Scripture Lesson
From the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1:
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
From the Gospal of Mark, Chapter 1:
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, ‘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 sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
"A New Creation"
A
Sermon Preached by
Mr. Steve Aucella
at
the First
Congregational Church of Stoughton
United
Church of Christ
When I was a wee lad, my parents had me baptized in the Roman Catholic tradition. I admit that at that time, I did not know the full ramifications of that act. As I grew older, I took it on faith that I knew what it meant, and I have a fuller appreciation for it now. To be sure, my parents never thought that I might end up in a pulpit to talk about it.
Today, we have heard two readings that relate to baptism and the Holy Spirit.
Genesis – the first book, the first verses in the entire Bible; page 1: “In the beginning,” or, “When God began to create,” in some translations.1 In the phrase, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” the English word “wind” has been translated from the Hebrew word ruah, which can also mean “breath” or “spirit.” The spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. Think of it that way, and we can imagine God’s life-giving energy enveloping the entire earth, heralding the arrival of God in the very first moments of a new creation. God is about to transform inert material and animate it with God’s Holy Spirit. Water is one of God’s creations, the water of our baptism and even of the baptism of the earth.
Throughout the Bible, there is this wilderness tradition. It carries over into the New Testament as both a physical location where things happen and as a spiritual place of transformation.
In the Old Testament, the physical wilderness is uninhabited and inhospitable to people, having no food or water. In it, there are wild animals, demons, and death. The wilderness is where Israel found itself utterly dependent on God during the 40-year sojourn after the exodus from Egypt. It is where Israel became faithful before entering the Promised Land; it is where God made a covenant with Moses. The wilderness is a place of new beginnings. In the gospel of Mark, it is in a spiritual and physical wilderness where an act of God ushers in a new age.
John the Baptizer, or the Immerser in some translations, forms a bridge between the old and the new. The gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest of the four gospels and stands therefore at the beginning of the New Testament. Mark most probably used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint. In that translation, the Old Testament ends with the short book of the prophet Malachi. Malachi prophesies that God will send a messenger to prepare the way and later identifies the messenger as the prophet Elijah. Now here comes John at the very beginning of the gospel of Mark.
Why do you think Mark points out that John is wearing camel’s hair and a leather belt? I often wondered what that added to the story. Remember that the Bible only gives us the information we need to know. Names are important as are physical descriptions. Malachi names Elijah as the coming messenger, and Elijah figures prominently in the two Old Testament books called First and Second Kings. Elijah is described in Second Kings as “a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.”2 The very description of John. That’s how Mark reached back into the old to create a bridge to the new. Malachi’s prophecy, God’s promise, has been fulfilled in John.
So what is John called to do? Prepare the way for the Lord. His proclamation of a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” calls us to repent, to turn back to God, to cleanse ourselves of sin, to prepare our hearts. John’s proclamation leads the way to a call to change one’s life.
Jesus’ baptism marks the change of ages and the beginning of God’s kingdom on earth. Does Jesus, the son of God, God-with-us, need cleansing? Of course not. But when he comes to John in the wilderness, Jesus is just a guy out of Galilee. While John is baptizing “all the people” from Jerusalem and Judea in the Jordan River, here comes an unknown country bumpkin from the north, the One from Galilee coming into the midst of the “all” from Jerusalem and Judea.
John baptizes Jesus in water for his repentance even when he needed no cleansing because Jesus has appeared in our world as one of us. Jesus joins with those who confess their sins and go out to the wilderness. Mark very subtly implies that all those from Jerusalem and Judea were indeed baptized, but they remained unrepentant when they turned around and went home. Going out to the wilderness as Jesus did signified a determination to live under the judgment of God.
But immediately as Jesus comes up out of the water, the heavens split and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. Jesus is no longer the same now as he was. The voice that only Jesus and the reader hear confirms that Jesus is the Son of God. The heavens rip apart and now God is on the loose in the world, as the scholar Eugene Boring put it.3 God’s revelation is just beginning.
John proclaimed a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. By God’s grace, our sins were forgiven.
I used to worry about applying the word “sinner” to other people because I didn’t want to offend or seem judgmental. But, you know, we are all sinners. We miss the mark constantly. We’re only human. We can aspire to divinity but can never attain it. The novelist Somerset Maugham wrote, “People are born to sin.” He went on to note that we wouldn’t be people otherwise. But even so, we choose this baptized Christian life.
I remember a newspaper comic strip where a man is teaching a woman how to play golf. She asks, “So the less I hit that ball, the better I am doing?” He says that’s right. And she asks, “Then why do it at all?” For the rest of the day and all that night, the guy is left standing there, asking the question over and over, “Why do it at all?”
We might ask ourselves, why get baptized at all? What’s in it for us? Only eternal life. God’s grace. A call to service as a disciple of Christ. A place at the Lord’s Table. But the truth is, we seek it out, for our children and for ourselves. Water cleanses and purifies, it makes things new, just as God makes things new through Jesus. We instinctively understand that we can become new too. In a few moments, as we recall Jesus’ baptism, those who wish to can re-affirm their own baptism.
It’s a great and wonderful thing to be baptized in Christ. But with it comes a tremendous obligation. Baptism marks us for God. It’s the moment we become Christians. The kingdom of God – the new creation – is established within each one of us by baptism. We carry it in our hearts. We nurture it with the hearing and reading of God’s Holy Word, through the sharing of bread and cup, and through the Christian fellowship of our faith community.
Let us honor our commitment to live a Christian life, to follow the teachings of Jesus as best we can, and to be the people God created us to be.
Amen.
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