From Destruction comes New Life

First Sunday of Lent Year B

Such stark contrast! Our lectionary juxtaposes two extreme conditions, a deluge or great flood in the first reading, and an arid barren desert in the gospel. Too much water on the one hand, and too little to none on the other. Both conditions seem inhospitable and even humanly uninhabitable. What’s the connexion apart from being two extreme polarities? These two scenes draw us back to the beginning - to how it all began - to the story of creation. Most folks are familiar with the story of how God created the universe in six days and then rested on the seventh. But there are actually two and not one account of creation. Chapter One of the Book Genesis begins in a watery chaos and Chapter Two begins in a desert.

And so, we have in the first reading an account of God renewing His covenant with Noah in the aftermath of the flood. The flood itself portrays a return of the earth to the primeval state of Genesis where darkness, water, and wind covered the earth. The great flood is a testament to God’s hatred of sin and His determination to wipe it from the face of the earth. God blows a “wind” over “the deep” and “the waters” recede. When at last the flood subsides, the ground is dry and new vegetation is springing up. The barriers set in place by God at creation are restored - the dry land is once again separated from the waters. The occupants of the ark, both humans and animals, step on dry land and life begins anew. If the precreation scene in Genesis Chapter One begins in pitch darkness, this beautiful scene in the first reading is bathed in light - no stormy clouds in the sky but a bright sunny day with a rainbow crowning God’s redeemed creation. It is a picture of perfection, but not yet. That would have to wait until the Son of God becomes the Son of Man and seals a new covenant with humanity with His own blood instead of the sacrifice of animals as was done by Noah and the ancestors of old.

Let us not forget that the first flood swept away the evil from the surface of the earth, but not from the hearts of the ark’s passengers. So an even greater act of salvation was needed, one that was more radical, that penetrated to the very “root” of evil. God Himself enters into our world in the form of a man and engages in hand-to-hand combat with the father of lies. For sin to be rooted out, repentance is necessary. And so the rallying cry of God’s ultimate champion is “Repent, and believe the Good News.”

If the first reading calls us back to Chapter One of Genesis, the gospel story alludes to and reverses what takes place in Chapter Two and Three: the planting of the Garden in the midst of a barren desert, the creation of man, the first Son of God, and His subsequent temptation and fall. Here in the gospel, there is no garden - Paradise has been lost and all creation has been rendered a barren wasteland by man’s sin. But instead of succumbing to the ancient serpent, our Lord Jesus triumphs over Satan. Instead of enmity between man and the animal kingdom, we already see the beginnings of a reconciliation as wild beasts gather around the Lord. If one man wrought humanity’s downfall, another man, the perfect man, the one whom St Mark at the very beginning of the gospel identifies by His rightful title, the Son of God, will lead humanity in its ascent to the heavens.

The wrestling match is won by the Son. This, however, is not the decisive battle. By means of the cross, the sign of this New Covenant, our Lord Jesus decisively vanquished sin and its patron, letting loose from His pierced side a stream that was more powerful than the ancient waters traversed by Noah and Moses. The fathers of the Church saw in those two streams of blood and water, the birth of the Church through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. In Christ’s death and resurrection, creation is healed and reborn. The key for us to now participate in this recreation is repentance. Repentance begins the path to redemption and to sanctification. Repentance leads to conversion and conversion leads to baptism.

Through repentance, faith and immersion in these mighty waters of baptism, not the waters at creation or at the great flood but the waters that flowed from our Lord’s death on the cross, sin can finally be scoured not just from the skin but from the heart. In the second reading, St Peter explains that the water of the flood - “is a type of the baptism which saves you now, and which is not the washing off of physical dirt but a pledge made to God from a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” Baptism means burying the old man with Christ and emerging from the womb of the Church as a new creation, sharing in Christ’s resurrection. Lent is therefore the intensive preparation for those seeking baptism at Easter and an opportunity for the rest of us who are already baptised to recall our baptismal identity by renewing the promises made at our baptism.

This is what Lent is all about. It is a time when we remember the death that brings new Life. Just like Noah, his family and the animals at the moment they stepped out of the ark, would have been surprised by what they saw, this Lent too holds many surprises for us. We can either look at the destruction wrought by our sin, mourn the loss of all the things that have been taken from us or we had to give up, or we could behold a new world, a new creation before us. What was once a barren desert, watered by God’s graces, would now be teeming with life. For the great paradox at the heart of Christianity, a mystery we celebrate every Lent and Easter, is that a Death was the remedy for death. It was in losing His life that Christ brought new Life to the world. In the words of the Byzantine liturgy, “He trampled down death by death.” In the greatest paradox of all, our Lord changed death into a means of life, an ending into a new beginning. What was once our doom is now our salvation. “The time has come and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News!”