God Is Never an End. God Is Always a Beginning.
A sermon by Stacy Carlson Kelly, Seminarian, on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), July 11, 2021.
Mark 6: 14 – 29
What are we to make of today’s gospel, the brutal murder of John the Baptist? We are looking at a death, what seems to be the end – but, I think, it’s also a beginning.
When Herod hears of Jesus and his disciples, he’s afraid that Jesus is actually John the Baptizer raised from the dead, raised to torment him after Herod gave in to the vengeance of his wife and had John beheaded, and his head served up on a platter.
It’s a violent story. And in this story, Mark is foretelling the violent death of Jesus. That fits because John was always leading the way to Jesus. In Eastern Christian Churches, St. John the Baptist is also called St John the Forerunner.
So, who is this man, John?
We are introduced to John the Baptist within the first three chapters of every gospel. He is a New Testament prophet who proclaims that the Old Testament prophesies of a Messiah are coming true.
In general, the Bible doesn’t tell us much about how someone looks, where they live or what they eat. But we learn all of this about John. He wears a leather belt and clothing made from camel hair. When you hear the term “hair shirt,” meaning something uncomfortable or done as a penance, think of John. He lived in the wilderness. He ate locusts and honey and called hypocritical Pharisees “a brood of vipers.”
John is the early voice crying out in the wilderness for justice and truth.
He begins baptizing people in the river Jordan, calling for them to repent their sins. He proclaims that the Messiah will come and baptize, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
John is a prophet in the tradition of the ancient Hebrew prophets. He is chosen and set apart by God, to bring people back to God. All the prophets did this by proclaiming, by warning, by suffering.
This is who John is. So, then, where did he come from?
Most of us are familiar with the immaculate conception that brings us the baby Jesus at Christmas. Yet, in the gospel of Luke, there are two miraculous conceptions. Before the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive a son and name him Jesus, Gabriel has already visited Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s sister, Elizabeth.
While Mary is young, Elizabeth and Zechariah are not, and Elizabeth is barren. Yet, the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah that they will bear a son and they will name him John.
According to Luke, after the angel’s visit, Mary goes to see her sister. Imagine Mary, an amazed – and perhaps frightened -- young woman running through the dusty streets of Nazareth to find her sister, to tell her, “You’re not going to believe what just happened...”
Luke tells us that when John, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb, hears Mary’s voice he “leaps” and “the Holy Spirit fills the room.” It’s as if John recognizes Jesus the Messiah before either of them are even born.
Between this sweet beginning and his terrible end in our gospel today, John evangelizes and baptizes.
It’s John who baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River. John is there when God speaks from the sky to claim Jesus as his only beloved son. Jesus is not baptized as an infant, but as a young man. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus begins his ministry from baptism, after baptism.
Baptism is a beginning for us, too. We’ll rejoice at three baptisms at our 10:30 service today. We’ll welcome three new souls to the community of God and to the community of St. George.
It is their beginning, as baptism was also our beginning.
But for those who are not baptized, please stay with us. There is no shame or judgement. I didn’t hear the voice in the wilderness and wasn’t baptized until I was 41 years old. And then it took a few more years to realize that baptism wasn’t going to make much of a difference unless I let go of my ego, dropped my guard and let God go to work on me.
In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis describes the journey of faith like sitting in a hallway, which has doors into several rooms.
Lewis says the hall is a place to wait, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live. He says some people may have to wait in the hall for a long time, while others feel certain almost at once which door to choose.
We don’t know why there is this difference, Lewis says, but we can be sure God doesn’t keep anyone waiting unless God sees that it’s good for them to wait. When we get into the room, we find chairs and warmth and meals, and we’ll discover that the long wait has done some good which wouldn’t have been done otherwise.
That certainly was true for me.
Yet, in some sense, I am still waiting -- we are always waiting -- for God. To me, this is the “mystery of faith,” as we say in our Eucharistic prayer. It’s mysterious to have faith in an intimate and kind God, who is also a remote God who allows evil. It’s a mystery, yet I persist – and you are here today, so you persist as well.
We begin in baptism and then travel through this life, waiting and searching for clarity that may never come, yet we still find comfort and hope in our faith.
Baptism then, is not anywhere near the end of our journey. It’s a place much closer to the beginning. As it was with Jesus. After he was baptized, his ministry grew, He taught, he healed, he preached, he loved.
It wasn’t an end; it was a beginning.
Whenever we have a baptismal service, we renew our baptismal vows. We say that we will, with God’s help, continue in prayer and continue to resist evil. We say we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. We will seek and serve Christ in all persons, we say; and strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.
These are big promises and they’re not negotiable. Baptism isn’t a bargain, an agreement, or a deal. It’s an irrevocable covenant. God will never forsake us, never leave us, never stop loving us just as we are, frail and broken and sinful. We promise to keep our vows, but God knows us well and so God also gives us grace. Whenever we fall short, we can always “repent and return to the Lord.”
God gives us this grace, and God forgives us because God is in love with us – and God’s love is passionate.
Lewis says to imagine that we are a living house. Through faith, we ask God to rebuild us. But in reality, we don’t want a total remodel. We just want God to fix the few, small things that we know are a problem, like a leaky roof or a squeaky door. We’re grateful when God has fixed these small things in us, and we may think that God’s work is done.
But then God starts knocking down walls and rearranging things in our life. It’s annoying and it hurts and it’s much more than what we wanted.
So, what is God up to?
Lewis says God is building a very different house than what we imagined. God is raising the ceiling, adding new wings and floors and terraces. We may have asked God for a small cottage, but God is building a palace in each of us, and God intends to live there with us.
That’s a miracle. That’s grace. And that’s a beginning, not an end.
John the baptizer, the forerunner, is brutally murdered by a weak leader. Not long after that, Jesus is crucified because a weak leader, Pontius Pilate, let’s the mob decide if Jesus should live or die.
But Jesus’s death was not the end, was it?
Jesus’s birth was a miracle.
His life was one miracle after another.
His death and his resurrection were the most awesome miracles of all time.
John died to foreshadow Jesus’s death – the death that was our beginning.
We also know, as John told us from the wilderness, that baptism creates us anew. It starts a project that will give us God’s palace after all – because God is never an end.
God is always a beginning. God is always building. Alleluia!
So, what is God building in you?
What end are you facing that, with God’s help, can also be a beginning? Amen.