First Sunday in Lent: Gospel, Mark 1:9-15                                

Mark 1:9-15

Reading our gospel text for the week my eyes were hooked by a comment Mark gives concerning Jesus in His temptation. Matthew and Luke are much more descriptive as they treat the baptism and temptation narratives. Mark just gives a few comments including this:

“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” (Mark 1:13).

Two texts come to mind, both from the pen of Isaiah. Chapters eleven and sixty-five both make reference to the days of the Messiah’s coming and they are marked with a transformation of the animal kingdom. Not as we see things today, but in the future. And yet I have a sneaking suspicion that what we see prophesied in Isaiah was also a reminder of the way things were at the beginning. Here in Mark, Jesus is in the wilderness, yes. But the depiction is of a time in the not-too-distant future when Eden will be restored with Messiah reigning in the midst of furry and clawed friends.

It isn’t the only distinctive of Messiah’s reign in the New Heavens and New Earth, but it is one of them. And it points in this Lenten season to the kingly and kindly rule of the Messiah even over animals. The wild has been tamed. Those who were feared by man as a result of the fall are now made friends. Even as those marked for certain death have now been made the friends of the Savior.

King of all Creation, Jesus is.