January 15, 2012 – Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
New Creation
Baptism of our Lord [transferred] – January 15, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
There’s so much to notice and so much to talk about in Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism.
That’s probably not how you want a sermon to begin. . . .
There’s the wilderness, that place both of temptation and promise in
the biblical imagination.
There’s John the Baptist and his renewal movement, out by the Jordan river,
in an attempt to try and do the whole “being God’s people of manna and
mercy” thing over again.
There’s the heavens being ripped apart by God imaging for us
God’s taking up residence in this world through Jesus and
the divine Spirit being on the loose.
There’s a voice that gives assurance and blessing for the hard road ahead.
There’s Sonship for Jesus as he is claimed for doing what sons did in the ancient world:
apprenticing to their father’s work.
God’s work is to love and bless and heal and feed and forgive,
and so Jesus the Son will apprentice to this work in the world by
loving and blessing and healing and feeding and forgiving.
And then there’s water and Spirit and we are transported back to
the beginning of the Bible, to the very first chapter of Genesis,
and we are suddenly immersed with Jesus into a much, much larger story:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . .
the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.
In this year of Mark, the lectionary helpfully pairs Jesus’ baptism with
these first verses of Genesis.
Mark is deliberately recalling that first creation story in Genesis to invite us to consider
that in Jesus some new creation is being born, is about to come into existence.
In the Genesis account, it’s significant that what God does doesn’t just happen with
the snap of the divine fingers.
The story unfolds over a course of days.
Creation it seems is a process. It takes time.
Creation is not a finished product. It’s still in process.
Nevertheless, at the end of each day, God makes an evaluation of what God sees.
And the evaluation is always, “It’s good.”
God uses a wonderful Hebrew word here, tov. It’s tov.
It’s not done yet, it’s not finished yet, and yet, it’s tov. It’s good. It’s just right.
And later on, on the sixth day, after God has created the human beings and
the plants and animals, God looks at everything and says, Tov! Me’od tov!
Very good!
God says this even though there is still disorder and chaos in the world.
And despite continuing disorder, God never takes that positive evaluation back.
Even though God’s creation is still in the process of becoming what God intends it to be.
it is still tov. It is still good.
We too have been created by God, and,
as my Old Testament teacher Terry Fretheim says,
Similarly, along the way God certainly will evaluate each of us. Almost certainly at one time or another that evaluation will be: not as good as it might be, improvement is needed here or there, or perhaps a lot. But certainly many times that evaluation will be: very good.
Indeed, God so values you that “God will confidently entrust you with creative tasks and
responsibilities beyond your present knowing.”
These tasks have been entrusted to you in your baptism and
you recommitted yourself to them again today.
To live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
Somehow, God just doesn’t want to create all alone. God wants partners.
God doesn’t seek to bring creation to fulfillment without you.
In Genesis, God involves the earth in creating when God says,
“Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind.”
And God involves human beings in tending and
ensuring this creation’s future when God says, “take care of it or subdue it,”
where subdue here has the meaning of bringing order out of
continuing disorder. (ibid.)
God seeks to bring in the new creation through and with you.
In his baptism Jesus was swept into God’s story of bringing blessing and life and
love to this whole world and every person in it.
That’s why Jesus’s baptism is linked by Mark to this beautiful story in Genesis.
And because our baptisms are modeled on Jesus’s,
we too in our baptisms are immersed in this story and become part of it.
And note how our baptism – our beginning in this story – begins with blessing.
In his baptism, God blessed Jesus by naming him “beloved son,”
and likewise in your baptism you are named beloved child,
commissioned to apprentice to God’s work of
loving and blessing and healing and feeding and forgiving.
You’ve been given God’s own energy to do it, the Holy Spirit,
the loving life-giving energy that took up residence in Jesus and
was active in him.
You’ve been blessed, like Jesus, before you even start.
You are not nobody, you are not nothing: you are beloved.
Note, though, that it’s a dangerous thing to be named beloved by God.
It prepares you for the work that is to come.
The word “beloved” is used three times in Mark’s Gospel:
here, just before Jesus begins a very taxing ministry.
Again, at the Transfiguration on the mountain,
just before Jesus talks about his many sufferings,
and finally in a parable Jesus tells about a king who sends his “beloved”
son to wicked tenants who will kill him.
God desires us to be involved in God’s creative activity of blessing this world and
every person in it, and God blesses us before we tend to those tasks,
because God knows we will need it.
But the good news is that we are always beloved. Always blessed. Always tov.
God never takes back that evaluation, even though we don’t always live up to it.
And the even more good news is that this story we’ve been immersed into with Jesus
will end in blessing for all creation.
The story ends when love wins.
One of the amazing things about attending the Kids Klub free drop-in on
Saturday mornings at First Lutheran, to which I too occasionally drop-in,
is the conversation you get to have.
A few weeks ago, over the Christmas holidays, we were eating cake together at
the end of the week.
And the conversation turned to the end of the world.
These kids have seen Hollywood’s violent and destructive version of the world’s end,
as if the only possible ending were a bad one.
“How will the world end?” the children asked me.
“You know how a good book ends?” I asked.
They nodded their heads.
“Everything turns out well, despite all the bad stuff that happens.
everything turns out, well good. That’s the way the world ends.”
I might have said everything turns out tov. The Bible ends with . . . communion.
At the end of Revelation, the communion invitation is issued to all creation:
Come, Lord Jesus. The world ends not with destruction, but with communion.
Because God’s not done creating yet. Creation’s not done.
And God’s not done with you either.
You are tov, just right for what God is calling you to do.
You are blessed, you are beloved.
The same Spirit that was in Jesus has taken up residence in you.
You’ll notice that at the end of our worship service,
we receive a blessing just before we are commissioned and dismissed.
We need that blessing for the work that God sends us out of this place to do.
On Ash Wednesday the commissioning is particularly beautiful,
and I like to remind you of it regularly.
The blessing is this:
Almighty God, Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit, bless you now and forever. Amen
And the commissioning and dismissal is this:
Go forth into the world to serve God with gladness;
be of good courage;
hold fast to that which is good;
render no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak;
help the afflicted; honour all people;
love and serve God, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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