I love Mark’s eye witness account of Jesus’ life. It seems to me to have been written by someone who wants to get on with it, to keep the action moving. As you read it through, you can barely catch breath as Mark jumps from one scene to another.
The beginning sets the tone, none of this baby stuff for Mark – you won’t here anything from his gospel read at Carol services – he wants to tell us about what Jesus got up to in his active ministry. So he begins, not really at the beginning, but when Jesus is 30, almost at the end of his life on earth.
As well as keeping the action moving, Mark is efficient with his words, and packs a lot of meaning into what he writes. The first verse we read this morning is a great example of this.
“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah”
No introductory paragraph, or prologue, just – “the beginning”. And what it is this the beginning of? The good news. Everything that Mark writes is intended as good news. I wonder what you think of when you hear the words, “good news” – Perhaps hearing about the birth of a baby, like Aurorah, or about a job that you’d got, or that someone you love had recovered from an illness. All kinds of possibilities of what good news might be for you. Mark was convinced that he had good news for everybody, and that good news was about a person – about Jesus the Messiah.
And even those two words carry a load of meaning. Jesus’ name means “God saves” and Messiah means, “Chosen” or “Anointed”. So the good news is that God has chosen someone to come and save us – every single one of us, and the whole of creation, from the darkness, pain, and evil that can invade our lives. This is as good as news can get.
And the thing is, this was not God’s plan B. We know this because God had been telling his messengers, the prophets, all the way through history that he was going to send a rescuer. That’s why we lit our second advent candle in memory of those prophets, like Isaiah, who pointed forward towards Jesus. Mark reminds his readers of this by quoting from Isaiah, who had shared God’s promise that he was going to send someone to prepare the way for the Messiah. And then Mark makes a bold claim.
He says that this promise was fulfilled in the work of John the Baptiser, who got the people ready to hear Jesus’ teaching, and so Mark is claiming that Jesus is the Lord.
Now, we’ve had a great celebration this morning of Aurorah’s baptism. As part of that, Aurorah’s parents and godparents were asked some questions, on Aurorah’s behalf. They were asked, “Do you repent of your sins”, and they responded “I repent of my sins”.
You might recognise this language from what we read about John’s ministry of baptism. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But what does that mean? We don’t use words like repentance or sin very much in normal conversation, so what do they mean?
Repentance is all about changing – changing our direction and changing our mind. Part of it is feeling sorry for the things that we’ve done wrong, but it’s more than that. It’s about making the decision to turn around, to head in a different direction, to live differently.
This doesn’t usually happen quickly, or all at once, but at any time we can make that decision to say to God, “I’ve got myself in a mess, I need your good news, I want to repent, to turn my life around, will you help me?”
And, as I’ve been talking about repentance, I’ve been talking about sin as well. Sin is the stuff that messes up our lives, those things that we do that fall short of God’s best for us. The lies, the gossip, the envy, the dislike, the selfishness, the lack of love, the dishonesty, the lust. It’s the attitude that puts ourselves at the centre and pushes God away. This is what has been rejected on Aurarah’s behalf this morning. Because of Jesus, our rescuer, the effects of all this rubbish can be washed away from our lives, because we can be forgiven – it can be as if we’d never done any of these things, or been infected by them. We can be free of guilt and shame. This freedom and cleaning is symbolised for us in the waters of baptism.
But the baptism that we have seen this morning is even more than that. As Mark goes on, he shares what John said to those coming to him, “I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.”
This baptism is what we have done this morning.
When I prayed over the water I said, “Father, we ask you to bless this water, that those who are baptized in it may be cleansed in the water of life, and filled with your Spirit.” The baptism itself was in the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”. Afterwards we prayed that Aurorah “may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit” At the welcome I said, “by one Spirit we are all baptised into one body.”
Are you getting the picture? John came with a baptism of water for repentance, Jesus added to that baptism with Holy Spirit. This baptism is the one that the Christian family now uses. Every Christian who is baptised with water is also baptised with the Holy Spirit.
What does this mean? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not always very good at doing what I intend to do. I want to live better, but I don’t always do it. I might mean to turn away from the things that I know are wrong, but somehow I can get dragged back into them if I’m left to my own devices. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t leave us to our own devices. The Holy Spirit helps us to change, to become more like Jesus, to put God at the centre of our lives, to let go of control, and our own selfishness, and to live our lives for God. When we do slip and fall, the Holy Spirit provokes our conscience, and brings us back to repent again, and then assures us of God’s love and forgiveness for us.
More than that, though, the Holy Spirit flows through us to others. Last week Ellie shared with us a picture she had of a river of the Holy Spirit flowing out from the front of the church building here, down the central aisle and out of the doors into the community. There was lots that was really powerful and special about that message, if you haven’t seen it, please do go and watch it on Facebook or Youtube, or download the podcast of the sermon from last week. I want to build on that this week. As I was preparing what I was going to say this morning, I was struck by the fact that Ellie felt that the water was flowing from the front of church, here where the baptismal pool is.
What struck me was that sometimes I wonder if we can think that the Holy Spirit is like an optional extra in the Christian life, nice for some people, something for the keenies. But that is not what the Bible teaches us.
Right here, at the very beginning of Mark’s account of the good news of Jesus is the work of the Holy Spirit, linked to the thing that unites us all – that is common to all Christians – our baptism. All those who have received Christian baptism with water have also been baptised with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an optional extra, the Holy Spirit is in us and with us. It is only by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit that we can live the live that God is calling us to, it is only the Holy Spirit causing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self- control to grow in our lives that frees us to live free from sin.
This is the faith that we have baptised Aurorah into this morning, this is the Christian faith, this is our faith. It is as we live out this faith, as individuals, and as a church community, that we will see that river flowing more and more widely into our lives and our community, bringing the cleansing, refreshing, healing, live giving water of the Holy Spirit to more and more lives.
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