January 8 One More Powerful

Introduction

Our text this morning may sound familiar as we read most of it just a month ago.  At that time we were in the season of Advent and John’s action was a reminder to ask ourselves how we are being prepared for the arrival of Christ.  Well this morning, we look at the same passage from a different vantage point, but it is still a preparation for the coming of the Messiah.  However, this time it is not a preparation for the Messiah as an infant, it is the preparation for the Messiah as a man.  But the question I asked on Christmas Eve is the same, ‘Will we recognize him?’  Will we be like Herod or the magi?  Like the inn keeper or the shepherds?  The Pharisees or the tax collectors?  Will we recognize Christ when he comes?  John is attempting to prepare us to do so.  Let’s see how.

Mark 1:1-11

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"-- 3 "a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" 4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." 9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

          “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God.”  So begins the gospel of Mark.  When someone comes to you and says, I have good news, they establish a certain expectation.  I have good news, we’re having steak for dinner.  I have good news, I found plane tickets for $100 less than we thought they would be.  I have good news, the tests came back negative and you don’t have cancer.  Were someone to say they had good news and follow it with, ‘our car just broke down.’ We’d likely be even more upset than if they’d just told us the car broke down.  So, whenever someone begins by telling you they have good news, they set a certain expectation.

Disneyland

          I was eleven years old when my parents gathered my brother, sister and I to tell us they had good news.  And the good news was news that almost every kid hopes for at some point.  It is news that has become a rite of passage for families.  I am speaking of course of Disney World.  Kids, we have good news, we’re going to Disney World. 

          We were ecstatic and to understand why, you’d have to know a little more about my family.  For my entire life to that point, our vacations consisted of loading up the car and driving to my grandparents or loading up the car and camping at the state park.  As of yet, we had never really been to a place that actually had a brochure, let alone a commercial that was a vacation destination.  Now we, the Sikes family had arrived because we were going to Disney World.

          The day finally arrived and we loaded up the 1975 Chevy Impala and headed south on I-75.  After ten hours in the car we finally arrived in Orlando and pulled into our residence for the weekend, a KOA campground.  This was the first sign that our Disney World vacation might not make all our dreams come true, campgrounds are great places to stay, but they are more what you think of in connection with the woods instead Disney World.  But we were too excited to care, so we set up our tents.  My brother and I were in a two-person tent while my parents and younger sister stayed in a 5 person tent they’d borrowed from some neighbors.  It was an older tent but enough to keep the bugs away.

          Our first day at the park was great.  We rode rides, scenes and had a great time.  Things went so well that on the way back from the park my dad offered something he never, I mean never offered, he offered to take us out to eat.  Wow boy, that was big time.  And living it up, we decided to try something we’d never tried, Chinese food.  It all sounded so cool until we got the menu and didn’t recognize anything.   My sister and I got hamburgers while my brother ordered Poo Poo platter and ended up eating hardly any because it had too many vegetables.  Oh well, at least we had Mickey and Donald to look forward to the next day.  But, while we were eating, things had changed in the magic kingdom.  The skies had opened up.  Just getting to our car was like we’d been in the shower.  Somehow we made it back to the campground and into our tents where it kept raining. 

          My parents learned something really quick about their tent.  Though it was great for keeping the bugs out, it didn’t do so well with the rain.  Within an hour, the three of them had abandoned the tent for the car.  My brother and I had somehow managed to fall asleep, but it kept raining.  Likely we would have been okay if the lightening had not arrived.  That was too much.  At about 1 in the morning, my dad expelled us from the tent and into the car where all 5 of us and a couple of mosquitos tried to spend the rest of the night.  It was, to say the least, miserable.  As was the next day. 

          Instead of traveling back to the magic kingdom we spent the day at the magic laundry mat drying things out.   Though we were able to make it back Disney World and the trip was not ruined, it had become a major disappointment.

          Have you ever had good news turn into a disappointment?  After spending some time with our passage this morning, I wonder if there wasn’t a hint of disappointment from the people and even from John.  Let me explain.

John and the good news

           In the first 8 verses of Mark we hear loads of good news.  In verse 2 we hear that an ancient prophecy regarding the coming of the Lord is being fulfilled.  We know this because a messenger has come.  This messenger’s name is John and he came baptizing in the desert region by the Jordan.  Now, the desert is not exactly Disney land, yet there was something so appealing about John’s message that both the city folk of Jerusalem and the country folk from the Judean countryside came all the way out to meet him.  What was it that was so appealing about John’s message, his good news?

          First there was the desert which was the historic place of the formation of the Hebrew people.  It was there God took them from slavery and formed them into his people.  This journey climaxed at the Jordan River where the people crossed over in to the Promised Land, Israel’s version of Disney Land.  In setting up shop here, John was declaring a place of new beginnings.

          And at this place he offered a chance for people to confess their sins and be forgiven.  Not unlike the turning of the calendar, new year is a chance for new beginnings.  It feels good to make some resolutions and sort of start things over.  John was offering the people this chance through forgiveness and even the ritual of baptism which allowed the people to arise from the waters and watch their sins flow downstream.  This person and place offered a new beginning for them as well. 

          All of these things lead me to believe that John was starting something new.  Perhaps this is the reason the lectionary people placed Genesis 1 with this passage.  But it was not just the new beginning that got people excited, it was what, or I should I say who was coming next. 

         

One more powerful

          “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I’m not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  Wow, the people must have thought, we were excited about John, but he’s saying there is someone even cooler that is coming.  I imagine the people looked around at all the other folks who were there, the peasants, the city folks, the soldiers and even the Pharisees and were amazed at the power that John had to attract so many and such a broad spectrum of people.  If there was one coming with more power, they’d like to see this.  And not just more power, but so much power that John wasn’t even worthy to be his servant, to do what not even servants were expected to do, untie their master’s sandals.  This must be some giant of a person.

          And what’s this about baptism?    Did he say this one to come would baptize us with the Holy Spirit?  Unbelievable.  Forever, the only people who received the Holy spirit were the prophets and some of the kings.  Is he saying this person will submerge us in God’s spirit like John did in the waters of the Jordan.  This person must be an amazing, incredible, unbelievable person. 

          Yes, John had set the expectations high and then…they arrived at the campground.

Jesus’ arrival

          “At that time, Jesus came…”  This is not a bad start, simple, to the point.  It isn’t a grand start, not what one would expect from the Son of God, but an entrance nonetheless.  But then we hear, “…Jesus came from Nazareth, in Galilee…”  When Nathaniel is told that they’d found the Messiah and he was from Nazareth he replied, “Nazareth?  Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  It was a small, irrelevant village which sat in the stix of the country.  If you couldn’t be from Jerusalem, then at least be from the Judea.  But Galilee, that was the stix, the hills, the kuntry with a k.  One wouldn’t expect a great leader to come from either of these places.  And things got worse.

          “…Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”  He was ‘baptized by John in the Jordan.’  Now keep in mind, John has just said that one would come more powerful than I, yet, here John was baptizing Jesus.  He also mentioned he wasn’t worthy to untie his sandals, yet, here he was submerging him in water.  He said that Jesus was the one that would baptize with the Holy Spirit, yet Jesus himself receives only water and dirty river water at that. 

I wonder if the people were shocked, or at least disappointed.  All this set up for good news, for a powerful person and yet from what we’ve seen so far, there isn’t much to look at.  But, you say, what about the voice?  That’s pretty powerful.  Yes, let’s talk about that.

The voice

          I will admit that this is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  I love the fact that Jesus hasn’t done anything to this point, yet God already declares, “this is my son, my beloved, with him I am well pleased.”  What a great start and what an encouragement to us as well.  I hope that everyone associates the waters of this baptism with these words and embraces the truth that they are God’s beloved child with whom God is pleased.  But just for a moment, let me set that significance aside and help us imagine what the people may have heard, if they did hear this voice.

The meaning of the texts often lay in the metaphor we attach to them.  One of the ways the New Testament authors do this is by Old Testament connections.  The Jews were people of the book who knew the stories of Moses and the prophets.  So, when they heard this voice, they would likely have heard echoes of the Old Testament.   So, from where did the echoes arise? 

The King (Psalm 2:7)

          “I will declare the decree of the Lord, ‘you are my son, today I have become your father.”  Some, perhaps most, would have heard this voice and thought of Psalm 2.  This Psalm is a royal Psalm in which God not only declares his support for the king, likely David, but gave successive generations a model for what the coming Messiah would be like. 

The Servant (Isaiah 42:1)

          However, there was another source of this echo that might have been heard as well, this one is from the prophet Isaiah.  “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.”  This is from Isaiah, so that is good, but servant?  We like the king part better. 

The Sacrifice (Genesis 22:2)

          “And God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah…”  Does this sound familiar?  This is the story of when God appeared to ask Abraham to sacrifice his son and if this is the echo, then who is Jesus other than the role of the lamb. 

          What started with a king, stepped down into servant and finished with a sacrifice.  Are we still talking about good news?  What started with Disney World stepped down into the KOA and ended with a family of 5 crammed in a car.  Was this still good news?

A way more powerful   

          Undoubtedly, the crowds would have been hoping for the first metaphor, yet, as we read through the gospel of Mark we will discover over and over again that Jesus was showing that this kind of power only came through the second and third; servant and sacrifice.  There is probably a reason why Mark starts his book by writing “the beginning of the good news…”  We are just in the beginning and to really get the good news, you need to read to the end.  Are we willing to stay til the end?

The way out…

          I don’t know why you came here this morning.  No doubt each of us desire to be connected with the one more powerful with John, with the one who is the son of David, with the one who is the son of God.  I believe this is part of the good news.  Jesus does reign in glory and some day he will gather us up into that kingdom as well.  But what we witness in the rest of the gospel is Jesus inviting the people to live that kingdom of heaven on earth.  And the way he did this?  Servant.  Sacrifice.  Are we willing to follow this Galileean from Nazareth?

          Where do I start?  What does it look like?  I can’t be the suffering servant of Isaiah.  I can’t be Isaac of Genesis.  Where do I start?  This is where I find the words of two past saints helpful.  The Scottish writer and pastor George MacDonald wrote that God is hard to satisfy, but easy to please.  Easy to please.  I like that.  CS Lewis fleshes this out more in Mere Christianity when he writes, “And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty."

          I’ve never been back to Disney World or Disneyland, but not because it was bad trip.  Rather, because it was so good.  In retrospect, Disney World was far less about Mickey Mouse and Space Mountain and more about my family and the trip.  Our memories are not of the rides, they are of one another and this is the real story and it too has become good news.