Come Up

What r u up 2? • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 4 months ago

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Mark 1:10-15 About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. 10 While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. 11 And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” 12 At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him. 14 After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, 15 saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”

INTRO

This Lenten season, we will be exploring our calling to observe a Holy Lent through the lens of “being up to something.” Series creator, Rev. Dr. Marcia Mcfee notes, “We ask our friends, “What are you up to these days?” It is a playful question when we ask it this way. “Up to” sounds a little sneaky. “They are up to something!” Like orchestrating a surprise or creating something wonderful without making it a big deal. It is like having a project that only you know about. Lent is a little like that. It is a time when we go inward to assess “what’s up” in our soul so that the outward-facing life we lead is fueled and supported by a deep inner spiritual well.” This Lent, we are invited and challenged to ask ourselves what’s up with our souls as we examine our call to get up to something good over the next 40 days.

This week’s gospel lesson begins much like it did a few weeks ago on Baptism of the Lord Sunday; in fact, one commentator reminds the pastor not to preach the same sermon they preached a few short weeks ago. It begs the question: why does the lectionary bring up the baptism of our Lord on this first Sunday in Lent? Yet, how fitting is it that we begin Lent as a season by which we dwell on who Jesus is to us? We seek to grow deeper as we strive to follow Christ to the Cross. The first Sunday in Lent begins at the moment when Jesus comes up out of the waters of baptism to hear, “You are my beloved,” and is driven into the wilderness to be tempted. If we wondered where lent is going to take us…the implications are clear…we too, are headed to the desert.

Interestingly, Mark’s gospel does not spend time on the birth narratives of Christ, and the writer does not linger long at the baptism of Jesus, but he stays just long enough to point to the Holy Spirit’s work in Jesus. It does not give any dialogue between Jesus and John The Baptist as the other gospel writers do. Mark isn’t concerned with the details.

Yet, For Mark, the baptism of Christ is a significant event indicated by the way the heavens do not just “open” but are “split open.” Other translations say “torn open.” It is a dramatic display of the divine. One commentary notes, “This term, “torn open,” appears at only one other time in the Gospel, at Jesus’ death, when the same word is employed to describe the tearing of the curtain in the Temple. Thus, Mark was conveying to his readers that heaven was torn open at the onset of Jesus’ ministry, and the world will never be the same. The readers have a glimpse into the heart of heaven as Jesus walked, talked, and lived before them.”

Jesus appears out of Nazareth as an answer to an old prayer that the prophet Isaiah prayed long ago: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” The heavenly words echoed indeed share that God has come down in Jesus Christ. The words are actually citations from the Old Testament, foreshadowing just who it is we have been called to follow. The words “You are my son” come from Psalm 3, a Messianic psalm that offers a word of political judgment and warning which the psalmist declares to all the nations of the earth that the heavens and the earth belong to the only begotten son.

The textualization and clues as to who this Jesus is do not stop there. The heavenly voice continues, “With you, I am well pleased.” The voice from heaven alludes to Isaiah 42, known throughout the biblical tradition as the suffering servant’s song. Jesus is the servant upon whom God places God's Spirit, the one who will bring forth justice to the nations. Jesus enters the waters of baptism as a commitment to the way of God; he takes the form of a suffering servant.

Mark’s gospel describes Jesus’ baptism differently than others. Jesus is baptized into the Jordan without any confession of Sin. Only Jesus heard the disruptive voice of God. This life-changing experience in the Jordan River signals the freedom of Christ to pursue God’s call. Just as in the first chapters of Genesis, God pronounced all that God has made as good (delightful, joyful, agreeable). Here, at the baptism of Jesus, the voice of God rings out, proclaiming God’s delight in Jesus. Jesus’ baptism is not only a religious act but a political and economic assertion of God’s sovereignty over all of creation.

The things of old will begin to fade in the light of God’s inbreaking. Jesus steps into Israel’s history, our history, in order to rewrite our story. As soon as the voice is finished speaking, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.

One commentary notes “Whereas Israel in the wilderness stumbled and wandered for forty years in sin, rebellion, and distrust, longing again for the chains of slavery, Jesus withstands Satan’s tests in the wilderness for forty days. By this means, Jesus is retracing Israel’s steps, rewriting her story, and recasting the destiny of all of God’s people. Jesus’ first declaration of the gospel, after the temptation in the wilderness, says as much: he announces that the time has been made full, and God’s rule has come near. All of the old obligations to the priests, to the temple, to Herod, and to Rome have been cancelled, not only for Jesus, but for all those who repent and follow him into God’s rule.”

Friends, the desert, the wilderness, is not only a physical place. It is also a spiritual place where we are called to self-examination and repentance, where we are called to reflect on our baptism or anticipate our baptism as we are called to follow Jesus down into the waters of death and come up out of the waters to rebirth. Going down into the water means we are called to bear witness to the places of pain and solidarity as Christ did as we honestly reflect on where our pains, our traumas are. The words “you are beloved” become so much more real at the fount as we begin to realize we are loved and restored even in our brokenness.

Don’t you see, we, too, are called like Jesus to enter into the desert? We are called into the wilderness that we may see and marvel at the heavens that are torn apart, the crooked paths that are made straight. We, too, are called to participate in the divine liberation from all that would like to enslave us. We, too, have to wrestle with what it means to be beloved and the belovedness of others. The wilderness will remind us that the Spirit of God is not ours to contain.

We need to come up from where we are stuck, distracted, or delayed because, in God’s love, God will send us to some challenging places. God will stretch us, mold us, and shape us. Church, we can not predict where the heavens will tear open; we can not predict what will happen in the wilderness. The wilderness is a place where we will have a lot of time to think. Can you handle the silence, in which the thoughts and feelings you have outrun will have time to catch up with you? Should you encounter some wild animals of your own, will you stay or pack up? How will you tell the difference between Satan’s voice and that of the Spirit? The wilderness will test, strengthen, and propel you forward to live out your baptismal vows to resist evil, oppression, and injustice, but it will also move you to put your whole trust in God’s grace.

One of my favorite African American Spirituals speaks to the waters that will move us to reflection as we follow after God…Called Wade in the water - (Sing) “Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God’s a-gonna trouble the water.” [hum] “God’s a-gonna trouble the water.” As people who seem to wade through the waters of life each and every day, it seems only natural to ask, what is God doing in troubling the waters?

This very day and any day, as long as you walk with God, you can have your waters troubled. You can be healed, you can reaffirm your call, you can see God’s power, and you can even do something that you didn’t even think was possible. So, as we walk through life’s waters, I want to invite you. I want to invite you to wade through them, knowing that “God’s a-gonna trouble the water.”

I invite you to wade through them, knowing that God is calling you out into them. God is offering you the chance to have the waters of your lives troubled, to push you in new in different ways, to send you out to build and shape the world around you. God’s calling you, all you need to do is respond. Won’t you join with me and lift your voices as we “Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God’s a-gonna trouble the water.”

In the spiritual, troubling the water comes from the story of the man waiting at the pool at Bethsaida. Once a day, an angel would stir the waters, and the next person in the water would be healed. For the American slaves, the call to wade in the water offered hope that God might trouble the waters of their lives, leading to freedom. Theologian Howard Thurman offers this insight into the refrain, “For [the slaves] the ‘troubled waters’ meant the ups and downs, the vicissitudes of life. Within the context of the ‘troubled’ waters of life, there are healing waters because God is in the midst of the turmoil.”

You see, in the desert, in the troubled waters of our lives, this is the very place where miracles occur. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, miracles occurred in troubled times in people’s lives. Whether the troubling is difficulties or God-given stirring up, Jesus works through the troubled waters of our lives to bring forth spiritual growth within us. In the midst of the troubling of our lives, the shaking up of where we have always been, we need to call God to come and stir us up more.

And when the troubling, the stirring, is done, our call is to come up out of the waters and go into the world to make a difference. We come up out of the waters; we come up out of the wilderness, places empowered and strengthened for the ministry we are called to do in the world. And then, we go to the next place where God will challenge us for growth again, ready to be stirred up again. As Howard Thurman reminds us, “Do not shrink from moving confidently out into the choppy seas. Wade in the water, because God is troubling the water.”

So this Lenten season, we invite you to live a holy Lent, in which your waters might be troubled, and you might come up empowered and strengthened for getting up to something good and for living as Easter people in the world.