Reading · Faith Encouraged

The American astronaut Buzz Aldrin once said, “Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.” This reminds me of the old saying in comedy, “Timing is everything.”

I could sum up most of my own life by discussing events based on right timing and wrong timing. One particular experience comes to mind. My ordination as a deacon in the Orthodox Church. I did not come to Orthodoxy until my early forties, and I had already been a clergyman in the Evangelical Protestant world. When I entered Orthodoxy, I had decided the days of being a clergyman for me were over. I was content to be a layman, using my gifts however the Church saw fit.

Fast forward several years, and there I stood in the Cathedral in Atlanta, preparing to enter the ordained clergy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. Timing is everything.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Today’s Gospel takes us to the beginning of the Lord’s own public ministry, His baptism, His temptation, and His first proclamation. And it comes just two days after we celebrated the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos. There is a connection here worth contemplating.

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 opened and the Spirit descending upon 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, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Look at everything that precedes the launch of the Lord’s ministry to save the world. An extraordinary baptism. A season of temptation. The company of wild beasts and the ministry of angels. And only then, when the time was right, “the time is fulfilled,” the announcement of the Kingdom of God.

First, the same God who sent His Son through the Theotokos into the world now takes her to Himself, and this exchange is the pattern of our own destiny.

Two days ago we celebrated the Dormition. God used one of our own race, a humble woman from Nazareth, to bring His Son into the world in human flesh. And when her earthly life was complete, that same Son took His mother to Himself, body and soul, into the glory of heaven.

This exchange is not simply a beautiful story about one extraordinary woman.

It is the pattern and promise of our own destiny. The Theotokos is what humanity looks like when it says yes to God completely and is received completely in return. She carried Christ. We are meant to carry Him too, through the disciplines of the Faith, through the Eucharist, through a life increasingly conformed to His likeness. And just as He received her at the end of her earthly journey, He intends to receive every faithful soul who has been formed into His image.

Today’s Gospel, read right after the Dormition, reminds us where this whole pattern begins. Not with our own effort to become worthy, but with Christ Himself entering our human condition at the Jordan, baptized alongside sinners though He had no sin of His own, beginning the work that will eventually make it possible for people like you and me to be received the way His own mother was received.

Next, the Kingdom is entered through a very specific door, and the Lord names it plainly at the very start of His ministry.

“Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

This is the first public sentence of the Lord’s ministry in Mark’s Gospel, and it sets the terms for everything that follows. Not comfort. Not entertainment. Not a philosophy to admire from a safe distance. Repentance and belief. Metanoia, the reorientation of the whole person, and faith, the substance of things hoped for.

That is the entire purpose of human existence, to grow into the likeness of the God in whose image we were made. And the door into that transformation is repentance, the honest turning away from the old orientation and toward Christ, combined with genuine belief that acts on what it believes.

This is not a one-time transaction completed at baptism and then set aside. It is the daily posture of anyone who wants to actually enter the Kingdom rather than merely admire it.

Every single day offers another invitation to repent more deeply and believe more fully.

Finally, even the wilderness season, with its temptation and its wild beasts, was necessary preparation, and God does not waste any of it.

Notice what happens immediately after the extraordinary moment at the Jordan, the opened heavens, the descending Spirit, the Voice of the Father. The Spirit does not lead the Lord into comfort. The Spirit drives Him into the wilderness, into forty days of temptation, into the company of wild beasts.

The mountaintop experience at the Jordan was real. And it was immediately followed by the wilderness.

Both were necessary.

Both were part of the timing that had to unfold before the Kingdom could be announced.

Our own lives are filled with amazing moments and challenging ones. Times we made the right choice, and, perhaps more often, times we made the wrong one. Times of joy and times surrounded by what feels like wild beasts. But we should not forget the angels ministering in the same wilderness. One of the main reasons we mess up our own discernment about timing is forgetting that reality is bigger than what we can see.

When we forget the spiritual dimension of even our hardest seasons, we fail to take in the whole picture, and we misjudge the moment.

Even a bad choice, even a painful season, even a wilderness surrounded by wild beasts, is not wasted if we are willing to mine the wisdom out of it. Godly sorrow, as St. Paul calls it, brings us to genuine repentance, but only if we accept that the very seasons of temptation and difficulty are teaching us how to get the timing right for what comes next - The Kingdom of God!

Today the Church continues in the Afterfeast of the Dormition, lingering in the joy of the Theotokos’s falling asleep and her reception into the glory of her Son, just as we lingered in the Afterfeast of the Transfiguration earlier this month.

This lingering matters. We do not celebrate the Dormition and immediately move on, as if it were simply one more item on a calendar. We stay in it. We let the reality of what happened to her continue to settle into us, the same patient wisdom the Church showed us with the Transfiguration.

The Theotokos, having said yes to God completely throughout her entire life, was received completely by Him at the end of it. Today’s Gospel, read in the afterglow of that feast, shows us the beginning of the ministry that made her reception, and ours, possible. The Son she bore in her body is the same Son Who was baptized in the Jordan, tested in the wilderness, and Who then announced that the time had come. Her Dormition and His baptism are two ends of the same golden thread: God entering our human story completely, so that our human story could be brought completely into His.

Today, are you struggling with the timing of your own life? Are you grieving bad choices or wrong decisions, wondering if some season was simply wasted?

Take heart.

Godly sorrow will bring you to true repentance if you are willing to accept that even your wilderness seasons, even the times surrounded by wild beasts, are filled with potential wisdom for the road ahead. The Lord Himself was driven into the wilderness before He was ready to announce the Kingdom. Your own difficult seasons may be doing exactly the same work in you.

Then pray simply:

“Lord Jesus Christ, You entered our human story completely, from the Jordan to the wilderness to the Cross, so that we could be received into Yours, the way You received Your own mother. Let me repent and believe the Gospel today, and let me trust that even my hardest seasons are preparing me for what You have next.”

Being Orthodox on Purpose means repenting and believing the Gospel daily, trusting that every season of our lives, joyful or difficult, is part of the timing that leads us toward being received into the likeness of Christ, just as His own mother was!

The Time Is Fulfilled

Comments