"You Are My Beloved" A Sermon for Epiphany 1

 

I have been lackadaisical about updating this blog, but for good reason. My mother-in-law passed away shortly after the 1st of the year, and so I had to quickly pull some things together and make a trip to France to be with my wife and her family. And this week has been a lot of getting caught up from being away. So now I am finally posting the sermon I preached on January 7th right before I took off for Haut de Gan. 

I'm just happy the Gospel lesson was a very familiar one, and since I am involved in an intensive study of Mark's Gospel with a group at my parish, I had done a lot of the exegetical work ahead of time.

See what you think.

Text: Mark 1:4-11

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I have never been to the Holy Land…not in a real physical sense.

My Hebrew professor at seminary… a quirky guy who loved technology and gadgets…had a pair of virtual reality goggles.

Putting them on one day when we were at his house for a meeting…I was able to see the road where the story of the Good Samaritan was to have taken place.

It looked like a narrow rocky twisting and turning mountain path.

It was cool.

But…honestly…I could’ve been looking at the southwest of France and seen the same thing.

Virtual reality is still just virtual.

I’ve lived vicariously through friends and colleagues who were fortunate enough to spend two weeks at St. George’s College in Jerusalem.

They posted photos and kept running online diaries of their visits to all the places which now are far too dangerous for pilgrims and tourists because of war.

Many of my friends have had the experience of wading into the waters of the Jordan River.

Some have been deeply moved at the feeling of being in the place where Jesus was baptized.

I’ll admit…I’m a bit envious. Maybe someday I’ll go.

Recently…I was reading an account of a Lutheran pastor who also did a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

She…like others… was awe-struck at being able to stand in the Jordan River.

She thought how amazing it would be to collect some of the water and bring it back with her to the States…mix it in with the water in the baptismal font so that everyone baptized in her church would be touched by the waters of the Jordan.

She brought along a special container.

She carefully collected and sealed up her jar of Jordan River water.

She made sure to pack it carefully. And it made it through many airports and across the Atlantic Ocean.

But when she pulled it out to take it to the church…she was horrified to discover her sacred object was a filthy mess of slimy…muddy…watery sediment.

While the Jordan River starts as very clean pristine snow-fed waters at Mount Hermon in the northernmost part of Israel…as it flows southward…it picks up lots of  sand…dirt…and mud until it empties into the Dead Sea.

So much for her grand plan to put this smelly mess she had so carefully saved into the lovely, distilled water of the baptismal font!

Nice thought, but no thanks.

Still…there’s something so absolutely perfect about the idea of the Jordan being such muddy water.

Especially as we think about what John is doing…and what Jesus participates in…and the tradition we carry forward with our own baptisms.

Ritual cleansing is part of the Jewish faith.

The act of “dipping” or “baptizing” was and is still done at a mikvah. A mikvah is either a special pool or some other flowing freshwater source.

People who convert to Judaism are expected to go to a mikvah with a rabbi. The ritual is a way of bringing them into the tribe of Judaism.

In the days of John and Jesus…this ritual was about cleansing the outside of the body of things that cause impurities…blood for example.

Jews were expected to do this type of ritual cleaning before they could enter the Temple.

It was a purification of the flesh…but not of the soul.

But John wanted something more.

John was at odds with the religious authorities of his day…not to mention his objections to the occupying Roman Empire.

He didn’t think the religion being practiced in the Temple was pure enough.

So John had declared that his baptism was one of repentance: more of a national baptism for Israel…to turn around…get back to a fundamental form of Judaism…stop with the going along to get along with Rome.

It’s no mistake that John set up his community at the Jordan River.

There’s symbolism using the Jordan to baptize people.

Afterall…the Jordan River are the waters of deliverance for the people of Israel as they entered what was the promised land.

For John…his baptism was more than cleaning the outside of the body; he was proposing a radical change….an internal shift…a moral cleansing as well.

John saw his baptism as a preparation for the coming of the anointed one…the Messiah.

So when Jesus shows up to be baptized by John…this is a really big deal.

Some have wondered if Jesus really needed to be cleansed of “sin” since he was the “sinless” one?

I think it’s not so much a matter of Jesus needing to be baptized.

It’s more like this is something he wanted to do.

Like we talked about last week…in Jesus we have a vision of a God whose deepest desire is to be with us and be in our experience…not hovering above us…but being in those muddy waters of life with us.

A full participant in the human experience…and bringing humanity and divinity into close contact.

And if John wanted his baptism to move people to a higher plane of their inner beings…he got way more than that with Jesus.

Because as Jesus rises up from the water….the heavens tear apart…the Holy Spirit descends as a dove…and he hears:

“You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well-pleased.”

Nobody else heard this voice.

Nobody else saw this vision of a dove.

Nobody else was aware that the heavens had split apart.

This is a visual image that we should all park in the back of our minds because the same “torn apart verb…schizo”….will come up again later when the curtain of the Temple tears in two at Jesus’ crucifixion.

It seems that…for Jesus….this baptism is not one of repentance.

But it is one of an inner understanding of his mission…his work…and what his purpose would be going forward in this story of God’s people.

He’s in the muddy waters with us…and he’s destined to lead us to higher ground.

His baptism both defines Jesus….and gives him the clarity of who he is and whose he is.

Our own baptisms are the same…and no less instructive.

We may not have had all the fireworks of the heavens opening and doves descending and otherworldly voices whispering in our ears that we are beloveds.

Maybe we did and we just don’t remember it.

But our baptisms into the Body of Christ are an important and powerful affirmation of our place as the adopted children of God.

They bring us into a deep and abiding bond to each other and to our families…our communities…and our society to approach others from a starting point of love.

Our parents and godparents…aunts and uncles…stood with us or spoke for us…in making the covenantal promises to be the children God so wants us to be.

Children of love…bringing good news to a hurting world.

We pledged to continue in the traditions of our biblical ancestors…sharing meals…and saying prayers.

We have committed ourselves to seek out the good and to resist the things that will wreck our relationships with each other and with God.

That’s one of the toughest things to do in a world where loving neighbor and especially loving your enemy…that person you really don’t like… gets us no brownie points and may even make us figurative punching bags for the people who don’t “get it.”

But our call through our baptism is to ignore that noise…resist the temptation to give up and stay the course of remaining committed to one another.

Keep on loving…and respecting the dignity of each other.

Continuously search for the Christ in the eyes of everyone we meet.

My gosh: if all those who claim the mantle of Christ could see the Christ in the person who is different from themselves…can you imagine what a sea change that would make?

How different would things be in the world?

It might feel as profound as the heavens being torn apart…a dove descending and a voice speaking such words of wisdom as “You…all of you…are my beloveds with whom I am well-pleased”!

Then maybe God’s dream for us really would be realized.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.