Ash Wednesday
5 March 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
FOLLOWING
Mark 1:1-45
Series: Following Jesus Through the Gospel of Mark
Welcome to worship on this Ash Wednesday, the first day in the season of Lent. Lent is a journey toward the cross of Christ and an examination of our mortal lives. We know Easter is coming. But Lent gives us the opportunity to engage in spiritual honesty before God, to sit in the ashes of our broken dreams and broken hearts, knowing that the crucified God sits here with us.
To aid us in this journey, you will be given the opportunity tonight, if you so choose, to receive water on your hand in the form of a cross as a symbolic renewal of your baptism: to remember you have chosen the way of Jesus, and to hear once again that you are God’s beloved, that you belong to Christ, and then to receive ashes on your forehead as a sign of your mortality and as an impetus to live as a beloved child of God, making any changes to your life that will enable you to live more in line with your identity as God’s beloved.
This Lenten season we will be traveling with Jesus through the Gospel of Mark. Tonight we’re going to make a ten-minute trip through chapter one where Mark lays down some themes of the Ministry of Jesus and the Baptismal Life that he will return to throughout his gospel. Beginning today you are invited, to read through the Gospel of Mark during this Lenten season. As you entered you should have received a book mark containing the daily readings and the Lenten worship schedule. I will be preaching on Sundays from select scenes in Mark’s Gospel: scenes of healing and scenes of challenge to walk in the way of Jesus.
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ are the first words of Mark’s proclamation. Mark does not begin with any birth narratives like Matthew and Luke or a theological hymn like John. Mark gets right to the action, beginning in the wilderness on the banks of the Jordan, where John the Baptist is preparing the way for the Lord, calling people to a baptism of repentance and forgiveness. As John tells of One who is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit, that One – Jesus of Nazareth – appears and is baptized by John. As Jesus comes up from the water, the heavens are torn apart, the Spirit of God descends upon him, and a voice of heaven says: “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
I believe this is the experience God desires for each of us at baptism: To know ourselves as God’s beloved in whom God takes marvelous delight. To be marked by forgiveness and new life. To be touched by God’s Spirit, commissioned to serve in the revolutionary kingdom of God. Because there will be days of Kingdom testing and hardship for us all, just as there were for Jesus, we need to know who we are and whose we are.
The Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism drives him out into the wilderness for forty days of prayer and fasting. There he is tested and tempted to live as something other than God’s true Beloved, to use coercion, and to turn is ministry into one big show. In the wilderness he discerns his true identity and mission. He emerges from the wilderness only to hear that his cousin John has been arrested for his bold preaching. From these forty days in the wilderness where Jesus prepared to walk the way of the cross the church has set aside forty days of Lent to prepare us to take up our cross and to renew our commitment to follow Jesus.
Jesus then enters Galilee and his first words announce the gravity and goodness of his
mission: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark will spend his entire gospel teaching us what the gospel of the kingdom is all about.
Jesus begins calling others to follow him, starting with fishermen. When they hear his call they drop their nets and follow, leaving ol’ dad in the boat with his nets in his hands and hired workers by his side, muttering to himself, “What in the world just happened? Some long-haired hippie has come and stolen my sons.”
The baptismal life as God’s beloved child is the life of following Jesus. Peter, Andrew, James, and John drop their nets and get tangled up in people’s lives instead. They share their lives with lepers and the mentally ill, with sinners and with each other. It’s what followers of Christ do: We drop our own plans and follow.
Sometimes following Jesus means leaving your day job and taking up a new calling. But most of the time it’s about transforming the way you live your everyday lives. We arrange our lives around something other than our own comfort, security, and pleasure. The baptismal life is one we wake to each morning, hearing Jesus say to us anew: “Follow me!” And with God’s help, and by God’s grace, we follow.
Jesus and these first disciples travel to Capernaum where Jesus enters the synagogue and begins to teach. People are astonished at the authority with which he preaches. This kingdom doesn’t sound like anything they’ve been hearing from the Bible experts or reading in their daily devotionals. These are revolutionary words, words of eternal life, the words that guide us as we follow Jesus.
While he’s teaching in the synagogue, Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a man. And they continue to be amazed, debating among themselves, “What is this? Some new theology? Who is this? He commands evil spirits and they obey.” And Mark says, contrary to Jesus’ desire his fame spreads everywhere. So he leaves the synagogue and goes to Simon’s house where Simon’s mother-in-law is laid up with a fever. He takes her by the hand and holds her and the fever leaves. In return, she gets up and prepares him a good homemade supper. So we are – all of us – healed to serve others. “Saved to Serve” as the saying goes.
After sunset, people bring to Jesus all the sick and those tormented by demons. It seems like the whole town is at the door. And Jesus heals many of them. New life is springing up everywhere. The kingdom of God is breaking into this old world of death and decay.
The next morning before sunrise, Jesus rolls out of bed, tired from the previous day’s work, and goes looking for a lonely place where he can finally be all by himself, and he prays. Simon and the others wake up and go looking for him. And when they find him they say, “Jesus, everybody’s looking for you.” The look on his face probably said, “And why do you think I’m way out here!”
As followers of Jesus we are called to carry on his ministry of teaching and healing. But we have to be careful: The baptismal life of following Jesus can wear you down. The needs of the world are so very great. So we prepare ourselves for life in the kingdom, a life of ministry, service, and discipleship through prayer – daily communion with God and intentional seasons of retreat where God can nourish us alone as we pray. After all, if the Son of God needed time away to pray, how much more do we!
After a morning of prayer, Jesus leads the disciples from town to town throughout Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out unclean spirits. A leper comes to Jesus, kneeling before him, begging him: “If you want,” he says to Jesus, “if you want, you can cleanse me.” And Jesus, filled with compassion, says, “I want.” And he reaches out and touches this untouchable man and says, “Be clean.” And at once, Mark says, the leprosy leaves him and he is made clean.
What about you? What makes you feel like a leper? Where do you need to be cleansed? Because Jesus wants to cleanse you. All you have to do is ask.
Jesus warns the man to keep quiet about the miracle. He tells him to go like a good law-observing Jew and show himself to the priest. Jesus doesn’t want a circus atmosphere of miracle-mongers all around. But the man couldn’t keep quiet. How could he? Could you? And soon, Mark tells us, Jesus could not openly enter a city, but stayed out in the country. And they came to him from everywhere.
So what is this new life, this new beginning, this good news Mark is calling us to trust? It is a life as God’s blessed and beloved child, touched by God’s Spirit, cleansed by God’s grace, baptized into a life shaped not by our culture but according to the kingdom of God where God is redeeming and restoring the world. It is a life of following Jesus, a life nurtured in prayer, a life teaching the kingdom, serving those around us, healing those who are broken, and being healed by the love of God.
So as we begin this season of redemption and healing, allow God’s Spirit to awaken you through the remembrance of your baptism, the acknowledgment of your mortality, and the chance to change the direction of your life. Let’s take the Lenten journey together.