Lent 1B (RCL) – A Preacher’s Ponderings

Angels and wild beasts

First Sunday in Lent; 18 February 2024; Lent 1B (RCL); Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15.

We always hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness on the First Sunday in Lent. Mark’s account is the shortest and most cryptic. All we’re told is that the Spirit drove him into the wilderness, and he was there for 40 days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him. The forty days, of course, recalls the forty years that Israel wandered in the wilderness, but also Elijah’s journey to Horeb after his contest with the prophets of Ba’al (1 Kings 18-19).

A new covenant

First Sunday in Lent; 21 February 2021; Lent 1B (RCL); Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15.

The temptation story in Mark’s Gospel seems rather truncated compared to Matthew and Luke, until one remembers that Mark wrote his account first. Matthew and Luke added Q material to Mark’s account, as well as some of their own material. But they leave out an interesting detail. Mark mentions that Jesus was with the wild beasts.

Wild beasts

18 February 2018
First Sunday in Lent
Lent 1B (RCL)
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 251-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark a:9-15

The wild beasts in the wilderness as they show up in Mark’s Gospel here pose an interesting puzzle. Why this detail. Most commentators that I can find suggest one of two things – either to intensify the terror of the wilderness, or to suggest the presence of the first human being with the beasts in Eden (or the peaceable kingdom which would recreate that first Edenic state). The word being translated “wild beast” (therion), does indeed occur in the Genesis account of creation. Interestingly, it also occurs in the story of Noah. I think the connection of time-period (forty days) makes this association more likely than the others. Continue reading “Wild beasts”