an easy way to confront the powers. These are the things that could make him beastly. And he must face them and master them. Discernment isn’t always easy and one of the hardest parts is facing and mastering truths about ourselves.

And when we picture the ministering angels, we shouldn’t think for a minute of harp-playing, white-robed, golden-haloed, smiling beings – think instead about the angel standing at the gate to the garden, keeping Adam and Eve from returning, or the angel who came to Gideon and told him to get out of the wine press, stop hiding, and lead the army of Israel against the enemy, or the Guardians of the Ark of the Covenant. Think of the tens of thousands of angels Daniel describes as ministering to God or the six-winged Seraphim Isaiah heard chanting “Holy! Holy! Holy!” for all eternity.

With a discernment process like this – beasts and angels, Jesus came through knowing who he was and what he was do to next – no longer was he a carpenter working in Nazareth but he was to begin his ministry announcing the Kingdom of God. Still, he doesn’t start right away. Instead he waits and when he learns John has been arrested, he knows it is time – time to begin his new life in public, time to proclaim to a waiting people that the Kingdom of God has come and that they are invited to be full participants in the life of God.

Discernment for Jesus didn’t end there – in the wilderness, with the beasts and angels. Throughout his ministry he is discerning the extent of his call – he discerns from a centurion with a sick servant that he more powerful than the centurion for whom people do what he says even if he is not physically present – “Speak but the word and my servant shall be healed,” says the centurion and Jesus speaks and so it is. He discerns from a Syrio-Phoenecian woman that even the Gentiles are part of the family of God as she gently reminds him that he may regard her as no more than a dog, but even dogs are given the scraps from the table. And the most difficult discernment of all – he discerns in the Garden as he prays, “Let this cup pass from me….not my will but thine.”

Like Jesus we are discerning – we are discerning all our lives. The Spirit is with us, just as She was with him, sometimes dovelike and gentle, assuring us that we are loved, and sometimes prodding, pushing, even compelling us to a new life.

We are all discerning – discerning our varied calls at varied times. God calls us to different things at different times. When young we are called to be the best child we can be and then later we may be called to be the best parent, and later still the best grandparent. We can have a call to live a harmonious life with another. At times our call may be to a profession. We can be called to study. We can be called to teach. Sometime we are called to be a friend and a neighbor. Sometimes God says that it is time for us to draw closer to him by being a pilgrim or going on retreat. We are called to growth and to change. We are all called into a life of service to all God’s people. And when He calls us for this service, God finds ways to use us where we are, in what we are doing – but we need to actively listen and to actively listen we need others to help us – we need to be in community.

And we need to remain open. When we are open to hear God speak to us, we will then, like Jesus, be ready for the Spirit to prod us, push us, and, if need be, compel us into that new life in which we will know that the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed is truly present and that we, like Jesus, are part of it.

Amen.