First Sunday of Lent, 5 Mar 06
Most of us realize somewhere during our lives that we live within stories and perspectives and habits -- both good and bad -- that we first learned when we were children and have been building upon ever since. These stories, of which we are often hardly aware, tell us whether the world is safe or dangerous, predictable or chaotic, violent or full of love, and whether the people and institutions around us are to be trusted or resisted. Our stories may be driven by any number of diverse experiences: by fear, shame, trust, guilt, friendship, insecurity, alienation, or hope, to name just a few -- all of which give rise to the particular scripts by which we shape our lives and relationships. We go through our lives not only living out of these early scripts, but trying to script everyone else around us into our own peculiar story of the world.
Does that person like me or want to hurt me? Was that joke friendly or an attack? Is this situation a threat or an opportunity? The ways we answer questions like these reveal our foundational stories. Good and bad, these stories define us, set the boundaries on our imagination, and shape the ways we interact with everyone around us.
This is especially so during times of transition and crisis, when both individuals and communities are likely to revert to their most heavily traveled pathways and pathologies, their oldest and most cherished scripts. Often these are the very scripts that led to trouble. It's as if we are bound to cover the same ground, to relive the same story, again and again, until we get it right or it gets us. If we are unable to name and set aside the old scripts, we will continue to be defined by them, no matter what else we do. You can talk yourself blue in the face about change, make all kinds of resolutions, and try, try, try to be different, but until you come to grips with the elements of the real story out of which you live, it will rule you. In order to reorder your world, you have to be able to name and disorder the old one.
Today we go to counselors and psychotherapists for help with such matters, but before we had this kind of professional assistance, societies had rituals that worked to similar effect. For the people of Israel, the whole sacrificial system was a way of naming and dealing with the brokenness of their human experience. By making sacrifice for their sin, both individual and corporate, the people of Israel were naming aloud their failure to live up to God's calling. The sins were placed upon an animal, which was either killed and burned, or let loose into the wilderness. But in either case, the point was that the sins carried by the animal were taken away, so that the people no longer had to be defined by them. The sacrificial ritual, in other words, was the social and religious mechanism by which people named what was wrong in their world, and then let it be removed from them, thereby making way for a new script. Once the sacrifice was made, the people no longer had to live with the guilt or shame of the offense. They could reorder their lives without dragging the old baggage with them.
At least that's the way it was supposed to work. Eventually the whole system of sacrifice became corrupted. It became big business, with people and priests going through the motions. The Temple system became not the only the heart of Israel's religion, but the primary support for exploitive and corrupted political and economic structures. Rather than being a resource to keep Israel free from the bondage of sin, Temple sacrifice became the source of its enslavement. Rather than being a symbol of hope and a locus of prayer, the Temple had become, as Jesus would call it, a "den of thieves."
And that is precisely why, at the beginning of Mark's Gospel, John the Baptizer is out in the wilderness calling people to repentance and demanding their baptism in the Jordan River. He is doing what the Temple and sacrifices no longer could; he is preparing the way of the Lord. His baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is meant both as a critique of and replacement for the temple sacrifices and the Jewish establishment. Everything in Mark's description of John and his baptism implies a vote of no-confidence in the current arrangements. We can see this not only in John's call to repentance, but in the location and costuming of his ministry.
First, John is in the wilderness, which Jewish imagination associated with beasts, demons, and spirits -- with risk, danger, and disorientation. The wilderness was also the place where Israel had wandered for forty years before they could enter the promised land. Not only is John in the wilderness, he is baptizing people in the river Jordan, which was itself the boundary line of the holy land. The Jordan is not just a convenient source of water for John's baptisms, but the symbolic crossing point into salvation for God's people. John's ministry, in other words, is focused on returning the people to the significant moments in their history, before they came to rely on the Law, Kings, priests, and the sacrificial system. In the wilderness their imagination is deprived of the images of blood and splendor associated with Jerusalem and the Temple, and taken back to the beginnings of their story, to the source of their hope, to the places where they had once lived in dependence on God alone.
John's costuming and diet are meant remind his audience of yet another part of Israel's story. John wears camel hair and leather, and eats locusts and wild honey, just like the prophet Elijah of old. The link to Elijah establishes John as one who pronounces judgment on king and court for their violation of the covenant with God. Elijah is also the prophet who did not die, but was lifted into heaven by a whirlwind of fiery horses and chariot. From the time of Israel's last prophet, Malachi, which Mark cites at the beginning of this Gospel, Jewish people had anticipated Elijah's return from heaven to announce the coming of God. John's appearance in the wilderness is thus not only a critique of the Jerusalem establishment, but an apocalyptic sign of God's coming, bringing both judgment and hope.
No wonder John's ministry provokes such amazing results; Mark tells us that "all of the country of Judea and all of the people of Jerusalem" went out to let themselves be baptized by John in the Jordan. It's the mother of all revivals, laden with political, economic, and religious critique. John's baptism is the counter-ritual to the rituals of the Jerusalem establishment. John is providing a new perspective from which to look at the world. No wonder King Herod will soon arrest John and eventually kill him.
And then, suddenly, amidst the crowds of Judeans and Jerusalemites, comes Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee, the one for whom John has been preparing. The designation "Nazareth of Galilee" is meant to be a little provocative. It signifies "the sticks," or "Hiccups-ville" -- the messiah comes not from Jerusalem itself, but from a third-class village in second-class Galilee. His very presence is something of an offense among all these Judeans.
We often wonder why Jesus, who is not a sinner, needs to be baptized at all. The answer lies not in who Jesus has been -- sinner or not -- but in who Jesus is and what he is committing himself to. Jesus' embrace of John's baptism signifies a public act of commitment to the way of God that John has been preparing. There is a subtle difference -- parts of which are lost in English translation -- in the way Mark describes Jesus' baptism, as opposed to the others who have come to be baptized by John. Earlier, Mark tells us that the Judeans and Jerusalemites were letting themselves be baptized in the Jordan by John, confessing their sins. Jesus, in contrast, is baptized into the Jordan, without any reference to a confession of sins. He is actually doing something much more extreme than the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem. He does not confess sin, but instead perfectly embodies John's call to repent of the world's ways. He goes under. In a sense, he drowns in the Jordan.
It's one thing to confess your sins, as the Jews do, and then go back to Jerusalem and all the old scripts. But confession is not enough. What is required is a complete turning around -- a repentance not only from the sins of the world, but from the whole sinful world. This kind of repentance amounts to nothing less than death. With his baptism, Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee ends his former life. He dies not only to sin, but to all of the assumptions, world-views, entanglements, and obligations of his former life as a citizen of Galilee, subordinate to the Temple and the Jerusalem authorities, subordinate to Herod, and subordinate to Caesar and the Roman occupiers. His baptism is not only a religious act, but a political and economic assertion of God's Lordship.
When he emerges from the waters of the Jordan River, Jesus is the first citizen of God's empire, completely unobligated to anyone or anything else but God and God's coming rule. All of the debts and obligations incurred under the old orderings of the world, whether Jewish or Roman, have been cancelled. All the debts are cancelled: even "to his parents for feeding, clothing, and sheltering him; to his friends for their love, encouragement and support; to his society for educating and civilizing him; and to his government for its maintenance of law and order." (Herman C. Waetjen, A Reordering of Power, p69.) His repentance and death redeem him from these debts and loose him from all of the socially prescribed ways of discharging his obligations. He is now free to pursue God alone, and thereby empowered to do all the things that will define his ministry.
Jesus' old world has just ended, and a new one is just beginning. We know this because as soon as he arises from under the waters of the Jordan, Jesus sees the heavens themselves being torn apart. The image is both violent and hope-filled. The only other place Mark uses this word for ripping and tearing is in the description of the events that take place at the moment Jesus dies on the cross, when the veil of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom. In both cases, God is doing the ripping. In both cases, all of the former assumptions and arrangements of this world are disordered and brought to nothing. These are both high apocalyptic moments, when the boundaries between earth and heaven itself are disordered and dissolved. And as the heavens are being torn apart, Jesus also sees the Spirit coming down from heaven, like a dove, not just upon him, but into him. This is the same Spirit, or wind, of God that moved over the face of the waters of the deep at the creation of the world. And now God is beginning to remake that old, broken creation.
The voice that comes from heaven as soon as the heavens are being torn open not only affirms Jesus' identity and calling, but suggests the script for how the new creation will come into being. The heavenly words are actually a composite citation of Israel's scriptures, meant to recall not just these words alone, but the contexts from which they come. The first saying, "You are my son," comes from Psalm 2, a Messianic Psalm that offers a statement of political judgment and warning to the nations. "Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?" the Psalmist asks. "The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed" (Ps. 2:1-2).
But God merely laughs at these human plots, and then speaks to the chosen one: "You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession" (Ps. 2:6-8). When the voice from heaven cites Psalm 2, it is not only affirming Jesus as God's son, but predicting the opposition he will face among the nations, and his ultimate lordship over them. So, too, the last word we hear from the heavenly voice -- "with you I am well-pleased" -- is an allusion to Isaiah 42, the first of the famous "suffering servant songs" in Isaiah. The one in whom God delights is the servant, upon whom God places God's spirit, the one who will bring forth justice to the nations. The words from heaven at the baptism of Jesus are, thus, more than just a statement of who Jesus is and how much God likes him. They are, rather, a way of reminding all those present of what lies before God's servant, the Messiah, as he sets about rewriting the scripts for the people of Israel.
As soon as the voice is finished speaking, the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. Unlike the other Gospels there is no mention in Mark of the contents of the temptations themselves, which are not as important for Mark as the fact that Jesus is retracing the steps of Israel's history in order to rewrite her story. Whereas Israel in the wilderness stumbled and wandered in sin, rebellion, and distrust, and longed once again for the chains of slavery, Jesus withstands Satan's tests. His commitment to God is opening a new way, a new history, a brand new script, for 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. And if God has come near, then all the assumptions and the logic that stood behind the Law and the need for sacrifice have been swept away. All of the old stories and scripts that told us who we are and what we must do are being swept away. 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. It's time to turn around, to repent, to let your imagination of the world be transformed. It's time to put your trust in the Good News of God that Jesus announces and manifests. The old world is ending. God's reign is already here. The world and all of its ways are being reordered and re-scripted.
Which brings me to us, and to the rituals by which we name and set aside our burdens. Think about all the old scripts and obligations that have defined the life of First Christian Church of Atlanta:
Will we always be survivors? Will these old and continuing stories and scripts master and enslave us? Will our story be driven by fear and shame, or by deadly repentance and hope? Let me ask you, will we let our old scripts die with Jesus of Nazareth in the waters of the Jordan, or will we be content to confess our sins and then go back to the safety of Jerusalem? The gospel story is simple: The time is full. God's rule has come near to us. What's our story? What scripts will we follow?
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