The following sermon written by Matt Schmidt and preached on Sunday Jan 10, 2021.
Mark 1:4-11 (NRSV)
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And 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. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He 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. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And 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. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The beginning of Mark introduces us first to John the Baptist, then to Jesus. If all we had was Mark’s Gospel, we wouldn’t know the birth narratives of Luke and Matthew. We wouldn’t know about the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks at night when the angel appears and announces the glorious birth of a Messiah. We wouldn’t know about Mary and Joseph and all their drama. We wouldn’t know about the Epiphany of the wise men from the east who saw the star. Mark begins his version of the Jesus story with John the Baptizer mid-ministry, when his prophetic movement, quite frankly a populist movement, was in full go. And so when we meet Jesus for the first time, we’re not sure who he is according to this story, but that gets cleared up quickly because in baptism we discover his true identity. And it’s very good news for you and for me.
My hope today is that in talking about the baptism of Jesus, you might reclaim your own baptismal identity and rediscover the power of love in your own life, and then I hope that this good news of God’s love, transmitted to you through Jesus, might help you navigate these strange times, this difficult life, the brokenness, the mess, the depravity that is so rampant.
Now, I believe human beings are endlessly complex, and that we each have our own stories that are nuanced and complicated. We suffer, we sin, each of us in different ways. I’m not sure how brokenness has crept into your life this week but I’ll bet it has. Nobody has walked into church today thinking — absolutely everything is perfect! My life is amazing! There’s nothing wrong with the world! What pandemic? What violence? I haven’t heard this news about these things—nobody is walking in to church today thinking I have no issues and no needs.
Now, also in my old age, I’m increasingly convinced of the depravity of humanity. I don’t mean that human beings have no good, we all have a mixture of good and evil swirling about within us. But I do not think we have the capacity to completely save ourselves.
We need a savior.
And then, we need to remember our baptism as a unifying, redefining identity of beloved belonging with this savior — a gift of grace from God so that we might know our true self as God knows us. A union with Christ.
I’m so glad you’re here today (or reading this sermon) because the gospel of the Son of God here to save us is thus announced by John the Baptist.
Here’s one thing we know about John: He lived on the edge of two places: the wilderness and the land flowing with milk and honey. Quite literally, the Jordan River divides the wilderness from the promised land. And John offered a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in this river. So people from the promised land, the place supposed to flow with milk and honey would journey south and east, down the mountains, out from the highlands, towards the wilderness, until they reached the gateway, which was the Jordan River. And there, they would meet John. Who offered them an end-times message of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins.
Why was this popular?
Why were so many people drawn to these waters?
For one, if the end is near, then you always see people making big changes in desperation. But also, I think then was similar to now, in that, there were so many forces and powers depraved that you just had to hope God would do something to save you, because that was just too overwhelming. For example, then, there were Emperors and Kings who oppressed people (sound like today?), slaves and peasants with no upward mobility (ring a bell?), an aristocratic generation of priests who ruled the Jerusalem Temple and who got rich and fat off the backs of the poor (uh…I’m sure that would never happen today). Overwhelmed, overworked, powerless people heard about this movement that anticipated the end of things as they are and then something different. So they journeyed, searching for God, willing to admit their sins, and ask for forgiveness, and hope for a fresh start. Baptism in this way is a kind of humble submission to God. You confess that you are powerless amidst these warped powers of the world and you ask to be made clean and new.
And so baptism in this place — on the edge of two places: the wilderness and the land flowing with milk and honey — is a kind of return to the Exodus Story in which the people of God understand God has covenanted to overcome empire (Egypt) and all odds (wilderness/power/obstacles) to give blessing and abundant life in the promised land, but first they must be go through it. Through the wilderness that reforms them. And so in the time of John, the people of God were being drawn back to the journey of that story, to leave the land that was supposed to flow with milk and honey, to plunge back through the wilderness, and then return to the land through the waters of the Jordan River and maybe now there’d be a little more milk and honey for them too.
Water, wilderness, milk and honey, locusts, camel hair. This story is earthy. It’s about food and money and sin and life and death and liberation and land. God’s story of redemption and promise of forgiveness is earthy—a story for here and now and you and me.
Mark’s Gospel is only beginning, but he wants us to know that the good news of Jesus, salvation itself, is addressing the problems of this place, this earth, this life, these particular people, this particular society, even you. And so when we name that we can sense the brokenness of this place, the sin, the lies, the greed, the politics, the people today, we can expect for God’s salvation to infect this place. Which is what the incarnation, and the baptism of Jesus is doing. Infecting earth with heaven like a good disease—how about that good news amidst an actual pandemic?
So John the Baptizer grows in popularity. He’s quite successful in terms of how many people are impacted by his ministry, but do you notice that he keeps telling them the same thing: Somebody next is more powerful than I. How refreshing is it, to hear a popular, powerful public figure be humble and talk about how the next leader is going to be more powerful and more worthy…you see that John really believes that up next is the Messiah. He knows he’s not the Messiah, so he points outside himself and at God for deliverance. And as a firm foundation, he leans into the prophecies of old, that in the end times God would saturate this world with God’s Spirit.
Listen to the old prophet Ezekiel, from chapter 36, and tell me this isn’t what John hoped for:
Thus says the Lord…24I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. 25I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put my spirit within you…then you shall live in the land that I gave your ancestors; and you shall be my people and I will be your God.
Land, people, clean water, a new spirit.
Earthy stuff mixed with heavenly stuff. John believed that in the end, someone more powerful that he would come and bring with him the salvation of creation. And then this:
9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And 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. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Jesus brings the good news because he is the good news. He is the one more powerful than John. And his power is love. All the energy of this text is the moment when heaven is torn apart and the Spirit descends from the Father to the Son like a dove…
(By the way — a dove — really? Isn’t a dove like THE sign of peace and love? — Do you remember the story of Noah? That great cataclysmic flood, so much death, so much destruction, and then in the end the dove and the olive branch, proof that the waters are receding. Que the rainbows! That story is actually not about an angry god, but about humanity patiently enduring cataclysm so that God might be victorious in the promise of peace and love).
This Jesus will bring this kind of peace, inner peace, quietness and calm. Waters can be peaceful or chaotic. This baptism in these waters mark a man named Jesus will be called Prince of Peace.
So all the energy of this text is in the heaven-torn-apart-revelation of the relationship between the Father and the Son, which we discover is a type of peace and love, like a dove. And then a voice makes it more clear: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
All the energy, the spirit of this text is in the revelation of love.
The Father and the Son are connected to each other with love. In fact, the Son’s identity as Son or Messiah, cannot be disconnected or parsed from his identity as the Beloved One. Baptism reveals love. Baptism is about God making promises about the truth of one’s life.
And then, Jesus Christ transmits this identity to you. Jesus Christ will expend all kinds of energy throughout his life and ministry and death on a cross proving the height and depths of God’s love for you. We discover in Jesus, the true power of God is love, which means you’ll know salvation when you know God’s love for you.
The effectiveness of Christ’s work is connected or linked or revealed or sealed upon our hearts in the waters and Spirit of our baptism.
Because the relationship between the Father and the Son is connected by love, then we can receive such a connection of love as well. All this happens in the baptism of Jesus, and thus should inform our understandings of our baptism as well!
Let me ask you this:
How do you remember your baptism?
I know for a fact, that many of you have been baptized. How do you remember your baptism? OR If you’ve never been baptized, then talk to me after church about why we shouldn’t baptize you as soon as we can.
For Christians, especially in reformed theology, baptism by water and Spirit (an earth and heaven baptism) is a visible sign and seal of God’s grace. It’s not an earned identity, it’s a gift of grace, a freely given identity from God to you.
Notice the story of Jesus begins, for Mark, with God speaking words of affirmation and love towards his son. The way things begin shape how they end. Words matter. Words create identity. And the first words spoken by God of Jesus are: you are my son, the beloved.
In baptism, we believe this same essential spirit: God chooses you, before you can even choose him. God loves you even before you can return the love. This is why our reformed tradition baptizes babies, because before they can cognitively comprehend what’s happening, God is already making promises to love them.
God promises to love you no matter who you become, no matter where your life goes, no matter the circumstances, God loves you. Period.
But Pastor Matt, what difference does it make if God loves me?
The reason this promise of love and grace matters so much is because of the depravity so prevalent in ourselves and in our world. The love of God doesn’t condone the depravity, the love can transform the depravity. The reason Mark connects water and spirit, earth and heaven, is because of the broken world we live in and the truth that salvation and transformation is available here and now. Things have changed, things can be different, love has come.
Salvation is the power of God’s love, and this is the real power.
This week I saw popularity as power, money as power, violence as power, look how much power that person has, look how many followers that person has, look at all that power. But that’s not power. God’s power is love. And you’ll know salvation when you know God’s love for you.
In the baptism of Jesus, heaven is torn apart and the spirit descends like a dove, who’s arrival marks peace, and an affirming identity of love is declared.
Have you noticed where the story goes from here? Immediately after Jesus is given the power of a loving connection with the Father, he is driven deeper into the wilderness to be tempted by the very other forms of power that the world seems to be concerned with: geopolitical power, popularity, physical strength. All of which he can deny because he’s the only one who can deny such temptations. And in denying himself such power, he reveals to us the true power of God: LOVE.
This means that if you can figure out how to claim or reclaim or rediscover God’s love for you, then maybe it will begin to change your circumstances and even this world. See, we’re so deeply concerned with all the wrongs things. And what we should be concerned with is the wellbeing of all things, which begins with love.
My little baby girl Margot is one year old. And she’s a cute but fussy little one. She’s had a low-grade fever since Wednesday. Last night my wife was up every hour holding and rocking her. By two in the morning I got called in for relief. And I’m holding this fragile little warm body, and its so dark I can’t see her, but I can feel her shimmy and squirm with sadness, and when I kiss her chubby little cheeks they’re wet with tears. So much is wrong, but she is loved. She’s sick, she’s exhausted, she’s in pain, but…she is loved.
You may be sick, you may be exhausted…but you are loved.
Our world may be sick, our world may be broken…but Christ is here to show us that love is only thing that can save us now.
Hate doesn’t drive out hate. Only love can do that. -MLK
Our nation won’t heal until we learn to love our enemies.
You won’t be okay, until you learn to love yourself.
God love you.
May you stand in front of the mirror this week — don’t let the litanies of the world inform you, don’t let your mistakes haunt you, don’t be distressed about the wrinkles or saggy skin, stare deeper into your eyes and let the Word of God recreate reality, let the heavens part, and the Spirit fill your heart, and the voice declare:
you are my daughter,
you are my son,
the beloved,
I’m so pleased with you,
I affirm you,
I support you,
I care for you.
Let this love come to you, and then quickly, now, share it.
Amen.
*The idea of John occupying two spaces—the wilderness and the land flowing with milk and honey is from Ted A Smith, “Homiletical Perspective”, Feasting on the Word, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (2008, pg. 239).
