Trinity Presbyterian Church
2200 N. Bell Avenue # Denton, Texas 76209
March 1, 2009
In the Beginning
Scriptures: Psalm 25:1-10, Genesis 9:8-17
Three . . . two . . . one . . . lift off. The rocket burst into space, bearing three astronauts with it for what would be a historic journey. Some would later call it the most important space mission ever. The year was 1968. This wasn't the mission where US astronauts would walk on the moon. No, that would come a few months later. This earlier mission laid the groundwork for it. This was the Apollo 8 mission, launched during the week of Christmas, carrying Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders aboard.
The take-off was flawless, no minor achievement considering problems our space program has had before and since. Space travel that we now take for granted was back then of course a much more anxious affair -- remember the problems and anxiety that came with the Apollo 13 mission a year and a half later, dramatized in the movie with Tom Hanks. Even the crew of Apollo 8 gave themselves only a fifty-fifty chance of fully succeeding. But this Apollo 8 mission continued smoothly to the moon and the astronauts became the first people ever to leave the gravitational influence of the Earth and orbit another celestial body. As they came around for their fourth orbit of the moon, they took a now-famous picture of the Earthrise, the first ever such picture. Their picture of the entire Earth as chosen by Life magazine as one of the hundred photos that changed the world -- it became an icon of the environmentalist movement and the first Earth Day in 1970. The crew of the Apollo 8 mission were chosen as Time magazine's Men of the Year, and as one stranger sent in a telegram after the mission, "Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968."
But something else occurred during that mission. I wasn't alive to see it, but just imagining it gives me goosebumps, it has such evocative power. I am sure many of you know or will remember what I am talking about. On Christmas Eve, as the Apollo rocket closed in on the moon and the television cameras gave the world the sharpest details of the moon's surface ever seen up to that time, Borman, Lovell, and Anders took turns reading the verses of Genesis we heard in our Old Testament Scripture reading for today: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." Those broadcasts received an Emmy award, and were seen, live or delayed, by an estimated 25 percent of the people alive in the world at the time. Somehow, standing there as it were on the lip of space, peering into the abyss beyond, uncertain of what it held, those familiar and often repeated words seemed to take on a new and deeper meaning -- that ultimately it is God who give being and beginning to the universe. It is God who shapes and gives it order. It is God and God alone to whom this planet and this universe ultimately belong. No matter what might happen as we venture further and further into the darkness of outer space, no matter what was encountered there, nothing could alter the fundamental and underlying fact that the universe was God's. God's presence, God's hand, there in the beginning, moving over the face of the waters -- make the world belong forever to God. As Pope Paul VI told Borman after the mission, "I have spent my entire life trying to say to the world what you did on Christmas Eve."
In his own way, Christ pointed to the same truth that was revealed with that Christmas Eve broadcast of 1968 -- the truth that all life comes from God and ultimately belongs to God. Christ witnessed to that truth not just on Sundays or in convenient seasons of his life, not just through his relations with his friends and family, but through all the days of his life, even with the sick, the oppressed, and with his enemies. Even from the beginning. For that is what our Scripture text from Mark is about today, it is about a beginning. Like the creation story from the Book of Genesis, Mark's gospel begins in the midst of the waters, the waters of the Jordan, where Jesus is baptized at the hand of John. It is there, in those muddy waters, where Jesus' life and ministry is set upon a sacred course. It is there, in the beginning, where Jesus' identity as God's Son is revealed, where God reaches down from heaven, so to speak, to touch Jesus and to claim him as God's own. "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased."
Notice that it begins with a blessing. Lest we forget, this passage reminds us that all ministry begins with a blessing. God claims Jesus as God's own, God figuratively smiles upon Christ and pronounces Godself pleased with him. How powerful such a blessing can be! How many people in our world are dying for such a blessing -- from their parents. From their spouse, or children. From God. You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased. This is, you will note, before Jesus has done anything. He hasn't healed a single person yet, he hasn't given a moving sermon, he hasn't recruited any followers. His presence there establishes his solidarity with sinners, but he hasn't actually done anything. God's blessing is not, in other words, based on any accomplishment or achievement, it comes rather as a gift. It reveals to us who this person Jesus is.
Mark wants us to know from the very beginning who Jesus is so that later, when all hell breaks loose on Golgotha, we will remember that the pitiable man dragging the world's scorn up Calvary's weary steps is still nonetheless God's Son. Mark wants us to know the truth about this Lord of his from the very beginning so that later, when the most devout people of his day spit in Jesus' face and call him "blasphemer" and "traitor," we will remember who Jesus really is and not turn away. Mark lets us in on this not-so-little secret right away in the beginning, in other words, so that at the end, when the sky is dark and the air is filled with Jesus' cry and the temple curtain is torn in two, we will stand with the centurion at the foot of the cross and confess what we already know: "Truly this man is the Son of God."
That is the meaning of Jesus' baptism and why Mark puts it here. He wants us to know that the one who will appear to be rejected is in reality the one in whom God is well pleased . . . that the one who will appear to be deserted by all is in reality God's beloved Son . . . that the one who will appear impotent in death is the one whose powers give life. That is the secret, the reality, the truth flowing from the waters of creation and swirling in the waters of the Jordan, that is revealed and contained in Jesus' baptism. And that is the same secret, the same reality, the same truth which through baptism all Christians share.
Heaven knows it is a secret and a truth that the world urgently needs to hear. You don't need me to tell you that at times it seems the world is coming apart, that it seems the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Violence in the Middle East and elsewhere continues with no end in sight. Our planet stumbles under the strains that our consumption places upon it. The global economy reels from one disaster to the next, leaving one feeling that we are without a rudder, caught between the mythical monsters Scylla and Charbydis. As a world and as a people, all too often we feel alone, a lonely earth in a dark and cold universe.
We face this darkness not only as a society, but as individuals in it. Teenagers and young adults, caught in the fast-changing currents of modern society, struggling to resist temptations on so many levels -- they want to know, they desperately need to know the truth, the answers to their questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Who has set me here? Where do I belong? These questions demand an answer and yet for many, especially but not only for the young as they stand at the beginning and set their own course, for many the answers remain unknown, the secret remains concealed, and they are afraid.
Mid-lifers and older adults, too, many of them outwardly successful but inwardly troubled by a nagging sense of discontent, also need to hear the message, the secret Jesus' baptism, and ours, proclaims. "Have I worked hard enough? Have I loved enough? What has my life meant so far and what can it mean in the time I have left? What am I worth?" These and other questions eat away at many a person's soul. And for many, sadly, life unfolds day after day with the verdict in suspense, the questions still unanswered.
So, young or old, as individuals and as communities, God knows people of all ages desperately need to know the truth, need to know the secret Jesus' baptism contains.
What you may or may not realize is that every time we celebrate the sacrament of baptism we let the secret out. Every time we remember and celebrate our own baptisms, as we do today, the church shouts the secret to the world. Baptism marks the beginning of the Christian journey, often the beginning of a child's life, when one stands before a lost and confused and frightened world to announce who and whose this person or child really is. And to remind ourselves who and whose we are as well, we who have been baptized into Jesus Christ. For what we declare is that the presence, the hands that stirred the waters of creation and pushed back the darkness of the universe, the hands that made the universe God's own -- that same presence, those same hands dipped into the muddy waters of the Jordan and claimed Jesus as God's Son -- and that same presence, those same hands, stir the baptismal waters here. And by their touch, Almighty God declares, "You are my beloved child, my very own. I have placed you here and called you to be mine. You belong to me. In you I delight. In you I am well pleased."
It is an awesome moment when you think about it . . a moment of sheer and utter grace, a love deeper than the depths of outer space . . . when the God who was there at the foundation of the universe stoops down to touch such small and pathetic people as ourselves and claim us -- and others like and unlike us -- as God's own. It is a moment when the church announces to all the world to whom we belong.
And in the Presbyterian church, we share this secret in the beginning, even for infants who are too young to know anything, for the same reason that Mark does. So that no matter what may happen to the child later, no matter what may happen to us, he or she and we will not forget. So that no matter what temptations we may face, no matter what uncertainties the future holds, no matter what tragedies might be encountered, he or she and we will know who and whose she is. God's beloved child, claimed at great price as God's own.
So do not be afraid. Remember your baptism. Even amid the uncertainty and darkness of our world. Do not be afraid. Remember the secret that we proclaim to day. Teenager and young adults trying to find your way, remember you have been baptized -- you are a child of God's. Mid-lifers
and older adults nagged by questions of self-worth, remember that at your baptism, you were given worth. God touched you and made you God's own. You know the secret -- you have been baptized. The same hand who was there at the foundation of the universe and gave it being has touched you and smiled upon you, and nothing in all creation , neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nothing can change the fact that ultimately we belong to God. Alleluia!