Sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday, "Citizens of God's World," Mark 1:1-11

Sermon 1/10/21

Mark 1:1-11

Citizens of God’s World

I, like many of you, I suspect, have been at a loss when trying to process the events at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, when a mass of people broke into the building to interrupt the certification by Congress of the Electoral College, which made official President-Elect Joe Biden’s election. Typically, after national world events like that - the kind that really shake us, I try to post something on facebook, some reflection, some words - maybe not of wisdom, but of encouragement, of hope, of helping people to process what’s happened. But I’ve been coming up empty. I’m not sure what to think, or what to do. 

It’s not that what happened at the Capitol was so shocking. After all, the escalating language since the election and well before has suggested that the way our US American culture has been functioning is unsustainable. But I’ve felt as if this past week has been a taking of all the brokenness we’ve been accumulating and putting it on garish, painful display, where we can’t ignore it or hide it or suppress it, and I don’t know what to do. 

I don’t know what to do when it feels like the meaning of words has become so fluid. What I think are “facts” and “truth” don’t line up with what others say. If I point to news accounts to support my claim, someone else can just call that fake news, and produce an entirely different account from an entirely different news source. What seems to me to be a clear act of racism, others insist is not, while labeling things that I see as anti-racist as racist. What I see as a peaceful protest, others insist is a call to violence, and what seems to me a violent insurrection, others describe as a protest, exercising first amendment rights. And I see my points of view as a reflection of my faith - grounded in my faith in God and my commitment to following Jesus. But I see others claiming to be on the side of Jesus, doing God’s work, who have come not to just different conclusions than I have, but opposite conclusions. Irreconcilable conclusions. Conclusions that make me wonder how I can be in relationship with people who don’t just have different opinions than me, but who seem to see the world in a way that is on a repeated collision course with the way I understand the world. Am I right? Are they wrong? Is there even such a thing as right and wrong?

And so even though I think I know what’s right, that I think I hear God’s call - I’ve been a little quiet. I’ve felt like my words are useless - they’ll resonate with people who already think like I do, and be ignored by people who already think the opposite of what I do, and I will be like what the apostle Paul described - “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” He didn’t mean that as a complement. Yet, I can still only try to follow Jesus as best as I possibly can, and although he certainly took time for reflection, for prayer, for rest, he never gave himself an “out” from the most difficult conversations and conflicts. In fact, much of the gospel narratives are spent recounting Jesus saying to folks, “You have heard that it is said … but I tell you.” It seems really different understandings of the truth are not so new. 

So - as people of faith, I think we’re called to take a stand, to speak up, to offer more than “thoughts and prayers” when crisis unfolds around us. Not instead of thoughts and prayers - but the ways of being and acting in the world that unfold because of what our thoughts and prayers reveal to us about God’s call. But how are we called? What do we do? 

Today is Baptism of the Lord Sunday. It’s the day on the liturgical calendar when we remember the baptism of Jesus, an event recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John’s gospel takes up similar themes, and Paul’s writings frequently discuss baptism in the name of Jesus, baptism by the Holy Spirit. In the Acts of the Apostles, baptism is again and again the act that joins new followers of Jesus to the community. Baptism is the marker of Christian identity. Baptism is the outward sign, the celebration of our becoming God’s family. It is God’s invitation of grace, and our response, our commitment, our vow to live in response to God’s grace a life of love in the ways of Jesus Christ. We “put on” Christ in baptism, clothe ourselves in Jesus, meaning to be as Jesus-like as we can be. 

In worship, it is common to renew our baptismal vows on this Sunday. We renew our baptismal covenant not because God ever rescinds God’s invitation of grace, but because sometimes it seems like we’ve left the party. Sometimes, we’ve forgotten our vows. God is faithful, but we are caught up in sin. We need a reminder, and a chance to recommit, to remember that we said “yes” to God’s invitation. As I was preparing for today’s service, I found a liturgy for the Reaffirmation of Baptism that was used “by the Worship and Spiritual Renewal Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in San Jose, California.” I found the prayer of confession in the liturgy moving. I want to share parts of it with you: 

Through our baptism we were made citizens of God’s kingdom, and freed from the bondage of sin. 

In baptism you joined us to Christ in his death that we might be raised with Christ in new life; but we cherish old ways and fail to embrace the risen life of righteousness, justice, and love. 

In baptism you united us with all the baptized who confess your name; but we foster division in the church. We refuse to live as one people, and so fail to witness to your reconciling love before the world. 

In baptism you call us to ministry in all realms of life, but we refuse the struggle to know your will; we do not nurture the ways of peace; we allow enmity and hatred to grow among us, putting neighbor against neighbor, and nation against nation. We abuse the earth you entrust to our care, and live in discord with all you have made. 

In baptism you sent us to serve with compassion all for whom Christ died; but we ignore the suffering of the oppressed and the plight of the poor. We take bread from the hungry, and will not listen to cries for justice. 

In baptism you gave us the Holy Spirit to teach and guide us, but we rely on ourselves, and refuse to trust your direction. We spurn your eternal wisdom, preferring the luring ways of the world. 

Remember the promises you made to us in our baptism, forgive our sinful ways and heal our brokenness. Set us free from all that enslaves us, and raise us to new life in Jesus Christ, that we may be your faithful servants, showing forth your healing love to the world, to the glory of your holy name. Amen. 

And the affirmation, the reconciliation: Hear the good news! In baptism you were buried with Christ. In baptism also you were raised to life with him, through faith in the power of God who raised Christ from the dead. (1) 

I keep coming back to that first statement: “Through our baptism we were made citizens of God’s kingdom, and freed from the bondage of sin.” We’re meant to be citizens of God’s reign on earth and in eternity. Our citizenship with God isn’t just one of our many identities. It is meant to be our primary identity. Not America First, or Democrats First or Republicans. Not Trump First or Joe Biden First. Our citizenship, our primary identity, the only one that matters eternally: we belong to God. That’s what we celebrate in baptism, and reaffirm today. We belong to God, and we want to follow God’s rule, and affirm God’s values, and live in God’s reign, and imitate God’s love. 

Pastor Brett Younger picks up the theme, exploring what this means more fully. He writes, ““The children of God tell the truth in a world that lies, give in a world that takes, love in a world that lusts, make peace in a world that fights, serve in a world that wants to be served, pray in a world that waits to be entertained, and take chances in a world that worships safety. The baptized are citizens of an eccentric community where financial success is not the goal, security is not the highest good, and sacrifice is a daily event. Baptism is our ordination to ministry, our vow to live with more concern for the hurting than for our own comfort . . . Baptism is the commitment to share our time with the poor and listen to the lonely.”

If we’ve been baptized, we’ve vowed - on our own, or through others who have loved and nurtured and spoken for us - we’ve vowed to be citizens of God’s reign. We belong to God. As God says to Jesus, “You are my child, beloved. I am well-pleased with you,” so God claims us, too. Citizenship in God’s reign means God first, our neighbor first, and in case we get confused about who our neighbor is, Jesus gives us lots of examples. Citizenship in God’s reign means God is in charge, and God’s will shall be done, not our own, not our President’s, not our governor’s, not our political party’s will. Citizenship in God’s reign means serving rather than being served. It means giving up rather than taking up power. It means that sacrifice is costly to us, rather than sacrifice that seems to cost others. Citizenship in God’s reign means, in words drawn from our baptismal vows, resisting evil, injustice, and oppression however they show up. It means rejecting evil. It means repenting - turning away from sin and back toward God when we’ve gone too long in the wrong direction. My allegiance is to God’s reign on earth and in eternity. In baptism, I celebrated my citizenship in God’s reign. And today I want to remember that it is God’s values I want to uphold, and God’s call to truth, to justice, to compassion, to love, to self-sacrificing service that I want to emulate. Knowing we are invited to be citizens of God’s reign won’t make things clear and easy. But, just like Jesus is reminded in his baptism of who he is, remembering we belong to God will give us strength to persevere as disciples of Christ, striving to put God first in everything.  

Remember, God, the promises you made to us in our baptism.  Forgive our sinful ways and heal our brokenness. Set us free from all that enslaves us, and raise us to new life in Jesus Christ, that we may be your faithful servants, showing forth your healing love to the world, to the glory of your holy name. Amen. (1) 

1. Adapted from “Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant”: “This liturgy for the Reaffirmation of Baptism, including the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, was used by the Worship and Spiritual Renewal Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in San Jose, California. This was the committee that discussed and approved the overture for solemn assemblies.” https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/reaffirmation-baptismal-covenant.pdf 

2. Brett Younger, as quoted on https://reverendjoanmkistler.blog/2020/01/12/sharing-christs-baptism/

Sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Year B, "A New Name: Beloved," Mark 1:4-11

Sermon 1/11/15

Mark 1:4-11

A New Name: Beloved

            Tim: Today we’re starting a new series in worship called, “A New Name.” Each week, we’ll be looking at a different person in the Bible who goes by a new name. Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon is called Peter. Saul becomes Paul. In each of these cases, the new name corresponds with a significant moment in their spiritual journeys. This is a series Pastor Beth’s been wanting to do since her first weeks at Apple Valley. Surviving a merger of congregations is a difficult task for churches. It usually isn’t all smooth sailing. And sometimes there’s a lot of residual grief and pain and tension and so on. Pastor Beth served as pastor for a few years at a church that was a United Church – Presbyterian and United Methodist– and when she first met with them, they told her about how firmly they thought of themselves as united. This made sense, because they had been merged together as one congregation for almost 40 years. And yet, Pastor Beth discovered that within two weeks of being there, she knew whether everyone was a Methodist or a Presbyterian! The differences between the denominations still stirred up trouble in the congregation all these years later. Making a new congregation out of older congregations isn’t an easy thing.

            The longer she’s here, the more Pastor Beth learns about the journey we’ve all been through to become one congregation – and she knows it wasn’t always easy, even still. But, she says, “I have to tell you, from this outsider’s perspective, you’ve done a remarkable job at becoming one congregation. Yes, I know what congregations some of you were once part of – but it isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I interact with you. Every church has some traditions that are special, but I’ve also found you refreshingly flexible when Pastor Penny and I want to try something new. It’s really delightful to pastor that kind of congregation, because it means that there’s room in us for God to do something new.”

            And we serve a God who loves to make all things new. That’s one of the promises of the scriptures: In Christ, we are new creations. When we follow Jesus, we have an opportunity to let go of the past, let go of harmful behaviors, let go of destructive patterns in our lives. We can actually let go of hurting ourselves and each other, and claim new life in Christ, resurrected lives. So between now and the season of Lent, as we begin a new year, we’re also thinking about what it means to be new creations in Christ, children of a new birth, given new names. Today we do that as we celebrate Baptism of the Lord Sunday.

***

Laura: Today, in our gospel lesson from Mark, we find Jesus at his baptism. Hopefully this text sounds a bit familiar – we just read most of it during Advent, the first section about John the Baptist. Mark is very brief in all things in his gospel, and so the actual baptism gets only three verses. John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus, is in the wilderness, preaching baptizing people, a symbol of repentance and forgiveness of sins. He speaks about one who is coming who is more powerful than he, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And then, indeed, Jesus arrives, and is baptized by John. The other gospels have a bit of dialogue between Jesus and John where John wonders why Jesus needs to be baptized by John, but that is of no importance to Mark. He only says that Jesus comes to be baptized, and that when he was, as he was coming up out of the water, the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit seemed to descend on him like a dove, and a voice spoke, saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Other gospels have these words from God directed to the crowd – This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased. But in Mark, this message is right from God to Jesus – You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. This event marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry – from here he goes into the wilderness himself for a period, where he is tested and tried, and then he begins showing up in synagogues, preaching, teaching, and healing. But it begins, in a way, with this baptism. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

***

Bev: A couple of years ago, Pastor Beth’s dearest friend Heather was struggling with the process of getting a learning permit for her then 16-year old daughter, who was ready to learn to drive. Somewhere along the way, Heather had misplaced her daughter’s Social Security card, which they needed to get Mickayla’s permit. Well, in order to get a new Social Security card, you need your birth certificate, which proves your citizenship, but you also need proof of identity – like a driver's license – which obviously she didn’t have. Of course, it turns out that you can also use a photo student ID card or a photo credit card or something like that, but proving your identity isn’t so easy.

Every so often, you can read news stories about people who have accidentally been declared dead in paperwork even though they are quite alive! Somehow names and information got mixed up, and these folks had ended up with bank accounts frozen, unable to get loans or credit, had stopped receiving things like social security checks, and had real financial difficulties as a result of the mix-up. And, as crazy as it sounds, some people have had an extremely difficult time proving their identity, proving that they were really alive and who they claimed to be, once this mistake had been made.

How would you prove your identity? Author John Reader, talks about how we keep trying to form our identity in different ways in contemporary culture. Sometimes we try self-as-commodity – we are sort of a “product” that can be branded and molded in a certain way. Sometimes we try self-as-consumer – “I shop therefore I am.” We try to take what we have, what we possess, and make it into who we are. Sometimes we try self-as-project, he says, constantly trying to put together a good-enough self by making sure we have the right trainings and qualifications and skills to be what we want and what is expected of us. Identity formation is an important process. We all go through a time or times in our life when we need to ask ourselves critically: Who am I? What do I believe? What is my life all about? But whenever we start building our identities from all these external sources, we are probably heading in a bad direction, never knowing our true selves. So who are you, really? What is your identity?

***

Liz: Sometimes we need to be reminded of who we are. John Reader was right: if we look in the wrong places, we can find a million voices that will gladly tell us who we are and who we should be. But these voices don’t know us. God, who created us, knows us. Our identity is being shaped from the day we are born and before and onward. We might, the day we are born, have had our feet dipped in ink to make prints that would identify us. We have names that we were given that set us apart. But even our names aren’t who we are. When we celebrate a baptism in the church, we are celebrating the fact that we all know someone's identity. We are celebrating that the person is a child of God, made in God's image, and part of the body of Christ. That is our identity, our true self. It is something we all share in, but something that is made manifest in each one of us in a completely unique way. We are God’s beloved. With us, each of us, even you, even me, God is well-pleased. We are Beloved.

Sometimes people get worried about baptisms when they have newborns. A lot of traditions and practices built up over time are hard to erase, and many pastors still find it hard to get people to believe that nothing bad happens to you if you aren’t baptized on a certain timetable. Baptism is a sacrament – and outward sign of an inward grace. And the inward grace is from God – God's unconditional love for us. Baptism, then, is a sign, a reminder to us of God's love. It is the thing we do to celebrate what is true no matter what. God made us. We are made in God's image. God loves us. Baptism is the reminder, the party, the celebration of that amazing fact. That’s why Jesus is baptized. It reminds him, as he starts what will be three years of heart-wrenching ministry that will lead to his death on the cross, that he is Beloved. Jesus is many things, and known by many names. But what he is first is God’s child, Beloved.  

***

Tim: Isn't it nice to be reminded of who we are? Figuring out our identities in this world of competing voices can be exhausting. We can get off track. Lost. Mixed-up. Isn't it good to remember? Who are you? What is the true self buried under all those expectations placed upon you? What is your true self, when you strip away all those layers you’ve built up to fit in, to get ahead, to be good enough? Who are you?

We have an opportunity to renew our baptismal vows, to remember the celebration that marked our true identity, so that we, too, might have strength for the journey that lies ahead. Do you need a reminder of who you are? Are you a disciple? Are you a follower of Jesus? Come, let God remind you. In whose image are you created? Who calls you by name? Come, let God remind you. You are loved without condition, part of God's own family. Come, Beloved, let God remind you. Amen.