Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis January 8, 2006

Mark 1:1-13

“High-Level Repentance”

John the Baptist was like a supercharged Billy Graham–without the suit and tie. He sounded the altar call: “Come, repent of your sins, and receive God’s forgiveness– before it’s too late.” And Mark says, “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him.” We know from Matthew and Luke that tax collectors, soldiers, the well off, Pharisees, and Sadducees made their way out to the Jordan River to get right with God. Oh, and I left out somebody else. Who else came out to the river to be baptized? Yes, Jesus the carpenter came all the way down from the northern town of Nazareth to be immersed in the river and baptized by John.

Wow, this is quite a range of people, isn’t it–from tax collectors to God’s beloved Son. So here’s the question. If all of these people went out there to be baptized, do you suppose you or I would have been among them, if we had lived in that place and time?

To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure if I would have made the journey out to the wilderness to be dunked into the river by John. I don’t usually think of myself as needing a whole lot of repenting. But here stands Jesus among all the rest of the crowd, humbly asking John to baptize him. Matthew says that John protests that he shouldn’t be baptizing Jesus; if anything, Jesus should be baptizing John. But Jesus presses him to go ahead and baptize him to “fulfill all righteousness.” If Jesus needed to do this, am I missing something important by assuming I’m above all that?

Let’s look through the crowd that was streaming down to the waters of baptism to get closer to God. I wonder if we might find ourselves somewhere among them, and find something that might be good for our souls too.

Let’s start with the obvious sinners like the tax collectors. These are people who have gotten caught up in something they know is wrong, and yet they have found all kinds of excuses to keep doing it: how else will they support their family; if they don’t do it, somebody else will; it’s a tough world, the system works against you, and everybody just has to do what they can to survive.

The tax collectors who have journeyed out to John have decided it’s time to come clean and change their lives. So they come into the river and confess to John how they’ve betrayed their people and exploited their neighbors and brought shame to their families and come to hate themselves. As John plunges them into the water, they release their drive to extract all they can from people and their obsession to accumulate more and more for themselves. And they come up out of the water feeling clean and whole and new.

Luke says there were also soldiers who had come to John to be baptized. To bear the fruits of repentance, John told them not to extort money from people by threats or false accusations. These are people who had power in their hands, and they had used their power to press their own advantage, even though it hurt others.

Power comes in all kinds of forms besides carrying a sword in your belt. We can make a cutting remark, or give someone a tongue lashing whose wounds last longer than physical wounds. We can use a demanding or intimidating attitude to coerce people into getting what we want. We can even twist apparent powerlessness around to our advantage, like exploiting being sick or helpless, and make people feel guilty for not doing what we want them to.

So some people walked into the waters of baptism aware of ways they had abused or exploited or hurt other people. They thought they had the power to get away with it. But something inside them knew they hadn’t gotten away with it. They carried the wounds and injustice they had caused as dark marks on their souls, and they knew that those dark marks blocked out the life and love of God flowing into their lives.

So they went into the river and told John what they had done to hurt others. They told him they didn’t want to use their power that way any more. And so they released their weapons into the water–the weapons of threats and extortion, the weapons of anger and a biting tongue, the weapons of manipulation and guilt. And they came up out of the water clean, humble and with hearts that were open to other people and open to God.

And Luke tells us there were people with two coats, whom John told to share with those who had none. These were ordinary people who had worked hard to try to make it in tough times, to get ahead a little, and to have some margin of security. Does that sound familiar to anyone? We’ve worked hard, we’ve done what we were supposed to, we’ve been responsible with our money, and so we have two coats, and a closet stuffed with clothes, and plenty of food, and some money in the bank. It’s only right and fair, because we’ve earned it.

And yet, when John proclaimed that God’s Messiah was coming and they’d better be ready, maybe something in some of those people began to ask themselves, “Is this what my life is about–more for me, while I ignore those who have so little? Will God want to know how much I’ve done for myself, or how much I’ve done for others?”

And so some came out to see John, not so much because they were burdened by guilt, as much as because they wanted their lives to mean more than just taking care of themselves.

As they stood in the water with John, they told him that they wanted to serve God and not just themselves. They were sorry for their selfishness that allowed others to suffer while they indulged themselves. And they released into the flowing water their callousness, their self-righteousness and their judgement of those who didn’t have what they did, and they asked God to show them who they might share with and how they might serve. And they went home with a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm for life.

And now we see Jesus quietly making his way through the crowd, and approaching the waters of baptism. What do you suppose he needed to repent of or release into the waters of baptism? We can only speculate what he was thinking. But we do know that Jesus came down to the river to deliberately make a transition from Jesus the man, to Jesus the Christ, the One whom God had chosen to usher in a new kingdom, a new order, a new way of living and living together and living with God that had repercussions into eternity. God’s Spirit was waiting to fill Jesus to the point where Jesus would incarnate, or embody, God’s own nature, so that God’s transforming power would be visibly active in the midst of the world’s sin, suffering and strife.

So I imagine that going to the Jordan river for baptism was a profound step for Jesus. As he stepped off the dry bank and into the river, he was stepping into God’s call for him to manifest God’s Spirit as no other person ever had. What did he need to release into the river? Not sins in the way we think of them. But he needed to let go of every vestige of his own ego, every desire to determine his own fate, every attachment to his own comfort and welfare, every hope he had for his own future, every sense of his life belonging to him–all of that had to be emptied out and released into the river in order for him to be totally filled with God. And so as John plunged him down under the water, Jesus let himself die as Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth. He let that identity be washed away. And he emerged out of the water ready to become the Messiah whose life was offered for the world. And in that moment that he emerged, Mark tells us, God’s Spirit descended on him “like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” And Jesus went on to be our Guide, our Master, our Savior, and our eternal Friend.

Now I think I understand why baptism quickly became the sacrament by which people entered the Christian faith. It is a sacrament by which anyone, from notorious sinners all the way up to God’s Messiah, can name and take responsibility for what is separating them from God, can release more of their sin and selfishness into God’s transforming grace, and can be redeemed, renewed and reborn as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

So did you find yourself anywhere in the crowd that gathered at the river for baptism? I did, in several places. Do you feel a call to name and take responsibility for something that separates you from God and from other people? Is there something that you are ready now to release into that cleansing river of God’s grace? Are you ready to go under the water to let go of more of your old ego-bound self, so you can emerge into life more filled with God? Then allow yourself to receive the waters of baptism, which I will sprinkle on you during our hymn. In this bowl of water is some water from the Jordan River, where John baptized all of those people, including Jesus himself. And now he offers this water to you.

(Sung prayer of response: “Search Me, O God.”)