Week One Introduction | February 18–21

The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ 

The gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy of Christ, devoting two full chapters to His virgin birth and childhood. The gospel of Luke goes into even more detail by including John the Baptist’s birth narrative as well as the dedication of the Christ child in the temple with Simeon and Anna. Then there is the beautiful, poetic passage of Christ’s incarnation in the gospel of John. The gospel of Mark on the other hand, does not mention anything at all about the birth of Jesus but instead plunges right into Christ’s baptism and early ministry.

New Testament scholar Dr. Mark Strauss declares, “Mark writes with a powerful and energetic literary style, full of drama, mystery, and color. Mark is fond of the word euthys, often translated ‘immediately,’ which appears 41 times. It serves to propel the narrative forward with speed and urgency. This is a Gospel on steroids!” In the first chapter alone, Mark recounts the forerunner’s role in preparing the way for the Messiah, the baptism of Jesus, Christ’s forty days of temptation in the wilderness, His announcement that “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” the calling of the disciples, and concludes with an account of Christ’s miraculous, nonstop rounds of preaching, teaching, healing, and deliverance. One event seems to smash into the next as Mark’s action-packed gospel explodes before us.

In paraphrases of the New Testament, Mark 1:1 reads, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Here, in his introduction, Mark references Genesis 1:1 and in so doing proclaims that the earthly ministry and mission of Christ initiates a fresh start, a brand-new dawn in God’s providential story of redemption. All of creation will be renewed through the salvific work Christ is about to accomplish. This is indeed the greatest good news, freely offered to all mankind!

Wednesday, February 18 | Ash Wednesday

Mark 1:1-11 (NKJV)

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the Prophets:

“Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way before You.”
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.’ ”

John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Poetry

"Meeting Ourselves"
by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

We met ourselves as we came back
As we hiked the trail from the north.
Our foot-prints mixed in the rainy path
Coming back and going forth.
The prints of my comrade's hob-nailed shoes
And my tramp shoes mixed in the rain.
We had climbed for days and days to the North
And this was the sum of our gain:
We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain.
Our old souls and our new souls
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years,
And a thousand years as a day.
The powers of a thousand dreaming skies
As we shouted along the trail of surprise
Were gathered in our play:
The purple skies of the South and the North,
The crimson skies of the South and the North,
Of tomorrow and yesterday.

Everybody Called: John Prepares the Highway

Today, everybody gets called to the water; everybody gets called to the ashes. I use that word intentionally here—everybody—because of two realities foundational to our faith: an all-encompassing call to repentance and salvation and the essential importance of the body. Jesus was born, bodily, from Mary; He suffered in His body and fully died; and He was the firstborn of the bodily Resurrection. His call to salvation is therefore offered to all of humanity and meant for the whole of who we are: spirit, soul, and body. It is through baptism and on Ash Wednesday that we enact and remember how we are destined for death and burial, destined for “water and ashes”—yes, all of us, and yes, even our bodies. But in Christ, we are also destined beyond this.

As we make a parallel journey through Lent and Mark’s Gospel, we touch the temporal transcendence of the Good News. Christ’s work is both retroactive and future-facing. Its power reaches back to the first breath of creation and forward to our very own. It is unbound by the “before and after” of our days yet is deeply present with them. The creative offerings for today represent this mystery. The layered lines of Vachel Lindsay’s poem remind us that “Our old souls and our new souls / Met to salute and explain— / That a day shall be as a thousand years,” while our music exclaims the eternal reality: “Here begins the Good News!”

John Patrick Cobb’s art provides a visceral entry into this journey. I was blessed to meet John and experience his immersive Ikon Chapel first-hand in 2021, witnessing how he incorporated the likenesses of friends and strangers into the paintings—elevating neighbors, plumbers, and janitors to symbolize the foundational figures of our faith. He doesn’t depict distant ideals; he paints the "everybody" of our communities, neighborhoods, and streets.

In Baptism by Water, a contemporary John the Baptist figure calls us to the river. This symbolism furthers John’s role in making straight a highway to Christ, a highway that reaches back to the beginning and stretches into the eternal. Cobb appropriately reaches back in time to include Adam and Eve entering the water alongside contemporary figures. As the crowd descends the rocks, the centuries compress into the redemptive now. We find Mark’s same urgency even amidst the sacred work. The figures don't just stand by the shore; they descend en masse, drawn into the water as if by a Divine “immediately.” In board shorts and boxers, the descending figures draw our eyes down into the depths of burial, even as our original selves, Adam and Eve, enter the waters in the distance.

This layering captures the essence of baptism: our death and resurrection in Christ—a story Jesus has given us that is “stronger than death,” as our song today hauntingly expresses. In this layered immediacy, I am reminded of a response Karl Barth powerfully gave when asked when he was saved: “I was saved at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem, in the year 33 A.D.”

And it is the highway Christ made on that hill outside of Jerusalem that leads us to the water and ashes today. We are invited to walk it even as we acknowledge the hard truth that everybody has missed the mark and “all have fallen short of the glory of God.” Yet as we begin our Lenten journey, we also walk in faith and freedom; the highway has been cleared, we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” So, we are all invited to make our way to Christ, the One in whom our Good News begins, who was formed like us from the dust of the earth, and who has gone into the water with us. Today, everybody gets called to the water; everybody gets called to the ashes.

Prayer

Infinite God, You hold time in your hands. Thank you for meeting me even in the ashes of this broken world, calling for repentance and bringing salvation. During this season of Lent, may I hear Your call in the present and every day, find You in deep waters as I turn my heart to You, and follow on the highway that draws us closer in love.

Steven Homestead
Artist, Composer, Writer, and Curator

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab near the top of the page.