ROME IMPROVEMENT 01/10/2021

MORE POWER!  MORE GLORY!!  MORE SPIRIT!!!

SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 1:4-12

This week we are challenged to think about the wilderness places of our lives. Is that wilderness place a safe place? Is it dangerous? Is it lonely? Is it a place that you long to go to? Is that wilderness place a place of new growth or is it harvested fallow ground? Whatever your thoughts are, the place of wilderness is where we begin and end this week.

READING THE BLUEPRINT

If this passage were filmed, I could imagine an aerial view of the Jordan River flowing into the Sea of Galilee with hills and crops along the shore. There might be a few fishing boats on the sea as the camera scans the immediate horizon. Then, as the focus of the shot begins to close on a particular point along the banks of the Jordan River, a rough looking character and throngs of people suddenly appear.

There is nothing gradual about this throng gathering, it just appears. There are the noises of the crowd, people pushing their way through to get a better vantage, and this rough looking character speaking loud enough to hear his voice, but not enough to understand the words he is speaking. As the camera draws nearer, the words become clear: “People of God, you have lost your way. Turn again to God. Reflect God’s light to the world and be baptized!”

One person in the crowd elbows the one next to him, saying, “Who is this guy?” The camera now tightens in on the rough looking character as the other responds, “They call him the Baptizer.” We see his ruddy appearance, a coarse woven camel’s hair garment with a leather belt around his waist. As the camera isolates on his face, we see intense dark eyes. In the background the second person continues, “They say he eats nothing but locusts and honey. He would’a been a hit in old Egypt years ago, eh?”

Now we hear John’s voice, overwhelming all other sounds. “The one, who is more powerful than I, is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandal. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

One man pushes through the crowd to stand before John, and they both go into the river where he is baptized. Other people begin to enter the water after him, so no one notices the unidentified person as he walks back to the bank. He looks up into the skies. There is a lightning flash, a thunderclap, a bird flies for shelter, and the unidentified person walks off into a nondelineated, out-of-focus distance. As he walks away, John the Baptizer, the river, and all the people vanish.

Oh, did I mention that this whole event takes place in the midst of a torrential down-pour?

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

This theme of wilderness is integral to our faith identity because it is the place of becoming. In Genesis we read that the world was an endless wasteland, a wilderness, and from the wilderness place, God creates all that is created. When Moses fled to the wilderness after killing an Egyptian soldier, it is there that he receives his call to lead God’s people to the Promised Land. In the wilderness, God’s people receive the law. Isaiah 35 tells that in the wilderness there will be a holy way which shall be for God’s people, on which no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. There the redeemed shall walk, and everlasting joy will be upon their heads. 

Jeremiah 31 also speaks of that wilderness road. There we hear of the blind and the lame, those with young children, and those who are with child will walk through the wilderness in comfort.

Now, Mark tells us, in the wilderness, this place from which creation comes, John appears. There John heralds the coming of a new creation relationship with God, proclaiming not just a baptism of water, but a baptism of the Holy Spirit. As we are imagining this new creation relationship, we hear God’s evocative word speaking this new creation into being. The heavens are torn open, and the birth of a new relationship with God is established as the Spirit descends on Jesus in the likeness of a pigeon.

It is now time to enter again into the wilderness in order to discern the Son of God’s leading for God’s new covenant people.

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

At the beginning of Advent, we heard the words from Isaiah 64, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” This week these words are fulfilled.

I remember, as a child, a picture of Jesus’ baptism on my Sunday School room wall. The water is serene. John is standing in the water looking at Jesus who walks toward the shore. In a cloudless sky, a dove descends over Jesus.

This image sufficed until I got to seminary. Then, having translated this text myself, I was no longer satisfied. I started to interview people who were blind and asked them to describe the day: what time of year it was; what was the weather like, what they smelled when they heard this story. What I got was a description that had nothing to do with the pretty picture from Sunday School.

I heard of oppressively hot days, storms and tornados, lightning with the smell of ozone in the air, wind blowing, torrential rain and thunder—lots of thunder. One said, “I don’t know how bad the storm was, but I wish I could have had a tape recorder there that day.” They heard the heavens being torn apart—the boundary between heaven and earth being destroyed. In this boundary-breaking event, they heard the answer to the prayer of Isaiah 64.

Accustomed to the images that have been prepared for us, we overlook the radicality of Jesus’ baptism in Mark. In God declaring Jesus’ identity, the world has changed. The kingdom of God has seismically shifted, and the Son of God walks among us. It is radical! It changes the world, creating a spirit-driven wilderness time of new formation.

We live in the world where the heavens are torn open. God comes down to live among us in the wilderness. We are called to consider the implications of the new creation possibilities that continue to stretch out before us.

HANGING THE TRIM

During this past week, many, newly aware of living in the wilderness, asked in fear, “Just how close did we come to losing the freedoms we assume to be ours guaranteed by the constitution?” I heard some respond, “Well it was close, but it turned out not to be so bad, didn’t it?” In the horror, they were looking for hope and sunny days ahead.

John’s words seem especially poignant today. “Repent and receive your new identity. Claim your place in the kingdom of God. Speak truth to power. Embrace the anger, for those would take your constitutional liberties away from you. It’s time to get into “good trouble.” For the fear that many of white America experienced this week is the fear that many of our brothers and sisters of color experience daily.

We need to look at those pictures carefully and consider the response of the day and then imagine what that response might have looked like if the throng had been Black, or Asian, or Latinx, or gay, anything other than a White crowd. How much power are we willing to give Caesar to divide us and terrorize us with false promises of salvation?

Jesus’ baptism opens the kingdom of God to us, that world where we are justified by grace through faith in Christ and taught a new way of living. This new way of living calls us to stand with those who are falsely deemed disposable, of less importance, not made in the image of God.

In these schismatic times, when the face of reality is shifting, we, who have been justified by Christ, are given the opportunity to stand fast and work for the justification of others. Now that the boundary of heaven has been torn apart, we all get to play and embrace our neighbor, sharing those Holy Words, “You are beloved. With you, I am blessed. With you, there is shalom.”

In the torrential rains of baptism, with God’s word of claiming, with the sign of the cross upon us and sealed by the Holy Spirit, we hear God’s creation words of goodness, entering our wilderness time of new creation. So, can we hear our names among the names of the disciples?

Are we ready for the radical love of God that breaks down the barriers between heaven and earth, between liberals and conservatives, men and women, gay and straight, and from those cosmetic differences we call race?

Are we ready, because, on the other side of the storm, on the other side of wilderness days, is the promised land of heaven and earth inclusion where the Son always shines!