Meditation onMark 1:9-15 (Pastor)
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Pastor Karen Crawford
First Sunday in Lent
Feb. 18, 2024
It was like a winter wonderland walking around the neighborhood yesterday. The trees and shrubs were blanketed with freshly fallen snow. There was a moment when the sun pushed through the clouds and everything sparkled! It was just beautiful!
I was surprised not to see any children playing in my neighborhood. It was Saturday, after all.
Researchers say that children (and adults) today don’t have the same connection with the natural world that other generations have had. Richard Louv, the author of Last Child in the Woods, sees the lack of connection as something essential to their growth and development that has been lost. “Many members of my generation,” he says, “grew into adulthood taking nature’s gifts for granted; we assumed (when we thought of it at all) that generations to come would also receive these gifts. But something has changed.” [1] Louv sees the “emergence” of something he calls “nature-deficit disorder.” [2]
He started his research in the 1980s, interviewing thousands of children and parents in urban and rural areas. [3] He thinks often of a “wonderfully honest comment made by Paul, a fourth-grader in San Diego,” who said, “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” [4] One mother lamented that when their family did plan trips to enjoy the wonders of nature together, the children needed something more to entertain them. She recalls a family ski trip, on a “perfect, quiet day, the kids…skiing down the mountain—and they’ve got their headphones on.” [5] The issue of safety came up. “ ‘My parents don’t feel real safe if I’m going too deep in the woods,’” said one boy. “ ‘I just can’t go too far. My parents are always worrying about me.’” [6] Another boy said “computers were more important than nature because computers are where the jobs are. Several said they were too busy to go outside.” [7]
Louv offers examples of famous creative people nurtured by nature as young children. Ben Franklin “lived a block from Boston Harbor when he was a boy… His love of water and his bent toward mechanics and invention merged and led to one of his earliest experiments. One windy day, Ben was flying a kite from the bank of the Mill Pond, a holding area for water from high tide. In a warm wind, Ben tied the kite to a stake, threw off his clothes and dove in. “The water was pleasantly cool, and he was reluctant to leave it, but he wanted to fly his kite some more,’ …. ‘He pondered his dilemma until it occurred to him that he need not forgo one diversion for the other.’ “Climbing out of the pond, Ben untied the kite and returned to the cool water. ‘As the buoyancy of the water diminished gravity’s hold on his feet, he felt the kite tugging him forward. He surrendered to the wind’s power, lying on his back and letting the kite pull him clear across the pond without the least fatigue and with the greatest pleasure imaginable.’” [8]
Others influenced by early experiences in nature were Joan of Arc, who “first heard her calling at age thirteen, ‘toward the hour of noon, in summer, in (her) father’s garden.’” Two- year-old Jane Goodall “slept with earthworms under her pillow.” [9] “John Muir described ‘reveling in the wonderful wildness’ around his boyhood home in Wisconsin. Samuel Langhorne Clemens held down an adult job as a printer at fourteen, but when his working day ended at three… he headed to the river to swim or fish or navigate a “borrowed” boat. One can imagine that it was there, as he dreamed of becoming a pirate or a trapper or scout, that he became ‘Mark Twain.’ The poet T. S. Eliot, who grew up alongside the Mississippi River, wrote, ‘I feel that there is something in having passed one’s childhood beside the big river which is incommunicable to those who have not.’” [10]
“‘As Eleanor Roosevelt passed from childhood to adolescence, the beauty of nature spoke to her awakening senses.’ … ‘The changes of the seasons, the play of light on the river, the color and coolness of the woods began to have the profound meaning to her that they would retain throughout her life. When she was a young girl, she wrote a half century later, ‘there was nothing that gave me greater joy than to get one of my young aunts to agree that she would get up before dawn, that we would walk down through the woods to the river, row ourselves the five miles to the village in Tivoli to get the mail, and row back before the family was at the breakfast table.’ She disappeared into the woods and fields for hours, where she would read her books and write stories filled with awe and rooted in the metaphors of nature.” [11]
Beatrix Potter, children’s book author and illustrator, along with her brother, “smuggled home innumerable beetles, toadstools, dead birds, hedgehogs, frogs, caterpillars, minnows and sloughed snake-skins. If the dead specimen were not past skinning, they skinned it; if it were, they busily boiled it and kept the bones. They even on one occasion, having obtained a dead fox from heaven knows where, skinned and boiled it successfully in secret and articulated the skeleton.” Everything they brought home, they drew or painted, and sewed the pieces of drawing paper together to make their books of nature. The depictions were realistic for the most part, “but here and there on the grubby pages fantasy breaks through. Mufflers appear round the necks of newts, rabbits walk upright, skate on ice, carry umbrellas, walk out in bonnets . . .” [12]
Today’s reading in Mark is a good example of how so much of Jesus’ ministry happens outside. Did you ever notice that? The wilderness temptation has echoes from Israel’s past—connecting the long-awaited Messiah with the people of God wandering in the wilderness for 40 years in Exodus; the rain that fell for 40 days in the story of Noah’s ark in Genesis; and Elijah being fed by ravens and angels in his 40-day wilderness journey in 1 Kings.
Jesus goes out to be baptized by John and, as he comes up out of the water, he “sees the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.” “The relationship between heaven and earth has been permanently changed” with the tearing of the heavens, theologian William Placher writes. “The image of the dove evokes the dove that returned to the ark with a freshly plucked olive leaf (Gen. 8:11) to signal to Noah the floodwaters had subsided and there was now solid ground bearing vegetation.” [13] The tearing of the heavens at Christ’s baptism foreshadows the tearing of the veil or curtain of the temple when Christ breathes his last on the cross in 15:38.
Verses 12 and 13 capture my attention. Mark, the oldest surviving gospel account, is known for his brevity, which, at times, I find refreshing. Others, such as author and rector Elizabeth Felicetti, serving St. David’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, says she misses “the scenes with the devil in Matthew and Luke,” while, at the same time, being “intrigued,” with Mark’s use of “satan,” rather than the devil.[14] The Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period says “satan is a member of the heavenly court whose primary adversarial function is to accuse in legal dispute. The noun usually appears with the definite article, indicating a role rather than a personal name.” The Greek diabolos or English devil is used more frequently in the New Testament and as a proper name—usually as a tempter rather than an accuser. [15]
Scholars talk about the language of the Spirit that came on Jesus “like a dove” in his baptism and “drives” Jesus deeper into the wilderness “immediately.” (This is the first of 41 occurrences of the Greek word “euthys” in Mark, which creates a sense of urgency and movement.) [16] Felicetti wonders if the Spirit “driving” Jesus into the wilderness means that he doesn’t enthusiastically embrace his wilderness testing experience. [17]
I see something different. The Spirit gives us the passions of our heart and wants us to act on them. Jesus is compelled by the Spirit to go deeper into the wilderness, a place to which he will return, again and again, throughout his ministry to hear from God, rest, and slip away from the sometimes clueless disciples and demanding crowds. This is why I have included this message in my Healing Stories series. The wild places will continually replenish and heal Jesus spiritually, emotionally, and physically and prepare him for the ministry God has ordained.
The problem with the passage, as I see it, is the question of the “wild beasts.” Some see the “wild beasts,” like satan, as an adversary to Jesus, in “satan’s employ, menacing Jesus over the 40 days.” [18] The wilderness can be a “dangerous place, undomesticated, unsafe, the abode of demons (Isaiah 34:14), says another theologian, “yet Israel remembered the wilderness as the place where they had been closest to God (Jer. 2:2). [19]
Others think that Mark is purposefully leaving the question of the wild beasts up in the air. Are they threatening? Or are they like the angels, waiting on him in his time of need? The verb translated “waiting on” has the same root as the word “deacons.”
I imagine Jesus with the wild animals as friendly beasts, foretold by Isaiah 11, when,
“The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.”
Jesus is our faithful model with his temptation in the wilderness. As Hebrews 4:15-16 assures us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
I had the sudden urge to make a snow person after my walk yesterday. It was harder to pack the snow than I remembered. Then, when I went inside, I felt stirred to read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, from 1962. I felt sad as I thought about how children and adults today may be missing that life-giving, healing connection to the natural world, maybe even suffering from “nature deficit disorder.”
Peter, dressed in a red snowsuit, goes “crunch, crunch, crunch” as his feet sank into the snow. He drags them “s-l-o-w-l-y” to make tracks, finds a stick just right for smacking a snow-covered tree. Snow falls “plop” on his head. He joins a snowball fight, but he’s too little. He makes a smiling snowman and angels, pretends to be a mountain climber, sliding all the way down. He puts a snowball in his pocket for tomorrow.
Then he goes into his warm house, tells his mother all about his adventures while she takes off his wet socks. And he thought and thought and thought about his adventures, while taking a bath in a pink tub with legs. Before he gets into bed, he looks in his pocket. It’s empty!
“The snowball wasn’t there. He felt very sad. While he slept, he dreamed that the sun had melted all the snow away. But when he woke up…the snow was still everywhere. New snow was falling!
After breakfast, he called to his friend across the hall, and they went out together into the deep, deep snow.” [20]
Let us pray.
Holy one, thank you for the beauty of your Creation, for the sun that sparkled on the fresh snow yesterday that blanketed our community. Thank you for your Son’s faithful response to temptation in the wilderness and his willingness to suffer and give his life for the sake of the world you so loved. Help us to be strong and faithful when we are tempted. We lift up the children and families today, who are so busy and stressed. Draw them outside, dear Lord, by your Spirit, as you drove Jesus into the wilderness in the gospel of Mark. Give young and older people opportunities to grow in creativity and connection to You and your Creation and find joy, healing, peace, and refreshment in the wild places that may be right outside our front and back doors. In the name of our Triune God we pray. Amen.
[1] Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods (Algonquin Books, Kindle Edition) 10.
[13] William Placher, Mark, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010) 22.
[14] Elizabeth Felicetti, Christian Century, February 2024, 28.
[15] Jacob Neusner and William Scott Green, editors, Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period (MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 552-553.
[16] William Placher, Mark, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010) 27.
[17] Elizabeth Felicetti, The Christian Century, Feb. 2024, 28.
[20] Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day (NY: Puffin Books, 1962).
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