ROME IMPROVEMENT 02/21/2021

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

SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 1:4-15

When I was so much younger, younger than today, I went to the carnival. One of the attractions was the “Hall of Mirrors. At first it was fun—I was tall, I was short; I was very thin, I was very fat. It was fun to see the various distortions until I realized that I had no idea where I was. All I saw around me were images of myself and people that seemed to be a longways away.

Sometimes it looked like people were walking toward me, but I discovered that they were really walking away from me. Eventually, I decided the only thing to do was to do what I had been taught to do when I was lost: sit down on the floor and wait for someone to rescue me. 

Finally, one of my cousins came and found me cowering on the floor. He showed me the trick of getting through the maze of mirrors—on the floor was a stripe that continuously led from the entrance to the end.  As long as I kept looking into the mirrors, I saw me, and me, lost. But, when I looked at the floor, I could find my way through just fine.

This week the text has that distorting distraction to it, but there is a through-line that will bring us safely to the other end. So, welcome to the hall of mirrors.

There is a reflected action in these verses. John appears in the wilderness; Jesus goes to the wilderness. John is the voice crying out; a voice comes from heaven. John proclaims repentance for the forgiveness of sin; Jesus proclaims repentance because the kingdom of God is engaged. John is arrested; it will take some time, but Jesus is arrested.

In this wilderness gallery of looking glasses, we are presented with a positive image and a more positive image. In this hall of mirrors, one is not lost, but found. We are told to believe in the Good News, and to proclaim what that Good News is.

READING THE BLUEPRINT

If you feel like this is deja vu, or maybe the movie “Groundhog Day”, you might be right; after all, this is February. Except for one verse, we have read this passage in various forms before. One might think the Gospel of Mark is so short that repetition of passages is necessary, but no. There are many verses of Mark we never get to.

So why do we need to repeat these verses? In part, the message included in these verses is so important that they bear repeating. In part, we repeat most of these verses in order to maintain the integrity of Mark’s good news message for us. So, let’s review.

·        We meet John in the wilderness.

·        He is the voice preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

·        People from the countryside and Jerusalem come out to him to be baptized confessing their sins.

·        We are told that John baptizes with water, but Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

·        Jesus comes from Nazareth, in the Galilee wilderness, to be baptized by John.

·        The heavens are torn apart, and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus.

·        God’s voice affirms Jesus as the Son of God.

·        The Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for forty days where other-worldly people come to him: Satan tempts him, wild beasts surround him, and angels wait on him.

·        John is arrested.

·        Jesus goes from the Jordan River into Galilee.

·        The voice of Jesus begins ministry proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe in the Good News.

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

This year, I am particularly aware of the dangerous gatherings in the wilderness. Clearly, John and Jesus were not in the middle of a pandemic—there is no social distancing here! People are gathering to be baptized—to be washed clean of their sin. Satan is tempting Jesus, wild beasts are surrounding him, and angels are waiting on him.

These gatherings in the wilderness evoke memories of Daniel in the lions’ den. Daniel is tempted to deny his faith, but angels come to be with him. Similarly, the plight of early Christians who had to choose to deny their faith or be sent into the coliseum where they were savaged by a variety of large cats or wolves. There they were confident of angelic deliverance into eternal life.

Especially during Lent, when many adopt sacrifice/fasting as part of Lenten discipline, note that this is not part of this wilderness experience. Mark is not about piety. This wilderness experience entails faith, stamina, and perseverance. It leads to belief in the Good News.

What is that Good News? Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Before you, stands Jesus Christ, the son of God, the one who has the power to overcome temptation, death, and the grave. Believe it!

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

Ah, wilderness! From our earliest Scripture readings, we are surrounded by wilderness. We may call it by various names, but there it is. From the endless wasteland or wilderness, we find all the building blocks of our world. God speaks, and these wilderness building blocks become something—light, land, birds of the air, fish of the sea, trees, plants of every kind, stars, animals of every kind, and humanity, you and me.

This week, from that wilderness place comes the voice, the Word of creation revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, with the words of new creation, “Believe in the Good News.” It all seems so easy, “Believe in the Good News.”

We know that the good news is that Christ is risen, but where do we go with that news? What is the good news we need to hear this week? Good news might be the power grid is back in working order in Texas. It might be water pipes did not freeze. It might be there is enough money in the budget to buy food or food might be in stores to buy. Vaccine availability, safe places to live, jobs, a car that runs, in other words, enough to meet the needs of the day, might be the good news that many of us need to hear.

With the good news of Jesus’ resurrection comes the power to raise others from the dead. Sometime ago, in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, I found a definition of poverty that I had not before considered. The poor of the first century were “socially dead”. That is, to the wealthy and powerful, poverty was of no concern. The privileged regarded the poor as being dead, out of mind.

The article also explained that the poor were not the only people to be considered socially dead. The list of people included the blind, the lame, the deaf, the maimed, the widow, the orphan, the stranger/foreigner, the mentally ill, and the chronically ill. These people were de-humanized, categorized as being beyond help, and beneath dignity.

Jesus reaches into this world of de-humanized people. Jesus touches the socially dead, the unclean, the broken, the forgotten, and raises them up into valued members of what we will come to know as the body of Christ. In the body of Christ, we not only celebrate resurrection as belonging to Jesus Christ, but belonging to all people Jesus raises with him.

I know many of you have heard me say this before, but the article so radically changed the way I understand the Gospel of Mark that how I think of Jesus’ ministry has been forever changed. This ministry of resurrection shifts our understanding of what following Jesus means. In our creed, we say, “He descended to the dead”. Jesus has gone to those who are buried, but could it be that this statement of Jesus’ descending also refers to his descending from heaven in the first place?

Further, this ministry of reaching out to raise up the socially dead of the world not miraculously curing the sick, this ministry of resurrection, becomes something that we can do. In Christ’s name, we have the power to reach out to the socially dead of our time, raising them up into the places where we live. We have the power to make safe places of new life. To believe in the Good News of Jesus Christ is to believe that resurrection-transformation is as close as our willingness to make it happen.

This is the vision. This is the proclamation. All of God’s people have value. All of God’s people are loved. All of God’s people fall short of the glory of God, and God continues to forgive all people.

So, who are the socially dead of our world today?

Where should we, as Church, as local congregation, as individual Christians, begin?

Who are the socially dead in our neighborhoods, our villages/towns/cities, who are being de-humanized, shunned, ignored?

Who is tempted, surrounded by beasts of terror?

Can we be their angels ministering to them?

Indeed, the kingdom of God is engaged, drawn near, believe in the Good News.

HANGING THE TRIM

Amid the many voices that call out to us, seductively drawing us from following Christ, we hear, “Repent. Believe. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.”