Mark
1:4-11
January
8, 2012
No
mention of the baby Jesus. No mention
of wise men from the East bearing gifts.
No mention of the Word made flesh.
We have just barely put our Christmas decorations away and the pine
needles are still wedged in the carpet.
The crèche may even still be on display, and yet in today’s gospel
reading from Mark, we jump right into Jesus’ life as adult. In the opening verses that appear right
before the passage for today Mark gets right to the point, at least Mark’s
point, as he says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.”
Today
we are in the season of Epiphany as we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Epiphany means manifestation or
theophany, an appearance. The one for
whom we have been waiting has appeared.
In today’s reading John the Baptist is with us again (and yes, you did
hear some of this same passage read just a few weeks ago during Advent),
pointing the way to Jesus, clearly giving credit and honor where credit and
honor are due as he says, “the one who
is more powerful than I is coming after me.”
John has been baptizing a baptism of repentance, preparing folks for the
baptism of Jesus, a baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River. As he is coming up out of the water, Jesus
sees the heavens torn apart[I may take this out; the Greek word translated here
as “torn apart,” schizo, is the same word that will be used later after Jesus’
death when the temple curtain is torn in half from top to bottom,] and the
Spirit descends like a dove on him. And
a voice from heaven says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well
pleased.”
For
Mark, Jesus’ baptism establishes his identity as the Son of God which will be
one of Mark’s key messages throughout his Gospel. In a paradigm where the heavens are high in
the sky on a separate level than earthly, human life, this is a major
statement. God has broken into our world
-the heavens are torn apart -hence, dissolving the separation of heaven and
earth.
As
we celebrate Jesus’ baptism, this day we reflect on our own baptism, even those
who cannot remember the actual event. (If you have not yet been baptized and
would like to consider it, please feel free to speak to one of the
clergy.) We will renew our baptismal
vows after the sermon, and I invite you to listen to those words with new ears
and an open heart and hear what God may be saying to you. Before we look at those vows, let’s think
about Mark’s words where God says to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” He does not say,
“You are my beloved when you get your life together or when you are successful,
when you stop gossiping or drinking or when you take out the trash.” He does
not say, “You are my Beloved because you
go to church, because you pray, because you seek justice or even because you
care for the sick.” He says, just, “You
are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
The
apostle Paul reminds us in his letters that our own identity as believers comes
through our own baptism. In our baptism
we identify with Christ, and these precious words that God says to Jesus in his
baptism, God aims for us to hear as well.
You are my beloved daughter, my
beloved son and with you I am well pleased.
This statement of God’s love is a foundational truth in our relationship
with God and with one another. Through
our baptism we make a statement of who we are- a beloved child of God, and we
are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to become
– to become our true selves, to become fully human, to become Christ-like
in what we do and in who we are- the really real us! From the moment of baptism we are unfolding
into the person we were created to be, the person we already are in God’s
eyes. This unfolding does not happen
overnight for most of us. Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, SJ wrote:
Above all, trust in the
slow work of God,
We are quite naturally
impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip
the intermediary stages.
We are impatient of
being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of
all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of
instability---and
That it may take a long
time.---
Only God could say what
this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the
benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,
And accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
The
reality is that even though sometimes we do our best to repress it, the Holy
Spirit resides in us and in the person next to us, and as we open our heart and
mind to God, we find a transformation occurring. As we open our hearts and minds to God we
find ourselves more able to faithfully move into the baptismal promises. Consider one of those promises: Will you proclaim by word and example the
Good News of God in Christ? If you allow the Holy Spirit to lead you, you
may surprise yourself as you share your faith with your son or daughter- maybe
even with words-maybe even out loud! Consider another of the promises: Will you seek and serve Christ in all
persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
If you allow the Holy Spirit to lead you, you may find yourself actually
finding something to love in the difficult
people in your life, maybe including your own difficult self! And the final promise: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the
dignity of every human being? Let
the Holy Spirit lead you, and you may find yourself standing up for the
innocent, caring for the poor, reaching out to the downtrodden, allowing love to
shine in an otherwise inhospitable place, casting light in a dark corner. The Holy Spirit is already in us and has the
power to change us if we are willing recipients, and when the Holy Spirit
changes us we indeed have the power to do nothing less than change the world.
In
Bible study this week, I asked an opening question of what was your favorite
present you either gave or received at Christmas? One member told us that her best gift was
that over the holiday she actually enjoyed going to see a family member, a
certain relative whom she usually did not particularly even like. For years she
dreaded the visits but something was profoundly different this year; she was
able to give room in her heart for this relative, able to see her as a human
being who had weaknesses much like herself.
The anxiety, the tension, the feelings of dislike were simply gone. She said that even the memory of that
experience continues to wash over her as an amazing gift. The slow work of God…
In
Jesus’ baptism Jesus is who God says he is; by our baptism we are reminded that
we are who God says we are: Beloved children of God. Just as Mark reveals Jesus true identity as
the Son of God, in our baptism our true identity is revealed as well. In our baptism God meets us where we are,
before we have our act together-- way, way before, but our lives don’t stop
there. When we respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, we find we are
drawn to prayer, we are drawn to worship, we are drawn to share our faith, drawn
to care for the disenfranchised, drawn to seek out justice for everyone, drawn
to see the face of Christ in every single human being. 14th c. nun Catherine of Siena
said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” We find this becoming fully human, this becoming
our true selves, this becoming
Christ-like that the Holy Spirit empowers is full of excitement, full of
elements of the unknown, and, even at times full of anxiety. We must remember that even after this spiritual
high that Jesus must have experienced at his own baptism, immediately afterward
the Spirit drove him into the desert for 40 days! There is definitely risk associated with
baptism! Baptism does not guarantee a
cushy life in the clouds. It does guarantee
and affirm though that we are beloved by God in all circumstances and that God
will be cheering us on as we become all that God intends us to be, indeed as we
become who we already are in God’s eyes. Trust in the slow work of God…
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