Mark 1:4-11
Baptism Sunday - Year B
Whatever there was about Baptizing John that brought folks to travel from the center of power to beyond the edge of same, opened them to look clearly at their lives and fess up to what they had been about that they knew they shouldn't be about and yet they were about.
This is a story that moves from settlement back into exodus. This is a story that recognizes the permanence of exile over the temporary nature of acculturation. This is a story that brings us to the nature of life being a pilgrimage and so we are back on the leading edge of creation.
Once upon a time people recognized their dissatisfaction with the standard of living for their time and heard the call of the prophet to come out of whatever level of security they had settled for, whatever status they had managed.
From deep within came a movement of confession that was evidenced by a willingness to be thrown back into the moment of creation when all was chaos. This is a willy-nilly repentance indicating a willingness to move in any direction but the direction they were heading because they could see so clearly its shortcomings.
John focused the symbol of baptism on this chaos of confession/repentance and directs it toward forgiveness (a foundation of seeing, evening and morning, all the time, "it is good"). God is good - all the time. The marker for this is forgiveness of every forgetfulness that interdependence and community are at the heart of our best life.
Mark, like John, pushes us to creation imagery as Jesus' birth story. Mark does this with an overt connection to the prophetic tradition that uses the goodness of creation as the corrective for whatever situation we are in. It is only in the beginning, in the wilderness of creation's chaos, that we can start anew, that we can take that first step.
With creation as our base we can once again be cleared to be introduced to the specific "it is good" of Forgiving Jesus.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html
"What does this mean, 'Child of God'? The entire Gospel of Mark tries to deal with this question answering it with a narration of Jesus' actions." [CCBV introduction]
Peterson puts it this way in his introduction, "There's an air of breathless excitement in nearly every sentence [Mark] writes. The sooner we get the message, the better off we'll be, for the message is good, incredibly good: God is here, and [is] on our side.... God is passionate to save us."
Baptism is a clarifying moment. G*D's voice touches us, "You are mine, chosen and marked by love, be-loved."
Now what do we do with that? What are our actions?
Do we limit our brothers and sisters to those who exhibit their being chosen in the same way same manner as do I?
Do we honor our sisters and brothers whose sense of being G*D's beloved is different than mine?
Where on the continuum between those two approaches do we find ourself and in which direction are we heading?
Is the blessing we have received a measuring rod for others or an opening to grow into additional blessings? As we act out our response to receiving be-loved-ness we will give evidence of a demanding or inviting revelation that "truly, this was a beloved child of GOD." (15:39)
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html
"We may have here the echo of an oracle of Isaiah: [Isaiah 42:1,4].... The voice, thus pronounces a commission to establish an international rule of justice. How this is to be done is what we must learn from the narrative. But it is already clear that what Jesus is up to is precisely this: the establishment of the just empire of God. Jesus has a political, indeed an imperial mandate. In the bible, spiritual and political matters are not separate things; they are the same thing. The difference is not between politics and spirit, but between a divine and a worldly politics, between justice and oppression, between the politics of God and the politics of idolatry." [The Insurrection of the Crucified: The "Gospel of Mark" as Theological Manifesto by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.]
This is a huge expectation for one to live up to. Like those disappointed on the road to Emmaus, we are finally getting to the disappointment that after 2,000 years the politics of God are still being trumped, in God's name, by the politics of idolatry. A question comes to mind: did Jesus intentionally avoid the prophetic and messianic expectations of an empire of God or did he find the only way possible (spiritual jujitsu) to move through the resistances of his day?
How do you hear a call to you to be G*D's beloved? Can it but lead you to risky side of salvation where the temptations, fears, tremblings, and politics are located? What prophetic action grows from your belovedness? what spiritual jujitsu? Surely it is not a beckoning to simply bask in a gauze-wrapped soft-focus slide through life.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/january2006.html
John exclaims, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me...." This raises a question, "What is power? What is authority?"
In this passage, what is invested in the one coming is that of Belovedness. Belovedness is power. Relationship is power. Compassion is power. Healing is power. Teaching is power. Forgiveness, even without repentance, is power.
This reversal of our usual attempts at power through a variety of external controls is worthy of a big crack in the cosmic egg, a tearing apart of the fabric of heaven and earth. Instead of an eagle swooping down from heaven to place its talons in the nape of one's neck to drag you where you would otherwise refuse to go, to make a puppet of you, here we have the dove that brings a sign of a new earth (after a flood), a new heaven (one with a rainbow).
What are you aware of in your own life that is less than it could be, but it is currently all you are able to do? What sense do you have that there is something better coming? In these ways we follow John and anticipate the best we can do, water baptism, is not the best that can yet be. Let us continue point the way to a better way.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/january2006.html
Creation moves from formless to formed, only to become the ground for new formation. Day by day lightness and darkness interplay.
Repentance called and responded to, follows this same process. This assertion calls us to look around: what light from today's repentance has come to guide us beyond repentances of old?
John's baptism unto repentance, Paul's baptism unto tongues and prophesy, Jesus' baptism unto belovedness, raises the question of what baptism through you is unto? Might it be a baptism unto peace?
Regardless of the baptism focus offered or age/understanding when one receives, there is an entry into the mystery of creation and creation beyond creation. Relax, enjoy, baptize.
- - -
have you received a holy spirit?
what is that you ask?
it is this says you
well ok says I
and off we go
what once we knew we knew
it is reduced to babbling
pretty and comforting
but babbling still
it is expanded to consequences
harsh and challenging
but consequences still
what once we knew we knew
bows its head to play its part
between the less and more
between the less and more
is less and more
than spirits holy or muddy
can contain without
breaking apart into a blessing
on light and dark
beginning again
moving beyond
have you received a holy spirit?
of course
does it measure up?
not now not ever
and you
have you been released
from a spirit holy
to arise once more?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
Baptism is one of those words that comes freighted with layers of meaning. There are questions of style and consequence.
Baptism is simply a response to a recognition of being off-kilter. Whether called sin or misgiving, whatever comes after its acknowledgement is our baptism. It may be a baptism into further delusion so we have deniability of any wrong or a baptism into some degree of repentance or life-change.
Baptism is simply a repeatable action of daily cleansing. Such a mikvah affirms conscious and unconscious, intentional or unintentional, missteps on a daily journey and anticipates some grander baptism that would be once-for-all.
Baptism is simply an assurance that one is marked by L*VE or L*FE and as L*FE and L*VE. (Enjoy the difference between voiced and unvoiced labiodental fricatives and know the difference is subtle enough that you can freely translate between them and be understood.)
Baptism is simply not simple. The Wikipedia article is representative of the divergences of baptismal traditions. If you were to confound your particular baptismal tradition, what one question would you ask?
Regardless of your preferred baptismal ritual, may you live and love out of an assurance of being loved into life.
For those interested in a more orthodox presentation are welcome to attend to several additional sites:
United Methodist Overview
United Methodist In Depth
Overview of traditions from Religious Tolerance
Or – use your favorite search engine: "(your tradition here) baptism"
For those interested in a disconnect with baptism:
The Godfather: Baptism and Murder
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
Here is a draft of a sermon by aMike Johnson, as found on Midrash Discussion Group. [Register for Midrash]
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Sermon Title: "The Galilean Candidate" (or "John the Baptist and the Queen of Diamonds" or "God's Sleepers")
Prime metaphor: Jesus as a "sleeper" planted by God in Galilee and activated 30 years later by the preaching of John the Baptist (à la Raymond Shaw in "The Manchurian Candidate" -- a sleeper planted in the US by China, in the original movies, and by a man who doesn't know he's a sleeper)
Entry-into-scripture question: How did Jesus know it was time for him to emerge from his Galilean obscurity? And did he know what it was time for him to do? And did he know all along -- or, as Jim asked in opening comments, "Was everything revealed to him in a great flash of understanding? Or did he figure it out as he went along?"
Existential belly-button question: Who am I that I may not know that I am? A swan and not the ugly duckling I see in the mirror. A prince and not a pauper? A child of God? Raymond Shaw was activated by the Queen of Diamonds. Jesus was activated by John the Baptist's preaching. Jesus is God's instrument for activating us -- letting us know who we really are.
_________________
"Where did this guy come from?" That question was asked by more than one person (especially among Hillary Clinton's campaign crew) as Barack Obama rose from being a 47-year old extremely junior senator to first the winner of the Iowa primary and then the Democratic nomination. Nothing in his background marked him as a possible, let alone successful, presidential candidate. He was not the son of a former president or senator. Born of a basically absentee father from Kenya, for a while the stepson of an Indonesian, raised in Hawaii by a single white mother and grandparents -- not exactly a fast-track to the presidency.
And even after his big splash at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when people began thinking of him as a future presidential possibility, no one assumed that he was a shoo-in for the 2008 nomination. Who knew that this charismatic speaker would also have such finely honed political skills as to understand the importance of caucus primaries and the savvy to know how to go about getting them a few at a time, in a way that would make the final difference. Even today, marveling at how far he came in so short a time, without the pedigree of so many others, I find myself wondering, "Where did this guy come from?"
Bystanders may have said that about Jesus, too. He was not the son of any famous religious figure - like a Robert Schuller. He may have been spiritually precocious, if there's anything to Luke's story about talking with the elders in the temple at age 12, but he was hardly a well-known child prodigy -- a spiritual Tiger Woods -- on whom the whole world's fascinated attention was turned as he neared the age of 21. Moreover, he was a Galilean -- a boundary figure from the northern fringe of Judaism. If somebody had said, "The Messiah stands among us," nobody would have picked Jesus. And when he started to make a splash -- maybe beginning with his baptismal splash -- don't you know people said, "Who is this guy?" "What's a Galilean doing in these parts?"
You can never tell, based on background alone, what people have in them. Sometimes we don't know ourselves what we have in us. People differ in their beliefs about how much Jesus knew when about what he was to do and be, and I wouldn't argue about it. But I favor the view that he learned as he went along, because otherwise it doesn't seem to be he was really human -- and because the scriptures say that he was tempted in every way we are, and you can't be tempted in every way as we are if you know totally ahead of time the exact outcome of every situation, and exactly what to say and do, no sweat.
As I say, other Christians think that if Jesus were in any legitimate sense, the Son of God, then he must have known all along. And that may be your view. And that's fine. We can still commune together. But one thing is for sure. Whatever Jesus did or didn't know all along about what he had in him, and what he was to do with it, we don't always.
[Tell the story of the "ugly duckling" -- maybe also the story an eagle raised in a chicken lot.]
And Paul the apostle didn't know he was Paul the apostle. He thought he was Saul, the righteous defender of the faith and godly destroyer of the liberal "Christian" heresy -- that was absolutely his identity right up to the point where he was activated by a blinding light and a voice on the road to Damascus. And Moses may have thought he was a son of the Pharaoh -- with all the finest clothes, the whole east wing of the palace to himself, six sports cars -- everything -- right up to the point where he was activated by seeing an Egyptian overseer strike a Hebrew slaves -- suddenly he was activated and knew himself to be, not the son of the Pharaoh, but a brother to the slave. And Rosa Parks had no idea who she was, or what she would mean to this nation, that day when she understood herself to be a human being.
People don't always know who they are, who they are supposed to be, what they have it in themselves to be, or what sort of a difference they can make -- until God activates them in one way or another. That's why I think that was true of Jesus too. That he was activated by the preaching of John. That all he had learned about God, from his rabbi, from his parents, from the people they sat next to at the synagogue (who knows who all played a role in his coming to understand the radical nature of faith in the radically sovereign God of Israel -- an understanding that led him to see how far from actually following God's lead the people of God often were?) -- all he had learned about God and what it meant to love and trust God was engaged and taken a step farther by the preaching of John the Baptist, who was saying exactly what Jesus knew to be true.
John's radical call to radical repentance and faith and disciplined living triggered something in Jesus. And John's sense of urgency triggered something. Now is the time. God is on the move now. Now. Get ready. Prepare yourself. Open yourself to God. Leave off your fooling around with religion, let alone your cavalier sinfulness, and start taking God seriously and actually living in faith. And Jesus knew he could never go back to the carpenter shop. He was a part of what was going on.
Maybe he knew he was destined to lead at that point. Maybe he just knew that whatever was happening he was a part of it and the rest was revealed to him later. But whenever and however much he knew, it was the preaching of John that moved him to offer himself for baptism -- to take a flying cannonball leap into the waters of baptism, body and soul, absolutely unreservedly offering himself as an instrument of God to be and do whatever and wherever God lead him to do no matter what.
And as he was coming up out of the water, the heavens were torn apart and he saw forever and the spirit descended on him and a voice from heaven affirmed him.
But the main question here, finally, is not what did Jesus know when. And the question that comes to me out of all this is, "Who am I that I don't know that I am?"
[Haven't fully developed this yet. But want to emphasize especially that God's estimate of us is almost always different -- and always, ultimately grander and nobler and more beautiful and more life-affirming that our estimates of ourselves. Shouldn't be hard to come up with illustrations here.]
Whether Jesus always knew, or didn't know till that point, John the Baptist's preaching was the trigger that activated him. And Jesus is the trigger that activates us. Jesus may not have known until he came up out of the waters of baptism that he was God's son. But thanks to Christ, we know going in that we are children of God. It is God embracing us in Christ who transforms us, who affirms us, who calls us his children, who gives us a new identity.
"Where did this guy come from? Who is this guy, anyway?" We may, and do, often say the same thing of ourselves. "Who am I? I'm a nobody. I do not matter. I have no worth." Indeed, many of our attempts to be somebody come out of our feelings that we are nobodies. Our attempts to impress come out of our feelings that we are not very impressive. Our desire for praise comes from our never having been blessed. Our desire for power comes from our feelings of weakness and vulnerability. On an individual level we may do many foolish and counterproductive things because in an effort to escape the nobody-ness we feel. And on a national level, a people may engage in all kinds of massive destruction, working out their fears and flaws on a global scale.
And that remains our identity -- unless and until we experience ourselves embraced by God, declared to be his children, loved. That's when we find out who we really are -- and begin to live out of that identity. Until then religion remains just a matter of doctrines we ought to believe, commands we ought to obey, but which we can never really get into -- because we do not yet know who we are.
Whether Jesus always knew, or didn't know till that point, John the Baptist's preaching was the trigger that activated him. And Jesus is the trigger that activates us.
That's why Mark tells this story. That's why we keep on telling this story.
So: who are you that you don't know you are?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
Alakazam! John appears.
Shazam! And you also.
John proclaimed.
And you also.
Abracadabra! Jesus arrives.
Hocus-pocus! And you also.
Bethleham is past.
River Jordan is now.
Your past is past.
Your time and space is now.
Secret spirits are loose.
Catch one by the tail and never let it go.
There is no end to belovedness,
no limit to pleasure.
Put potential to work through joy.
And you also.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/01/mark-14-11.html