God’s grace, peace and mercy be with
you. My focus is Mark, chapter 1 where we read: “The beginning of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the
psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the
Lord.’”[i]
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
‘The Three Bs’ is a phrase used in
discussions of classical music to refer to the supposed primacy of Johann
Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. Although ‘the three
Bs’ is associated with classical music, it is found in other disciplines. There
are ‘the 3 Bs’ of bass fishing (bait, bottom and bass), and the Houston Astros used
it when their lineup included Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman.[ii]
My sermon has nothing to do with
classical composers, bass fishing or baseball players, but Beginning, Baptist
and Basics.
We begin at the beginning. Mark’s
opening verse deserves comment. We read,
“The
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Theology
demands we ask what these words mean. When Mark wrote his first verse, he did
not say, “I am going to write a gospel.”
Rather, he presented in written form the ‘good news’ about Jesus which was and
is the subject of the church’s teaching and mission.
Gospel
became a technical term for a particular type of Christian literature about
Jesus Christ. Gospel was the most suitable label for church books about Jesus. The
church could then determine the 4 Gospels or 4 versions of his story.
Unlike Paul’s letters, which opened and
closed with his name and signature, the gospels were anonymous. The phrase ‘according to’ does not appear in any
gospel. The church introduced it when it had more than one gospel in
circulation.
Mark’s first verse serves as a heading
to the whole book; and although verbless, we find similarities in Proverbs (“The
proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.”), Ecclesiastes (“The
words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”), and Matthew
(“The
book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”).
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God” meant Jesus’ disciples
passed on orally the good news about Him. Mark passed on the good news about
Jesus Christ in written form with a view of reading it aloud in congregations.
The Gospel of Mark is not a distant
evaluation by a scholarly admirer of Jesus, but the experience of one who knew
the stirring and profoundly disturbing events of Jesus’ public ministry and his
confrontation with the Jerusalem establishment. Mark reflects experiences
passed on in the day-to-day teaching ministry of a living community of Jesus’
followers, which included Mark and Peter, the teller of those stories.
The beginning had something to do with the
ending, in which those who went out of the tomb fled “for trembling and astonishment
seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Those who were afraid did not remain
silent but proclaimed the Good News.
Good News! Good news is never simply
reported. Good news is always proclaimed. Last week, I proclaimed good news to
you – that we are expecting our first grandson in April.
Birth announcements are good news.
Recall the media attention when Buckingham Palace announced the birth of Prince
George. In Jesus’ day, the birth announcement of a god was the beginning of
good news for all the subjects, for only a god could bring world-changing and
lasting good news.
An inscription discovered in western
Turkey, dating to 9 BC tells of the birth of Caesar Augustus. In part it reads,
“The birth-day of the god was the
beginning, for the world, of the good tidings which were because of him.”
Is it no wonder that Mark, writing the story of Jesus for the Christians of
Rome, opened with “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” An
audacious statement of faith spoken courageously to the face of the Roman
Empire. A bold beginning for a brave new world.
From a bold beginning to the Baptist,
our 2nd B. I grew up in a church named St. John the Baptist. The
building depicts three scenes from his life. The stained glass window on the
left of the transcept depicts John preaching in the wilderness. Opposite it, a
soldier clutching the hair the decapitated Baptist. The mural in between shows
John baptizing Jesus.
Prior to Jesus’ public ministry, John
attempted to reform Judaism. In citing Malachi (“Behold, I send my messenger. He
will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come
to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold,
he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”[iii]) and Isaiah (“A
voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in
the desert a highway for our God.’”[iv]), Mark told his original
readers, Jewish Christians seeking to reform Judaism, that this messenger would
be found not in the Jerusalem Temple, as they expected, but in the wilderness.
The setting of the wilderness was
important because this was the staging area for the formation of Israel, and
now the staging area for the reformation. It was where God’s people learned to
trust in God’s providence and protection. This new Exodus was a new beginning –
a symbol of hope and fulfillment. At the same time, it dismissed Israel’s
institutional life.
Because John prepared people in the
wilderness, and not in Jerusalem, through baptism, and not sacrifice, he
shifted the center of authority. This explains why the chief priests and elders
refused to recognize the authority of John, and why he was expendable. In
essence, John was the first protestant.
John’s radical message was forgiveness
without sacrifice. For him baptism was not a
way but the only way
to achieve repentance. By baptizing, John sought to call together the repentant
and restored people of God for the imminent eschatological crisis – the end.
Before I move to my third point, the
Basics, a word about John’s baptism. John’s baptism was not the same as other
Jewish ceremonial washings, nor was it the same as later Christian baptism into
the death and resurrection of Christ. Those were performed repeatedly.
Christian baptism is performed only once.
Our third B, the Basics. Because Pastor
Wietfeldt and I are preparing people to become new members of the Lutheran
Church, it is important to cover basic beliefs that differentiate us from other
denominations. Why? So our new members know who we are and what we believe.
You should know that many non-Christians
do not distinguish between Christian denominations. To them, churches that
define themselves as Lutheran, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist
or a myriad of micro-denominations that embrace the term nondenominational are
all the same. We may have trouble sorting out other religious denominations,
but we must certainly understand what we believe. So, periodically, we re-visit
the basics.
We look at two basics – baptism and
Lord’s Supper. Lutherans believe the Bible teaches a person is saved by God’s
grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The Bible tells us that such ‘faith comes by hearing.’ Jesus commands
Baptism, and tells us that Baptism is water used together with the Word of God.
Because of this, we believe that Baptism is one of the miraculous means of
grace through which God creates and/or strengthens the gift of faith in a
person’s heart.[v]
Now, some denominations do not recognize
infant baptism. We baptize infants because of what the Bible teaches regarding God's
command to baptize. There is not a single passage in Scripture that instructs
us not to baptize for reasons of age, race, or gender. On the contrary, the
divine commands to baptize in Scripture are all universal in nature. Based on
these commands, the Christian church has baptized infants from the earliest
days of its history. Since those baptized are also to be instructed in the
Christian faith, our church baptizes infants only where there is the assurance
that parents or spiritual guardians will nurture the faith of the one baptized
through continued teaching of God's Word.[vi]
Baptism, along with the Lord’s Supper,
are the two sacraments we recognize. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two
sacraments clearly instituted by Christ’s teaching.
When we take communion, we receive – in,
with, and under the bread and wine – the true body and blood of Christ shed on
the cross, Jesus Christ, who is now risen and ascended and sits at the right
hand of God the Father. He is the same Christ, and when he gave us the
Sacrament, as the Lutheran Confessions affirm, ‘he was speaking of his true, essential body, which he gave into death
for us, and of his true, essential blood, which was poured out for us on the
tree of the cross for the forgiveness of sins’ (Formula of Concord, Solid
Declaration VII, 49).[vii]
In this Sacrament, our Confessions teach
the same Jesus who died is present, although not in exactly the same way he was
corporeally present when he walked bodily on earth. Luther and the Formula of
Concord speak of ‘the incomprehensible,
spiritual mode of presence according to which he neither occupies nor yields
space but passes through everything created as he wills ... He employed this
mode of presence when he left the closed grave and came through closed doors, and
in the bread and wine in the Supper’ (FC SD VII, 100).
The Good News or Gospel for us is that
God comes to us in Word and Sacrament to free us from Satan, sin and death. The
Good News is that Christ is not simply present in some symbolic way or represented
in Word and Sacrament, but truly present. And where the Second Person of the
Trinity is present, so are the Father and Holy Spirit.
I close with four words from Brad Harre.
Having been here only since late August, I did not know Brad as well as many of
you, but I know one thing. Whenever you would ask Brad how he was, he always
replied, “Better than I deserve.”
When we – miserable, rebellious sinful
beings – examine our lives and see how God has dealt with us, it is always
better than we deserve. Two thousand years after John summoned sinners to
repentance and Mark proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God, we
muddle in our sinfulness rather than accept God’s grace.
Then we grumble that we do not deserve
this – whatever this is – sickness, heartache, poor health or poverty. True, we
deserve worse. We deserve eternal punishment.
If Brad recognized that even with MS,
God treated him better than he deserved, what prevents us from recognizing that
same truth but our own sin? God does treat me better than I deserve. God’s
presence here and now in Word and Sacrament, in Confession and Absolution is –
as today’s gospel demonstrates – a proclamation and a new beginning.
Today is the first day of new life for
me. Whatever sin keeps me from experiencing God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s
love is overcome by His presence here and now. We are all better than we
deserve.
Friends, I ask you to do only one thing
today. Take time to reflect on Brad’s words – “Better than I deserve” – and
make them your own. For “better than I deserve” is the good news for each of
us. And as you meditate today on how good God is to you, may you be that good,
loving and merciful to others, and may the peace of God that surpasses all understanding,
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.[viii]
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