1st Sunday of Lent
Cycle B
Gn 9:8-15
1Pt 3:18-22
Mk1:12-15
Have you ever thought of what the odds are against you being here?
Harvard Law School blogger Ali Binazir produced a “probability chart” a couple of months ago contemplating this very question. In the chart, Binazir calculates just how improbable it was that the right sperm from your father hooked up with the right egg produced by your mother. By his estimate, it’s about one chance in 400 quadrillion. And that’s not all. To even get to that stage, all of your ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life on earth, had to survive to reproductive age. Multiplying the string of probabilities together, he concludes that the odds of your existence are an astronomical one in 10^2,685.000. That’s a ten with two million six hundred eighty-five thousand zeros after it. Enough zeros to fill 11 250-page books.
The string is very thin indeed. There’s the probability of one particular boy meeting one particular girl, then the chance that they actually talk to one another, then the chances of that turning into another meeting, then that meeting turning into a long term relationship, one that lasted long enough to result in offspring. The chances of your parents’ meeting resulting in marriage and kids is about 1 in 2000. The combined probability of all those events occurring is around 1 in 40 million.
When you get into the math of that one specific sperm with half your name on it hitting that one egg with half your name on it you come up with odds of 1 in 400 quadrillion. The right sperm also had to meet the right egg to create your grandparents. Otherwise they’d be different people, and so would their children, who would then have had children who were similar to you but not quite you.
This is also true of your grandparents’ parents, and their grandparents, and so on till the beginning of human time. If even once the wrong sperm met the wrong egg, you would not be sitting here daydreaming and wondering when I will get to the point.
Now multiply that by the billions of souls that have inhabited the earth and it blows your mind. Never mind the improbability that a planet could evolve out of the entire universe that could sustain life, not to mention intelligent life, and it’s time to quit.
So, you’re pretty special, aren’t you? You are not random. God willed you into being. Unbelievable. Even though the odds were stacked against you, God has known you since before you were conceived. He knew who you were going to be before he created Adam and Eve. He knew how much you would love him and how much you would turn from him, yet he willed you into existence anyway. Unbelievable. And the Good News is that he came down from heaven to redeem you, and he knew he would do so before he created the universe.
That’s pretty good news.
Yet that good news itself is unbelievable. Not because it is impossible but because we find it to be improbable. If it’s hard to believe in the improbability of our own existence it is even harder to believe that God would care so much for us. Why does he care that much for such insignificant creatures? What have we done to deserve this? But then again, why wouldn’t He; it took a lot of work to get you here.
Jesus says today to repent and believe the Good News. That good news is that the kingdom of God is at hand. God is here, now, in this place, and He’s here just for you. Throughout all of time the plan has been in place. And that plan is for you to be with him. All we have to do is turn from the things that keep us from accepting his love.
Repent and believe in the gospel. The two things go together.
We don’t need to repent in order to be worthy of the gospel; the gospel is what it is no matter what we do. We need to repent in order to believe in it. When we sin we are cut off from God and we feel unworthy of His love. Sin is like a wall that encloses us so that we feel completely worthless. Sin blinds us to the mercy of the gospel. How could the good news be for me since I am such a loser? I can never seem to get it right. I keep falling back on my old ways. We need to repent because then we will be in right relationship with God and the gospel will make sense to us. Repentance opens our eyes to the wonderfulness of God’s plan for us.
God has raised us up to the level of his equal, in a way. We know that we will never be equal to God, but he chooses to treat us that way. We hear today that God made a covenant with Noah and his descendants that he would never send another flood to destroy life on earth. We hear that word “covenant” at every Mass, yet I don’t think we truly understand what it means. We have lots of contracts today, but not many covenants. A covenant is not just an agreement, not just a contract. A contract usually is made between unequal parties, with the purpose of protecting the parties in case something bad happens. A covenant is much more. First, it is made between equals, and it is much more open-ended. It is simple. You do this and I will do that. That is why we call marriage a covenant. Because it is between equals and doesn’t try to guard against any eventuality. It is open-ended and both parties promise to be faithful to the covenant upon pain of serious consequences.
When God made a covenant with Noah, he raised Noah and his descendants to the level of equals. That covenant was renewed with Moses, then with King David and the Israelites, then finally in Jesus the covenant was made eternal. No more would it have to be renewed because it is forever. Whenever a covenant was made the parties would kill an offering of a lamb or a bull or whatever, then they would cut the carcass in half and walk between the two pieces, signifying that if either one broke the covenant that is what would happen to him. With Jesus no offering was needed because He himself was the final perfect sacrifice.
Repent and believe. Repent so you can believe. This lent remove all the obstacles you have put up to God’s love. Your existence is not random, don’t let your lent be random. Clear the decks and be faithful to your part of the covenant. Just as a covenant has severe consequences for anyone who breaks it, it also has amazing blessings for those who keep it.
