“Your pride, your hypocrisy, and other people’s opinions of you no longer define you.”

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (North Quincy, Massachusetts)

Year B, The First Sunday of Lent, Mark 1:9-15

Sam Melton MDiv ‘19

As some of you may know, I was a college athlete and played soccer from about the age five throughout my college career. And though I continue to play even now, albeit at a much lower level, soccer, and maybe more accurately, my identity as an athlete has been a major part of my life. Much of my childhood was spent either on the field or in the car on the way to the field and I grew up watching women’s soccer legends some that you may have heard of, such as Mia Hamm, Hope Solo, Briana Scurry, Alex Morgan, and Abby Wambach, to name a few. I followed and still continue to follow the careers of these women, though many have retired, married, and had children by now. And if you’re not familiar with the intricacies of women’s soccer and didn’t recognize any of those names, that’s okay too— but one in particular, Abby Wambach, is a more recent phenomenon, most famously known for her incredible ability to head the ball into the back of the net and as an Olympic Gold Medalist.

To translate a bit, all you need to know about Abby Wambach right now, is that she is essentially the Tom Brady of Women’s Soccer. So, a couple of years ago when Wambach retired, it shook the soccer world and unsurprisingly also shook Abby herself. In her recent memoir, entitled Forward, she tells us of the struggles she faced after retirement from an incredibly successful career. And sadly, it wasn’t long before we began seeing headlines about her DUI’s, her pending divorce, and her overall instability as she struggled with her new life as a retired athlete. In her book, she speaks about these decisions, but dives a bit deeper by telling us how she never knew herself separate from soccer. She tells us of her struggle to see herself as a valuable person and not only as a valuable soccer player. So suddenly, she felt as though her retirement threw her into this space of wilderness. A place in her life that was unfamiliar and challenging and that forced her to leave her identity as a soccer player behind. |In her time of wilderness, she heard all of these voices drowning out her confidence and worth. She tells us how the voices that seemed to come in loud and clear, both from herself and from others, were the ones telling her that she was only loved when she was on the field. Those inner voices asked her: What kind of person am I, who could love me, am I even worthy of love and attention, if I’m no longer a world class athlete? Who am I?

Though most of us here are unlikely to be Olympians and I’m imagining most of you have no intentions of kicking a soccer ball around anytime soon, I do imagine that we can all relate to Abby’s struggle during her time of post-retirement wilderness. We too have all experienced times and spaces of wilderness, both short and long, where we find ourselves wondering who we really are. And it is in these times of that we find ourselves listening to those other loud voices — voices that question our worthiness, that tempt us to give in to them, and that force us to question our own identities.

This week we hear from the Gospel of Mark, in which we hear, once again, of the story of Jesus’ baptism. This piece of the story may sound familiar because we have heard this section three times already. However, this time, after Jesus’ baptism, we hear of his time in the wilderness. Now, Mark is not exactly known for his beautiful poetic writing, but is instead known as being a sort of ‘matter of the fact’ kind of guy. And we see this here, we get an incredibly short passage that describes the baptism of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness. Six sentences barely seems long enough for such a dramatic story.

But, what Mark conveys so well here is his sense of urgency. He seems almost panicked, like he wants us to hear this story right now. He urgently tells of us of Jesus’ baptism and then says, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” It feels like Jesus is baptized and then is shot out of a cannon into the wilderness to survive with the temptations of Satan and the wild beasts. And then very quickly afterwards, we know that Jesus makes it out of this wilderness as he travels to Galilee and proclaims the good news. It is a quick story, but an urgent one.

THE FATHER VICENTE DIARIO OF A CURE OF DISTRICT

Jesus is baptized and the heavens open up, they tear open in a dramatic fashion and a voice from heaven resounds, saying “"You are my Son, the Beloved.” And then Mark tells us that immediately, immediately, Jesus is in the wilderness and this very statement that Jesus just heard, the one calling him beloved, is tested. I’m sure that Jesus was tempted in more ways than one, but those tempting voices make him question his identity as God’s beloved child...those tempting voices make him question his identity as God’s beloved child. I wonder what those tempting voices sounded like for him? What were they saying to him, what did they question, what did they try to fool him with? I’m not sure what those tempting voices sounded like in Jesus’ time of wilderness, but I do know what those tempting voices sound like for me today.

At our baptisms, much like Jesus’ baptism we are promised that we are one of God’s beloved children. And every week we are reminded of this baptismal promise at the start of Sunday worship, and yet for so many of us, this reminder seems so hard to remember as we work our way through the week. What are your own voices of temptation that make you question your identity as a beloved child of God? What are those are voices that distract us from the promise of our baptism?

Though Abby Wambach is surely not Jesus in any way, we do know what her tempting voices sound like. In Abby’s wilderness, she tells us that hers echoed, “You aren’t good enough,” “Nobody will love you without soccer,” or “You’re not worthy without your career.” |These are the voices that challenge us by sewing little seeds of doubt into us about our baptismal promise. And so, again, I wonder, if we were to really think about it and be honest with ourselves, what do your voices sounds like?

Perhaps they are those little voices in your head that tell you that you aren’t good enough, that you aren’t smart enough, wealthy enough or skinny enough to be worthy of love? Maybe they come in the form of your boss questioning your abilities or your worth as an employee, or from you as your find yourself comparing yourself to others, or maybe as you question your own parenting abilities? Perhaps they are the voices that tempt you when you are feeling shame or guilt as you struggle with the realities of loneliness, loss of our independence, or inability to complete a task we once had no problem completing?

Whatever those voices sound like for each of us, they are the voices that attempt to cloud our ability to remember the promise of our baptism. The promise that tells us that we are a child of God, that we are valuable, that we are loved, and that God calls each one of us — with all of our shame, and guilt, and questions, and doubts, and anxieties, and fears — with all of our stuff, God names us one of God’s beloved children.

Though we are beloved children of God even with these voices, I wonder what would be possible if we started to clear them out? I wonder if we push those voices out, cast them out, leave them out in the cold, what would be possible? What would happen if we had a chance to turn away from those tempting voices making it easier to hear the promise of our baptism?

If we push out our doubts, fear, shame, and anxiety, it may free us to recognize the immense amount of love surrounding us within our communities. Drowning out those voices may free us to recognize that we need help, maybe it even frees us to ask for help, allows us to start going to therapy, to talk to someone, to enroll in literacy courses, to ask for help around the house. What would be possible if we called those tempting voices out and then worked to overcome them? What would that look like for this community, here at Good Shepherd?

My guess is that it would allow us to remember that we are so, so, worthy of love. And though it’s hard, and it definitely takes time to recognize and combat those voices, I believe Mark is letting us know in his own urgent way, that we would find such freedom on the other side. My hunch is that it would allow us to be more open with one another, to have those hard conversations with our spouses and family members, to be more vulnerable with others, and I’m pretty certain it would make it so much easier to hear and live out our baptismal promise over the voices of those temptations.

The quick pace of Mark allows us to see what it looks like when we turn away from those voices of temptations and eventually make our way out of the wilderness. He allows us to see that as we live into our baptismal promise, that we are called to eventually make our way to a different land, proclaiming the good news. Mark lets us know that the love of our baptismal promise is paired with great responsibility, that such a great promise, naming us one of God’s beloved, empowers us to also do the hard work of the kingdom.

When we recall our identity as God’s beloved, and we work to push out all of our stuff, I am certain that we would be more free to hear, truly hear, the promise of our baptism. Such freedom that would allow us to travel to Galilee, proclaiming the good news, with a little bit less baggage.

I leave you today, with a poem from Michael Coffey reminding us of our baptismal promise and I invite you to close your eyes and imagine the words washing over you, rolling over you in the Jordan river.