Gordon McPhee
Mark 1: 4-11
AND THE POINT IS?
Introduction:
Today is the first Sunday after Epiphany, which occurred yesterday, January 6th. It is the day we celebrate Jesus’ manifestation to the world, the moment the Gospels got started. And this Sunday is about Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan river and what baptism means to us. The Old Testament passage; however, is about creation, that wonderful allusion to the Holy Spirit hovering, waiting in anticipation above the watery abyss for the first word, light, to be spoken. It is used as an allegory for baptism with water and the Spirit, one of Paul’s important themes touched upon in our Epistle reading this morning.
Today I’d like us, as the sermon title suggests, to ask the question, “What’s the point?” We have in our readings this morning a Cecile B. DeMille panoramic vista of life, from the very beginning of the beginning in Genesis 1 to the heart and core of Christian faith today, our baptism into Jesus Christ. But what’s the point? Why did God say the word ‘Light!” and get it all started if what’s ahead is what we know today as a history of war and suffering and, in particular, for Jesus, the cross. Well, I think the answer is in what is revealed to us in Acts and Mark about baptism.
Sermon:
The Gospel of Mark, which is popularly considered the earliest Gospel, differs significantly from its companion synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke, in that it doesn’t provide any narration of Jesus birth or resurrection, except to say that Mary and some of the other women found the tomb empty. Mark 1:1 says, “The good news of Jesus Christ—the Message!—begins here,” and for Mark that beginning is the passage we read this morning; John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River. For Mark this is the important stuff. The beginning of everything about the Messiah, everything about Jesus the Christ that is important to know. This is the commencement of all that leads to the cross and our salvation.
I would not disparage Matthew and Luke for making such a big issue of Jesus’ birth and early years and parents, nor John and his reflections of Jesus eternal nature and place in the Godhead, but I do think Mark got it right. His short Gospel didn’t have the luxury of time and resources that the other Gospel writers seem to have had so he kept it to what was essential. We begin with Jesus’ baptism, and we are introduced to the same duality that Paul spoke of in Acts to the disciples from Ephesus, water and Spirit.
In his travels Paul happens upon some disciples from Ephesus and asks if they have received the Holy Spirit, which he explains to them is having Jesus in your heart, not just your mind. They said they were baptized with water, into John’s baptism, which is a baptism in which one decides to radically change their life so that they live righteously before God and are forgiven their sins. It’s a commitment to live by the true spirit of the law, justice and peace and honouring God. But as Paul pointed out, it is a decision of the mind and has no power beyond what you put into it.
Paul and John the Baptist both preached the same good news. Listen, Paul says in verse 4, “John preached a baptism of radical life-change so that people would be ready to receive the One coming after him, who turned out to be Jesus. If you’ve been baptized in John’s baptism, you’re ready now for the real thing, for Jesus.” In verses 7 and 8 Mark says that John preached, “I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. His baptism—a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.” And immediately Mark recounts Jesus coming and being baptized with water by John, to fulfill all righteousness as Matthew records, and then, as well, He is baptized in the Holy Spirit.
Both these passages tell us something very revealing about baptism. John did not, in acknowledging Jesus’ “baptism by the Holy Spirit,” (Mk 1:8) invalidate the efficacy of baptism by water bearing witness to a change “of life-change that leads to forgiveness of sins.” (Mk 1:4) And significantly, in coming to John to be baptized in the Jordan river, neither did Jesus. Paul also, in Acts, does not disparage the value of the Ephesian’s baptism by Apollos into the Baptism of John. He says, “If you’ve been baptized in John’s baptism, you’re ready now for the real thing, for Jesus. (Acts 19:4)” One is necessary for the other, the precursor, and Paul goes on to explain the difference. “Did you take God into your mind only, or did you also embrace him with your heart? Did he get inside you? (Acts 19:2)”
This is such a crucial but often maligned and misunderstood distinction, please allow me to allegorize it, as imperfect as that genre is. In scripture, our relationship to God is often characterized like a marriage. Think of John’s baptism as not one of those idilic modern relationships where the couple fall hopelessly and endlessly in love with each other but are rather thrust together in some circumstance of mutual benefit and compatibility. They have made a decision of the mind that this is the best person for their lives and they live together in the hope that care, respect and mutual benefit will produce the fruit of happiness and joy. They forgive and are forgiven and work to help one another. Much like what is promised in the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses and King David.
But then, something happens. As the couple live and grow closer together, more in unison and synchronicity, they discover they have gone beyond the bounds of the mind, that their hearts have been captured as well. They find they have become one spirit with the other person. That in a sense, the other dwells in them and they are inseparable. This is what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like.
And to those who would propose a strict doctrine of “one Lord, one hope, one baptism (Eph 4:5)” I would suggest that whether one begins hopelessly in love and grows to become compatible with the other over time or one begins in mutual care and respect and as a result embraces the love of the heart, both are useful and lead one to the other, as Paul put it, “you’re ready now for the real thing.” We often consider that being baptised in the Holy Spirit is what produces a “radical life-change” from within the heart but Mark’s John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle agree that their is a life changing baptism of water, a “renewing of your mind”, as Paul put it to the church in Rome, through which “you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
I think, at least here in St. Simeon’s, we can agree that Jesus was already living obedient to God the Father before he was baptized by John. His life did not need a radical change and there was no need to be forgiven. And I think we’d agree that Jesus did not need to experience a baptism in the Holy Spirit to enter into a full relationship with His Father, as the Spirit witnessed in a voice on the day, “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.” What Jesus did at the Jordan was a witness, a sign and confirmation of what was already true of his life. So that we would see and know how important this is.
So now what of these words in Genesis 1, “First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see.” Whether you’re a short term or long term creationist, an evolutionary creationist or you just can’t be bothered thinking about it, there was a beginning and unless you’re an atheist, God created. The second verse goes on, “God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: “‘Light!’ And light appeared.” And my question at the beginning of the service was, “Why did he do this?”, “What’s the point?”
There is this pregnant pause, and you can imagine how great a pause it was for an omniscient immortal God, it was eternal. God’s Spirit brooded over the abyss; about what? Knowing all things did God not see that man would sin, that Cain would kill Abel, that the flood destroying everything but Noah and those in the arc with him would be necessary? Did God not know the children of Abraham would be enslaved, that they would continually rebel and, as it is expressed, whore with other gods relentlessly till the Babylonian king would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. Could God not see that the only way to redeem the situation was for Him to humble and humiliate Himself taking on the form of a helpless human child, to bear with faithless human disciples who would abandon Him at His moment of greatest need and then be humiliated and crucified and, immortal God as He was, die, so that, in His resurrection we might have the opportunity to live? Was God not considering the disease and suffering and wars that have, do and will accompany human existence to this day? In that moment, that eternal moment hovering over the abyss, God’s Spirit brooded over all this and far more we do not know, and still He spoke, “Light!” Why, what was the point?
Acts 19:6 answers that for us, “Paul put his hands on their heads and the Holy Spirit entered them.” Jesus wants a relationship with you, and He’s willing to do anything for it. He doesn’t care if you fall madly in love with Him and then gradually learn to walk in the path of a new life or if you have been trying to live a life honouring to God and slowly grow to love Him with your whole heart. All this was for you.
When God pondered and brooded over all the implications that creation would bring, He was thinking of you. Before He said “Light!”, He saw that He could have a relationship with you, and you with Him. And He was looking at your children, and your co-worker, and your neighbour. And it doesn’t matter if they give God the time of day or not, you can still treat them like they are, and tell them they are, the most important thing in the universe because God was looking right at them when he spoke, “Light!”
We forget sometimes God had a choice, that He did brood, or hover, over the waters. And when we think of our baptism, it should warm our hearts to know that all of this, everything since the wonderful first day when “light appeared. [and] God saw that light was good,” has been so that we can come together with each other and with Jesus in the Holy Spirit to worship and glorify God. To know Him who created us and saved us, and to be known by Him.
Amen
