Jan. 11,2009
The Baptism of our Lord
Mk. 1:4-11 MLC – Dennis Township NJ
Hartmut Fege, D.Min
Epiphany – to reveal, to
show, to see differently, to see for the first time or to see for the last time.
In Marks Gospel there are
not Shepherds,
No Angels, no Magi,
No table no Mary or Joseph
Sometimes we forget that
the 27 books of the New Testament at one time were not part of the Bible.
They circulated
independently for almost 100 years or more before they became part of what we
today call our New Testament.
There where some Christian
communities in the first century for whom this was the beginning of the story…
“In those days Jesus came
from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptize by John in the Jordan.”
There where no angles
scaring the wits out of Shepherds or no cosmic symphony of
“ In the beginning was the
word and the word was with God”
Mark writes less like a
poet and more like a reporter for the NY Times.
In those days Jesus came
from Nazareth…
Like the others who made
their way to the river, Jesus joins them and is baptized,
washed and joining himself
to all of us… who stand in need of washing.
So like the others he waded
out into the same waters that his ancestors had crossed… after wandering for 40
years in the wilderness…
Historic waters, but on
that day they looked quite ordinary.
As Mark tells the story,
Jesus was one among many who came to John for Baptism.
When Jesus came out of the
water – Mark tells us that Jesus saw the havens “torn apart” the Gk.
Translated torn apart is schizoid.. from which we get such words as
schizophrenia and schism..
There is a certain violence
in the moment..
Maybe Mark had the passage
of Is. In mind that we read a few weeks ago “Oh that you would tear the
heavens open and come down to make your name known…”
And then a voice closer to
a whisper than the resonance of a Hollywood makeover, “You are my beloved
son. With you I am pleased”
It might have been just a
whisper or just the way the wind gusted and rustled the reeds on the river bank.
We are told that Jesus
heard the words as a dove glided across the water just as the wind rustled the
reeds… as far as we know no one else did.
But from that moment on..
noting in this world would be same again..
There was a tectonic shift
of cosmic proportion.
As Barbara Lundblad notes,
“ the heavens where torn apart –and they would never quite close again”
The first ten years of my
life I spent in a quite little country village on a mountain plateau, about 40
miles from Wiesbaden.
The town was called
Mappershain.
The town then had maybe 25
or 30 homes… now it has even less.
As a matter of fact the
towns postal service has been merged with a neighboring zip code.
When you are a kid at least
this kid..
Each day was an adventure..
I used to
Love running down a grassy
meadow until my legs couldn’t go any faster and I’d fall and roll the rest of
the way.. and when I finally stopped and caught my breath I would look up at the
sky and see God.
As the sun and wind brushed
my face and the insects that inhabit the meadows buzzed me…
I was as close to God as I
have ever been. I have been back to that little town several times… some of the
towns people still remember my family.
Of course the are my age
now and they too where children then..
I have gone back to the
meadow on the hillside.. but the moment– the epiphany of my youth has eluded
me.
The faith of my childhood
has been torn apart, ripped in many places and the pieces don’t quite fit as
neatly as they once did back then.
But I find that is through
the torn places of my life that I now find a faith that suits me better as an
adult.
From the day that Jesus saw
the heavens torn he began some tearing of his own.
He began by tearing apart
the preconceived notions of what the Messiah is supposed to be. . . not a regal
monarch but a suffering servant..
He began tearing apart the
social fabric that separates the rich from the poor.
Jesus would have a special
word for illegal aliens – it would have been a word about justice and compassion
without the “illegal”. He would remind us that we are all aliens.
If we asked him if we are
our brother’s keeper he would have reminded us that we are not our brothers
keeper but we are our brothers brother and sisters sister’s sister…
He challenged the worlds
preconceived notions of what worship is about. “Not everyone who says to me Lord
Lord… but he who does the will of father knows what worship means”.
He tore apart the very
fabric of the notion of power and privilege when he preached his first sermon
not in a temple but on a hillside.
Mtt. 5.ff. Blessed are the poor in
spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who
mourn”
Noting would ever be the
same again. When the heavens where torn apart that day they pieces would not
quite fit again..
At the Jesus hung on a
cross between heave and earth. It was now about noon
and until three in the afternoon while the Suns light faded and the curtain of
the temple was torn in two Lk.23.4
Just like the heavens where
torn on the day of Jesus baptism the curtain was torn from top to bottom.
The Holy and the Profane
The Sacred and Secular
The Sacristy and the
Sanctuary - no longer separate- the people and God became at one.. that is what
the word atonement is about!
No that day there was no
voice from heaven… God was silent; not even a whisper.
But there was a voice. It
was barely audible. It came not from a distraught disciple or from one of the
Mary’s. It came of all people from a Roman soldier a centurion an officer with a
command of 100 troops.
When the centurion saw what
had taken place he said
“Certainly this man was
innocent
So, where are the torn
places in your life?
Where are the paces that
the innocence of childhood has been ripped and torn by the vicissitudes of life?
As suggested by today’s
Gospel that is the place where God has put his claim on you. You are my beloved,
my son or daughter…
Carlyle Mareny said for him
that happened on a Saturday afternoon on such and such a st. in Knoxville Tenn.
when his father confronted him with a lie. At that moment I experienced the
loss of innocence – I felt like Adam in the garden when he realized that he was
naked…and it was also then I realized how much my father loved me.
Epiphany is an awakening, a
new way of seeing of being seen. Epiphany is when heaven is torn apart and you
know both the pain of innocence lost and the pain of re-birth or to use the
words of the Poet T.S. Elliot in the “journey of the magi”
As he retells the journey
of the wise men only this time it is a journey of the soul. Your soul and my
soul as we seek to find the Christ. The concluding paragraph tells of death and
birth. Listen: All this was
a long time ago, I remember And I would
do it again… We were led
all that way for Birth or Death? There was
Birth, certainly, We had
evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had
thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us,
like Death, our death. We returned
to our places, these Kingdoms. But no
longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an
alien people clutching their gods. I should be
glad of another death.
Based in part on a sermon by Rev. Dr. Baraba
Lundbald “Torn Apart Forever” 1.12.03
