In the name of God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is a day about beginnings. Our reading from Genesis
starts with “in the beginning;” and our reading from Mark comes from the start
of that gospel. And, of course, we’re at the start of a new year. In The Four Quartets, TS Eliot famously
says “in my beginning is my end.” If you attended the December class on the
Gospel according to Mark, you’ll remember that we discussed the notion that
this first chapter of Mark is an overture of sorts to the entire Gospel. This
story of Jesus’ baptism serves to set us up for the theological and emotional trajectory
for the rest of Mark.
As Mark tells it, and as we heard just a few weeks ago in
Advent, John the Baptist comes onto the scene as the forerunner of Jesus- to
prepare his way. Mark may be over exaggerating a bit when he says that “the
whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” were going to the
Jordan River to be baptized, but the historian Josephus does record that John
the Baptist was a fairly popular prophet with a substantial following. What is
important about this aspect of the story is that there were crowds gathered at
the time of Jesus’ baptism.
You don’t have to be a sociologist to figure out that
human beings are social animals. We often find our greatest joy, pleasure, and
fulfillment in the company of others. Relationship and belonging may be the
most necessary component of our mental health. Theologians often note that the
very nature of God points to this reality. The Holy Trinity shows us that, at
the core of God’s very being is relationship. And if we were created in the
image of God, then we, too, are intrinsically social beings. Through the
internet, we are the most connected that we have ever been as a species, but
yet, many people report feeling disconnected.
Studies have concluded that people who use social media
are more likely to consider leaving their spouse[1] and sites like Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram, for all their positive aspects, have created another
place for bullying to happen, sometimes even driving teens to end their own
lives.[2] Another study claims that
use of social media leads to people being less fulfilled and satisfied with
their own lives.[3]
As a disclaimer, I’ll note that I use both Twitter and Facebook on a daily
basis, so this isn’t saying that social media is bad, but there is a shadow
side to it. While they are great ways to share news and stay connected to
distant friends, ironically, social media is actually somewhat anti-social.
A saying among church consultants is that people used to
come to church to find faith and would end up finding community, but today
people come to church looking for community and end up finding faith. We should
pay attention to the fact that as Mark tells it, the Good News of Jesus begins
in community. Baptism is a communal event; you cannot baptize yourself. And at
its very core, Baptism is about being grafted into the Body of Christ, a
community. Our Baptismal theology has evolved over time, and in except in cases
of emergency, baptisms are not private events, but rather are communal- just
like the Baptism of Jesus.
So the first takeaway from this overture in Mark is that
community matters, and anything that we can do to build community is the work
of the Gospel. Get to know your neighbors, put down the cell phone every once
in a while and talk to the people around you, or at least make eye contact with
them, and plan to come to the Celebration of New Ministry on Tuesday, it’s
going to be a great party.
When Jesus is baptized, Mark records that the “heavens
were torn apart.” The word is Greek is schizo,
and is a somewhat violent word. It is not that the heavens were parted or
gently pulled aside as a curtain, but rather that they were ripped apart. You
might read it as a fulfillment of the prophecy that we heard from Isaiah back
in Advent- “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” God will
stop at nothing to get to us. God will fight tooth and nail to declare God’s
love for us. And this is Good News.
There is one other time in Mark when that word, schizo, is used- “Then Jesus gave a loud
cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn (schizo) in two, from top to bottom.” And
scholars agree that its usage in both the introduction and conclusion of Mark
is no simple coincidence. Things are torn apart at the beginning and at the end
of Jesus’ ministry. In the first instance, the heavens are torn apart as the
Spirit descends with a message of love; in the final instance, the curtain
which separated the people from God’s presence in the Temple is torn in half,
symbolizing that God is among us, on the loose.
And there is a fairly radical message embedded in both of
these events- namely that God is not confined to our religious understandings.
It is interesting that people come to John the Baptist to be baptized for the repentance
of sin. According to the theology of the day, sins were atoned for in the
Temple in Jerusalem, not out in the wilderness by the Jordan River. By starting
the Gospel in this way, Mark is indicating that Jesus will erase whatever
boundaries we think might exist.
There is a story that comes from World War II France. In
fierce fighting, three soldiers became cut off from the rest of their unit. One
of these soldiers was fatally wounded in the conflict. When the fighting died
down, they decided that they had to get back to their unit, but could not leave
their friend’s body without arranging for a proper burial. They saw a small
church not far away, and carried him there. When they got arrived, they were
greeted by a Roman Catholic priest who explained that while he would be happy
to provide a burial for their friend, since the cemetery was Catholic, he would
have to be buried just outside the fence that ran around the graveyard. It was
the best that could be done, and so they left their fallen friend there and
left. Years later, after the War, the two soldiers decided to make a pilgrimage
back to that small village to visit the resting place of their fallen friend.
When they arrived, they walked the perimeter of the cemetery, looking for the
tomb marker, but they couldn’t find it. They got rather upset, and went to find
the priest to question him as to why he never gave their friend the proper burial
that he had promised. The priest explained that he felt that their friend
deserved better than to be buried outside of the cemetery, but the rules were
clear that only Roman Catholics could buried here. So, he said, “after I buried
your friend, I decided to move the fence.”
That is what God does when the heavens and the curtain
are torn- the fence is moved. It is a new beginning of sorts. And I can’t help
but wonder if we are in a new era. Retired Harvard professor of religion,
Harvey Cox, wrote in a recent book[4] that there have been
different “ages” in the history of the Church. The first he calls the “Age of
Faith” which lasted for the first 300 years of Christianity and focused
more on following Jesus than it did following any sorts of creeds or sets of
beliefs. Then followed the “Age of Belief,” which he said lasted until the late
20th century and was marked by replacing faith in Jesus with dogma
about Jesus. Cox then posits that around 1960, we entered the “Age of the
Spirit” which seems to be grounded in the drive “to experience the Divine instead
of explaining it.” The Age of the Spirit is shaping up to be an age of breaking
down barriers.
Given that we are on the front side of a new beginning,
there are plenty of examples of people and religious groups, including our own,
that are, in one way or another, stuck in the previous age. But I think this story
of Jesus’ baptism is an invitation to consider what needs to be torn apart.
In the Age of Belief, the Church was in here, inside of
buildings and was primarily concerned with providing services to its clearly
defined members. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once said
that “The Church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit
of those who are not its members.” That is an understanding of the Church that comes
from the Age of the Spirit. Perhaps Church is out there, as much as it is in
here. Maybe salvation isn’t about a personal relationship with Jesus, but
rather, as the Prayer Book states, is
about “restoring all [of Creation] to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
It could be the walls which divide us need to be torn down. Let us consider
whether we, as the people of God, are in the business of building walls or
moving fences.
And finally, when Jesus is baptized and comes up from the
water, the voice of God calls, saying “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I
am well pleased.” This is the most important aspect of the story. When we are
baptized, God calls to us saying, “you are my beloved son, my beloved daughter,
and with you I am well pleased.” The Biblical understanding of this event is
that Baptism is adoption into God’s family. In the worldview of the Bible,
birth children could be disinherited if their parents chose to do so; but an
adopted child was permanently and irrevocably a part of the family. Nothing-
not sin, not fear, not depression, not a negative self-image, not death,
nothing can change the fact that you are a child of God.
Your Baptismal name is “beloved.” Now the world might give
you other names: opinionated, flaky, dumb, fat, lazy, worthless; but that is
not that name that sticks. You are the beloved of God, nothing and no one can
change that. The 16th century reformer, Marin Luther, is reported to
have repeated to himself as a mantra whenever he was discouraged: “I am
baptized, I am baptized, I am baptized.” And so it is. It is a truth that you
can depend on.
If you are baptized, give God thanks for that holy event
in your life. Pray for the grace and strength to live into the vocation of your
Baptism. And if you are not baptized, I invite you to consider making the
Sacramental decision to be baptized and adopted into the Body of Christ, to
more fully know the love and peace of God. If you are interested in exploring
that, please talk to me about it.
For the rest of this liturgical year, which runs until the
end of November, our Gospel readings will come mostly from Mark. Today’s
reading is the overture that sets up the story of the Good News of Jesus Christ
that is to follow. As we journey through this year reading Mark, let us
remember the importance of community, the invitation to live in the Age of the
Spirit as fence-movers, and your eternal identity as God’s beloved. Amen.
