Baptism of the Lord//God Loose in the World

Texts:

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Did the text sound familiar to anyone?  Anytime someone in church asks you if a text sounds familiar, it’s a pretty good idea to say, “Yes,” and hope you know why.  It’s kind of like the answer to every question in a children’s sermon being “Jesus.”  Well, the first part of this text was from the 2^nd week of Advent.  Strangely, it comes back around a month later, only now we get a bigger piece of the picture. 

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t begin with Jesus being born, it doesn’t begin with shepherds or angels or men from the east; it begins with John the Baptist, and all of Judea and Jerusalem out in the wilderness.  And Mark, wasting no time, lets the cat out of the bag before the story even begins, “Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  If you read the book of Mark all in one go, it becomes clear: Mark begins his story with the end in mind.  Mark is the person who, having seen a movie, becomes so excited about the movie he shares the end of it before you’ve had a chance to see it.   What does the beginning of the good news sound like for Mark? (Rip a bunch of paper).

Yup.  RIIIIP.  This is the sound that is made when Jesus comes out of the water as the heavens themselves are torn apart.  This same sound is made when Jesus dies and the curtain in the temple is torn apart.  The beginning and end hold the whole story in tension, and the first noise we hear God make in Mark’s gospel is RIIIIP. 

This is not the sort of thing in which you imagine a bunch of fat cupids peering from behind the clouds; it’s a decisive sound, and that which is torn will never be the same.  RRRIIIPPPP.  The heavens are ripped apart.  The fabric of creation is changed in a way that it can never be the same.  Like fabric, it may be sewn back together, but the heavens will always bear the scar of having been ripped open.   

It’s a little strange, isn’t it?  In Genesis, a few verses after the part we read for today, we read of the separation of the heavens and waters.  Now the heavens have been ripped open, undoing the separation between the heavens and the earth.  So often, we talk about God being in the world, but we have trouble living that way.  We have trouble believing that ripping open the heavens affected God as much as it affects us.  It is through ripping open the heavens and coming down that we found our salvation.  So the heavens are ripped apart, and, as Don Juel, a former professor from Luther and Princeton Seminaries, says: “And God is out loose in the world.”

Look out: God is running around loose.  There’s no telling what God might do.  

If we really believed God were out there, loose in our lives, loose in the world, and loose in the church, what would it look like?  Ideas?

 I think it looks a lot like Jesus’ life and ministry.  It’s no wonder Mark’s entire gospel holds the beginning and the end of Jesus’ ministry in tension.  What the good news of Jesus looks like is the entire picture, the entire story.  It looks like Christ’s baptism.  It looks like him teaching, preaching, and healing the sick.  It looks like the end of the story, which isn’t a neat-and-tidy, “And then everyone believed,” but ends with, “And they didn’t say anything to anyone because they were afraid,” and the message somehow still getting out there, throughout the generations, that this Jesus guy is God out loose in the world. 

And the first thing that God, loose in the world, does is get baptized.  Jesus’ baptism brings questions into the fore: if John was preaching a baptism of repentance into the forgiveness of sins, and if Jesus was baptized by John, then does that mean that Jesus was at least capable of sin?  To tell you the truth, millions of hours of conversation and millions of gallons of ink have been spilled on this… but is this the real question?  Are we really worried whether or not Jesus was able to sin?  Is this the crux of the matter?  I think the point is, rather, that Jesus was born into our world, as it is.  As such, Jesus receives our baptism.  Jesus is baptized in the same river that is washing away the sins of those being baptized there.  Jesus is baptized into our baptism, into our confession, into our sin.  Jesus is baptized in the same mucky waters of the Jordan as all the people were.  He comes into our messy world and into our messy sins, and is fully submerged (pun intended) in it. 

But why?  He’s God.  God didn’t really have any need of creation, but created it anyway.  God, who could have come in any form he chose to the earth, chose the form of a human - in Christ.  Christ was baptized into our sin, though he could have taken one look at us and said, “Naw, they’re not really worth it.  They mess up continually and they don’t really listen to me anyway.”  But he didn’t.  Jesus is baptized in order that 3 all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin, as it says in Romans 6:3-6.  Jesus was baptized into our sin that we might be resurrected into his life.  It’s what Luther called the Happy Exchange, or, my new favorite way to refer to it: the Sweet Swap. 

No wonder God was so proud.  God’s son opened the way for us to become children of God, as indicated in the Small Catechism:  “This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”  And so God decided to RIIIIP open the heavens.  With the beginning and the end in mind, the same sound is made when our savior came to earth as when he died.  Baptized into our sin, dying on the cross, the heavens are ripped open and God is loose in the world.

Jesus’ baptism is the baptism in which all of our baptisms are found.  As Martin Luther says, “To be baptized in God’s name is to be baptized not by human beings but by God himself.”  The very hand of God has baptized you into the baptism of God’s son.  It is in this baptism we have all become children of God, brothers and sisters with each other and Christ.  But it’s even better than that.  Each of us is proof that God is out there, running around loose in the world.  Think about your faith journeys, and your faith stories, think about all the bumps along the way, think about all the times you prayed and prayed… think about the times you felt God so closely there was scarcely any division between you and your Creator.  It’s because God decided to rip open the heavens and come down to dwell among us.

So Jesus comes out of the water, and the dove descends.  And then the heavens are ripped apart, and Jesus hears the words: “You are my son, in you I delight.”  I’m sure God could have found a gentler way to send the Spirit and to communicate with his Son: but in Mark’s Gospel, it’s as though God can’t take the time to gently part the heavens.  Like a child too excited to open his Christmas present, he rips open the wrapping paper, not caring where it is taped, whether or not there is a bow, or even whether there is a card on the outside of the package.  God rips open the heavens, ripping open a division that has existed since the second day of creation, and yells, “I LOVE YOU!”  At the end of Mark’s gospel, the tapestry in the temple is torn in two, as though, once again, God is ripping open the heavens, just to say, “ I LOVE YOU!”

So we have this God, who rips open the heavens, just to say, “I LOVE YOU.”  And welcome to “Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”