“The
Beginning”
Mark 1:1-11
January 11, 2009
Dave Russell,
----
An
attorney who specializes in personal injury law was at the mall with his 6-year
old daughter when a person walked by wearing one of those foam-rubber-collar-brace
things. “Look, Daddy,” said the little
girl, “There's a plaintiff.”
Not
many 6-year-olds would look at someone with a neck injury and see a “plaintiff.” But that 6-year-old’s father specialized in
the legal aspects of injuries, and from hearing him talk, she had learned to
see through that filter, or at least to use legal terms to describe what she
saw.
A
couple moved into a new neighborhood. The
next morning, the woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. “That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “That woman is doing something wrong. I wonder if she’s using some of that cheap laundry
detergent. It looks like she needs to
get her some Tide.”
Her
husband looked on, but remained silent.
Every
time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the
woman
would make the same sort of comments.
About
a month later, the woman was surprised to see a
nice
clean wash on the line next door and said to her husband: “Look, her wash is nice and clean. I wonder who taught her how to do laundry?”
The
husband said, “I got up early this morning and
washed
our windows.”
We
all see through filters of one sort or another.
Some people think of the middle of winter, what with snow and ice and
cold and darkness and dry skin and being cooped up in the house and colds and
the flu, as the worst time of the year.
Others think of the middle of the winter and their thoughts turn to
basketball season, and they see it as an exciting time of the year. It all depends on how you look at
things. It all depends on what you see.
There
are so many things that we see through filters.
We only see a part of what is there.
We rarely see the whole picture.
Filters
can be very useful – we would have a hard time getting by without them. We wear sunglasses so that by filtering out
glare and UV light, we can see clearly what we want to see – like the highway. If you are climbing to a high place, someone
might say, “Don’t look down!” That is a
self-imposed filter that we use to cut down on anxiety and help us function. If you are one of those people who enjoy
basketball, you may have watched a game where a player is shooting free throws
and the crowd behind the basket is waving and screaming and doing all they can
to distract the shooter – but a good player will be able to filter out those
distractions – for them it’s just like shooting hoops in the driveway. Filters can be very helpful and sometimes
even necessary.
But
not always. There are filters we don’t
even realize we are using, like the dirt on those windows, and they can lead us
astray. Sometimes what gets filtered out
is what is most important for us to see.
Mark’s gospel was written in part for people wearing filters that did
not allow them to see Jesus for who he was.
In
our scripture today, Jesus is baptized by John in the
Some
may want to ask, “Why didn’t John immediately become a follower of Jesus?” Why didn’t he become one of Jesus’
disciples? We don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t asked. Maybe John had his calling, his work to do,
and Jesus had his. But John saw himself
as a forerunner to Jesus. He said, “One
more powerful than me is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and tie
his sandals.”
John’s
ministry continued into the time of Jesus’ ministry. And while John understood himself as a
forerunner to Jesus, as his warm-up act, some of John’s disciples had a hard
time transferring their allegiance to Jesus.
A community formed around John and not all of his followers became
followers of Jesus. Compared to John,
Jesus seemed to them just a pale imitation.
Jesus certainly was not as tough on sinners as John was. John kept separate from the evils of society,
but Jesus was much too worldly. John was
an ascetic – he ate locusts and honey and stayed away from wine, but Jesus
seemed to go to parties all the time.
Some
of John’s followers continued as a separate community long after he was
gone. In fact, there is yet today a small
group called the Mandeans who see themselves as the continuing community of
followers of John the Baptist. It
obviously wasn’t easy for all of John’s followers to become followers of Jesus.
And
even when many of John’s disciples did follow Jesus, after John was killed,
they were not all following Jesus so much as they were following that part of
Jesus that reminded them of John. “Who
do people say that I am?” Jesus asked his disciples. “Some say you are John the Baptist,” they
answered. “They say that John’s spirit
is in you – when they look at you, they see John.”
Others
looked at Jesus and saw other things.
Some saw in him Elijah, a great prophet.
Others looked at Jesus and saw a charismatic leader who would overthrow
the Romans and bring glory to
Now
this may all seem rather remote for us, a mildly interesting Bible lesson
perhaps. But this still happens. Folks still see Jesus through filters.
Consider
Christian survivalists who stockpile food and weapons, so that when disaster
comes, they’ll have all they need for themselves -- and all the weapons they
need to shoot anyone who tries to get any of it. How can these folks think Christ approves of
their attitude? It’s simple. Whatever Jesus said that would seem to
disapprove of this gets filtered out.
They only hear what they agree with.
The
Ku Klux Klan sees itself as a Christian organization, “bringing a message of
hope and deliverance to white Christian America.”[1] How could they possibly identify their
organization as following the way of Jesus?
You know the answer – they have a big filter.
These
are perhaps extreme examples. But before
we get too smug, we need to acknowledge that we all see Jesus through a
filter. The way we see Jesus is colored
by our experience and colored by what we expect to see.
We
see everything most everything through filters.
Paul understood this when he wrote that we “see through a glass dimly.” We don’t see everything. We don’t see clearly. At the very least, we need to have some
measure of humility, understanding that we don’t have all the truth or all the
answers.
To
varying degrees, Jesus’ life and message gets filtered out for all of us. This is one reason we need to continue go back
to the scriptures. We need to hear
Jesus’ words and see Jesus’ actions again and again, because it is so easy to
filter out what we don’t want to hear or don’t expect to see. Simply reading the scriptures is no guarantee
that we will see Jesus clearly, but it surely improves our odds.
Dan
Kimball has written a book called They Like Jesus But Not The Church. He is writing about emerging generations, or
people roughly in their 20’s. His
experience has been that they are very positive about Jesus but by and large
negative about the church. In focus
groups and interviews, individuals in this age group were asked about their
attitudes. Kimball himself is fairly
conservative, but he is very open about the problems facing the church and the
way emerging generations view the church.
Common perceptions that this age group had of the church included:
As
it relates to our conversation this morning - about the way Jesus gets filtered
- Kimball essentially is saying that emerginng generations think the church is presenting
Jesus through filters – filters of judgmental attitudes and politics and male
superiority and homophobia and arrogance and rigid fundamentalism.
Are
all churches like this? Of course
not. Is there truth in what Kimball is
saying? Of course. And whether any of this is accurate or not, these
are perceptions that a lot of people have, and that is something that we have
to live with and deal with. But it is
interesting that people who would not necessarily self-identify as Christian
say that the church is presenting a Jesus that is heavily filtered.
On
the other hand, Kimball found that almost everyone interviewed really liked
Jesus. Of course, they were largely
viewing Jesus through their own filter, mostly a popular culture kind of
filter, but many of those interviewed had read the Bible and given this a lot
of thought.
We
all have filters, and sometimes these are necessary. But when it comes to Jesus, it is important
to see Jesus as he really is.
On
this first Sunday of the year – at least the first Sunday of the year fit for
making it to church – our scripture readings are about beginnings. We read from Genesis about the beginning of
creation. And we read from Mark about
the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Right
off the bat, those who may have been seeing Jesus through the filter of John
have their eyes opened. The very first
thing to understand is who Jesus is. For
followers of John who were having trouble with this – and for people today who
need to see clearly - Jesus goes to John for baptism. He is the one, who is greater than John, but
he identifies with John’s movement and ministry, and then as he comes out of
the water the heavens are opened and the Spirit descends like a dove and the
voice comes from heaven, “You are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.”
And
as Jesus is baptized in the waters of the
That’s
what baptism can do. It tells us who we
are. It helps to remove some of the
filters we may have about Jesus – and about ourselves. In our own baptism, we are reminded that each
of us is a beloved child of God. And we
continue down a path of seeing and following Jesus – who is not only greater
than John, but greater than our limited vision.
In
the old Wild West, a stranger arriving in town went to the saloon, which he
immediately noticed was full of the toughest and meanest looking cowboys he’d
ever seen. Tough and fearless himself,
he strode in among them, hoisted himself up onto a barstool, and ordered a
drink.
He
had hardly had time to take his first sip, however, when a man burst through
the saloon doors, obviously in a panic. “Big
Red is coming to town!!” he yelled. “Big
Red is coming to town!!” On hearing
this, the hard-bitten cowboys in the saloon were instantly terrified and ran screaming
out the door.
The
stranger thought that was odd, but being genuinely fearless, he remained to
finish his drink. About that time, he
heard the saloon door swing open again, and turned to see a huge man,
7-feet-plus tall, massively muscled, with long fiery red hair -- on his head,
on his chest, on his arms -- and the meanest most evil face and eyes he had
ever seen. And the stranger, who had never
known fear, suddenly was very afraid.
The
floor of the saloon shook as this massive incarnation of evil walked up to the
bar ordered a drink and threw it down his throat.
Still
shaking with fear, the formerly fearless stranger could think of only one
thing: get on the good side of this
monster. So he said to him, “Please
allow me to buy you another drink.”
“Another
drink??!!” the fellow said. “I ain’t got time for another drink. Ain’t you heard? -- Big Red’s coming to
town!!!”
“After
me comes one who is greater,” said John the Baptist. “You think I’m great. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Amen.
(thanks to Mike Johnson for ideas and inspiration
for this sermon)