Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 1/8/2012
Mark 4:1-11
Renewing Our Vows
Friday was Epiphany, also known as “Twelfth day” which is associated with the manifestation of Christ to the larger, non-Jewish, world which is represented here by the magi. Fulfilling God’s long-ago promise to Abram Jesus came to bless not just God’s covenant community of Israel, but to bless all the nations – all the world’s people – as well.
It is fitting, then, that on this first Sunday as we turn to our texts we find not just one but two very different epiphanies lifted before us: that revelation of God that comes to us in nature, and the revelation that meets us in Jesus’ baptism.
Psalm 29 offers us a glimpse of God’s terrible power as the psalmist describes a thunderstorm coming in from the Mediterranean and moving up into the mountains of Lebanon, shaking the very foundations of the earth; “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion [that is, Mount Lebanon] like a young wild ox… The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’” (Ps. 29:5, 6, 9)
The other day I joined our Friday book group which had been reading Rob Bell’s Love Wins. Towards the end of the book Bell shares the story of a man he met early on in his ministry. The man used to stay up all night every night, smoking pot and drawing at his kitchen table until finally going to bed at dawn.
One night he was there in the kitchen, smoking pot, doing his drawings, when he became aware of the kitchen filling up with an overwhelming presence of warmth and love. Bell continues:
The power of this presence was so strong and forceful that he was unable to remain in his chair. Struck to the ground, lying prostrate on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night, he said that he knew without a doubt in that moment that it was God telling him that he is loved absolutely and unconditionally and that the only possible path for his life was to receive that love and become a follower of Jesus.
[i]The man did and his life, Bell reports, was never the same. It is not the first time I’ve heard a story like that. I remember hearing someone share a similar story years. The sense of God’s power and God’s love was so overwhelming, so incredibly intense, that he began to cry out “Enough! Enough!” He was begging God to stop. He thought he was going to die.
What do you do with a story like that? If you are wise, you sit up and pay attention. There are moments when the eternal breaks into this world; moments when that wafer-thin membrane which separates this world from the Kingdom of God parts for an instant and like the psalmist we catch just a glimpse of that One who is so infinitely much greater than anything we’ve ever known before. Like Bell’s parishioner, it can and should fill us with awe.
Too often we miss that God with our domesticated spirituality. We trade the real God for something much tamer – a “small-g” god of our creation; a god we can manipulate and control. If we had any idea how real, how awesome our God truly is there would be nothing casual about our movement towards him in worship. We would tread lightly here, knowing that we tread on holy ground.
But if our first text speaks of God’s power and earth-shaking glory, the second speaks of his nearness. There is an almost frightening intimacy here: that the God of all creation chooses to join us, to become one with us that he might draw us back to Himself once more – frightening because if we truly understood who it is that we meet in Jesus we’d fall to our face in terror at the sheer power that One who stands before us.
This baptism wasn’t about Jesus’ need to be forgiven. It was, rather, the next step in his movement towards us – the continuation of that journey which began with his birth in a stable, and that would ultimately end with his death upon the cross. This was Jesus taking upon himself the fullness of our broken humanity: our need for forgiveness; our boundless capacity to make a mess of this life.
Don’t you wonder how Shiite and Sunni could be at each other’s throats within hours of our departure from Iraq? They are Muslim! They share the same faith! It is so clearly in their best interests to overcome their differences and find a way to live together.
But the same, of course, could be said of us. A couple that just a few years ago seemed so right for each other, seemed so incredibly blessed, and yet today find their life together filled with hurt and tears and anger. Or the gifted graduate of a top college with a bright future who is now struggling with an addiction that threatens to destroy everything he ever cared most about.
What is it with us? Why is that when life itself can be so incredibly hard, we can’t seem to do a better job of taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other?
That’s the brokenness that Jesus is choosing to take on here; choosing to make our struggles his own there in the waters of baptism. And ultimately of course, not just our brokenness but the terrible consequences of that brokenness – the stuff of death itself. Here in his baptism Jesus was putting a stake in the ground. He was committing himself to a specific course, to a specific kind of life. He was taking the decisive step in a journey that would ultimately lead him to the cross.
And look what happens. It is incredibly beautiful. The Spirit, we are told, descends upon him like a dove – a symbol of peace, of rightness with the world. The air itself is so thick with love – the Son’s love for the Father, the Father’s love for the Son, God’s love for all of us – that love itself becomes tangible and real. It is there in the form of the Spirit. The heavens are torn apart. The barrier is breached. Love, God’s very essence, becomes visible to all.
This morning, as we stand at the edge of a whole new year, you have the opportunity to be joined with Jesus – the opportunity to renew your own baptismal vows. There is a death in being submerged in the waters: a death to self that we might live for Jesus. And beyond it, as we emerge from those waters, the promise of new life: the kingdom kind of life – life at its best and most abundant – the kind of life we can only know in making the choice to follow him.
Jesus once said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34-35).
Two epiphanies: God’s great power and God’s great love. That’s the God who came to us in Jesus, the God who lived and died for us. Will we let go that we might live for Him? Let’s turn to the “Renewal of our Baptismal Vows” as we find them printed in the bulletin this morning.
[i] Rob Bell, Love Wins, (HarperOne, New York, 2011), p.139
