Unprecedented
Mark 1:1-11[1]
This is the time of year when people think about what will
be “new” about the “New Year.” But for those of us who have made more than a
few trips around the sun, turning over the calendar may just mark another day.
We may find ourselves thinking along with the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes that “What
has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is
nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Or to put it in a more familiar way,
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s the moral of the
story of Sisyphus, the mythological Greek figure who thought he could outsmart
the gods and even cheat death. As a result, he was sentenced to push a boulder
up a hill only for it to roll back down again, over and over and over. In both
cases, the idea is that all our efforts are in vain.
This sentiment has been around for a long time—for
millennia in fact! The myth of Sisyphus goes back to ancient Greece, and
Ecclesiastes may be one of the older books in the Hebrew Bible. And yet, there
are genuinely “new” things that happen for some of us. Students graduate from
High School and move on to the next level. Or they complete their studies and
start a career. Couples get married and start their lives together. Or they
have children, which changes everything! Those are exciting times for all who
are involved. But after a while, even a “new” career falls into a routine.
Couples and even families can deal with the same thing. As the years continue
to roll around, they may start to feel like every year turns into a repeat of
the last one. Monotony sets in, and that leads to boredom. Our flourishing
entertainment industry gives ample evidence of the fact that many of us,
despite whatever “new” things come our way, feel like our lives are just an
endless loop of the same old thing, day by day, month by month, and year after
year.
To some extent, that’s a normal part of our human
experience. Seasons come and seasons go. We rely on that. Our days and nights
and weeks and months and years tend to follow a pattern. That’s not all bad.
It’s comforting to know, for example, that the sun will actually come up
tomorrow. Having a “normal” life gives us a sense of stability. But when
stability turns into monotony, and boredom sets in, we can find ourselves
struggling with the idea that none of it really matters. And that leads to
despair, a state of mind and heart and soul that results from losing hope that
anything we do or say makes any difference at all. More than that, despair
cancels out any kind of faith: in God, in life, in the future, in anything. When
we lose hope, and we lose faith, we also lose the heart and the will to truly
live and love and find joy in doing so.
The message of the Bible, despite the pessimistic
declaration of the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes, is a very different one. As the
prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the Lord, “I am about to do a new thing”
(Isa 43:19). In fact, the new thing that God promised to do would change
everything. As the prophet said in the name of the Lord, “I am about to create
new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come
to mind” (Isa 65:17). In that setting, the prophet was primarily talking about
what God was going to do to set his people free from their captivity in
Babylon. The promise was that God was going to change everything; in fact,
God’s work was going to change even the heavens and the earth! As we’ve
discussed, when the people returned from exile, the reality they faced wasn’t
as “new” and as all-encompassing as they expected. There was a lot that stayed
the same.
Some might think that God didn’t fulfill his promise after
all. But the reason why things didn’t turn out quite the way they expected was
because God wasn’t finished fulfilling his promise. The “good news” that the
prophet Isaiah proclaimed almost three thousand years ago was a sweeping vision
that included all God has in store for his precious creation. And, of course,
the essential piece of that “good news” had to do with the birth, ministry,
death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus Christ as Lord! We get a glimpse of
that “good news” in our Gospel lesson for today. Not only does Mark tell us
that the events surrounding Jesus’ birth were part of the fulfillment of God’s
promises through the prophet Isaiah. He also demonstrates in several ways that
the story of Jesus is the “good news” about the “Son of God.” Now there had
been others before Jesus who were called “sons” of God, but Jesus fulfilled
that role uniquely.
That’s the point of the affirmation that the Gospel of Mark
opens with: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”
(Mk 1:1). One of the ironies about Mark’s Gospel is that the only person who
truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God” is the Roman Centurion who witnessed
his death on the cross. Nobody else truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God”
in Mark’s Gospel. I think the reason for this is that Mark believed people
could only truly understand what it meant that Jesus was the “Son of God” in
light of the fact that he suffered and died on the cross. In that day, “Sons of
God” were supposed to do miraculous deeds, draw huge crowds of followers, enjoy
tremendous success, and be recognized by one and all! “Sons of God” in the
ancient world were the “stuff of legend,” the focus of mythical stories. But
Jesus demonstrated that he was the true “Son of God” by following through with
God’s purpose: he took all the suffering of the world onto himself by dying on
the cross.
As important as it is that Jesus was born as
“God-who-is-with-us,” as important as it is that Jesus died as
“God-who-is-for-us,” as important as it is that Jesus was raised to new life
and ascended to the right hand of God to reign over all things, as Mark reminds
us, this is the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
The change that God made in Jesus was only the beginning. The work of
fulfilling the promise of making a whole new heaven and a whole earth would
continue through the first Christians, as the New Testament tells us. Through
those who were bold enough to declare the news that in Jesus Christ God had
begun working to change the whole world, the “good news” continued to be
fulfilled in the lives of all who heard the message and took it to heart.
I think what I want to emphasize today is that the “good
news” is that God isn’t finished with his work even now. The “good news of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God” is still in the process of being fulfilled. And
God will not stop working to make all things new until he has changed
everything and everyone by the power of his unfailing love. To those who say,
“there is nothing new under the sun,” I say that through Jesus Christ God is
continually doing something new among us, even now. To those who say, “The more
things change, the more they stay the same,” I say that it’s time to open your
eyes to see the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ that is still shining on us
all to this day. To those who say that the promises of the Bible are just a lot
of wishful thinking because life doesn’t ever really change, I say that it’s
time to break the chains of hopelessness and despair. It’s time to open our
hearts to the faith that the God who loves us will not stop changing everything
until his work is finished, and it’s time to celebrate with joy the signs of
God’s work that are all around us. In Jesus, God did something truly new and
unprecedented. And he continues to do so among us and through us to this day.
[1] ©
2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/7/2024 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
No comments:
Post a Comment