Connections

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Mark’s Gospel feels like it is in a hurry. There is no birth story. It starts with Jesus as an adult and when we see him for the first time he is already on the march from Nazareth to Galilee and beyond. And in the rush of images that Mark manages to fit into these eleven verses, he describes three relationships of Jesus, three ways he is connected to a larger story. First, Jesus is connected to the scriptures. Mark quotes Isaiah to show that the coming of Jesus was anticipated long before in the Bible. Second, Jesus is connected to John the baptizer, that is, to someone who went before Jesus to prepare the way for Jesus. And third, Jesus is connected in a special way to God: “you are my Son, the Beloved.” I want to talk about each of these connections for Jesus and think about how they apply to our own lives as well.

Mark’s Gospel begins by describing Jesus’ connection to scripture. The coming of the Messiah was anticipated by the prophets and was, therefore, part of the ongoing story of Israel and how God was revealed to the world through Israel’s life and history. We simply cannot understand Jesus without seeing his connection to scripture. In a strange kind of way, I think a very popular contemporary character can help us understand this better. We can learns something from Harry Potter.

As you know, the Harry Potter books have been a publishing phenomenon for the last seven or eight years. The British author, J.K. Rowling published the sixth book in the series this past summer and it was an immediate best seller as were all the volumes before it. Global sales of all the Harry Potter books have now exceeded 300 million copies and they’ve been translated into at least 63 languages.[2] The movie of Book Four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was just released a week or so ago. I bought Book Six when it came out in July but since it had been awhile since I read the earlier books, I decided to read them all again before taking on the latest volume. I’m up to the middle of Book Five now and will finally get to Book Six in a week or so.

I know that because the Harry Potter stories about wizards and witches, there are some Christians who think they ought not to be read. I really disagree with that because the world of wizardry is merely the narrative framework in which the Harry Potter story is set. Harry Potter is a wizard but he was orphaned as a baby by an evil wizard named Voldemort and the real story is about his growing up and discovering his identity and destiny. Only at the age of 12 where the books start does Harry start to discover that his individual story is part of a much larger and more important story.

We can all identify with this and that’s why the books are so popular, I think. It must be said that in many ways J.K. Rowling is not a great writer. At times her language is dull and uninspired. But she knows how to weave a great story and we come to love these characters, Harry Potter and his two best friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. And, of course, there is the beloved Dumbledore … ah, but that’s for another sermon. It is of utmost importance to know how our individual lives connect with the big picture. The books show Harry Potter discovering his connection and this is precisely why our connection to scripture is so important.

What does it mean to be connected to scripture? It means that we have a story. It means that the text with which we wrestle every Sunday in worship is the context in which we live. There was a time when as a culture we knew ourselves in terms of the Bible story. As a culture, we’ve lost that. But the biblical story is still our story. To be connected to scripture means that we belong to a people. Others have gone before. Others have thought about these verses, read these words and lived by these words. And this connection is what we need to keep rediscovering. Because our story is in the Bible whether we know it or not. For the Bible is the story of God’s love for the world, God creating the world and God redeeming the world. We need to be connected to that just as Jesus was connected to scripture.

Then the text describes a second relationship or connection of Jesus and that was to John the baptizer. John was the forerunner and he was very clear that his role was to prepare for Jesus. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” Without those who went before, the world would not have been ready for Jesus.

So it is with us. There are those who prepared for us. Our parents, obviously, and, we need to say, hopefully, because we are painfully aware that in many families today the connections between parents and children go awry. But parents are there to prepare the way for us. Others are too, dozens of people without whom we would not be who we are.

Just think of your teachers and your Sunday School teachers. I still remember old Mrs. Vickerson. She must have been 187 years old at the time, or so it seemed. And old Mrs. Vickerson came into my Sunday School class when I was a child and taught us the catechism. I only consciously remember one catechetical question. But sometimes wonder how much Mrs. Vickerson impressed on me that I was connected to a people, to so many who prepared the way for me. We all have some Mrs. Vickersons who are the personal saints that prepare the way for us. We need to remember those connections.

You may not be familiar with the name of Carlyle Marney. I only encountered his writings a few years ago. Marney was a Southern Baptist preacher. He died in the late 1970s and had a profound impact on many of his generation. One of the most famous images from his writing and preaching was about the “balcony” of our lives. Marney used to say that every human personality is like a house. Some are fancy and sophisticated. Some are simple and functional. Some ostentatious, some modest. Each has a number of rooms: a parlor for greeting guests, a family room, bedrooms, a kitchen.

Marney said each of us has in the structure of our personality a basement where the plumbing is located and the trash is stored. No need to spend life down there, Marney said. Everybody has a basement. Come on up into the sunshine. Marney observed that sometimes we act as if the plumbing and trash bin are all there are to us.

He said you should come upstairs and step outside onto the lawn and look up, Then you will see that the house that is you has a spacious balcony. There are people up there on your balcony. Now Marney was a Southerner. So his balcony was white wrought iron with wicker rocking chairs. Marney used to say there are people in the rocking chairs on your balcony sipping iced tea or bourbon, depending on whether you are a Baptist or Presbyterian. The people on your balcony are the strong, positive influences in your life. Your heroes and heroines. Your models and mentors. Your parents are probably up there … your grandparents. There are some folk up there you never met but they influenced and helped shape you and there are some really big names up there. Martin Buber is on my balcony, and Larry Yates, and C. S. Lewis, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The people on our balconies are those whose lives inspired us and called forth deeper faith, courage and stamina, love and discipline. The people on our balconies are our saints.[3]

We need to look up to our balcony sometimes at all those who have prepared the way for us, all the connections who are our saints, our dear ones, the great ones and the small ones. Just as Mark’s Gospel reminds us of Jesus’ connections to all who went before him, we need to be reminded of all who have prepared the way for us.

The third connection of Jesus in the text is with God. Mark briefly describes Jesus’ baptism and the key point is the voice from heaven that declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” We don’t have time today to delve into the mysteries of the Trinity and the relationship of God the Father and Jesus the Son. Jesus was uniquely connected to God. Our connection to God isn’t the same but it’s still very, very important.

When I was at my first church in Bellevue, Washington I volunteered with the Seattle Crisis Clinic as an emergency counselor. I didn’t get too many calls but the few I did were always interesting. I must say that the first time someone calls you on the phone and says they are going to kill themselves, it does get your attention.

It was late at night when one such call came in. The voice on the other end was barely coherent but through the muffled and garbled words I did get the person to tell me where he was. I got dressed and went searching for his apartment, not at all sure of what I would find when I got there. Initially I was surprised that the apartment was very nice, very tastefully and expensively decorated. That didn’t fit my stereotype of someone who was in serious trouble. Neither did the man I met. He was handsome, well dressed, educated and sophisticated. But he had to crawl to the door because he could no longer walk. He had taken a bunch of pills on top of a lot of alcohol and who knows what else. He seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness.

No one had told me what to do in a situation like that so I did what I’d seen in the movies. I threw his arm over my shoulder and supporting most of his weight got him up and walking as best I could while calling to get him to the hospital where he got the medical help he needed. In all of that began a relationship that lasted over many months.

It was never as bad again as that first night but I soon realized that I had encountered a person who was very distraught and very lonely. He was an alcohol and drug abuser, completely alone, and totally hopeless. It only takes knowing one person like that to understand that the worst thing in all the world is to be alone, to have nothing worthwhile outside of oneself. He had so many things going for him on the surface. He had a good job and money. But it had all turned sour. He had lost hope and without that he had nothing at all. He was estranged from himself and from everyone else and no longer could find reasons to go on living. He didn’t really want to die but he had no reason to live without a connection to something or someone greater than himself.

The message of Advent, my friends, is that God does not leave us alone. God wants to be connected to all of us, even when we make a mess of things. We have hope because God comes to make a home in our hearts. That’s what Advent and Christmas are all about. That is why we are here today and why we celebrate. God has come to make a home in our hearts. The great writer G. K. Chesterton, who had so much influence on C. S. Lewis, once wrote, “Hope means expectancy when things are otherwise hopeless.” He meant that circumstances are not what determine hope. Circumstances may indeed be hopeless as they were for the man I was trying to help. But what gives us hope is knowing that we are connected to God regardless of our circumstances.

I worked for several months with the man who ran out of hope and tried to end his life. Most of the time I didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. But one day he came into see me and I could tell just by looking at him that everything was different. Hope was present in his life again. He was experiencing the healing of forgiveness, forgiveness of himself and forgiveness within his family. He was Jewish and he also had started to sense God’s forgiveness and reconnecting to God. Oh, he still had many things he needed to overcome. But he no longer felt alone.

I’ve often thought that I didn’t do much for him and I didn’t. But I happened to be there for him at the moment of his deepest need and I became a sign that even though he was estranged from himself and others and God, God was never estranged from him.

So we celebrate our connections. Like Jesus, we are connected to scripture. Like Jesus, we are connected to those who have gone before us. And like Jesus, we are connected to God. Praise be!

[1] The “quote” isn’t all from Isaiah and scholars have proposed a number of solutions. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible suggests that mark intended verses 1-3 as one sentence. This implies that the evangelist was stating that Jesus was the one coming to prepare the way of the Lord, that is, of God. Matthew and Luke see the Isaiah quotation as pointing to John who prepares the way of the Lord, that is, of Jesus. Walter J. Harrelson, ed., The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003) 1804.

[2] CBS News, online, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/04/print/main907188, Internet, 4 Oct. 2005.

[3] I first encountered Marney’s balcony story in a sermon by John Buchanan. Since then I’ve become a Marney fan. John M. Buchanan, “For All the Saints,” online, http://www.fourthchurch.org/, Internet, 2 Nov. 1997.