Scripture: Mark 1:9-13
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the
Jordan. And 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. And a voice came from heaven, “You are
my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness
forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited
on him.
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Today…today was not a good day.
My youngest son got sick today, which meant that even though it was warm, sunny, and wonderful outside, our family spent the entire day inside doing nothing, so my lil’ guy could recover a bit.
Of course, this now also means that he can’t go to school on Monday either; which means that a hiking trip I had been looking forward to for weeks is suddenly not going to happen.
Instead, I got to spend today like I’ve spent most every day over the last months and months; in the house, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of a grumbling gaggle of kids who are entirely too annoyed at being stuck in the house with little else to do but watch TV and clean up after themselves; though they’d never actually either a) clean up after themselves without being directly incited by the voice of Almighty God (and, perhaps, not even then), or b) admit that they’re annoyed at being in the house through any other form of communication beyond punching each other in the face.
To be honest; it sucked. I love my family, but today was one big crap-filled exclamation point dropped unceremoniously into the abject middle of a sentence filled with fecal adjectives, noxious nouns, and putrescent verbiage, forming a truncated exclamation of mildly-stinky annoyance.
And the worst part of it?
It’s not a new experience for me.
Honestly, some days it feels like life is more this than anything.
In the last year or so, it’s been struggle after struggle after struggle, during a time in my life where I had been led to believe things were finally likely to hit a decent-sized upswing. After years of determined self-sacrifice, study, and patience, I had finally risen to a place in my life where I was ready and equipped to serve; sent by God and church to do work in the name of God.
Even though it was well more than a year ago, I still remember that moment like it was yesterday; in no small part because it was the last big win I’ve had since.
For me, that moment was my ordination to the position of Minister of Word and Sacrament, a fairly rarified position within Christian ministry, and one that comes as the culmination of years of work and study, matched with the patient support and nurturing of a community that has not only found you worth investing in, but which firmly believes in your God-given calling to serve.
I still remember that moment, like standing in a warm sunbeam on a cool spring morning, feeling like the Holy Spirit and I were, for once, in perfect alignment. Like God and I were going in the same direction.
Like God was truly pleased with me.
So, naturally, you can imagine my surprise when…well….
Gestures wildly to the just….everything…going on right now.
Over the past months, I’ve often found myself thinking about today’s passage, the baptism of Jesus as seen in the book of Mark. And, remembering rather than revisiting as one typically does, this passage was always a source of comfort to me. I recalled it as the story of Jesus standing before the face of God, leaning down from heaven, having gently pulled the veil aside for just a moment, in order to tell Ol’ J.C. just how tickled the Old-est Man was at the lil’ guy, after which Jesus, with a beautiful and shining smile on his inexplicably white face, strapped up his oddly clean sandals and walked, whistling, out into the world to to the great task of teaching and preaching that God had set before him.
Now, I’m a big fan of the Gospel of Mark for many reasons, but perhaps none less so than the blunt realism that this gospel continues to express. Despite being the oldest of the four gospels, it isn’t lacking in poetry, like the more academic accounts found in Luke, for example. But rather, it uses its poetry and imagery in exceedingly efficient ways, telling the story in concentrated and specific detail, yet remaining no less beautiful for it.
And now that we’ve heard this story from Mark’s gospel…I think we have to admit…
That sort of soporific, beautiful-without-challenge image we have of situation, this vision we collectively tend to remember of this as a moment of triumph, sending, and the pleasant beginning to a difficult-yet-rewarding journey for Jesus; it just isn’t accurate in the slightest.
When we think of this story, we tend to think of it as the definitive example of Jesus and the Holy Spirit operating in complete alignment; all flowing in the same direction, with a unified intentionality and purpose that we all so desperately want and need to imitate in our own lives.
But Mark constantly puts God, Jesus, and the Spirit in conflict with each other.
In verse 10, though this is far more poetically obvious in Greek than in English, we have Jesus rising UP out of the water, while the Spirit is coming DOWN on him from above. Right from jump, the two are moving in contrasting directions. Jesus’ emerging from the water isn’t expressed here as some epiphanal moment of cosmic kismet, but more of a rough encounter with a higher power.
I imagine Jesus coming up out of the baptismal waters with a reaction that was less “Holy Spirit” and more “Holy SHIT!”
In that moment, Jesus is presented with a image, likely seen only by him, of the heavens being torn apart.
And lest you think that the English translators are being a bit overdramatic with the phrase “torn apart,” let me take a moment to introduce you to the Greek term that is used here in the original text. The term that the Gospel author uses is the verb “schitzomenous” Now, fellow speakers of English, if you feel that this term sounds a little familiar to you in some way, you would be correct. The root of this verb, meaning to rend, tear, or divide, is the same one from which we get the term schizophrenia.
The kind of tearing being described here is positively natal; it is a disruptive, ugly, even painful kind of tearing. The sort of thing that comes across as a gross violation, rather than a graceful and beautiful presentation of divine presence.
So what happens is that Jesus enters into Baptism, begins his covenant relationship with God, and is immediately struck by a head-on collision with the descending Holy Spirit, who is already going in a completely different direction. Jesus then gets his glimpse of God, only instead calming, comforting, and supportive, it’s a violent, dividing, perhaps even terrifying encounter.
In that moment, the voice comes from heaven, saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
That’s, you know, great to hear and all, but I can’t imagine that Jesus was in any right state to take it super well to heart, what with all the schizo going on and all.
But still, good words of affirmation; an important point to hear, and something Jesus would absolutely need to hold on to because that Holy Spirit…man….it wasn’t planning on giving him even the barest second to think things through, or to bask in the Creator’s praise…
It IMMEDIATELY drove Jesus out into the wilderness.
Think that moment through again.
It wasn’t that Jesus, satiated and happy with the praise from on high elected, of his own volition, to head out into the desert for a time of fasting, asceticism, and patient meditation on the higher purposes of God. As much as we love to consider Jesus as this all-wise teacher, preacher, and architect of salvation, in this moment we’re presented with a VERY different image.
When we read this moment, we’ve been given the Greek term ekballo; which means in its clearest, root form, to throw. Like, to pick something (or, in this case someone) up bodily and hurl them in whichever direction you might find appropriate.
To yeet, if you will.
Without warning, the Holy Spirit yeeted Jesus clear into the middle of freaking nowhere.
That’s…pretty much what happened, actually.
So, when you actually look at the scripture here, you get a totally different understanding of what it’s like getting on the God-train to righteousness.
And….gotta be honest, it’s a struggle sometimes.
As humans, we expect that when we do a thing, when we believe a thing, that we’re doing it in a way that reaps some sort of logical, personal reward. A return, if you will, on our investment of time, belief, energy, or affection.
Christian folks are by no means immune to this; after all, how many people do you know that approach their Christian life transactionally? People who wanna “join up to team Jesus” because it guarantees them a spot on the other side of the pearly gates? People who pray because they want God to give them things, change their lives, make their situation better, make them happier, healthier, wealthier, or whatever? Salvation in exchange for signing up on the right religious team; safety and security because you’ve got God on your side.
How many times have you seen someone, some politician or prosperity gospel preacher, some Franklin and/or Lindsay Graham spouting this absolute nonsense that if you just believe, you can have everything?
How many times have you accidentally found yourself believing something similar?
But when you sit down to pray, when you surrender your heart to God and seek, truly, for God’s direction, how often do you really receive it?
And how often do you find yourself gettin’ yeeted out the damn window?
Thing is, our hope in life, in death, and in everything in between doesn’t rest in some cosmic transactional relationship that we’ve built with a trans-dimensional diety who has taken a personal and specific interest in humanity, which honestly makes about as much sense as a Gallifreian Timelord spending all their time in modern London. Our hope doesn’t rest on these sort of asinine ideas that we’re going to be rewarded for our baptism, rewarded for our allegiance, and that we need merely believe in God in order to live a hassle-free life absent of stress, challenges, or suffering.
Because God’s work in the world, the work that needs to be done in order for God to truly be known as the defender of the orphan and the widow, the uplifter of the oppressed, the voice-giver to the voiceless, and the deliverer of Justice through mercy and love, that work isn’t done without sacrifice.
When God calls out to Jesus that he is Beloved, that God is in him well pleased, the Almighty isn’t saying it because God firmly believes that Jesus Christ, as he is in that moment, has done and become everything that will ever be asked of him. The Almighty isn’t pleased with him because he has walked the walk, talked the talk, and arrived at the place of completion, victory, and validation.
God is pleased with Jesus in that moment because he is ready to begin; ready to face the hard, rocky path into the wilderness that lies before him.
God is pleased with Jesus in that moment because he knows that when the Spirit yeets him out into the seemingly godforsaken desert, that it won’t destroy him. Temptation will not sway him, and suffering will only serve to refine him, not reduce him.
That, I think, is where I am today. Where a lot of us are, if we’re being honest
Right now, a lot of us are mid-yeet; flying out from places of comfort from which we never expected to go, fixing to crash headfirst into a wilderness of suffering, temptation, loss, despair, and endless challenges both to our own self-identity, and perhaps even to our very survival.
Our hope lies in those words from God, that whisper in the back of our hearts telling us that God loves us; that God is pleased with who we are, and what we are.
That voice, telling us that we are beloved, that God is truly pleased, that we are ready and equipped to handle the challenges in front of us. To be shaped by our experiences, refined and not broken, and made into something purer, finer, and better able to do God’s good in the world.
You, today, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever it might be that you’re dealing with; you are a child of God, beloved, in whom God is well and truly pleased.
And because of that love, because of just how much pleasure God takes in you, delighting in who you are now, happy at the person you have become, and are still becoming; because of that love, you can take comfort in the fact that whatever challenges come your way, whatever difficulties, temptations, failures, or loss lie along your path, God thinks you’re ready for them.
Because God has made you of stern stuff, forged you in love, and shaped you to withstand.
So, as you go out into this next week, I hope you can take that to heart.
Because God wouldn’t let the Spirit yeet you out into the wilderness knowing you’d break.
The Spirit sends you, Christ goes before you, and God believes in you.
You can do it!
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