Lent Day 10
by Jessica Compton
Genesis 9:8-17 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.
1 Peter 3:18-22, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
Mark 1:9-13 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Baptism has always been a curious sacrament to me. Whether it’s an infancy water sprinkling or an ocean submersion, I can’t help but wonder... are we really changed? “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever,” the priest pronounces. In a physical sense, it is “just water.” Sacraments, however, are “outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.” Today’s passages weave together God’s story of suffering and redemption, symbolized and pronounced most clearly through baptism.
In Noah and the flood, God invokes disaster, followed by a covenant of mercy and a foreshadowing of baptism. “The Lord shut him in” to the ark for forty days. Though life-saving, it couldn’t have been very fun to be cramped in a small boat with a lot of potent animal smells, surely battling queasy seasickness. The flood is a means to save Noah and his family, but it didn’t come without a willingness to obey God and endure the world’s destruction. Additionally, in God’s promise to never wipe out the earth again, we also have a whisper of his future rescue plan to save us.
Peter expounds on the flood, explaining its correlation to baptism. Just as Noah and his family were brought safely through the flood, we are promised that Christ’s blood washes us of our sins and brings us into God’s family. As Noah and his family suffered in the ark, and Christ suffered on the cross, we will suffer for righteousness’ sake.
Jesus modeled baptism for us, too. Though free of sin, through his baptism, Christ shares his righteousness with us and says: “Let me take your place. I will be for you the Lamb who takes away your sin.” It’s noteworthy that the manifestation of the trinity following Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan is not the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but the prelude to forty days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness. Paralleling the Lord shutting Noah in the ark, “the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.”
Our Lenten forty days mirror Jesus’ wilderness anguish and ultimate crucifixion. We fast to face temptation, to remember Christ’s sacrifice, and to call on his power in resisting. Having been baptized by both water and the Spirit just as he was, our prayer is to be alive in the Holy Spirit, allowing him to bring us into our own deserts of spiritual discipline. In expecting suffering, we can also trust Peter’s assurance. Baptized and taking on temporary pains for eternal glory, we, like Jesus, are called beloved children of the most high, with whom the Lord is also well pleased.
Jessica’s favorite places to be with Jesus are on a mountain trail or in the saddle of a bicycle, amidst the fellowship of community and corporate worship, and in the secret place of prayer and scripture study. Village became her church family when she moved to Greenville in 2017, and she has enjoyed living into the rhythms of liturgy and the church calendar celebrated in Anglicanism. She loves serving as a Youth volunteer as well as fixing bikes and making friends as Program Director of Village Wrench.