That Love [Baptism of Our Lord - Mark 1:4-11]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Mark 1:4-11

 

That Love

 

John the Baptist was very much a human.  I doubt that is a controversial statement.  But I say it because I believe that is what the Gospel of Mark would like us to understand.  The man who appeared in the wilderness, the man who stood waist deep in the waters of the Jordan, was human.

 

Mark gives us quite the description of John.  He was a baptizer; that was his vocation.  His message was repentance.  He was magnetic – or at least his message was.  Also, he wore, what I can only imagine, was a distinctive, and probably itchy, suit of camel’s hair.  He cinched it up with a leather belt.  And he lived off of the land, eating bugs and their vomit – honey.  Mark paints for us a fairly effective picture.  According to the gospel writer, John was a rugged, focused, unique, and holy human.  And I suspect an acquired taste – with his noticeable quirks and unapologetic presentation.

 

Jesus, on the other hand, is a mystery.  For all of the effort Mark puts into his description of the Baptizer, he says not a descriptive word about Jesus in this passage.  We don’t know if Jesus’ clothes were made of animal hair.  We have no idea if Jesus ate bugs.  We only know that he was baptized by John.

 

He was a mystery: God incarnate standing in a que that ended at some remote riverbank – standing in the midst of the unwashed, and the just washed, masses.  Standing shoulder to shoulder with those he came to save, with some who would learn from him the meaning of love, with some who would, perhaps, later shout, “Crucify him!”  A holy mystery, the Word made flesh, the son of Mary, appeared on the horizon, walked into the water, and stood beneath a fractured sky, in a fractured age, in a fractured world, as a crowd of broken people looked on not understanding what they were looking at.  And God spoke love through that brokenness into that brokenness. 

 

And that love was the spark that gave life to Jesus’ earthly ministry.  That love gave Jesus the tenderness to touch the brokenness of this world whole.  It gave him the will to shout hope into the abyss of despair.  It gave him the courage to defy violence in the name of peace.  It gave him the strength to forgive those who signed his death warrant, and drove his nails, and mocked his reign.   It gave him the grace to believe the Good News in a world in which there is too much bad news. 

 

Bad news has been our companion for far too long.  We are living in a fractured age, in a fractured nation, in a fractured world.  And it is painful and frustrating and heartbreaking.  But we are not without hope because God’s love always finds a way through the brokenness.

 

The love that found Jesus in the River Jordan has found you.  Is finding you.  Will always find you.  It will find you in your wilderness and in the waters and under the fractured sky.  Because you are Beloved.  That is the name with which you were marked in baptism.  You are loved with a love that will never let you go, from which nothing can ever separate you. 

 

I pray that love, the same divine love that cracked the sky above Jesus in the Jordan, sparks you; I pray that the love that holds you securely in its grip empowers your ministry, the ministry to which God is calling you.  I pray it gives you the strength to courageously oppose the lies and violence and hatred that are threatening to rend this nation, the Church, and the human family asunder.  I pray that impossible love gives you the stubborn will to shout hope into the abyss of despair.  I pray that love possesses your soul and bursts forth from your every pore in a flood of justice and peace. 

 

You are Beloved.  You are claimed, you are possessed, by divine love; the same force that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.  That love is powerful; it is how you will continue Jesus’ work in this world.  And that is what God is calling you to do.  God is calling you to dream the Beloved Community into existence, to make the kingdom of God come true on this earth: a kingdom in which swords are beat into ploughshares, a kingdom in which justice rolls down like mighty waters, in which the peacemakers are blessed, in which truth is treasured, and love is the highest law.    

 

We are now living in the season of Epiphany.  But today, in these fractured times, the epiphany will not be found in the stars.  If it is to be found, it will be found in you.