On this first Sunday of the new year we begin a year-long
journey with the book of Mark. Mark may be my favorite gospel writer. I call it
the gospel of the cranky Jesus because the Jesus we meet through the eyes of
Mark is always a little on edge, he never wants anyone to say who he is, and he
loses his temper with the disciples all the time. Maybe it’s not that he’s
cranky, but through Mark’s eyes he is maybe more human than we find him in
other gospels.
In Mark there is no Nativity Story like we find in Matthew
and Luke. There is no long preamble preparing us for who Jesus is like we find
in John. Mark’s writings plop us right
into what he considers to be the start of the important stuff, the ministry of
Jesus and it begins on the banks for the Jordon River in Mark 1; 4-11
4 John the baptizer
appeared[a] in the wilderness,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And
people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were
going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing
their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s
hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild
honey. 7 He proclaimed, “The one who is more
powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the
thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with[b]water; but he will
baptize you with[c] the Holy Spirit.
9 In those days Jesus came
from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And
just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and
the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a
voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved;[d]with you I am well
pleased.”
May God Bless to our
understanding the words we hear today.
Today we move into
another new season of the Church year, epiphany. After Advent when we prepare
for the birth of Jesus and then Christmas when we get Jesus, the first week of epiphany always seems
to land a bit hard sometimes. All our
festive decorations that have been in the church for the last month are gone,
and it feels like we have been very abruptly thrown out of the manger, yanked
away from the sweet baby Jesus and rather unceremoniously come face to face
with a grown-up Jesus. The word epiphany
has several different definitions. It is usually a sudden manifestation or
perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. An illuminating discovery, realization or
disclosure. And that is what Epiphany is about, illuminating discovery about
our relationship with God, the discovery of who Jesus is and what better way to
begin our season of Epiphany than with today’s sudden discovery that happens at
Jesus’ Baptism. Will you pray with me
please?
May the Words of my mouth. And the meditation of all our
hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen
On the surface the baptism of Christ appears to be a nice,
simple story. It is the reintroduction
of Jesus into our collective memories, the first time we hear about him again
about 18 years after his time in the Temple and it is the “official” start of
his short, three-year ministry. A
baptism seems like a nice way to reconnect with the grown Jesus. I think we like it because we have a sense of
what a baptism is about, it’s a happy occasion and not one that holds much
risk, or danger or drama, or does it?
But this story is less about baptism and more about
discovery. It is, in some ways, less about Jesus and more about God and God’s
insistent impatience to get back in relationship with us. Last week we were reminded that it had been
well over 400 years since God has sent a prophet to the people to help keep the
relationship between heaven and earth open.
In many ways it may have felt like God has been strangely silent…but all
of that, ALL of that changes dramatically today.
To find that change we need to go back and relook at verse 11
because it is here that we find some very specific words by our gospel writer
Mark that leads us into this dramatic moment of discovery and reconnection with
God.
Listen and read again. “And just as he was coming up out of
the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove
on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I
am well pleased.”
Now you may think that I am going to focus on the “You are my
Son” part, and that is a lovely, lovely affirmation. But that is not the part that I find
fascination…it’s the part about the heavens which don’t just open up to let a
dove descend and to let the voice out; rather, the heavens are TORN APART.
This is an interesting choice of verb here. None of the other
gospel writers use these words and Mark uses the same verb only one other time,
when he describes how the temple curtain was torn apart when Jesus dies. His
choice of words, also points the reader back to the cries of their ancestors
who prayed along with the prophet Isaiah, “O that you would tear open the
heavens and come down”
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” That may have been the plea of our long -ago
ancestors in faith, but isn’t it still our cry today? When I hear those words, I am reminded that
maybe we really aren’t done with Christmas.
That today is a continuation of the Christmas story, a continuation of
the old promise made new again, that Immanuel, “God is with Us” is now, is HERE
and much like a 3- year-old who has been presented with a present and in their
excitement to see what wonderful gift they got TEARS open the paper with
elation to get to it, God is tearing open the heavens not just to get a message
to Jesus, but to get a message to us!
Here on the banks of the Jordan, comes a man of the people
and in the midst of the men, women and children of Judah, on the muddy banks of
the river, in the arms of John the Baptist, Jesus is baptized. The mud, the
water, the torn open sky is a reminder that the gospel, the good news is down on earth, dwelling here with
us. It is the good news that is grounded
in the real, tactile, sensual, fleshy world.
It is the good news that meets us right where we are in the less than
perfectness of our own lives.
I take great hope from this scripture reading today because I
think it gives us, the church, and us as individuals an opportunity to reflect
on our life in the church where we tend to clean everything up, we try to make
things neat and orderly and “sacred” by taking them out of the disorder of the
world. Our time in church is so often,
nice and neat and in order, that we fail to hear the implications of the words
that are spoken, words that invite us to allow God to invade our lives…not come
into our lives, but invade our lives through the torn apart skies.
Now I am a person who avoids violence in any form. I don’t like it, I don’t believe in it, so I
find it odd that I feel pulled to such violent verbs like invade and torn, to
talk about our relationship with God.
It’s a little dangerous and it feels uncomfortable, but I am, I am
intrigued by what it would be like to be invaded by God, to be torn apart by
God. How would our lives change, how
would our church change if we really and truly allowed ourselves to be torn
apart and invaded by God?
That sounds a little scary doesn’t it? To invade means to
conquest or plunder, it means to encroach upon.
We usually fight against those things, as difficult as it feels, this is
what we should be welcoming God to do.
Don’t we want God to conquer our hearts, to plunder our souls, to
encroach upon all that we do?
This may sound strange to say, but to truly allow God to
invade our lives we must be brave, because when God conquers us God asks us to
redefine our lives, God asks us to be open to new experiences, God asks us to
live as servants of Christ in the world, helping others not because we can but
because we must. God asks us to let go of old hurts, let go of our anger, let
go of our pettiness, let go of the way we have always done things and go
forward into a renewed life that is guided and directed not by what we want but
by what God wants for us.
In this moment, God is so excited to get to us to be reunited
with us, reconnected with us, to have us return to the parent whose love for us
knows no boundaries. Unfortunately, all too often we fend God off, holding
ourselves at arm’s length because we have some sort of crazy notion that we are
not good enough for God. God does not stay away from us, rather we keep
ourselves from God. But we can see
today, right here is this scripture that God is not about that. Whoever we are and where ever we are on our
life’s journey God just wants to love you and God will tear apart the heavens
to get to you, but in return we need to be prepared to be torn apart as well,
to be changed. I wonder if the question here today is, “What are you willing to
tear apart to get to God?”
This is the first Sunday of a New Year, a time that we make
resolutions to make changes in our life, resolutions that usually fall by the
wayside within weeks, if not days. I
know I have broken resolutions strewn behind me in my life. When I go back and
reexamine them, trying to figure out why such good intentions can’t be
attained, I realized that it is because all too often I think about the things
I would like to change in my life without inviting God in to make those changes
with me. I suspect that if you looked in your broken resolution closet you may
come to the same conclusion. Why do we keep God from being part of our
lives? I think sometime that we think we
are of so little consequence to God that we don’t want to bother God with the
mundane parts of our lives, saving our interactions for the BIG things. People, this is the God who TORE APART the
heavens for us, so that we could hear and understand the great love of God that
was and is before us in the son Jesus Christ.
This is the God who TORE APART the heavens to assure us that we are
loved, TORE APART the heavens to be in relationship with us! We mean something to God, each one of us, we
mean something to God and by golly I don’t want to save that love for a rainy
day, I want to be a part of that love each and every day of my life and I can
be, and you can be because God TORE APART the heavens to get to US. And If that
is not an illuminating discovery for epiphany I won’t know what else is!
On this first Sunday in Epiphany, in this time and in this
holy space, I invite you to be invaded. I invite you to be torn apart by God, I
invite you to continue to explore the discoveries of God in your life. HA