"Broken Open"

Mark 1:4-11

January 11, 2009
The First Sunday after Epiphany – The Baptism of the Lord

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

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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. 7He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver, a poet, asks us the question in her poem, The Summer Day: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Well, I spent my one wild and precious day at a Spa last Monday. Kim gave me a gift certificate for a “Gentleman’s Timeout” for my birthday in 2007. The brochure stated that it was for “an Aroma Anti-Stress Massage, a Gentleman’s Facial and an Intensive Spa Pedicure.” It took me over a year to make an appointment. And with some trepidation I finally entered the Spa on Monday.

For three hours, I was thoroughly kneaded, plucked, and filed to be beautified. At one point, right after my face was plucked; I said to the beautician that I now have more respect for women and men who take care of themselves diligently. “Beauty is pain” was the reply. I nodded to her in agreement as I was wincing from the pain. The beauty treatment may not show well on my face but I can tell you how soft the soles of my feet are. “Like night and day” was Kim’s remark.

These are some of the thoughts that whizzed by me as I was being kneaded, plucked, filed and beautified.

· I was glad that I did not have any knotted muscles. Knotted muscles would have meant more pain.
· I was amazed at the kind of high-tech machines at the Spa, such as the high frequency tool the beautician used on my face. It sparked! I realized that science was not only sending people to outer space but also helping us to look good on earth.
· And, I had no idea I was carrying so many dead cells! (At least a pound’s worth.)

I am not sure whether I would be volunteering myself to another beauty session in the near future; however, my smooth feet remind me of what is possible when I actually offer myself to be cared for. The whole experience was like being awaken to a realization that I had a body. And that it wants to be cared for and tended to. It was as though the Spa experience broke open my body to a new way of being.

On one summer day of his life, Jesus waded into the River Jordan, moved toward John the Baptizer, was pushed deeply into the water, and experienced his whole being broken open to the Spirit of God as he emerged from the water. That’s how the Gospel writer Mark opens his Gospel – the earliest one of the four Gospels in the Greek Testament.

Mark does not mention any stories of Jesus’ physical birth. There is no miraculous story of virgin birth. No animals in the manger. No Star and no Magi. Nothing about where and how Jesus was born. For Mark, it is the baptism of Jesus – the experience of the conversion of Jesus – that marks the beginning of Jesus of Nazareth of Galilee whom he proclaims as the Son of Man, who is the Son of God.

For Mark it was the spiritual birth of Jesus that was the beginning. It was the baptism – a ritual that signifies one’s death from the ordinary life (once born) into a renewed life (twice born) – that marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

In the summer of his life, Jesus of Nazareth of Galilee hears the question of his life from a fiery preacher named John the Baptizer: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Jesus’ first response to the question was to surrender himself to God.

In our time surrender is understood as a sign of defeat. It is a sign of weakness. It is something you have to do when you have no choice left. It is inconceivable that anyone would voluntarily surrender to anything these days. It conjures up images of humiliation. “Surrendering is for losers” is the message we often hear in our society. “Never Surrender!” is a war cry even in the peace time.

To be strong, to be tough, is what we desire in life. To be strong is to be independent. Being strong – like being healthy and wealthy – is the message we want to convey to others. Being abundant – to have much and to have more stuff – is the sign of being strong.

Surrendering things we possess, letting go of things we have, is not easy for us. I often said to myself whenever I was packing for a move that I had no idea how much “junk” I had accumulated. Something within us drives us to relentlessly acquire and accumulate.

I read a story of a dictator who had a house in every major city in his country. He also had twelve limousines, largely unused. He liked to look at them from his balcony. In the end, he died at the age of fifty after being shot during a military coup d’état.[i] It sounded so absurd that anyone could live in such extravagance while most of people in his country were eating one meal a day if they were able to afford it. But such displays of lavishness do not only happen in faraway places. Think about the displays of excess and cupidity in our country.

Look at the countless homeless people sleeping in the streets of Toronto under the gigantic TV screens that are lit up by the spectre of products being pushed as signs of wellbeing. I just read an article about Igor Kenk who is accused of being a thief and hoarder of more than 2,700 used and stolen bicycles in Toronto.[ii] Kenk may be an extreme example of cupidity in our society. Then, I realized my own lust for shoes.

My friend, Glenn, used to have a big sign in his office: “The one who dies with the most toys wins!” Although he meant it as a satire on materialism, some read the sign as an encouragement. Well, you are what you read.

If surrendering wealth and material things are difficult, surrendering things within oneself to a higher power or letting go of self to God seems impossible. Letting go of anger, resentment, pain – things you carry within you that have been damaging you and will ultimately destroy your wellbeing – is so much harder than letting go of the physical things. It is a struggle to let go of the emotions and stuff within us even when we know that carrying them are damaging our being and our relationships with others. But there are things we are totally unaware. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to our wellbeing – both physically and spiritually.

How do we let go of the things within us that harm us? How do we break ourselves open to a different way of being?

Richard Wagamese shares his experience of conversion in his newspaper column, One Native Life, in Calgary Herald. Wagamese writes that the anger resulting from the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools drove him for a long time. When he was in his late 40s he realised how much that anger had hurt him. He had had enough. And he searched for ways to let the anger go.

This is how he describes his letting go:

“One day, I walked into a United Church and forced myself to listen. It was hard and I wanted to leave, but there’s a sense you get when the big events of your life are unfolding and I sat there. …
The minister spoke … I heard compassion in his voice. There was no inferred superiority, no judgement, liturgy or doctrine. Instead, I heard the very human struggle to be spiritual in a hard world.
I went back to that church for weeks. The message I heard was all about humanity, the search for innocence, comfort and belonging. There was nothing in the message that was not about healing. I heard compassion talked about, love, kindness, trust, courage, truth, loyalty and an abiding faith that there’s a God, a Creator taking care of all of us. With my eyes closed, there was no white, no Indian, no difference at all and exactly when my anger disappeared I do not know.
That church changed my life. … Healing happens if you want it bad enough. … Every spiritually enhancing experience asks a sacrifice of us and in this, the price of admission is a keen desire to be rid of the block of anger.”[iii]

Baptism was the event through which Jesus was broken open to the Spirit of God. The ritual of baptism signifies a keen desire to let go of a life centred on oneself and a transformative move into a life centred on one’s relationship with God, with one’s neighbours. It is about letting go of control of self focused on wants and desires of oneself. It is about healing oneself by consciously becoming part of the whole – becoming an integral part of God and the rest of God’s creation and letting them become part of you.

When Jesus waded into the River Jordan and was baptized by John the Baptizer, Jesus was broken open to the Spirit of God. In his letting go of the self Jesus experienced God with him – God in him, God around him, and being in God. And through this experience of letting go and being broken open Jesus himself became the sign of God with us, Emmanuel, for Mark and the rest of the followers.

The baptism of Jesus, the spiritual awakening of experiencing God’s immediate nearness, became the point of beginning for the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In and through his experience of baptism, Jesus experienced God as near and fully present, not far and beyond reach. Baptism – a symbol of emptying of self and surrendering self to God – was the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry that culminated in emptying of self on the cross.

Mark expresses it this way:

“And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” [Mark 1:10-11]

Author Michaela Bruzzese cites James Cone, an African American theologian, in her reflection on today’s passage – “Jesus embraces the condition of sinners, affirming their existence as his own.” And she writes, “Those brave enough to journey to the wilderness to seek salvation find it waiting for them in the form of Jesus – who walks with them.”[iv] The experience of baptism for Jesus was the experience of being one with God, his neighbours and the rest of the creation.

Our life journey is full of parched experiences in the desert and sudden turns in the night. There are times when we wonder whether we will make it to the end or when we fear that our end may come too soon. There are times when life seems to be one long solitary walk through the wilderness. In those unsettling times, we are often tempted to look to quick fixes of material things to fill our sense of emptiness or to numb our spiritual longings with drugs of our choice.

The story of Jesus’ baptism reminds us that our life truly and fully begins when we surrender ourselves to be broken open to the Spirit of God. No “Gentleman’s Timeout” or “Spa Retreat” in itself will really satisfy our longing for healing within us. No amount of outward beatification of our physical selves will genuinely fill the spiritual hunger deep within us.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? How do you journey to the wilderness and be broken open to God’s Spirit?

After experiencing painful upheavals in her life and experiencing a sense of transformation through her healing journey, Elizabeth Lesser wrote a book to share her insights and the wisdom of those she met in her healing journey. “Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed?” was the question she grappled with in her book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. Lesser noted how ironic it is “that the difficult times (that) we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be. … It was only through turning around and facing (her) shadow that (she) was able to break open into a more genuine and generous life.”[v] Healing, for Lesser, is a process of rising out of the ashes of a former self and into a new way of being. Healing is about going deep within oneself.

When we take a risk to venture deep within us and face our own shadows – when we truly surrender ourselves to God – we will find ourselves broken open for the Spirit of God to enter us, to heal and to fill us. When we dare to surrender to God we will hear God’s voice of love for us. When we are open to the Spirit of God, we will relate and connect with the whole of God’s creation with a renewed life and energy.

Each day is a new day to be broken open to God’s healing. Each moment in life is an opportunity for us to experience and share God’s love. Each encounter with our neighbours is an opening to reconnect with all our relations in creation.

May God bless us a life that is wild and precious. May we be open to transformation and healing in our journey. Because with each and every one of us, God is well pleased.

Amen.

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[i] Ryszard Kapuściński, Trans. by Klara Glowczewska, The Shadow of the Sun (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 105-6.
[ii] Anthony Reinhart, Bike theft suspect back behind bars, The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, December 16, 2008, A11.
[iii] Richard Wagamese, Embracing forgiveness, Calgary Herald, Sunday, August 3, 2008, A9.
[iv] Michaela Bruzzese, Living the Word: Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle B – January 11: Water and Fire, Sojourners, January 2009, 48.
[v] Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow (New York: Villard Books, 2005), xix-xx.