February 18, 2018 – Mark 1:9-15
Mark 1:9-15
Black Panther – Lent at the Movies I
First Sunday in Lent – February 18, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In the wilderness of Africa there is a kingdom called Wakanda.
It is the most advanced nation on earth, advanced in science, technology, weaponry, and healing.
It survived colonization by Europeans by using its technology to hide itself.
The question driving Marvel’s new superhero film Black Panther is just this:
as its secret is about to be discovered, and with a new king – the Black Panther –
how will it use its incredible power?
On the one hand it could let refugees in, share its knowledge and
its technology to advance the welfare of the impoverished African countries around it
and, indeed, all the peoples of the world.
On the other hand, it could share its advanced weaponry with exploited and oppressed
black people around the world for a global revolution that would reverse the fortunes of
black people everywhere and wreak vengeance on their oppressors.
Two visions.
The new Black Panther king, T’Challa, ultimately must choose how he will lead his people.
His preference would seem to be for Wakanda to continue to remain hidden from the world,
but that seems more and more unlikely to happen as the film unfolds.
His love interest, Nakia, strongly encourages him in the former direction,
to share its technology and knowledge to
further the welfare of the surrounding countries.
But his bitter enemy, a cousin named Killmonger, desperately wishes for a global
black revolution in which the exploited would violently displace their exploiters.
So T’Challa, the Black Panther, must figure out who he is and what he’s willing to struggle for.
In a scene near the beginning of the film, T’Challa – son of the former king –
becomes the new king in a coronation scene that takes place in water.
T’Challa goes down into the water, comes back up again, and then is named Black Panther,
King of Wakanda.
But he is immediately challenged for the throne.
A man from a rival tribe steps forward to challenge him to a fight,
in which the winner becomes the new king.
T’Challa accepts the challenge.
During the fight, the challenger seeks to fight as much with words as with physical force.
He undermines T’Challa’s identity.
He tells him he couldn’t keep his own father safe and that his father’s blood is on his hands.
He tells him he’s “just a boy who is not fit to live.”
Is he kingly material or not?
And what does that mean?
Does it mean isolationism and helping Wakanda remain hidden?
Does it mean letting refugees in and
sharing Wakanda’s gifts for the benefit and welfare of all people?
Or does it mean using its weapons for a black uprising in order to start and fuel
a global violent revolution?
There’s a very similar dynamic in the Gospel reading today.
Mark presents us with Jesus’ baptism where he, too, goes down into the water.
Where he, too, comes out of the water and is named and given an identity,
this time as beloved child of God.
And where he, too, is immediately challenged in the wilderness to forget
who he truly is and tempted to use his power to become something he is not.
Jesus ultimately emerges from the desert to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand.
And his ministry from that point on clearly shows that God’s kingdom of healing and
feeding and forgiving is right here, right now.
Jesus proves his point by living God’s kingdom.
Jesus shows that God is indeed reigning, is indeed at hand, right now, by showing how
the gifts of God can be shared among all people for the common good.
Jesus shares God’s gifts with women and men, children and the aged, rich and poor,
Jew and non-Jew, friend and enemy.
Jesus proves worthy of his belovedness, worthy as a child or apprentice of
the God of all mercy and goodness and justice.
T’Challa’s identity was a gift.
He was born the eldest son of a king and did nothing to earn that.
But he did have to prove himself worthy of that identity.
That identity was challenged by those who told him he was not worthy of it.
And that identity was challenged by difficult choices he had to make.
Well: is it any different for any of us?
Our identities – like T’Challa’s and like Jesus’s – are a gift.
In our own baptisms, we are named beloved, precious, child of God,
fashioned to be apprentices to God’s work of healing and feeding and forgiving,
fashioned to be agents of God’s reign or kingdom.
But like T’Challa and like Jesus, there are immediate challenges to that identity.
Every day we are bombarded with messages that tell us we not beloved.
That our only worth comes from consuming and not from being beloved.
That our value depends on how much we have or how much money we make or
what we look like.
That we are made for consuming rather than for sharing the gifts inside us and
the gifts around us.
There are temptations to forget who we are and what we’re for every day.
And there are great forces at work undermining our identity as people made for community.
T’Challa figures it out not on his own but with the good people he surrounds himself with,
notably his mother, his sister, and his love interest.
And Jesus is not alone in the wilderness either, although we frequently picture him that way.
No: he is surrounded by angels.
And in the Bible, angels can look just like anybody.
They are, literally, simply “messengers” from God.
Maybe one of their functions is that they can remind us who we are –
and what we are truly for.
When Jesus was tempted to forget he was beloved, just as he was, made for
dignity and purpose and love – maybe the angels reminded him of that.
Just so, when we are baptized, we are never left alone.
God sends angels to remind us who we are – that we are beloved and precious and
full of dignity and meaning and worth.
That we are making this day special by just being ourselves, the way God made us.
That we can make a difference when we share the gifts of God inside us and
the gifts of God around us.
In the lives of those close to us and in the lives of those right here at Sargent and Victor.
An angel could be sitting beside you right now.
I did a funeral for a man this week who I think found himself in many wildernesses throughout
his life.
I am not sure anyone really knew what they were.
But I do know this: he was really blessed in having many angels in his life who were
there for him and who loved him.
And that was really something to be grateful for on that day.
Lent is traditionally a time for reflecting on our identity as Christians,
and it begins today by telling the story of Jesus’ baptism and the identity and purpose
he received there and the challenges he immediately faced
to that identity and purpose.
This Lent may we all be reminded that we are beloved, that we are all of us children of God
who have all the gifts we need to be God’s apprentices of love and grace in the world.
And when challenged, may we all be angels to one another.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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