Baptism of Our Lord B
Text: Mark 1:4-11
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
January 10, 2021
Torn
In the Gospel lesson this morning we read the very first story in the Gospel of Mark, chapter one. Mark the evangelist is short, concise, and to the point: he does not mess around. You notice that this very first story in Mark has no shepherds, no angels, no Magi, no star, no stable. Not a word about Mary and Joseph. Mark’s story of Jesus begins not in Bethlehem but at the river: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” In Luke it takes you three chapters to get to the Baptism; Mark takes care of it in one verse.
And if the Gospel of Mark is distinctive in that way, in its brevity, I learned just this week that it is distinctive in another way, too. It’s not that the story of Jesus’ baptism is unique to Mark; it appears in Matthew and Luke as well. But only in Mark does Jesus as he is coming up out of the water see the heavens “torn apart” when the Spirit comes descending like a dove. Torn apart: the image is as violent as that, and it is different here in Mark than in Matthew and Luke, in which the heavens are merely “opened.” “Torn apart,” says Mark; it’s a different word for it that he uses here, and the Greek word is schizo, from which we get the terrible word schizophrenia; torn apart, indeed.
The gospel mentions that only Jesus saw the heavens torn apart; no one else. No one else around seems to have noticed, and there is no intimation that the nations were trembling at what was taking place here. But that did not mean that nothing had changed. The heavens were torn apart, and they would never close again.
Some years ago now I was part of what is called an intervention with one of our church members. You probably know how one of these things works: it’s a gathering of the clans to face someone with the consequences of his drug and alcohol use. Family, friends, and pastor all intervene, to express concern and tell the story of how this addiction is affecting us all.
Now the story of this particular intervention has a happy ending. This is someone who has been clean and sober ever since. But while the story was happening back then it wasn’t very happy, at all. Man, says my friend looking back on that night, I felt like you’d all come together just to tear me apart. To tear him apart; schizo, indeed.
“But you know what?,” my friend adds when he tells this story now. “What else I learned that night and with all the hard nights that came after, is that the torn place is where God comes through. That place that is torn so wide in you, that big, wide tear makes space for God to work and for grace to be received. You know how we always say you’ve got to open yourself up, to God? Well sometimes the opening has got to be a big old violent tearing apart. Sometimes God’s gonna need just that much space to move, if God’s really gonna come roaring through to you.”
The experience my friend describes there, in the early days and years of his recovery? I think that was the experience for Jesus, too. From the day he saw the heavens torn apart, Jesus began tearing apart the picture of who and what the Messiah was supposed to be–
Tearing apart the social barriers that separate rich from poor, insider from outcast.
Breaking through hardness of heart to bring forth compassion.
Tearing apart the chains that bind some in the demon’s power.
Tearing apart all our inadequate notions of what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly as a Child of God.
Nothing would ever be the same, for the heavens would never again close so neatly and tightly.
Now these are the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark we get today, with the tearing open of the heavens. At the other end of Mark’s Gospel, at the end of his life Jesus hung on a cross between heaven and earth, and when he died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, torn apart as the heavens had been torn apart. Schizo, the same word, is the word that Mark uses again; it was torn apart. Nothing any longer separated the holy of holies from the common assembly area; nothing any longer separated God’s place from God’s people. The curtain would now be open forever, never to close between God and people, ever again.
Now there was no voice from the heavens that Crucifixion day. God above was silent, not even a whisper. But there was a voice; this one not far off, but close. Not up this time, but down. A centurion soldier stood at the foot of the cross watching it all, taking it all in. When he saw that Jesus had died, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” Who gave him that word? Heaven knows. That soldier had somehow heard for himself the same words that were whispered to Jesus alone at the Jordan. The word came to him through the torn place in the sky, through the torn curtain: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Is there a torn place in your life? Is there a torn place in your life? Years ago, in a previous parish, I had a young woman, 30 years old or so, come and ask to participate in the stripping of the altar area on the night of Maundy Thursday worship, during Holy Week. Maybe you have seen this worship service before; at the end of the service, as we remember that after the Last Supper Jesus was led away into captivity, the altar area is stripped of all furnishings, of all that speaks of the presence of God, and left bare. In that parish many folks did it – the kids of that congregation used to love to do it – so of course she was welcome, but why?
She told me, simply but with great pain, of how she had as a young teenager been horribly abused. Her youth and her innocent sense of security had been wickedly torn from her. “I was betrayed by someone I trusted,” she said. “Of all the things we do in church, there is nothing more meaningful to me than the night when Jesus, like me, is betrayed by the people he loves.”
So she did it, with great dignity, that night. And three days later, Easter Day, she celebrated with the rest of the community our Lord’s victory over such things, and her own victory, too.
The torn place was still there, you understand. And God knows we’ve all got a piece of that these days, as we move through this time when all of our lives are so torn up. But never forget the lesson of my friend and his move to sobriety, and the lesson of that young woman who cherishes the liturgy of Holy Week, and the lesson of Jesus baptized in the Jordan and Jesus on the day of the Cross. The torn place? The torn place, is always, always where God comes through.