SERMON
PREACHED
AT
St JOHN’S
WAIKOUAITI
FIRST SUNDAY
AFTER EPIPHANY (10th January) 2021
Readings
Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11
It is appropriate as I come to you for the first time in a new calendar year that we find ourselves reading of new beginnings in God. We are told of those who recognize the presence of God, and of those who become themselves to be the messengers of God.
Mark’s energized gospel-telling is of
course not given to us for entertainment, but for imitation. Where are we to be
in this story – in the first century in which he wrote or the twenty-first in which
we read?
Mark constructs his gospel account carefully.
He wants us to see – for spoilers are allowed twenty-one centuries later! – that
when we encounter Christ, when we are seized by the one who transcends all
oppression, even the oppression of execution and death, then we too can become
like the once-frightened women who at the end of Mark’s gospel story will whisper
that God-in-Christ has gone before us. Mark tells us that God-in-Christ is
before us no matter where or when or how we encounter him, that God-in-Christ
is the one who overthrows all oppression and despair.
Mark begins his story by telling about John
the Baptist, who declares that Jesus is coming, has come, and will overthrow
evil. He ends his story by telling of the women who, like John, cannot refrain
from speaking of Good News even though they are afraid. In between these
moments Mark will tells us all he believes we need to know of Jesus: he will
tell us of the one who overthrows doubt and evil and oppression and fear, of
the one who brings healing and comfort and hope and justice, of the one who
touches and transforms the lives of lepers and Syrophoenician children and
demoniacs and your life and mine and the lives of others we might touch with
good news about him. Above all he challenges us to ask where we belong in the
story.
Mark is careful in his construction: he opens
his gospel-account by telling us that it is a beginning – John does the same in
his gospel story that we will explore at times this year. It is the beginning of good news that is
personal and corporate: good news that personal darkness in our own lives can
be overthrown. It is good news that tells that corporate darkness in our community
life can be overthrown: unemployment and bank closures and changing social
norms are not the final word. It is good news that tells us that the mayhems of
Trumpism and globalism of pandemic can and will be overthrown.
By use of the word “beginning” Mark carefully
hints at the association between the story of Jesus and the story of Creation. The story of Jesus, he is telling us, is one with
the story of the beginning of All Things – no matter whether we interpret and
express that mythologically or scientifically. The story of Jesus, he is telling
us, inseparably links all that Jesus is with all that the God of Creation is. From
that he challenges us to extrapolate that this is universal, cosmic good news, that
global mayhems of planetary warming and plastic sludge oceans and mass
extinction and of all the darkness that bombards our news feeds can and will
be and are overthrown.
Mark gives no details of the divine plan,
except that it is embodied in the teachings and the life of the man that John the
Baptiser recognizes and baptises in the wilderness. In the place of fear Mark
tells of hope, and in the closing of the gospel we realize that in our being
seized by the Christ story fear cannot silence us.
As we watched in recent days the chaotic
fall of the Trumpian Empire, as we watch and read each day of the chaos of
pandemic and a myriad other warnings of human fallibility, Mark challenges us
to fix our hopes and our lives on a greater perspective. In the man who
succumbs to John’s baptism we find a God who immerses the divine self into all
human suffering and frailty, and there gives birth to a greater hope.
In the events that fill our news feed we see light and dark, good and evil: the message we will encounter in the person and work of Jesus Christ is that God will and does enter into all and will and does bring all into the glorious hope of resurrection: he is not here, he is risen. Our task is to immerse ourselves in the one who immersed himself in the waters of baptism, to immerse ourselves in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, to immerse ourselves in the knowledge and love of the Christ of compassion and justice who we find in prayer, liturgy, scripture and fellowship. May the Christ of water and Spirit help us so to do.
