‘Repent and believe the good news’

Each night as we watch the TV news, it gradually dawns on us that it is generally bad news that we are exposed to. The continuing bombings in Iraq; the threat of another explosive situation in Iran; the political tension in Thailand. Indeed, we do not have to go very far. We nurture our own bad news: our restive military plotting coup after coup; our politicians endlessly investigating in aid of legislation, while our doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals are lining up at our foreign embassies seeking greener pastures, even as they endure humiliations from some arrogant consul.

"Repent and believe the good news." Change your ways and believe that you can live a new life. Cast off the past and believe that God can make new hopes for a new future. Is that hard to believe? Does God feel discouraged when he looks at our world, our country?

In Noah’s story, God wanted to remake the earth, and so he dissolved its uncleanness in flood waters that rose like the tides without any ebb flow. For 40 days it rained, everything was undone; the past was repudiated, the earth purified. The "repent" was thoroughgoing. Sin and sinners were buried in the waters. The "good news" floated above the dissolving flood and the sign of the remarriage of heaven and earth was set in the skies for all to see. That rainbow of colors shone down on a new creation. Here was good news in technicolor. God remade the earth, and again found it clean and good.

In the gospel, we read that the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert. And he remained there for 40 days and was tempted by Satan. Jesus went into the desert to face the forces of sin and evil, to know the "bad news" that makes the earth and sky so dry and barren. On this sea of sand Jesus, who is God, experienced the temptations of mankind in all their pervasiveness. For 40 years, Israel having crossed the Red Sea on the ark of God’s provident arm, wandered over the sand seas of Sinai in search of the promised land of "good news", so unlike the bad news of Egypt’s sin and slavery. Jesus kept faith in the desert and he was graced. No rainbow appeared, but a dove from heaven settled upon him, and a voice from the clouds spoke": This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Jesus is truly good news.

In Lent, the Christian is called to "repent and believe the good news" again. We need to reaffirm our baptism and embrace a more genuine conversion. And how? Can a man return to his mother’s womb and be reborn, asks a skeptical Nicodemus. For some Christians, Lent becomes a time of increased prayer and self sacrifice. For others, it is not so much a doing, as a standing under the falling rain of God’s miraculous reality. We need to stand on the only reality that will float, Jesus Christ as our savior.

We need to wait without idols in the desert of our lives in this world. We need to be hungry for the food and love that fills our souls and breaks forth in the voice of every Eucharist: "This is my Body, given up for you." We need to hear the voices of peace that surround us in our brothers and sisters who hunger with us in this desert Lenten experience. We are well loved, because the heavens were opened, not with a rain flood of anger but with God’s tears of compassionate mercy. He has loved us even in our sinfulness, and he wills not the death of the sinner but that one be converted to wait for the unfolding of the mystery of God in one’s life story.

First Sunday of Lent, Mk. 1, 12-15.