Mark 1:4-11

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

On Wednesday we all witnessed a historic, unprecedented, and horrific event as fellow American citizens stormed the US Capitol building in a deadly attempt to thwart democracy.

Also on Wednesday, the Western Christian church entered the liturgical season of Epiphany – a season dedicated to the idea that God’s presence and goodness is being unveiled, revealed, shown to the nations of the earth. Light, in the midst of darkness. Order out of chaos.

The gospel text for the day of the Epiphany of our Lord this past Wednesday was the story of the magi presenting themselves and their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Holy Family. Their journey takes place under the orders and watchful gaze of an arrogant and entitled ruler who has received word that his political power will come to an end due to the birth of a new king. Herod’s solution to the threat of his power being taken away is a violent one: he has every male infant in the region murdered. He himself does not carry out the violence, but he entrusts his followers to use whatever violent means they see fit in order to accomplish this goal. They oblige.

The wise men, upon finding the Christ Child, do not return to Herod with news of the child’s location, but instead went home by another road – a beautiful and brilliant act of nonviolent resistance. The magi, those “wise” men, did their part to disengage from a pattern of destruction and take some violence out of circulation – a brave decision with history-altering ramifications.

The season of Epiphany begins with a warning about the horrific lengths that individuals intoxicated by worldly power will undertake when that power is threatened. The season also begins with the acknowledgment that nonviolence is the foundation of God’s kingdom.

The next Epiphany story – the next story about God’s presence and goodness being unveiled, revealed, shown to the nations of the earth – is what we heard today. John the Baptizer is calling people to repent – to do a 180-degree about-face with their lives – in order to be ready for the coming of salvation.

One among the crowd heeds the invitation and completely submerges in the cleansing waters of baptism. “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” His life would go on to prove that being loved by God is the true power of the universe and that love cannot be taken away.

I don’t remember my baptism, but I know without a doubt that water was poured over my head along with the declaration that God loves me. If you have been baptized, then you too have heard the words of God’s love for you. If you have witnessed the community gathered around the baptismal font and applauded as the baby, teen, or adult was presented to the community, then you have been reminded of the unique way that God’s love is expressed over and over again as those water drops fall off the forehead and return to the font. If you have experienced the pronouncement of God’s love for you, then you have within you the most powerful thing in the world and it is power that cannot be taken away.

Two Epiphany stories of two powerful men. Two totally different ways of reacting to God’s presence and offer of salvation. Herod was horrified; Jesus was humbled. Both were loved by God, but only one knew that God’s love was sufficient...that God’s love is the most powerful thing in the world and it is power that cannot be taken away.

World history is replete with stories of men who reacted violently when their worldly power and positions of privilege were threatened. The pages of scripture tell of scores of rulers, even God-fearing ones, who sought to preserve their power at all costs, even when it meant engaging in violence. Herod is simply one among many.

But we don’t worship the leaders who react violently when their positions of power and privilege are threatened. Instead, what unites us is our worship and adoration of the one who was humble enough to be washed, who rejected worldly power and false idols, who identified with society’s outcasts and gave them hope.

We worship the one who was executed by the violent power-hungry rulers and structures of the world. And we worship the one who rose from the dead, proving once and for all the complete futility of worldly power.

Why, then, was Christian imagery referencing the prince of peace and the God of love found on the flags, clothes, signs, and lips of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday...those who express the sentiment that their worldly power and privilege is being stripped away? Why would the baptized and beloved of God resort to violence (or at least be a part of the mob that put others in harm’s way)?

As a representative of Christ’s church I have to publicly condemn not just their actions but the theology that contributed to their sense of right and wrong because it has more to do with Herod than Jesus.

Many Americans (though, sadly, not all) were quick to condemn the violence and lawbreaking that unfolded in our nation’s capital on Wednesday. However, those who participated in the insurgency are not the only elements that are to be condemned. As an assembly of people who profess to follow Christ above all else, we must all take the time to reflect on the ways in which we, too, are prone to react with violence when we feel that our power and privilege is being threatened. This is what it means to remember our baptism – to daily put to death that which seeks to displace God in our lives and daily to rise to new life as we focus on God alone.

The events of this week and the lives that were lost demand that each and every one of us take an honest look at how our actions are contributing to the violence that seems so readily-accessible today. In what ways do we feel our worldly power slipping away? To what lengths are we willing to go to prevent that from happening? And if our honest answer to that question scares us, we can remember our baptism and our belovedness. We can repent and return home by another way.

These are the early days of Epiphany. God’s presence and goodness is being unveiled, revealed, shown to the nations of the earth. Light, in the midst of darkness. Order out of chaos. We keep watch together. We keep watch over one another. And we do all we can to remind one another of our belovedness. That is the true power that cannot be taken away.

Amen.

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

As it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were coming out to be baptized by John, in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now, John wore clothing of camels’ hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

This weekend, my son Jackson and I found ourselves binging a Netflix show called “The Confession Tapes.” It’s a series of one-hour, crime documentaries about cases where men and women (and children, too) seem to have falsely confessed to some pretty heinous crimes.

I’ll spare you most of those details, because it is Sunday morning, but suffice it to say, through poor – and often criminal – detective work, corrupt interrogation tactics, a desire to close cases at all costs, and an inability for the average bear to withstand all of the above when it’s stacked against them in just the right way after hours and hours and hours of questioning, the show tells of mothers who confess to crimes against their own daughters; fathers who confess to crimes against their own wives and children; young men who confess to committing crimes with and against complete strangers. And it tells, too, about how ready and willing a jury of one’s peers is to believe such a confession in spite of tangible evidence and common sense that seem to prove otherwise.

(According to the Innocence Project, of all criminal convictions that have been overturned and exonerated thanks to DNA evidence, 30% of them involved false confessions as part of their initial investigation. But I digress.)

Of course, what John the Baptizer is calling people to, down at the river, is entirely different from all of that, but it got me thinking. First of all, John’s invitation to repentance is for sins, actually committed. Maybe not arson or murder or anything that would make its way to Netfix for most of us, – but maybe some of that, too. Who knows? Whatever the case, these confessions he was calling for were to be made, rightly, with the goal of true repentance and real redemption, in the end.

Which means these confessions and this repentance John was calling for were invited, not coerced. These confessions and this repentance were to be made with hope and trust in God’s grace and mercy, not out of fear for God’s judgment and wrath. And these confession and this repentance led to new life and second-chances, not life behind bars or some kind of eternal shame and punishment.

And this was a new way to understand God those coming to John back in the day. John was promising something new and better and different in the Jesus who was coming after him. See, John was in tune with what God was about to do in and through this Messiah who was on the way. John seemed to know what others didn't: that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus had been born to save the world, not to condemn it, and that Jesus' ministry of peace, love, and justice, of healing and hope and mercy was about to begin in a big, beautiful, world-changing sort of way.

And John the Baptizer wanted others to be in on it. So, for John, “preparing the way” was about getting people to acknowledge how badly they needed this new kind of savior. John was speaking to Jewish people who knew what it was to be enslaved. He was preaching to Jewish people who knew about being in exile. And, like the prophet Isaiah before him, John wasn’t screwing around. He was reminding whoever would listen to him about their history – banished from a garden called Eden, captive in Egypt and set free to wander the wilderness, so often pushed, pulled, and persecuted and at the mercy of the world around them.

And, the hard holy truth of this, is that this is our story, too… still… as God’s people on the planet. If the events of the past year have taught us anything, it’s that we are at the mercy of so much that feels beyond our control – banished in our own way; wandering, lost sometimes, in our own kind of wilderness.

We are a law-abiding people who pay our taxes (I hope) and obey the speed limit (most of the time), but who are at the mercy of social and political systems that seem broken in so many ways.

We are a people feeling exiled from our church buildings, from our work and schools, from our friends, neighbors, and families, even.

We are a people wringing our hands and clenching our fists with more anxiety and fear, more frustration and sadness, more uncertainty and so much that we can’t possibly know about what’s coming next. And to be honest, I can’t help but wonder if all of this, for the likes of most of us listening to me, anyway, is just a taste of how most of the world lives, more of the time than people like me have been willing to see or understand.

Which means John the Baptist’s warnings and wishes and welcome to the river are for all of us – me, included – in still new ways this time around, if we’ll let them be.

What I mean is, I’m trying to recognize in all of this pandemic fear and frustration, that this is nothing new for a lot of people. So many in the world are worried about their health and their healthcare – and that of their loved ones – like this, every day, all of the time.

I’m trying to recognize that so many nations around the globe live constantly, year after year, with the kind of social-political tension we’ve been wrestling with in our own country, lately.

I’m trying to recognize that the day-to-day frustrations and uncertainties we’re feeling about work or school or worship, are ways of life for more people, more of the time out there in the world – and I, like many of you, I think, am just getting a taste of it in a way I never expected.

And I’m embarrassed by that. Ashamed, even, sometimes when the fullness of it hits me. And all of it makes me want to break out my camel-hair coat and my leather belt, too, and, like John the Baptist, call us all to task like some carnival barking, street-preacher out there in the wilderness.

I mean, I want to say, what if we complained less and confessed more?

What if we stopped complaining about how inconvenient all of this is and confessed, instead, our greed and selfishness and entitled living?

What if we stopped complaining about everyone with whom we disagree and confessed, instead, our own impatience and lack of understanding and pettiness, too?

What if we stopped complaining about all we don’t have or can’t do and confessed, instead, our ingratitude, our despair, and our lapses in judgment?

What if we stopped complaining about how much has changed for us these days and confessed, instead, our pride and our indifference and our denial of the suffering that was and is and will remain for so many others, when things go back to the “normal” we long for?

What if we confessed our Sin, people – Sin with a capital S – and what if we meant it; and repented to the point that we were changed to the degree that we found ourselves in solidarity with the world around us in a new way?

That’s something like what John the Baptist was calling people toward, out there in the wilderness, so many generations ago. And it’s what, I believe, he would say to us now as we wait and long and hope for Jesus.

Because if people like us can apparently be coerced or scared or tricked into making false confessions to things we’ve never done, might we not be invited and loved into faithful confession, too – real contrition, true humility, sincere repentance that leads to change – by a God who promises our forgiveness at all costs?

We would be transformed by that and we could change the world, because of it, too. We would experience the Kingdom alive and well and here and now. We would see love and justice and mercy “on earth as it is in heaven.” We would prepare the way and be prepared, ourselves, for God’s grace to be born – for our sake and for the sake of the world.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The True Power of God's Love

Complain Less, Confess More