Announcing the King! (Baptism of Jesus, Jan. 7, 2018)

Four baptized at NHCF today--a great way to celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. Here's the sermon. No audio today.

We have come through another Christmas season. We’ve had shepherds and angels and mangers and stars and Wise Men and wicked Herod. We’ve had Mary pondering these things; we’ve seen the coming of God for which the prophets prayed, but in a manner that they did not anticipate. God entered quietly, God entered unassumingly, God came to his own and for the most part, very little hanged. For days, and months and years after that first Christmas, Caesar still ran the world, Quirinius was governor of Syria, the Herods were still “Kings” in Judea, and the Romans kept an eye on everything. 

The new King—he was a refugee in Egypt. Taken there with his mother by Joseph to escape the murderous rampage of old Herod, a Pharaoh reborn.  

None of this is in the Gospel of Mark, the source of our lesson today. Not for Mark the genealogies that connect Jesus to David and Abraham, as for Matthew, or all the way back to Adam, as for Luke. Not for him angelic announcements, or heavenly choirs, or awestruck shepherds or adoring wise men or pondering mothers, or silent, protective, righteous fathers. Mark isn’t even interested in tying his Gospel to Old Testament prophecies—at least overtly, after the manner of Matthew, whose “This is that which was foretold. . .” seems to be inserted in every third paragraph. He just gets on with the announcement. Mark only does that once. And it sticks out as a result. 

“The beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God!” 

Boom! Mark’s message is an announcement. It is a proclamation. It is anything but disinterested history. It is Good News. It is euaggellion. It is a Greek Word eu is the prefix that means Good, aggel is the Greek word for message. It is a technical term. When a Roman general won an important victory, he would send proclaimers—evangelists—with the announcement of his victory—evangel—ahead of his returning army back to Rome. When a new emperor came to the throne, he would send evangelists with the evangel of his accession. There was a new Divine Caesar who would rule the world. The Good News is the announcement of a victory. It is the announcement of the arrival of a new King.  

Well, how does it begin? It begins at the edge of the waters of Jordan River. Which, if you have had the opportunity to ever be there, is not much to look at. Hallowed certainly by millennia of pilgrims, but on its own, not much more than a creek. And in that creek we find John the baptizer. The last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets. The herald, the messenger, the announcer of the Good News, who has stepped straight out of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” And people flocked to John. They repented of their sins. They submitted to a baptism of repentance—literally a change of mind; metaphorically a change of behavior—to prepare themselves for this one who would come with the purging fire of the Spirit of God. 

In those days, Mark continues, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galillee. Well, that’s telling, too. It’s obvious that Jesus is the “stronger man” whom John proclaimed, simply by proximity. But Jesus? A nobody from a backwater’s backwater. Nazareth—a mixed race town in a mixed race region with a dodgy reputation. Him? Yes, him. He’s the one.  

He came, moreover, to be baptized. Have you ever stopped to think just how counter-intuitive that is? And yet it’s important. The story is told by Mark, re-told by Matthew and Luke, and mentioned in John. It’s in all four Gospels. It’s important. BUT. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. It was about getting ready for the one who was coming. If Jesus was the one who was to come, he should have showed up—with appropriate splendor—thanked John for his good work, and started purging the people and judging the world. But no. He came to be baptized. If the Gospels were works of complete fabrication, this is just about the stupidest story to invent. Because it cuts against the grain. But there it is. Jesus submits himself to a baptism of repentance. Why? Does he need to prepare for the Coming One? Does he have some sin from which to repent? 

These questions bother Matthew, who includes an explanation from Jesus himself. But our story this morning is Mark’s story. And Mark raises those questions and deliberately leaves them open for now. Don’t worry. We’ll come back to them in a moment. 

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptized by John. And immediately. It’s not there in many English translations, but it is there in the Greek. Mark is always in a hurry. And immediately occurs again and again and again in his text. There is no lapse in time. Immediately, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he, that is John “saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” 

Here we have a divine approval of John’s message and announcement of Jesus’s identity. Here is the Good News that we had heard audibly in the preaching of John now made visible. The heavens were torn apart—the Greek verb is schizo, from which we get the word schizophrenic. Here we have an allusion to the Old Testament, Isaiah 64. If you remember, we read it ourselves way back on the first Sunday of Advent. The people had been told to expect the last great intervention of God and they, in response, called for it: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” And now? The heavens are torn open as that longing is fulfilled. God has entered into history.  

The Spirit descends “like a dove.” That does not mean a dove flew through a rift in the clouds and settled on Jesus. It means the Spirit settled on him in the same way a dove would. I presume that means, gently. Here was the One, who was God himself, and who would act in his humanity entirely under the direction and anointing of the Holy Spirit. Who is this One? Finally, we have the voice. “You are my Son. The Beloved.” Son of God. He is announced at the beginning. He’s the king. Stepped straight from the pages of Psalm 2. “I have installed my King in Zion!” says God there. “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” This is a royal title. This is euangellion! This is Good News the Great King is here! 

But he is not just the Son. He is the beloved son. The only son. We are meant here to hear an echo of Genesis 22. When God says those troubling words to Abraham, “Take your son, your only beloved son, to Moriah and sacrifice him to me.” And they go. Father and beloved only son. Son of the promise. The son given by God to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. The beloved son is bound. And Abraham raises his hand to strike and. . . . Do you remember the intervention of the angel? “Lay not your hand on the boy!” Do you remember the faith of Abraham which said, “God himself will provide the lamb”? The promised lamb for which Abraham looked was not the ram caught in the thicket on that day on Moriah, even as the son who would be a sacrifice for sin was not Isaac. No God himself provided the lamb and here he have an announcement not only of his identity as the royal king! But also of his mission. He is the Beloved Son. The Only Son. The one who will take Isaac’s place. And your place. And my place. And he does this in obedience to his Father. He does this in the power of the Holy Spirit. He comes not with fiery wrath to purge sin, but gently to bear it away. 

The euangellion! The announcement! Has been made. The King can now get to work.  

And that is where we move from Mark’s world to ours. What we have in front of us this morning, what greets us in the Gospel is the Announcement that King has come. He has come from literally from nowhere. He has come from a place no one would expect. But come he has. And with his coming, the heavens have been torn open. God has come among the people. With his coming, the Spirit has descended really, and gently. He will act in the Spirit’s power and in no other way. He has come with the Father’s approval. He is the royal Son. He is the Lamb who will show forth his reign even as he takes away the sin of the world. 

What an announcement! What Good News! It should have been made in Rome. In the Senate. In front of Caesar. Your days are over. The real King is here. It should have been made in the Temple, in front of the Saducees. The veil that separates God from the people is now torn. God is here. Thank you for your service as guardians. But no. It takes place in the muck and flow of the Jordan River. Why? 

In short because that’s where we are. In the muck. Estranged from God. Lost in our sin. Enslaved to dark powers. He is not a King who is far off and aloof and resplendent in glory but uninvolved with the lives of his subjects. Here I am reminded of the words Queen Elizabeth, the Queen mother, who wrote in a letter after the bombing of Buckingham Palace in 1940, “I am glad. . . . It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” She was no longer immune from the suffering of so many of her people during the Blitz. She was “one of them.” Even more so, Jesus is the king in our midst. A king who submits to baptism not because he is a sinner, but because he is for sinners. Not because he has sin of his own, but because he has come to take ours away. Not because he is enslaved to the dark powers, but because he is the stronger man, who has entered the strong man’s house and bound him and is now about to set the captives free.  Not because he needs to die, but because he knows we do and he refuses to leave us even at the hour of our death, but will bring us through into his own resurrection.  

Hear the charge of St. Paul: 

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” 

N, N, N & N, this is why the baptism to which you submit today is so very vital. Here in the waters of baptism, the king of the universe has identified with you. Here he has claimed you. Here, he has washed you. Here he has rescued you. Your identification with him in baptism is only a response to the grace—the favour of God—that came before.  Here, you will see and feel the promise made for you before the foundation of the world, namely that God would not be God without you. That he has torn open the heavens in search of you. That in and through his son, the beloved, he has found you. That through his Spirit, he has given you the very resurrection life that raised Jesus from the dead. 

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptized by John.