Genesis 1:1-5. Mark 1:4-11

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1 Genesis 1:1-5 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light ; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Mark 1:4-11 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 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. Now John was clothed with camel s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 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. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 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. 1

2 Not long after I graduated from seminary I was invited to a conference in upstate New York. At the opening session we were asked to pair up with a stranger, and to find a place where we could sit facing each other for an extended conversation. One of us was designated to ask questions, and the other to respond. The questioner was permitted to ask one 3-word question: Who are you? Questioners were not allowed to say anything else. Respondents could answer in any ways they chose, but when they stopped speaking, their partners were simply to repeat the original question, Who are you? and respondents were to try again. I no longer remember how many rounds of this we went through, or how long the exercise lasted, but I do remember that when the larger group later discussed the exercise, we agreed that most of us began by sharing observable facts data about ourselves: where we lived, how old we were, where we grew up, whether we had brothers and sisters, whether we had a partner or children, where we d gone to school, what sort of work we had done. But as the conversation progressed, we found ourselves forced beyond those easy statistics. Before it was over, most of us had at least ventured into the territory of what we hoped for, what we feared, where we struggled we d begun to let ourselves be known at a deeper level. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you, really? Although we might not articulate it this way, I suspect that part of the reason we gather here each week is because we aren t quite sure how to answer that question ourselves, and we ve heard a rumor that our best chance of knowing who we are comes from beginning to know who Jesus is. 2

3 Who is Jesus? Each of the gospels is an attempt to answer that question, but each uses a different approach. Matthew begins his response with a genealogy, Luke with birth narratives, John with philosophical reflection. Mark, on the other hand, says if you want to know who Jesus is, let me tell you what happened at the river. Mark says If you want to know Jesus, this is the place to begin. The first time we meet Jesus in Mark s gospel, he shows up out in the wilderness by the river Jordan. We don t know anything about his family, we don t know about his life up to that point. All that we know is that he has traveled a long way to get here most of the crowd is from Judea, Jesus has come all the way from Galilee. The crowds are coming to hear a prophet named John. They re coming to be washed by him in the river and to confess their sins they are coming to get clean, to get ready for whatever is coming next. We need to pause here and acknowledge that Mark s story has long unsettled the church. If Jesus is without sin, why does he need to join this crowd? Why does he come to be baptized? This issue has made the church uncomfortable from our earliest days. We have found all kinds of ways to dance around it the author of the gospel of John assumes the baptism happened but doesn t really want to talk about it. Matthew tells the story in such a way that John protests the whole thing as just not right. Luke acknowledges that the baptism happened, but skips past the actual washing as soon as he can. And if the story doesn t make us uncomfortable, it may be because we haven t thought through its implications: One commentator puts it this way: Imagine instead an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where Jesus steps to the podium and you realize he s about to say, Hello. I m Jesus, and I m an alcoholic. I d want to stop him or at the very least shout, But you re not! 3

4 We need to reckon with the decision that Jesus makes in coming to do this. He comes like everyone else. It isn t until he comes up out of the water that we realize that this event has cosmic implications. As Jesus leaves the water, Mark says that he sees the heavens torn apart and God s Spirit descending. The other gospels say the heavens opened. One of my favorite teachers used to say, what has opened can be closed. What gets torn apart won t be easily rejoined. God is now loose in the world. [paraphrase of Don Juel] And what happens when God gets loose in the world? Here s one little glimpse from one particular life. Years ago a church member came to me and asked me if I would be willing to meet his sister, who was living with advanced cancer. He said she d had a hard life, and that she hadn t had much to do with the church, but she wanted to talk to someone about the possibility of being baptized before she died. So we began to spend time together mostly on the smoking porch of the hospice center where she had come to have her medications adjusted. Gail didn t know much about the church, and we needed to find ways to talk about God, about baptism, that didn t make her feel further isolated. At some point, after we had begun to be friends, I asked her if she could remember a time when she felt really loved, really connected. She asked me if her example could be about an animal, and I said, Sure. This is the story she told me. Before she died she gave me permission to share her story with others. Gail once had a dog named Sasha whom she loved very much, and when Sasha got hit by a car and died, Gail decided that she did not ever want to have another dog, because she didn t want to hurt that much again. The loss was too hard. But a few months after Sasha died a friend of Gail s who cared for rescued animals asked her to help take care of a particularly vulnerable dog 4

5 while the friend went out of town for a long weekend. Reluctantly, Gail agreed but just for the weekend. It turned out this dog s name was Tasha. Tasha had been abused by her original owner and she bore the scars of that treatment. Gail took her in on a temporary basis. Tasha was needy and Gail tried to be kind, but when Tasha jumped up on her bed, Gail drew the line, saying, No, Tasha. Just the firmness in her voice was enough to send the dog cowering, shaking and whimpering, to the corner. When she saw that, Gail s heart went out. Instinctively, she got down on the floor, took Tasha in her arms and found herself in tears, saying it s okay, it s okay it s over, it s over you re home. That story became our metaphor for baptism. Gail held fast to the conviction that no matter what abuse she d suffered, no matter what wrong she thought she d done, the incarnation was about God getting down on the floor with her in the person of Jesus, and demonstrating that there is a love stronger than all of that pain and that she had found a trustworthy home in that love. Gail never got strong enough to come to church and be baptized the way that she d imagined it. So the church went to her. I told her story in a sermon and invited anyone from the congregation who wanted to come, to be part of the community that got down on the floor with her and welcomed her home. Before that happened, though, I had another conversation with Gail that was important to me. Gail loved the planning for her baptism. She would grin as we discussed possibilities. But at some point in our conversation she looked at me rather slyly and said, But if God is anything like who I think God is, it won t matter whether I am baptized. Her response said to me that Gail understood more about what we were about to do than she had let on. 5

6 Baptism is not primarily about anything we do. Baptism is first about what God does, about what God has already done. Baptism witnesses to a claim made by God in the act of creation. We don t earn God s love by performing certain rites or behaving certain ways. God just loves us. And nothing we have done nothing we will ever do can take that away. To be baptized is to submit to love, knowing that we have never been fully our own. To be baptized is to bathe in our need for God and our need for each other. It is to go swimming in the promises of God, and to come out dripping in God s call. As Jesus rose up from the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and a voice addressed him saying, You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased. Our own Lamar Williamson writes Jesus is who God says he is. [see Lamar Williamson s commentary on the Book of Mark, Interpretation series, p. 35] And beloved of God, you, too, are who God says that you are. Who are you? You are many things, but first and foremost you are a beloved child of God, one for whom God would tear open the heavens to come down-- When we follow Jesus into the water, we declare that this is the place where our truest identity is discovered; this is the place we come most alive. When we bring our children for baptism we acknowledge that they don t really belong to us, they belong to God, they belong to the world God loves. They are only lent to us. For it is in this water that we discover who we are and it is from this water that we are commissioned to serve. Our Book of Order reminds us that every decision we make is an opportunity to grow further into the promises made at this font. Only in death is our baptism complete. 6

7 So in a moment we will have the opportunity to reaffirm the promises sealed in this water. I will moisten the heads of your newly elected elders and deacons as they prepare to enter a particular form of service. Berry will bring the water to you. The words we will speak are Remember your baptism and be thankful. In this context remembering is not an intellectual exercise; many of us were infants at our baptism and we cannot call it to mind. To re-member our baptism today means to let the truth, the promise of it, the hope of it, live again in our bodies. So, sisters and brothers, re-member your baptism and be thankful. To God be the glory for the love that binds us to each other and gives us to the world. 7