Following our Lenten theme, Re:set, today’s particular focus is Re:name, and the text is the story of God’s changing the names of Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah. With the change of names comes a new relationship with God, and they now have a new purpose. It happens when they are very old, indicating we are never too old to come into a new relationship. Here, too, God gets a new name, El Shaddai. Jesus uses Abba, a term more like “Dad” or “Daddy,” again indicating a special relationship. What names do we use for God? Are we willing to be renamed by God?

We invite you to find some time today to pause for prayer with Pastor Carol. This audio recording is a guided practice of sacred reading (lectio divina) of our scripture text for Sunday. Find a comfortable spot, put in your earbuds or turn up your computer, and let this brief podcast guide you into prayer.

The reading for today is the post-flood story of God’s covenant with Noah and the earth. Believing that God is love, how do we wrestle with the dark side of this story that describes the destruction of the earth? This vow of God to hang the bow in the clouds might mean that this is a giving up of the bow as a weapon. The flood came with human failures, and perhaps that broke God’s heart, and on this end, God intends that all will be included in God’s declaration for the protection of creation. Perhaps when we see the rainbow we realize that the earth has been cleansed by a storm. It is a sign of hope, of new creation, of renewal.

Isaiah 43:19 talks about doing new things. When was the last time we allowed ourselves to do something new? In some ways the difficulties of the past year have forced us to turn to new things. How do we re-imagine ourselves and build on hope, even when we’re at our lowest moments? Verse 18, in a sense, challenges us to let go as a way to move on. Hope can’t stay stagnant in a place where there is no future. The last part of the verse assures that God will create a new path. That is hope.

The early chapters of Mark explore who Jesus is through the eyes of Peter. For Peter this identification culminates in the Transfiguration where he is both awed and not quite understanding of what is happening. Sometimes we, too, lose sight of the mystery that cannot be put into words. The overwhelming experience of mystery can happen in our own church sanctuary. How does God call us to offer our sanctuary for people to share the mystery?

The text for the day is from Mark’s account of that very busy first day of Jesus’s ministry with the potential for a second day of healing even more people. But on the morning of the second day, Jesus is missing because he has withdrawn to pray. It’s a pattern in his life, and, if Jesus needs time to abide in God’s love, how much more do we need it? John Wesley, too, talked about acts of piety and acts of mercy. Oddly, even after his time of renewal, when the disciples call him to return to Capernaum, Jesus declines, saying he was called to move on to other places. Sometimes God calls us to move on, too.

Much as a “cold open” draws a viewer in to a TV episode, the beginning of each Gospel is meant to make a statement and draw in the reader. In Mark, Jesus’s first public act of ministry is this shocking scene of a disturbed man confronting Jesus in the synagogue. Already, Mark shows us that Jesus not only heals the sick, but he can vanquish evil. It might have been that the disturbed man was not someone off the street, but someone who worshipped regularly at the synagogue, demonstrating that Jesus can heal the bad and difficult parts of our own lives, the evil that enslaves us.

Today’s reading is the Markan account of Jesus calling the first four disciples, all of whom are fishing at the time. Calling these first four disciples began a community of disciples. Recent events have pointed out our divisions and disconnection – a community problem, made moreso by the pandemic. How can we have conversations with each other when we really disagree? Perhaps the church is the place for those conversations. The disciples, too, had disagreements. Jesus calls us to follow him in community that reaches out to each other and to others in love.

Today’s reading takes place in the context of the Egyptian pharaoh who doesn’t remember the close relationship between Joseph and a former pharaoh and the contribution of the Hebrew people to the Egyptians. The new pharaoh fears the growth of “those people” and demonizes them, even to the point of genocide. It causes us to look at our own time and into our own hearts and calls us to be held accountable, and to live and share the love we know God to be and offer. The midwives heroically act in civil disobedience, and if we find ourselves in a similar situation, we must answer the midwives’ call.

This is our annual Remembering our Baptism Sunday. Usually on this Sunday the message is a reflection of baptism wherein God assures of God’s love, but this week we have experienced the shock of the assault on the Capitol building, and it is fresh in our minds. In Mark, the very next verse after the account of Jesus’s baptism says the spirit “drove” Jesus into the wilderness to temptation. It, too, is a shock, but Jesus responds in each case of temptation. Given our own baptism, our response to the world needs to be like his – stepping out into this world with the waters of baptism shaping our relationship and response to others and to the world.