Sermon January 8, 2012

Genesis 1:1-5 
Psalm 29 
Acts 19:1-7 

 Mark 1:4-11 

“New Beginnings”

After reading Eric's sermon of last week, I laughed a little because I, too, am coming to you to talk of new beginnings. And I believe that's appropriate because if Christianity is about nothing else, it's about beginning . . . again and again and again and repenting, again and again and again. Each beginning is new because each time, God wipes the slate clean and we start fresh.

And yet, and yet . . . what we do also has consequences in our lives and in the lives of others. God does not hold our sins against us—grace reigns supreme—but our lives and the lives of others are forever changed by the deeds that we do, the good and the bad; the beautiful and the ugly.

Mark's gospel begins decades after Matthew's and Luke's gospel—Mark begins by describing John's presence as forerunner of the Messiah and with Jesus' baptism. The gospel of Mark is the oldest gospel and the most direct. He wrote it about 30 years after Jesus' life had been lived on the earth. If you read it in the Greek, it would sound hurried and not very poetic. His grammar was rough and his transitions are rougher. He was just getting the story down, it seems.

Mark's work was even the beginning of a new kind of literature—a gospel, something that had never been written before. A gospel isn't a history or a biography, though some might argue that. A gospel is a written story that seeks to reveal Jesus through a message about his death, resurrection and return. They draw on oral sources, collections of Jesus' parables and stories of his birth and childhood and his death and resurrection. A gospel is different from Paul's letters because it tells the message through narrative rather than by presenting evidence and logic like Paul often does.

So new beginnings abound again this morning. We also begin a new season—though I've asked us to leave up the trappings of the old because I want us to remember this transition. Today we enter into ordinary time—and yet it is the time and season where the scriptures encourage us to look for the revelation of Christ in the world, a decidedly less than ordinary task. So lets look—lets look for the light, the revelation, the glory of God in the ordinary things.

Our first testament text tells us of the earliest of beginnings, the time before time itself began when God started time up—by creating light, the way that we gauge time. And as we remember God's voice echoing out over creation—the psalmist celebrates that creation of time and that time of creation with poetry.

¹ Ascribe to Yahweh, O heavenly beings,
   ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength.
² Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of God's name;
   worship Yahweh in holy splendour.

³ The voice of Yahweh is over the waters;
   the God of glory thunders,
   Yahweh, over mighty waters.
⁴ The voice of Yahweh is powerful;
   the voice of Yahweh is full of majesty.¹

When I hear that God's voice broke out over the waters, I picture so many things. I picture God breath stirring what the ancient peoples thought of as the waters of chaos, beginning a call and response of praise that continues with every breath we take from the first painful breath to the last one as we slip into the arms of God. I picture the power of God that stirs us toward fair treatment, first as children when we notice that some of us have lots to eat and wear and share and some of us have almost nothing. I feel that passion for justice rising, like it did first for myself and then for a friends of mine who sometimes suffered quietly and other times with tears or anger. That power rising inside—that reminds me of God's passionate love for us.

⁵ The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars;
   Yahweh breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
⁶ God makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
   and Sirion like a young wild ox.

⁷ The voice of Yahweh flashes forth flames of fire.
⁸ The voice of Yahweh shakes the wilderness;
   Yahweh shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.²

While this sounds very exciting—in many ways—it is also a little scary and sounds suspiciously like a tornado and an earthquake, all wrapped up in one. Or, as they called it this summer in Oklahoma—a quakenado.

The movement that God brings can be pretty earthshaking. Jesus went to the Jordan river to be baptized by John, who was known as the baptizer, appropriately enough. He was probably a member of a group of Jewish men and women known as the Essenes who practiced baptism as a rite of purification to show repentance from sins. It was a ritual for those who needed to turn their lives around—and yet this gospel tells us that Jesus came as the one who would—in baptism—receive and then share the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit—also known as the breath of God—the wind that blew from the power of God into all of creation from the first moment of time. This power was present that day, fanning fire, shaking up the world in a very ordinary moment during a very common ritual for the day.

Baptism was a pretty common practice—gentiles who became Jews were baptized to symbolize their rebirth into a new way of living. Even today, many Jewish converts have a ritual washing in a mikveh or bath used for ritual purposes. And some Jewish people use a mikveh daily for purposes of purification. For the Jewish people, immersion wasn't uncommon for reasons of faith, but this one is different according to Mark.

⁹ The voice of Yahweh causes the oaks to whirl,
   and strips the forest bare;
   and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’

¹⁰ Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood;
   Yahweh sits enthroned as king for ever.
¹¹ May Yahweh give strength to his people!
   May Yahweh bless his people with peace!³

God's voice is in this baptism—this drenching of the Holy Spirit. Jesus' person was infused and inspired by this act of unity with God's purpose for him. Some call it obedience, but I think that it's more than going along with God's command. It was a coming together and a drawing in of God's realm or kingdom within himself.

Madelein L'Engle draws this picture with words. “Everything we do either draws the Kingdom of love closer, or pushes it further off. That is a fearful responsibility, but when God made “[human beings] in our image, male and female,” responsibility went with it. Too often we want to let somebody else do it, the preach, or the teacher, or the government agency. But if we are to continue to grow in God's image, [Or as God's beloved sons and daughters], then we have to accept the responsibility.”⁴

In our baptisms—by water in any amount or by spirit and always by the very power of God—we were called and proclaimed to carry on this ministry. If it happened decades ago or moments, this is the beginning of Christ's ministry in your life as it exists today. And it begins again tomorrow, always new and as ancient as God's breath stirring up creation.

And so through this baptism and through our own, we are called to begin again the ministry, to continue again the work, to reveal anew and as always, the strength, the blessing and the glory of God within us all. Amen.

1Psalm 29.1-4, NRSV, alt.

2Psalm 29.5-8, NRSV, alt.

3Psalm 29.9-11, NRSV, alt.

4Madeleine L'Engle, And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, etc. in Resources for Preaching and Worship Year B. p. 43