Tues., February 20, 2024

The Rev. AARON B. JENKYN

Learning How to be Brave

The Rev. Aaron Jenkyn preaches on the Gospel of Mark 1:9-15.

In Sunday’s Gospel reading we heard the remarkable story of Jesus’s baptism and the start of his ministry in Galilee. In the space between these two events, we hear the story of how Jesus was spirited away, to the wilderness. The wildness is a place Jesus goes again and again when he is preparing to face the challenges of his life and ministry. He is modeling for us the need to care for our bodies and mind, to be renewed and rested, but more than that, he is teaching us that we must step away from our daily life, into the wilderness, to remember who we are and where we have come from, in order to know where we are going and who we are becoming. We go into the wilderness to be strengthened for the journey, to learn to trust, and to learn how to be brave for what is to come.

In Sunday’s reflection, Aaron tells a story about a place she learned how to be brave. She invites us to think of Lent as an intentional time of wilderness, where we set aside the expectations and responsibilities of our daily lives, if but for a moment, to listen, reflect, play, dare, dream and imagine, so that we can learn to trust each other, trust in God, and most of all, learn how to be brave…together.