January 11: New life

First Sunday after Epiphany B

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

In Genesis this morning, we see God shining forth into the darkness---saving, creating, giving life.  God’s spirit is the divine life force that sweeps overs the face of the water.  This verb translated as “sweeps” is the Hebrew verb px;r\ (rahef).  It means to hover, move gently, to cherish, to brood—in fact, it can mean to brood and fertilize.  It is the same verb used in the 32^nd chapter of Deuteronomy to describe a mother eagle who hovers over her young, protecting them and granting them life.

For the Hebrew people, the Waters represent chaos—a dark abyss.  The Universe at the beginning of this Creation story is in a deep darkness, a great chaotic miasma of dark, formless void.  Into this darkness, God calls forth light.  The darkness is not gone; it is still there, but God has dominion and authority over the dark chaos, and from this chaos, God is able to create and speak new life. 

A great darkness, an abyss, chaos: I think we can relate to this concept all too well.  So many dead and wounded in the terrorist attacks in and around Paris; it seems that resorting to gun violence in order to solve our conflicts and tensions has become a way of life.    What we, as disciples and believers in Jesus, are called to believe and trust is: even in our current and personal state of chaos and darkness, whether it be the escalating gun violence in our world, poverty, disease, grief, depression, physical diminishment----God is able to create, breathe and speak new life into each of us, and into all of us.

The Creation stories highlight the rushing forth of God’s spirit into the formless, dark void, creating new life where once there was only chaos. God takes hold of the wet, dirty stuff from the darkness and fashions it, simply and radically, by speaking a new reality: “Let there be light.”

In the Gospel today, the chaos of the waters of Creation is replaced with the salvation found in the waters of Baptism.  For in Baptism, we are buried with Christ and raised to new life.  Christ goes down into the watery abyss and breaks forth into new life through the waters of baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Mark tells us the heavens are torn open---just as the curtain separating God from man in the Holy temple is torn at the death of Jesus---same verb.  We are to clearly understand that the opening of divine and human connection and interaction are proclaimed through Jesus and through our understanding that God’s words to Jesus are God’s words to us: You are my beloved child.  I will not be separated from you.

Due to this glorious opening between God and humanity that is created by Jesus’ life, ministry and death, God’s life-changing, renewing spirit is poured out among all of God’s people.  Jesus enters the transformational waters of Baptism, not because he needs it, but because we need it.  Jesus completes his identity with broken humanity---providing us with the first steps we need to take in order to turn our lives around---the steps of baptism, repentance, and reconciliation.  The step of claiming God’s claim on us and living that claim in order to bring light into the darkness, in order that our actions and choices proclaim to the world: Let there be light.

Just as God takes hold of the wet, dirty stuff and fashions a radically new creation in Genesis, so too at our baptisms---so too when we make ourselves vulnerable and live into God’s claim on our lives.  God takes hold of us---wet, dirty, broken humanity---and with the Holy Spirit hovering over the entire action---we are fashioned into a new being, incorporated as living members of the Body of Christ.  God declares to us: You are my beloved child.  I desire to pull you out of the darkness and into the light.

Today, the Word tells us that it is God’s voice that can transform the chaos and darkness in this world, the chaos and darkness within our selves. 

How will we hear God’s life-changing voice?  How do we hear it?  Are we willing to make ourselves available to hear it?  And in order to recognize and know it is God’s voice, we must first come to know God, God’s character, God’s way of being, God’s mission—so that we not be fooled by the cacophony of competing voices, noises, and sounds that long to pull us away from God’s light and suck us into the miasma of darkness.  We must be willing to make ourselves vulnerable to God, to put ourselves in the presence of God, in order to hear God. 

My friends, we live in the midst of chaos---we have seen the dark voids that suck up all manner of living matter in our world.  Are we willing to release our hold on it and put this wet, dark stuff into the hands of God?  Will we allow our lives, our selves, our world to be reshaped and refashioned by God’s radically transforming spirit?

Just this week I conversed with two men, one not even yet 20 and the other closer to 70, whose stories witness to the power that the dark has to lead us into lonely and devastating places.

At times like these, when we sit with someone in their darkness, we always want to say just the right thing.  We struggle to find just the perfect word that will help pull him from the muck.  I don’t know about you, but I rarely find that I have those words right on the tip of my tongue.  When I talked to the younger man, I said the only thing I think makes a difference.  It went something like this:

I told him that I would be there to listen; that I would walk with him, but more importantly, I told him the best thing I have to offer is Jesus.  Jesus in the form of a community who would like to get to know him and who will walk with him even when he makes poor choices.

Jesus in the form of people I know will help him---if he is interested---in figuring out how to get his life on a track that will lead to fulfillment and wholeness rather than to bleakness and hopelessness.  I told him it wouldn’t be easy work, and it wouldn’t be without pitfalls, but it would be worth it.

I can’t prove this to you, I said.  I can only tell you I know this to be true.  Because this is the truth of my life, my living, my dealing with darkness.  Because this is how I know Jesus.  Through people.  Through prayer.  Through our life of community together.  And because I know Jesus, there is always a light shining for me---even in the midst of the sorrow and tragedy---there is always a hope and a belief that light and joy will return because God, the bearer of light and producer of joy, God yearns to know us and for us to know God.  Because God so loves us.

I am just like you.  I too can get lost in the shadows.  But when I turn to Jesus, this Jesus in our Intercession family, this Jesus I know in Word, in action, in study, in sacrament, in my neighbor, then I am buoyed up above the drowning waters. Jesus cannot simply be my port in the storm.  He is that, but Jesus is my safety because he is also my friend, my confidant, my guide, my disciplinarian.  I have a relationship with Jesus that takes just as much effort as my relationship with my husband---just as much effort, just as much time, just as much trust, and just as much commitment.

Oh, beloved, I know it may sound sappy or cliché to some.  I know it may sound too good to be true or too idealistic to be realistic.  But it is my truth; it is what I believe to be the Truth. I cannot prove it.  I can only live it and invite others to live it with me.  I can only live it and be bold enough to share it so others can arise and shine as the glory of the Lord rests upon them.

So, I invite you.  If this is your truth too, then let us be bold together.  If it is not your truth yet, then I invite you to come and see.  Come and see and know.  For this is how Jesus’ ministry, this is one way God, changes the world.  A Baptism at a time.  Counting on each of us who is Spirit possessed and claimed as God’s beloved to live out the promises made in our Baptism and to boldly proclaim Jesus Christ as our Lord.  Yes, even using those very words aloud—not to be afraid or ashamed to say:  “I believe in God Almighty; I believe God works in many ways and through many means, but for me: Jesus is my Lord. Jesus is how I know God.” We are to tell our truth to the world. And perhaps, beloved, we are to sit and listen to other’s stories as to how God is made known to them—even in ways that are foreign and unknown to us.

This is how we live Christmas---how we proclaim the Epiphany—by claiming our true identity.  By letting our lives, our identity, our trajectory in this world to be changed and reshaped because we accept the jaw-dropping truth that the Creator of all things loves each one of us so very deeply. Beloved, let us be so infused with the light that it shoots forth from our voices, our eyes, our fingers, our actions---so filled and overflowing with God’s Spirit that it cannot be contained.  You are God’s beloved child.  The Holy Spirit rests upon you. Marinate in that. Let this Truth sink into your bones.