Advent's Three B's

 

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.’” 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.

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. Birth announcements are good news. Recall the media attention when Buckingham Palace announced the birth of Prince George. People stood in long lines just to read the official birth announcement posted outside the Palace. 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 2^nd B. I grew up in a church named St. John the Baptist in Monaca. The building depicts three scenes from his life. The stained-glass window on the left of the transept 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.”) and Isaiah (“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”), 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 I am preparing students for Confirmation in the Lutheran Church, it is important to cover basic beliefs that Martin Luther wrote in The Small Catechism. Why? So young 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.

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.

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 that we often hear on Dave Ramsey’s radio show. When callers ask Dave how he is, he always replies, “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 don’t deserve any of these temporal punishments, we deserve worse. We deserve eternal punishment.

Do I recognize that even with disability, sickness or financial insecurity, God treats me better than I deserve? 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 these four 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.