Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Mark 1:1-8
I haven’t seen the final installment of the Star Wars series yet, Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith, but I am so glad for these new installments since they connect my generation with a new generation through the common ground of science fiction and special effects. However, I don’t think that the movies have the same impact today as they did for my generation. You see, back in the seventies, the first Star Wars movie was a whole new thing. Me and my seven-year-old friends had no idea what we were in for. We sat there with our jaws in our laps for the whole movie and then, when I got home, oh my poor mother!
Mom, you should have seen it, they had light sabers and x-wing fighters and there was a Death Star, which isn’t really a star cause it has a trash compactor. You see this guy Luke from this dusty planet buys some robots and one runs away and he chases it and he meets this old guy and he tells them he is a Jedi and they meet up with this other guy and Chewbacca who is a Wookie and really hairy but he can fly a spaceship and they fly away on the Millennium falcon to fight the empire but first they have to save Princess Leah and did I mention the Jawas or the Sand People? So they rescue the princess and Luke learns how to use the force and blows up the Death Star, you know, where Darth Vader lives. Can I get a light saber?
To my seven year old mind, this was the greatest thing that ever happened and I had to tell my mother all about it. That is what kids do and that is what adults do. When we get excited about something new, we just can’t help but tell people.
The author of Mark’s gospel has become aware of something far more important than a movie and he has to tell everyone all about it, right now.
1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
If you spend any time with me at all you will find out I am a big fan of Mark’s gospel. For a member of the television generation such as myself, it speaks right to me. It is like the made for T.V. version of the good news of Christ. It is fast paced and action packed, Heck you can probably read the whole thing in about half an hour. It doesn’t get mired down in long-winded theological discourses, it even has a cliffhanger sort of ending.
And that beginning!
1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
There is no long-winded genealogy, no setup, just good news. Author Eugene Peterson writes this about Mark’s gospel:
An event has taken place that radically changes the way we look at and experience the world, and he can’t wait to tell us about it. There is an air of breathless excitement in nearly every sentence he writes. The sooner we get the message, the better off we’ll be, for the message is good, incredibly good: God is here, and he’s on our side.[1]
This isn’t just good news. The one word we translate as two words, “good news” is the same word we translate as “gospel” (euongalion), we are talking about really good news. This is exciting stuff!
The thing that draws me to Mark’s gospel is what draws me to do what I do. It is the breathless excitement of news so good, you can’t help but get revved up about it.
Mark’s enthusiasm is a good picture of my journey.
Most of you don’t know a whole lot about me. You have heard some bits and pieces. You may have read my bio in the newsletter. I have had a chance to sit down and talk to some of you. But, for most of you, you have no choice but to take the limit data you have about me and fill in the blanks. There is nothing wrong with that, it is kind of how we are wired. When we meet someone we create a composite of what we know, filled in with information from past experience. You know some things about me. You know I am a pastor. You might know that I am not from Texas originally, either because I told you or because I talk funny. I have a wedding ring on my finger, so, even if you haven’t met my wife, you can guess I am married. Maybe you have known another somewhat young, married pastor from out of state, and you may transfer some of his traits onto me until you get to know me better.
Most people miss something with me when they try to fill in the blanks. When was I called to ministry? I am at that age where, if I took my time through school, this could be my first career. But it isn’t. So, I was called to ministry as a an adult. Was that due to the nurturing in the faith I received as I child? No. This may make you begin to reevaluate the composite picture you have created of me: I was not nurtured in the faith as a child.
Yes, I grew up on Church Street in Eden, New York but never once spent a Sunday morning in the pew of any one of the five churches that were in walking distance of my house.
I didn’t even find my way to Christianity as a youth. I wasn’t invited to a youth camp or a lock-in that helped me find my way to God. When I went to college on the shores of Lake Erie at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, there was a church right across the street from the school that offered Wednesday night dinner to college students, but I never went. I took my degree in communications and made a career as a radio disc jockey in New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. I went to church a couple of times, for weddings and funerals.
By just looking at me, most people don’t consider that through my teenage years, through college, through my first career I had no relationship with God or the church whatsoever. When people ask me if I am a second career pastor, I say “no, I am a second career Christian.”
When trying to fill in the blanks just looking at me, it is hard to guess that that I wasn’t baptized until I was 27 years old. Now, you may guess by looking at me that I am now 33, though it is alright to say that I look much younger. But, now you start doing the math, and now you have some new data and now, for some of you, that composite picture you have been creating of me in your head is starting to change.
1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Mark’s enthusiasm is a good picture of my journey. As I grew up, with the limited contact with church that I had, I saw it as, at best, boring, at worst, as a set of impossible to follow moral codes that existed solely so that people who lived boring lives could look down at people who didn’t. And it wasn’t just that the message sounded boring, it was that everyone looked and acted bored. I told you I never went to church on Sunday morning, but when my grandmother babysat me, should we make me sit the basement of the Baptist church while the women had Bible study. Leviticus 10:6:
6And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, ‘Do not dishevel your hair, and do not tear your vestments, or you will die and wrath will strike all the congregation; but your kindred, the whole house of Israel, may mourn the burning that the LORD has sent
I honestly thought and I think some people in the churches would have backed me up on this, that church was supposed to be boring.. I thought, that somewhere, at the core of the message of Christianity was a call to dullness, that its sole purpose was to drain every last bit of enjoyment out of our existence. My grandmother told me I was supposed to have a relationship with Jesus, who sounded to me like the most amazingly dull disciplinarian who ever walked the earth. Yeah, sign me up for that!
It wasn’t until I stumbled into a United Methodist Church with pastors who were truly excited by a message of grace that I thought this might be interesting. As I began to look closely at the Christian message, I realized that the message was not mundane and boring, but radical and powerful. It wasn’t just a bunch or rules designed to take the excitement out of life, it was about a world changing message of hope and challenge and grace and love and peace that was more exciting than even a first screening of Star Wars for a seven year old. And once I realized the true nature of the gospel message, I had to tell everybody about it.
As soon as I saw the power and possibility of the message of the Gospel to change lives, to change the world, when the message of the gospel was transformed before my eyes from mundane ritual to a powerful call to action, I knew that I had to be a messenger of that gospel!
You are going to find I use the word radical way too much. I had the privilege of taking an advanced preaching class in seminary with an adjunct professor some of you may know, Bobbi Kay Jones, and she told me I could keep using it, but I had to stop modifying it, as in really radical or sort of radical. But here is why I use the word.. The word radical actually comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. So, radical in its current form, as in departing from the customary, effecting fundamental changes in current practice, is talking about something that gets at the very foundation of things, get right to the root ~ radical.
The Gospel is radical, it gets right at the root of reality. It is world changing, life changing, it is serious, but it is not boring. The reason I love Mark’s gospel is that it starts with a bang and then stays out on that radical edge. The first person we meet is not the kind of person we would expect. In fact, the first person we meet is someone who, if they showed up in church, would probably make us quite uncomfortable.
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And 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. 6Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
Let me pause a moment to clarify what John the baptizer was proclaiming here.
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The word repentance might not convey what John was talking about. Repentance in modern use, according to the American Heritage Dictionary is:
Remorse or contrition for past conduct or sin.[2]
It is become kind of a synonym for penitence. It sort of conveys feeling bad about doing something or being sorry. But John is proclaiming something else. He is not proclaiming that everyone should feel bad about themselves; he is proclaiming a baptism of metanoia, a word that conveys a change of heart, a turning. I like to think of it as a turning of one’s heart toward God.
So, first thing in Mark’s gospel, along comes John the Baptizer, proclaiming that people should turn their hearts toward God, not a bad thing at all, but let’s look at this John fellow:
5And 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. 6Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
Mark’s gospel starts with an unexpected messenger delivering a radical message. And in just a couple verses when Jesus of Nazareth comes strolling into the picture, things are only going to get more intense.
John the baptizer is a bit of an irreverent sort of character to be starting a gospel, but that is what makes me love Mark’s gospel so much. I have to apologize in advance. Every so often, I may do or say something that you find not suitable for church. Don’t worry, I am not going to swear or get ugly or anything. But every so often, you may think something I do or say is irreverent, not quite appropriate for this holy place. I apologize, but I also say this. It will never come out of a lack of awe and respect for God. Instead, it is that I am so excited, and I think this message is so important that there is nothing I won’t do to try and help people grasp it, internalize it, grow in it, and live it out in their lives.
This week has been such an exciting week for me here at Grace, because I got to be around the youth and adults who were part of the Sea City Work Camp. Talk about exciting and reverent, serious, but not boring! At night, there was singing, and laughing and fun, right here is the sanctuary, and there was nothing irreverent about it in my book, because everyone was here to worship. They had worshipped all day but using their strength to serve God and then they came in here and celebrated the joy of knowing God in their lives.
This is exciting stuff! It is serious stuff, but it is exciting. I believe that sometimes the way we can be the most reverent is when, it looks to outsiders, like we are having a blast! And when we look like we are having a blast people will want to join us!
If we truly believe and accept this good news, it should and will affect every last part of our life and being and it should evident in the joy and excitement that radiates from within us.
I speak as a person who didn’t always have this. I can tell you, what you have, in the knowledge of the love of God in your lives, is a precious, precious gift. Embrace it, enjoy it, celebrate it! Have fun with it!
Amen?
