“Then one day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John there in the Jordan River.” (Mark 1:9, The Living Bible)

I have genuine appreciation for the members of our pastoral staff who bring their unique styles of preaching each week. Carol minces no words, but plunges into contemporary application of the Gospel; Todd always leads off his sermon with a “gotcha” story that rivets our attention; Tim gives didactic sermons that begin with interpreting the background of his textual material as prologue to the sermon. I find it necessary to follow Tim’s example for my own sermon.

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the Synoptics. Mark spends no time “cooing” over a baby born in a barn or magi following a star. He begins, “This is the wonderful story of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” He alludes to the prophecies of Isaiah regarding the Messiah, then plunges headlong into a description of the enigmatic John the Baptist. I cannot resist speaking first of this mystifying man, clad in a camel’s hair garment with a leather girdle, the garb of Old Testament prophets; not the soft, luxurious woven garments worn by wealthy potentates. He lived in a most remote and God-forsaken desert along the Jordan River. His diet consisted of the meager food he could find in the area, perhaps bean pods from the carob tree (sometimes called locust trees) and wild honey, robbed from swarms of bees in caves. He was a cousin of Jesus and may have been at one time a part of the Essene community (the pious separatist group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls). Whether he was driven out of the group, or left of his own accord, the record is far from clear. But here he was, wandering the wastelands and proclaiming the need for repentance, for the Messianic age was about to begin. His preachment was harsh, condemnatory statements and recommended repentance as the only alternative, accompanied by baptism, hence the name, John the Baptizer.

Now a word about the practice of baptism in John’s day. Jews did not practice baptism as such. Male babies were circumcised as a sign that they were Jews, God’s chosen people. Any semblance of baptism would have been ceremonial washing, which would have been prescribed , perhaps like Jesus told the man to whom he restored sight to wash the mud from his eyes in the pool of Siloam. Jews may have ceremonially washed themselves, always by immersion . Baptism was largely reserved for proselytes. But John the Baptist was insistent that those who were already Jews--born and circumcised as descendants of Abraham were to undergo a baptism similar to that of proselytes, in preparation for the coming judgment. The rite itself signified the acknowledgment of their sins. It might even have included an oral statement of their actual misdoings. We simply do not know. We do know that it was more than a confession of a sinful nature. It was most likely concrete and specific.

Why would Jesus submit to such baptismal rites? Was he not sinless? For Jesus to be baptized by John presents a problem. John demanded baptism after the repentance of sins. What had such a baptism to do with Jesus? Some scholars have suggested that Jesus with his intuitive knowledge of his vocation and the condition of mankind, willfully was baptized on their behalf. Perhaps his mother had even said that “someday we ought to go down and hear what your cousin John has to say.” John’s reputation was spreading throughout the area. His constant reminding people about the needful coming of the Messiah was troubling to the leadership of both the civil and religious communities. I am sure that you know already that those who question the status quo are always suspect.

When I think about the difficulty of this pericope, read in your hearing, I hope that there are two things that you may find useful.

I. For Jesus The Day of His Baptism Was a Day of Decision. (And Decisions are Difficult to Make)

According to the account, for some thirty years Jesus had been a home boy in Nazareth. He had apprenticed in his father’s carpenter shop. He was well aware of the prophecies of Isaiah concerning the much hoped for messianic age. He knew how the Messiah had been described: “He will reveal justice to the nations of the world. He will be gentle--he will not shout nor quarrel in the streets. He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the dimly burning flame. He will encourage the fainthearted, those temped to despair. He won’t be satisfied until truth and righteousness prevail throughout the earth, nor until even distant lands beyond the seas have put their trust in him.” (Isaiah 42)

Then one day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John there in the Jordan River. It was a day of decision. The time had come to leave the easy routines in Nazareth. He had long been conscious that the time for him to go out had to come. He must have waited for a sign. The emergence of John the Baptist was that sign. This was the moment when he had to launch out upon his task.

Another matter must not escape our attention. In his baptism Jesus chooses sides. He chooses to be identified with the sinful crowd, with the insiders who have really become outsiders, rather than with the self-righteous Pharisees and Sadducees who saw themselves as sinless. While he does not surrender his identity as the sinless one, he makes a conscious identification with sinners. He accepts their corruption, their sinfulness as his own. He is, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s memorable phrase, “the Man for others”. This identification stayed with him throughout his ministry. All his enemies taunted him as one who kept company with sinners and tax collectors.

One of the things that I find most obvious here is that decisions are rarely easily made. Many years ago, I lost five pounds trying to buy a car. The last car I bought, I never gave it a test drive. I saw it, liked it, it was practically new, the engine ran well and it met my needs. I bought it on the spot. But that has only come with the springtime of my senility. Decisions generally are not easy. And because they are not, we struggle to make them reality.

In every life there come moments of decision which may be accepted or rejected. The late Bishop Gerald Kennedy, of the Los Angeles Area of our church, once put it this way: “Most of us looking back upon our life would have to say that there were moments when we came very near to doing a daring and wonderful thing. In my own experience, I have hardly ever regretted decisions which were big and exciting, but I have nearly always regretted having turned my back upon them. There is no regret like the safe life that dwells in the twilight of mediocrity.”

The late Edward Abbey, southwestern author, environmentalist and thorn in the flesh of capitalists everywhere, in his autobiography, described an unmade decision that allowed a young lady to disappear from his life and years afterward put it this way, “For that sin I shall pay, all my life, in the cheap coin of regret.”

Having lived most of my professional life in the church, I have found a propensity in it for preferring rules to decisions. Great traditions can easily supplant a zeal for mission. Smaller traditions can occupy our time and energy beyond their true worth. The older we get, the more we are inclined to pine for the good old days when the church seemingly was the center of life in the community. Nostalgia is often the enemy of decision. Decision is the hallmark of the intentional life. It was so with Jesus. It is true with ourselves.

We did not improve the newest United Methodist Hymnal when the decision was made to leave out James Russell Lowell’s “The Present Crisis” which says:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide;
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side,
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, twixt the darkness and that light.

Decisions are terribly important. Jesus understood that and left Nazareth to come to John for baptism, deciding that the time was at hand to begin his ministry.

If I may, let me attempt to illustrate with a personal reference. It was a stiflingly sultry summer night in Bradford, Alabama, with the heavy sweet smell of honeysuckle blooms permeating the air. I parked my dad’s car in front of the church and crossed the street to the parsonage where I had an appointment with my pastor. As I approached the parsonage, set between two massive transpiring oak trees, I could see the angular form of my pastor, silhouetted against the light of the living room window as he sat on the porch swing. A chorus of katydids and crickets filled the air. After exchanging niceties of the evening, I sat down beside him and blurted out, “Pastor Ray, what kind of a preacher do you suppose I would make?” I expected there would be some philosophical and ecclesiastical talk about God’s call and our response. To my utter surprise, he immediately said, “George, I have been wondering when you would come to talk with me about this.” In the course of our conversation he told me of an upcoming charge conference at our local church at which he would be glad to recommend me for license to preach; then that recommendation would be forwarded to the District Conference which had the authority to issue such a license after due examination. I drove home through the darkness that night convinced that I was fifty pounds lighter. I could not know all the circuitous turns ahead of me, but my decision had been made.

A few years later, while serving in the U.S. Army, I was about to be reassigned to another duty station, and I had agonized long and hard about my courtship with a lovely girl, Kathy Clemons, who was a student at the University of Alabama. While things had gone well in our relationship, I felt a numbing dread of extended separation and wanted to hedge my bets that upon completion of my military duty, she would still be available. With meager army pay, I mustered enough for a modest engagement ring and asked the biggest question of my life. When I was given an affirmative answer, I felt ten feet tall! What could ever be more wonderful than the future we had decided upon? Kathy and I will celebrate 46 years of marriage next March.

Shakespeare said it well:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in the shallows and miseries.”

I am very sure that there are important decisions that have so affected your lives. Would you humor an old preacher and take a moment, close your eyes and allow yourselves the privilege of naming two such decisions to yourself, remembering how they have affected your lives?

(silence)

The drifting life is never the happy life. Nazareth was peaceful and sweet as Jesus’ home, but a decision had to be made to answer the summons and call of God.

There is a second thing that I hope you won’t miss in this story. It is that

II. Decisions Determine Destiny (Or Our Decisions Form our Character and Identification)

Jesus might have stayed home in Nazareth and let someone else champion the cause that John the Baptist had been preaching. It would have been the safe thing to do. But he already was familiar with the servant passage of Isaiah concerning the coming Messiah. It became very evident to him at the time of his baptism that he was the personification of this servant. This passage from Isaiah is one of the strongest expressions of God’s satisfaction in possessing on the earthly scene a selected agent in whom his soul delights. This servant has a prophet’s task, requiring endowment with the Spirit who illuminates and empowers prophets. God does not assign a duty without also furnishing the requisite equipment. And so at the baptism of Jesus, several things were given. Jesus was given an identification the moment he came up out of the water. He saw the heavens open, and the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descended upon him and he heard a voice from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son; you are my Delight”.

It signified approval. Mark was the first written Gospel and he says that Jesus heard the voice from heaven speaking to him, saying “You are my beloved son…”. Matthew later recorded the story as the voice from Heaven saying “This is my beloved son…” for the benefit of John and all others who may have been present. Mark sees it as personal approval. It is God’s “thumbs up”.

Jesus was equipped for his task. The Holy Spirit descended like a dove. A dove is a symbol of peace, life and health. Remember in Genesis the story of the flood, three times Noah sent out a dove to find if the world was a habitable place after the flood. The dove came back the first time, was sent out a week later and returned with an olive leaf (again peace) signifying that at least the olive trees were beginning to flourish again. Olives do not grow at high altitudes, so Noah knew that the floods had subsided at least below their level. The third time the dove was sent, it did not come back. That was a sign to open the boat and let all the creatures out. It is a fascinating story and the dove is significant in the story. So, the dove is a symbol of gentleness, hopefulness and peace. The conquest of the Messiah must be that of love and not war.

In our own society today we stand at a crossroads. Many of our problems have come because of our indecision. Our educational system is in desperate need of shoring up because politicians have used it as a whipping boy, failing to make adequate decisions. Not to decide is to decide.

We need people who are honest. Corporations whose accounting practices and lies are beyond contemptible need to be replaced with people who see broken promises as a black disgrace. Our society needs to decide for unequivocal justice for rich and poor alike. And insist upon it.

The hope of our society are people who are intelligent; people who can make decisions and take actions. Already nations seek to acquire the best brains of other nations. Intelligence, not yellow metal, is the gold standard of the future.

Our world needs people who are patient. Drive your automobile in any major city of this country and you will be sickened by the utter lack of courtesy shown on our streets and freeways.

We need, as a society to decide that our shortcomings are simply unacceptable. Our destiny as a society of free people depends on our ability to make sound decisions and live intentionally. The people we are tomorrow will depend on the decisions we make today. Our questions are these:

Does our call to follow the example of Christ reach into profound theological matters? Is our own baptism a commissioning to ministry? Are we to be servants without being servile? Are we to live intentionally in what often appears a fortuitous society? Can we claim the royalty that Christ gives while at the same time breaking no bruised reed and quenching no dimly burning flame?

It is the task of every preacher to assist persons in their ongoing struggle of becoming. And this is accomplished primarily by speaking about Christ, who lived his life intentionally and with an increasing willingness to face His own condition and the condition of the world in which he found Himself, in such a way that people were encouraged to follow Him; that is to live life with the same authenticity even if it leads to tears, sweat, and possibly, a violent death.

I offer you Jesus, the Intentional Messiah. He lived his life with decisive purpose. Should we do more or less?