Genesis 1:1-5 (The Message)
First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.
God spoke: “Light!”
And light appeared.
God saw that light was good
and separated light from dark.
God named the light Day,
he named the dark Night.
It was evening, it was morning--
Day One.
Mark 1:9-11
At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
It’s a new year in the church calendar, and that means our focus shifts to another gospel. This is Year “B” and so our gospel readings will largely be taken from Mark. If you remember from our season of studying the gospels, Mark’s is the first of the gospel accounts to be written down (as far as we know) – roughly around the year 70 A.D. Again, as far as we know today, before Mark’s gospel there was nothing in written form – except the seven letters from Paul that we studied this summer.
Mark is also the shortest of the gospels – no frills – just a bare bones account of what Jesus did to lead to the cross and resurrection. There’s no nativity narrative, long or short – no childhood stories. Mark dives straight in and introduces us to John – the wild man from the wilderness, and a fully adult Jesus, who comes – out of nowhere in particular -- to him for baptism.
This reading, placed as it is in the cycle, is clearly about Baptism – but I feel that we largely approach this whole topic as a discussion of the whys and wherefores of the institution of baptism as a sacrament. We rarely take the time to simply ask, “Why baptism?” We are, I trust, all entirely aware that there is nothing ‘magical’ to be found in water as a substance. It is a symbol – a visual sign of something going on at a much deeper level. But symbols are important.
What does interest me is the juxtaposition of readings today that pairs the opening lines of the Creation story with the Baptism of Jesus. It’s not a thought that is original to me, by any means, but it is no accident that the entry into this sacrament, the introduction of Jesus to the larger world, is through the agency of that substance that was present before, during, and after the creation of everything that is – a substance that is part of the physical world of which we also are a part.
The writer of this gospel, consciously or not, uses an element that is part of creation itself, and a vital constituent part of life as we know it.
The church has an unfortunate history of telling us that matter is gross and evil and that only spirit can be holy. Our inherited beliefs that land and resources exist only to be used for the monetary benefit of humankind and possess no intrinsic value of their own have led to deforestation, pollution, the extinction of untold numbers of animals, and the perils we face today in ignoring climate science. Centuries of church teaching taught that human flesh is ugly and sinful and our only goal is to escape it to become pure spirit. All of these teachings have led to self-loathing and untold agonies of both flesh and soul.
And yet, a careful reading of scripture assures us that everything was created in love and joy. From the repeated assurance that at almost every step along the God looked at his new creation and “saw that it was good” – not evil, not gross, but good, to God’s acceptance of creation as part of the sacramental world – a ‘beloved’ part – a cherished part.
Jesus was not baptized in a tidy church baptismal tank or sprinkled with a few drops of holy water. John the Baptist is described as a wild man, not only for his own looks and behavior but for the desolation of the desert wilderness in which he lived. I’ve read descriptions of the Jordan that describe it as a muddy stream, at best. The reading doesn’t give us much detail – Jesus may have been baptized in a raging torrent in spate or in a mud hole. In either case, it was unlikely to have been placid and beautiful.
And yet, this wilderness was where God chose for it to happen. Jesus walked “out into the desert” to find John – he didn’t find him in priestly robes in the temple. Instead, he sought a wild man dressed in skins and existing on what he could find. That’s where the sacrament was instituted – out in the middle of the wild creation that God loved and blessed. In using water – ordinary water – to sanctify Jesus in the eyes of the world (and perhaps in his own eyes) God, through John, sanctified every created thing – including us. Including us. We are part of that Beloved creation.
Do we live as if we believe that?
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