Rev. Bob Mutlow
Woodcliff United
11 January 2009
“Baptism Vocation”
“I am haunted by the waters.” So ends Norman Maclean’s novella, A River Runs Through It made famous by Brad Pitt in the movie by the same name. One of the popular worldwide New Year’s activities is the annual polar bear plunge. There seems to be something deep in the human psyche that drives us to jump into the frozen waters and get washed for a New Year. The church picked up on that basic human need and tells us to jump into the Jordan River with Jesus. The four gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John emphasize a lot of different details when it comes to Jesus’ ministry but on this they are all in agreement. Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist was his wake-up call to ministry. What we want to remind ourselves today is that your baptism and my baptism is our wake-up call to ministry – it’s our vocation, our real job in life, everything else is avocation. So let’s take the plunge once more and get real clear what this vocation looks like in Calgary in 2009!
Mark doesn’t begin with any heartwarming baby stories. He puts it out there, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1) Think of the opening line of the Bible in Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. For Mark Jesus baptism is all about an exciting new beginning comparable to the Genesis creation story of seven days. The early Christians labeled this new beginning the 8th day, which gets lifted up in the titles “Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark begins with the human Jesus – the name Jesus was a very common household name in that time but that is only the beginning. Christ is not a surname but a theological name that describes his work as the Messiah, the anointed and that is topped off with the greatest title of all, “Son of God.” Mark sets up the perennial question we have lived with ever since. How much do we really know about the human Jesus from the Gospels and how much has been on this human Jesus as the Christ of faith? The Jesus Seminar scholars began voting with colored beads on what are the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus and what belongs to the faith of the early church community. They stirred up great controversy and got people talking about Jesus, which seems to me is a good thing.
Mark is writing to the church in Rome, to people who have come together from different religious backgrounds, different races and have been baptized into the Way. You heard that name for the early Christian movement from our Ephesians reading today. They are meeting secretly in houses or in the catacombs and violence and persecution is breaking out all around them and they are afraid. They are forced to make choices between burning incense to the Emperor and declaring that he is Lord or staying true to the first Christian creed, “Christos Kyrios.” The death penalty has a way of framing the question – do we stay faithful to the Way or do we go back to the old ways?
Mark reminds them that on Jesus’ baptism day, something big happened, “the heavens were ripped open” – powerful words, dramatic words, even violent words. We hear those words; “ripped open” again at the cross, at the moment Jesus dies, the curtain dividing the holy of holies in the Temple from the rest of the temple is ripped open. Through the tear, the rip Jesus hears those powerful words, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Every baptism is all about the voice breaking through to us, “Beloved daughter, beloved Son.” The voice often comes to us through the torn places, the ripped places, the hurting places in our lives and the place never closes again as neatly as before – something is left ripped and ragged and changed. Mark is saying to them and all who claim the name of Jesus, this wasn’t just for Jesus. This was for you as well. Be open to the heavens ripping open and you will get what you need for the day at hand, “You are my Daughter, my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
Mark is reminding us that God is no longer found in the Temple but in the body of Jesus and folks, we are the body. John Ortberg of If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Step Out of the Boat fame tells of one of the powerful sermons he ever heard and witnessed was by a guy named, Rob Bell the founder of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan named after the “Areopagus,” where Paul preached in Athens (Acts 17.24). When Rob began that church he preached on the Book of Leviticus for a year and a half and the church grew to 10,000 people in that time. That night he preached for an hour and a quarter on the priesthood in Leviticus. He explained in great detail the elaborate worship that went on in the Temple – it was far more than the burning of sacrifices – there was music and dance, singing and praying the psalms. It was dramatic, powerful, spirit-filled worship.
The whole time he was explaining the elaborate ritual that went into this worship event at the Temple, a guy stood on the platform dressed as a priest. Rob ended this great teaching sermon with some words from the writer of Hebrews who talks of Jesus as our great high priest, “Day after day, every priest stood, but after our high priest Jesus, had offered for one time, the sacrifice of our sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.” The good news of Jesus is that he has done it all for us – no more sacrifices need to be offered. So he invited the guy dressed as a priest to sit down and he invited the congregation, “I want you all to think about what happened when Jesus finished his work and the cross and what that means for you. You’re forgiven. You are set free. You don’t have to live in guilt, darkness, hiding or shame. When this guy sits down, I want you to think about that day in Heaven when Jesus had finished the task and he sat down at the right hand of God the Father. Now we get to celebrate. People go to football games and rock concerts, and they do the goofiest stuff. For once we are going to celebrate something worth celebrating.” And the place went wild as people got it really got I that night.
As John Ortberg says, from that you might to get thinking that the New Testament would then do away with the concept of the priesthood. They didn’t, they just re-worked it, unleashed it and make it bigger. They made it available to everybody. They said things, “All of you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” The “priesthood of all believers” became the rallying crying of the Reformation. Today as Catholics and Protestants come together – we recognize that our Baptism ministry is common to all of us. Some may be chosen to give leadership in the community as priests or pastors but all of us are called to ministry by virtue of our baptism.
Baptism vocation is about Identity. We are all hard-wired with our own gifts and passions. One husband shared how his wife is one strong-minded woman. Always has been. At three years of age – true story – she would get on her tricycle and head off. One day her mother took her outside and showed her just where she could ride and laid it on her, “If you go past this tree I will spank you.” This little three-year old girl backed up to her mother and said, “Well Mom, you might as well spank me now because I’ve got places to go. Let’s just that over with, Mom. If it’ll make you feel any better, you know, have at it. I’ve got things to do and people to see.” Now would it surprise you that this young girl grew up to have strong leadership gifts?
Every so often we get to thinking, we’ll model ourselves on some person who we admire. “When I really come under the grip of God’s work in my life then I’ll be like that person.” In our better moments we know we won’t. We have been wired – our personality, temperament, passion – our strengths have also built into them in our greatest shadow side. God has given us these gifts to be used in our real vocation in life. If we try to deny our gifts, we miss the real reason we were created. On the last day God won’t ask us why weren’t you like Moses or Mary but why weren’t you who I created you to be?
Baptism Vocation is about Body Building. Paul talks about any number of gifts that are given to us to be used to build up the body. The gifts come in many different shapes and sizes – just like people – wisdom gifts and faith gifts, healing, teaching and prophecy. You heard Paul meeting with a group of believers in Ephesus. He asks them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They don’t know what he is talking about because they were baptized according to John’s way of repentance. Obviously the two groups of followers – John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ co-existed for some time. There was a crucial difference between Jesus and John the Baptist. Jesus wasn’t just about repentance; Jesus was about spirit-filled life giving. It wasn’t just about calling people back to God; it was being filled with the new wine of the spirit. When Paul baptized them into the name of Jesus and laid hands on the followers – they began speaking in tongues. There was a woman in the church I served in Winnipeg who spoke in tongues – it is a love language of the heart and she certainly radiated that in her life.
All of us are given different gifts – it is good to pay attention to what grows our gifts, inspirits us and enthuses us? For me a lecture, a movie, a book that lifts me up, that stirs me up, challenges me helps to grow my spiritual gifts of teaching and leadership. For some of you it is all people relationships – coming alongside in a helping capacity. You get fired up when you help out at Inn From the Cold or connect with a new mother or needy family through NeighbourLink. Others of you find it through the gift of music or working with children, for others it is knitting prayer shawls and companioning folks who are hurting, coming alongside and walking with them through their journey. For some of you it is about getting involved in politics, in wanting to address the poverty issues, the justice issues, the peace making issues of our time, and nature lovers will take on a passion for the environment. We need all of you with your passion, your gifts to make a community that is alive and real in the world today.
Baptism Vocation is about Looking Out. Paul began teaching in the synagogue at Ephesus, but the Jewish believers rejected the way and so he moved out into a lecture hall and thus began the movement out of the synagogue and into the Gentile world. “This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.” A touch of hyperbole maybe but they had the big picture going – this was good news that demanded to be shared. The reality is that when people with the gift of helping are out there on the front line when people with the gifts of encouragement are raising people up, when caregivers are making a difference in people’s lives, when prayers are energizing the people with their depth of insight and spirituality, when justice seekers are out there on the front line of the environment and developing world issues, when peace makers won’t give up on the Holy Land there you will find a local church on fire and that is what we want for Woodcliff.
Baptism Vocation brings its own reward. Throughout the gospels Jesus reminded his followers, “great would be there reward in heaven.” We don’t lift this one up a whole lot in United Churches. Maybe it feels a touch embarrassing that we would be living out our baptism vocation for the reward. But that is not how it works. In the Matthew story of the Last Judgment they were surprised at the reward, “When I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty you gave me drink… in as much as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me.” One pastor said he had two Emails come his way recently about the shaking economy. One guy with a lot of financial resources wrote, “You know, I’ve been taking a beating for these last two weeks. It’s killing me. It’s killing me.” Another guy with far fewer resources wrote who works in the health care field and is know around his church for his ministry of encouragement to folks, “As I watch the stock market shrink, I stand amazed at how rich I am.” It is all about an embarrassment of riches that comes to us through the torn places in our life – we get to hear for ourselves – beloved daughter, beloved son and that is the reward – the gift of belonging, the gift of grace.
So there it is. You and You and I are made for ministry. You were baptized for it. You were called to it. You have been gifted for it. You will be accountable for it and richly rewarded for it now and to come. And so I invite you at whatever age you are 6 or 60 to take the polar plunge and get your Baptism Vocation, your real job kick-started for 2009.
