The End in the Beginning

A sermon for the Baptism of our Lord, the first Sunday after Epiphany, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on January 8, 2012.

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

Mark’s gospel is a story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
But Mark’s gospel is not just another story. It is a gospel.
Literally good news.
Sometimes we want someone to give us just a brief synopsis of what the good news is. But Mark won’t do that, because the good news is not something that can just be summed up into pithy statements. The good news IS Jesus of Nazareth – we cannot separate the good news from the story of Jesus.
So Mark doesn’t give us some brief synopsis of what the good news is. Mark gives us Jesus, up front and in person.
The point is not to understand some idea about who Jesus is, but to follow Jesus and the way that he marks out.
One commentator puts it this way: “…Mark does not invite us to decide what the Gospel means, but to find our place in the unfolding good news.”
(Kernaghan, 38)
It is through our living engagement with the living Jesus that we learn what it means to be followers and why being a follower of Jesus is good news.

Mark begins:

Mark quotes the prophet Malachi who wrote: “I will send my messenger ahead of you to open the way for you.”
And then Mark reminds us of our prophet of exile and return, Isaiah: “Get the road ready for the Lord; make a straight path for him to travel!”

God’s new way is coming as it was foretold and hoped for by many generations.
And this new way comes not as a set of rules or profound new ideas, but as a person who shows us how to live and shows us God’s love.

John goes out to the desert, speaking about God and about God’s coming deliverance to all who listen, and baptizing in the Jordan river all who want to be baptized.
John is the voice in the wilderness, calling people to prepare for God’s new way.

The desert, the wilderness, the wasteland, is a place in the Biblical story where people come to grips with who they are before God.

After the Israelites leave Egypt, they follow Moses into the desert and remain there for forty years. But it’s there in the desert that God creates out of an enslaved people, a new liberated community, it’s there that God gives them the law and the promise of blessing.

In the wilderness, God creates a way.

And John proclaims that way and says if you want to be able to receive this new way of God you’re going to have to come to grips with who you are before God. You’re going to have to be honest about your own life.

To tell the truth about our lives itself can seem like a desert, a painful and lonely reality that we most often just try to avoid. But it is when we are truthful before God about our own sins and failings that we can be prepared for the new life, the new calling God has for us.

And so often we realize that telling the truth about ourselves is the most freeing experience we can imagine. God hears us as we confess and with open arms responds with grace and love like the Father of the prodigal son.

We need confession because we need to stay in touch with reality. We all like sheep go astray and follow our own ways and stray from what God would have us do and who God would have us be.

And John calls all, the poor, the rich, the strong, the weak, the ones who have it all together and the ones who can’t seem to walk the line – all are in need of the reality check that is confession and forgiveness of sin.

And then baptism. Baptism purifies – it’s a washing symbol –all cleaned up and ready to move on. But it is also most importantly an initiation into a life of service to God. Baptism is only the beginning of the life that seeks to follow God’s way.

The first time we see Jesus in Mark, he is going out from Nazareth in Galilee to be baptized by John.

Jesus’ baptism was the beginning of his public service of God. Jesus goes down to the waters of baptism.

And this act, this act of being baptized by John is an act of both dedication to God and solidarity with all of the people that God loves.

Jesus was baptized in the same water as all of those who John had baptized before. Jesus was to be among fellow human beings and to be with fellow human beings, especially the weak and the poor, the prostitutes and the tax collectors. Jesus is baptized in solidarity with all those who came before him and all those who come after him, leaving the old behind and pressing on toward the new.

As it says in the book of Hebrews: “he had to become like his people in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in his service to God, so that the people's sins would be forgiven.”

And Jesus is baptized in dedication to God’s purposes. As we move into the time of sharing the Lord’s Supper, I want to reflect upon the meaning of the words that are said about Jesus in the baptism story. These words begin his ministry and foreshadow what is to come in the events of his ministry. Even here, in this celebratory moment, we can feel the shadow of the cross. But ultimately we see here the hope of God’s redemption and healing through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Let’s take a look.
I like the way Eugene Peterson renders this episode in his translation, the Message.

“At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God's Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”

The sky splits open. N.T. Wright comments that “it doesn’t mean that Jesus saw a little door ajar miles up in the sky. ‘Heaven’ in the Bible often means God’s dimension behind ordinary reality. It’s more as though an invisible curtain, right in front of us, was suddenly pulled back, so that instead of trees and flowers and buildings, or in Jesus’ case the river, the sandy desert and the crowds, we are standing in the presence of a different reality altogether.”

The tearing of the sky brings to mind the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Why don't you tear the sky open and come down?” God has come down and Jesus will bring us out of the exile of our sins.

The new reality that is opened up in the tearing of the sky is the reality of God’s deliverance beginning to be made real in the life of Jesus who is in his baptism dedicating himself to God’s service.

And this reality is a reality of promise – the promise of restoration and of new creation – shown in the descent of the Spirit of God like a dove.
In the story of the creation of the world we read that “the Spirit of God was moving over the water.” The Spirit of God like a dove was moving over the waters of Jesus’ baptism, empowering him for the work that is to be done, and signifying the NEW creation that will be a result of his life, death, and resurrection.
And just as the dove gave Noah the sign that there is dry land, the Spirit of God gives us the promise of restoration.

And we who have since been baptized and received the Holy Spirit can take great encouragement from the remembrance of the newness of life that was offered to us there and breathe in again God’s promise of continual restoration and healing and creating anew when we find ourselves in ruts or on paths that we never wanted to tread or perhaps just adrift in a vast sea. God’s Spirit once again points us to Jesus and to look at Jesus’ life and the work of God’s deliverance through Jesus’ death and resurrection and find hope again for a new start.

So we have the skies split open, the Spirit descends, and “along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”

And it is with these words that we see the beginning and the end of the gospel all at once. Here in the baptism we celebrate the beginning of Jesus’ ministry just as we remember the beginning of our own new life of following Jesus in our baptism or confirmation.
But here in the baptism with these words we see the full story of who Jesus is and who Jesus is to be for all humanity.

The three parts of the voice’s statement tell the story: (1) “‘You are my Son,”
(2) “chosen and marked by my love,” and (3) “pride of my life.’”

“You are my Son” – this part looks back to Psalm 2:7 which is called an enthronement Psalm. This Psalm was said by the Jewish community in hope of a new king who would come and restore their nation. Jesus is being addressed as that new king who would establish a new reign. But this reign would not be what people expected.

“chosen and marked by my love” – this part looks back to Genesis 22:2
Isaac, the son that Abraham loved was to be given as a sacrifice to God. In the last moments, we recall, God tells Abraham to sacrifice a lamb rather than his son Isaac and God tells Abraham that on account of his faith all nations would be blessed through his children.

Jesus, God’s beloved, will be the lamb that will die in place on humanity and will rise again in order that humanity might be blessed through him.

“pride of my life.’” – or “I am pleased with you” – this part recalls Isaiah 42:1

“Here is my servant, whom I strengthen— the one I have chosen, with whom I am pleased. I have filled him with my Spirit, and he will bring justice to every nation.”

Here is a direct reference to the suffering servant that we read about in Isaiah chapters 40-55.
In chapter 53 we read the famous poem about the servant:

“he endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. All the while we thought that his suffering was punishment sent by God. But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. All of us were like sheep that were lost, each of us going his own way. But the Lord made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved.”

Jesus is baptized, the skies split open – looking to coming restoration of justice and peace among humanity
The Spirit descends as a dove – promising new creation
And “along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”

God proclaims his great affection for his Son but we also see in this words a foretelling of the end as we recall the prophecies – God’s son, the promise to Abraham, the suffering servant will be light in the darkness and the darkness will refuse that light.

But by his wounds humanity is healed.

As we turn to the Lord’s Supper and remember Christ’s death for us, let us remember that it is this Christ who died for us, the one who was baptized and dedicated to God’s service, the one who sought to live a life of love in solidarity with the outcasts and the down-and-outs, and the one who was addressed by God: ‘You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’” This same one became the sacrifice for sins, in place of all and rose again that all might receive new life, a changed nature through faith and eternal life in the world to come.

By Jesus’ death and resurrection we have new life and a new relationship to God whereby we hear the same words of God’s great love and grace: So we have the skies split open, the Spirit descends, and “along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my [children], chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”

Let us hear those words spoken to us, the words of God’s love as we eat the bread and drink the cup – God’s love for a broken world, God’s love for each of us.

Amen.