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CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
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Preached by O. Benjamin Sparks, Pastor Second Presbyterian Church Richmond, Virginia January 8, 2006, The Baptism of the Lord
NEW BEGINNINGS
Genesis 1:1 – 5; Mark 1:1 – 11
As I read the account in The Richmond Times Dispatch of what I said in worship here on Thursday, I was suddenly glad for water bugs becoming dragonflies, hoping that the power of that wee story would erase what I was quoted as saying, which was: “It didn’t matter what the Harveys believed.” If that is true, then we are wasting our time with the sacrament of baptism, where it matters very much what we believe, what we, as baptized believers, promise to do, and what we promise to teach our children – until they put their trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. It matters. Whether it was my mis-speaking or their mis-quoting, the point I made in the meditation on Thursday is that God’s hands are not tied by unbelief, and that God’s wonder working power, present from the creation of the world, can manifest itself in human creatures. What after all are human beings in the vastness of the universe, made in the image of God? God knows our frame and our being; God remembers us – and the sun shines and rain falls alike upon believers and unbelievers. Beauty and skill, generosity and hospitality manifest themselves in and among all people. If the brilliant surgeon at the Medical College of Virginia, whose skill makes possible the healing of my heart disease, is a practicing Hindu, I am no less healed (and no less grateful) than if she is a Christian.
So there is a sense in which these two readings from God’s
word today make the same point, for they are not about us but about God – about
the universe God made, and the people God made (the church) which Mark sees as
beginning with the preaching of John the baptizer and with the baptism of Jesus
in the river Jordan. In Mark’s gospel – as in the entire New Testament – it is not we who reach up to God; it is not we who climb the stair steps of human yearning and intelligence and discover Jesus, and, like the builders of the tower of Babel, make him who we want him to be. Instead, God reveals to us who Jesus is. It is God, according to Mark, who tears apart the heavens and declares to Jesus – you are my Son, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased. Tears apart. Rends. Rips open. With that violent word Mark describes what happens when God tells Jesus who he is. It is a word taken from the prophet Isaiah, when the prophet gives voice to his pleading, suffering people: “O that You, O holy One, would tear open the heavens and come down” to deliver us. This same word is used at the end of Mark’s gospel at the moment of Jesus’ death upon the cross – when the veil in the Temple is rent (torn apart) from top to bottom. There’s a wonderful story (2) that gets right at what Mark is saying: Don Juel, was a New Testament scholar, an expert on Mark’s gospel and he was teaching a Sunday School class to youth on the crucifixion. He was explaining the meaning of the temple curtain being torn apart and told the students that this rending meant that now we have access to God – the Holy of Holies in the temple having been open for all. He was feeling quite good about this class when a young man’s hand shot up and said, “I have something to say.” Juel replied, “Yes.” The teenager said, “I think you have it wrong.” What was this? Who was this youth to question a New Testament scholar who read Greek and Hebrew and had taught Biblical studies for years? The youth, “I don’t think it means that we now have access to God. I think it means that – all of a sudden – God has access to us.” Juel said that he has never seen the passage in Mark the same way again. (3) And I think – such and understanding demonstrates what Mark was saying about Jesus – right at the beginning of his gospel – when he writes that Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove. It’s what God is doing that matters – so once again, it’s not about us, it’s about God, and about what God does for us. These scriptures confirm what I fumbled in saying on Thursday. God is God, and in God there is no darkness. All the light we see in this world, shining with grace upon our blighted humanity with healing and peace, is God’s doing, by whatever name it is called. To put it another way, because God has acted in creation and redemption, we may respond in humility and hope. Because God has entered into our situation, has borne our griefs and sorrows, has become acquainted with us at our worst – in our lowest, vilest, cruelty – has even – in Christ Jesus – suffered our cruelty – then we can place our trust in him with confidence and joy. Actually, in the situation in which we find ourselves in this city – nothing less would suffice. Nothing less than God’s meeting the whirlwind of violence and murder we are reaping than to enter our world with outrageous power and love – and redeem us. In our decades long discomfort with the supernatural; in our comfort laden anxiety that seeks a Jesus without blood, for a salvation without costly (4) grace; in our nodding, interested assent to a sort of mythic, Jack Spong Jesus – not the blood-sweat-and-tears Jesus of the gospels – who binds Satan and the power of everlasting death upon the hard wood of the cross; in all of our 20th Century flight from reality, and our watering down of grace – no other Jesus, no other God – could possibly meet our present trembling need. It matters very much what we believe, and upon what we stake our lives. For years now we at Second have been using what was, when it was introduced, a new baptismal liturgy. In fact it was ancient, and brought to our modern, high tech world the words of the earliest liturgy – but it was new to us and different – and somewhat shocking. You hear the question when we baptize infants. We ask parents: Do you renounce the sin and evil that would separate you and your child and the whole world from the love of God? There are even more pointed alternative questions provided for us, and when the candidate for baptism answers these questions he is, in the understanding of the ancient liturgy, making renunciation:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you away from the love of God? (4)
Some years ago, a Session of one of the most powerful, lively, progressive churches in the Southeast rejected these questions, and would not allow them to be used in the Sacrament of Baptism. I guess they were saying, by their rejection – that nice people like us are never confronted by Satan, evil powers, nor do we have sinful desires. Yet those questions seem particularly appropriate after this week in Richmond, after another bloody week in the endless whirlpool that is the war Iraq, after we have absorbed over and over the horror of what happened in that basement in Woodland Heights, and the deaths of the father and daughter, the Caspers. After many of us in this congregation have had sleepless nights and wept over the deaths of children. And they beg another question: How long, O Lord? It matters what we believe, and it matters what we immerse ourselves in – the violence of video games, and gangsta rap, lyrics of songs that not only demean women but cheapen us as human beings, making us seem expendable – rather than being the beloved creatures of God that we are. It matters what we believe and in whom we place our trust. There is a chilling exposition of the Massacre of the Innocents in Dale Bruner’s commentary on Matthew’s gospel. He organizes those Christmas and Epiphany stories into theological lessons, or treatises. In Chapter 2 of Matthew which he names the Doctrine of Human Nature, he calls the story of the Magi’s visit to Bethlehem: “Humanity under the power of Grace.” He names the story of King Herod, and some of you have already guessed it, “Humanity under the power of Sin.” (5) In his comments on the story of the massacre of all the children under two years old – he writes, “Those who reject the Child end up by killing children.” (And we remember, likewise, that when Cain rejected God, and did not listen to the divine warning, he killed his brother Abel.) Further, Bruner points out that sin is not individual but social. Herod’s pride, jealously, and rage led to murder and chaos for a multitude. (6) So it is a city that mourns, not only the neighborhood of Woodland Heights, or those who loved the Harveys and the other murder victims. All of us have felt the terror in our bones; we could not sleep at night; we wept for the children who were killed and drew an even closer protective web around our own; our imaginations ran riot even when we consciously knew ourselves to be safe. When we are faced with implacable evil, it matters what we believe, and whether we think this evil is the last word about our world, or whether, God has broken in – ripped the heavens open and come to save us. Last Monday morning after reading the newspaper, I wrote the Session that this gruesome deed involved not only one of the children in our Child Care center, but members of our church with children at Fox School and one of the teachers at Fox. At the end of my sad announcement, I appended the words of the apostle:
". . . For I am persuaded that neither height nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord."
One of our elders wrote me back with these words:
Ben, Thanks for this message and for our discussion this morning. I called the principal and offered your help and that of Second. She said they are set for tomorrow but this will not be a one day thing and they may need help in the days ahead. She appreciated the offer as I do. As I reflected on all this and how to explain it to Marshall I felt that hopefully his early faith developed at Second and nurtured at home would help him in confronting such a horrible thing. I know little about our day care center except that I have always heard wonderful things about it. I could not help but think then and as I read the scripture in your email, did Ruby [Harvey] hear this message about Jesus at Second's center? I know that message can give strength at all times.
It matters greatly what we believe. Today we rejoice in the sheer and inexplicable grace of God whose power shaped a universe for us to live in, and who – when things were at their worst, came, in Christ, to bring out the best in us, (7) and to usher us with joy and power into a community of always new beginnings. Thanks are to God.
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