Baptized into good news
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
Dec 10, 2023—Advent 2B
Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1)
Good news. that’s what the word “gospel” means. That’s also what the word “evangelism” means, in case you didn’t know. In Greek, euaggelion: eu: good; aggelion: message (angel and messenger are the same word, as it happens). Brought into English as “evangel” … translated through Old English as god-spel: good story.
Gospel. Good news. Evangelism. Which means that the story the church offers to the world had BETTER be good news!
This comes at the very beginning of the gospel that Mark wrote, and it’s always interesting to see how the four different gospel writers understand the good news of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will see Mark’s understanding unfold as we move through his account during the coming year. But for now, we are here at the beginning, and on this day on which we will recognize and celebrate Kyle’s baptism, we hear the voice of John the Baptist calling the people to baptism. He describes his baptism as an act of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, but attests that this will be a mere shadow of what we will have in Jesus.
Here then, we learn something big about the good news. The good news is not just that Mark’s stories about John the Baptist have far less “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!!" than Matthew and Luke (although that is indeed good news for a preacher who is also baptizing someone right after the sermon) … the good news is about forgiveness, and the even better news is that the forgiveness of Jesus will surpass that of John the Baptist.
John’s forgiveness can feel like it lands really hard on, “You have SERIOUSLY messed up, and things are about to go down, so you’d better straighten up RIGHT NOW!” Something about the “brood of vipers” thing makes it hard to read him any other way. But as even he admits, he isn’t Jesus. And the spirit and power of Jesus will take the second chance John is offering to the people and expand it a hundredfold.
Forgiveness of sins.
That’s the good news we are baptizing Kyle into, after I’m done talking here. Forgiveness. A new beginning. For her, for all of us. After all the ways we’ve messed things up in this life. Big things. Small things. New things. Over and over things.
The good news is that we don’t have to be chained to any of our mistakes. Don’t have to drag them around forever. They matter, and we must always work to mend the damage we have done. But we don’t have to pin our failings to our chests and carry that stigma through our lives and into eternity.
We can be forgiven. And that just might save us from a life that is crippled by shame and guilt. We can be forgiven, as we encounter and take hold of and unite ourselves to a savior who embodies the words we heard God speak in Isaiah today:
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.”
This, Isaiah tells us, is what the glory of God looks like! That people will be unchained from their past mistakes. That their life will be restored, the damage mended. And that the barriers (the uneven ground, the rough places) that stand between all people and the life God wishes for them will be removed. The way will be smoothed.
Did you catch that? It’s not that they will work harder. Or that they will somehow, miraculously, make no more mistakes ever. Neither of those things is what will bring this beautiful vision of God’s kingdom about. It is simply that in the dream of God, in the idealized vision of salvation, those barriers will not exist, and the burdens of guilt and blame that we carry around can be put down.
In our less idealized world, of course, the barriers still exist, and those of us who long for God’s kingdom have much work to do to bring them down. But that work will be made so much easier by the fact that the limitless forgiveness of God will allow us to put our personal burdens down: the damage we have done, and the damage that has been done to us.
That’s the promise of salvation; God’s promise to us at our Baptism. That we can admit our mistakes and our wounds, and then (and this is the key part) actually be released from them. No-one is going to make confession if they can’t actually trust in the forgiveness, and this is the way the Church has sometimes failed over the years. We have not always embodied the trustworthiness of the God who gave those words to Isaish, and who revealed himself in Jesus. The God who assures us that there is a way back from exile, and broken relationships, and all the ways in which we humans hurt each other and ourselves. God will bring us back, not by forcing us to wallow forever in shame and recrimination. But releasing us, renewing us, giving us courage to try again. To start over.
This is the freedom that lies at the heart of Christianity, the life-giving power that pervades the church at its best. It’s a big part of the good news. And it’s what we rejoice to welcome Kyle into today. May it be so, my friends, Amen.