It Is Good
Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
January
11, 2015
At
the beginning of a new year, it’s good to read about creation. In the depth and
dark of winter tide, it is good to read about light. After the mad rush of the
holiday season, it’s good to read about drawing order from chaos.
Yes,
it is good to read the creation story from Genesis at the beginning of a new
year.
I
am struck each time I read this ancient creation myth by the attitude God
repeats with regard to each step of creation: it is good. Creation is good.
That’s a good place to begin.
You
wouldn’t think it was any particular insight: creation is good. In the first
place, personally speaking, it’s the greatest gift any of us have ever
received! Biblically speaking, Genesis tells us just what God thought about
God’s own handiwork.
Yet
for eons the church has lived with some manner or other of a the doctrine of
“original sin.” That doctrine, born of interpretations of the second creation
myth set in the garden with Adam and Eve, tells us a couple of things, one
obvious, the other not so much.
For
starters, the story of “the fall” reminds us of the obvious: human beings are a
broken lot prone to all kinds of broken behaviors. In Reformed theological
history, we receive this ancient doctrine under the heading “total depravity.”
There is both truth and utility to the idea that every human being is broken,
and that the best of us is capable of acts that do great harm to others. As the
apostle Paul put it, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
I
don’t have to look any further than the mirror to understand this concept, and
it’s a concept that explains a great deal of seemingly inexplicable behavior in
the world.
The
less obvious teaching that burdens this old doctrine, though, tells us that all we can see when we look in the
mirror is brokenness. If that’s what we believe, it can become how we live. If
you tell a child over and over and over again that he’s ugly or that she’s bad,
then no one should be surprised when ugliness and evil is what you get.
But
God doesn’t say that. God looks at creation, including the human creature, and
says, “it is good.” Thus creation begins with the blessing of the Creator.
That
original blessing doesn’t mean that we are incapable of behaving otherwise. That’s
obvious everyday practically anywhere in the world.
The
story of Jesus, though, is the story of a new creation, of another chance, of
turning around or turning away and beginning anew. As Mark’s gospel starkly
puts it, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism
of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
That’s
where the gospel begins: with the acknowledgement that we are broken and the
proclamation that our lives can be turned around. The verb voice is crucial
there. I used the passive on purpose: our lives can be turned. It’s not that we
have no volition, that we don’t make decisions and act on them. We do. But the
first move belongs to God, and it is symbolized in the gospel in the baptism of
repentance that John proclaims and through which Jesus is initially recognized.
John
the Baptist “announced that God was about to end the present evil age, marked
by injustice, exploitation, violence, and death, and would complete the
manifestation of the realm of God as a world of justice, mutual respect,
sharing, and eternal life.”[1]
This
is the invitation of God to enter into the work of God in the world. Consider
that for a moment: the invitation of God to enter into the work of God in the
world.
We’ve
just come through the holidays. Many of us issued or received invitations to
various holiday gatherings. Imagine, for a moment, an invitation from God.
What does that look like? What does
it feel like?
***
We
speak of baptism as “a sign and seal” of God’s promises and of the welcome the
baptized receives into the household of God. Important invitations come with a
sign and a seal. Baptism is an invitation from God to enter the work of God in
the world.
We
mostly think of baptism as sweetness and light in our tradition because we
typically baptize infants and very young children. There’s nothing at all wrong
with that, but it offers us an incomplete picture of baptism because the work
of God in the world of children is certainly different than the work of God in
the wider world.
We
also tend to gather for baptisms in safe and controlled environments around the
tamed water in a font. But listen again to these details from the baptism of
Jesus: John was baptizing in the Jordan River. The Jordan is not the Colorado,
but it’s still a fairly powerful river flowing rapidly down from the Dead Sea
to the Sea of Galilee. It’s got stretches of whitewater than would be fun in a
kayak. In John’s day it would have been far from tame and controlled.
We
could use some of that in our baptisms – something wild and uncontrolled. For,
if baptism is the invitation of God into the work of God in the world baptism
calls us into a crazy ride in untamed waters.
Listen,
again, to the details Mark gives us from the baptism of Jesus: “And just as he
was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart.”
“The
heavens torn apart” – there’s nothing tame, safe, and controlled in that image.
The invitation from God to the work of God in the world tears apart the
heavens.
As
Diane Roth wrote recently in Christian Century:
The heavens torn open mean
that God is somehow with us in a new way. Not that God wasn’t with us before,
but that something new is being born – a different kind of relationship, both
dangerous and comforting. The wildness of the river is not tamed by the font or
by the order of the liturgy. God’s words – “You are … my child. With you I am
well pleased” – promise us a wild ride into the current of God’s justice, passion,
and mercy.[2]
Baptism
recapitulates the creation myth in this moment as the baptized – be he Jesus,
or any one of us – as the baptized is claimed by God and called “good.” Claimed
by God we are thus invited by God into the work of God in the world.
This
is, always and again and again, a new thing. With this new year upon us, what
is God re-creating in you? What work is God inviting you to join? Where will
the waters of baptism carry you this year? Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
12:07 PM
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