a sermon on mark 1:4-11, in the wake of the capitol insurrection
to watch a video of this sermon, click here
Like most of you, Jason and I were glued to the news on Wednesday afternoon as our President openly incited violence over his election defeat. We watched in horror as a mob stormed our US Capitol building, threatening not only the leaders and staff who work there, but also our Constitution, our values, and our commitment to peaceful transitions of power. We prayed as we listened to President-Elect Biden call for the mob to pull back. We prayed as Republican Senators like Lindsay Graham and Ben Sasse stood up to say, “Enough is enough; our duty is to steward and protect the Constitution.” We prayed as we had clumsy conversations with our kids, trying to speak to what was happening in terms they might understand. And we prayed as we later read the deeply vulnerable statement from our own Bishop, Yehiel Curry.
“They would have shot us. If it was us, we would have been shot.” That was Bishop Curry’s summary of the text messages and calls he received from other leaders, friends, and loved ones as they watched Confederate flags – a symbol of white supremacy – be carried freely into a place that is supposed to cradle our democracy. He described many previous experiences of racist violence that Wednesday’s events brought again into his mind and said, “[For Black America,] Wednesday was more than Wednesday. It was trauma, reopened, flooding back in, and forcing us to relive specific moments of pain and oppression, again and again.”
Those are hard words to hear, and for those of us who are white, they might also be hard to understand. But as Bishop Curry reminded me in the text conversation we had on Friday, sitting in the tension of our own messy feelings is holy work. And my prayer is that sitting in this tension will help us honor Bishop Curry’s call to engage in what he calls “courageous conversations” around these issues. Courageous conversations is the right phrase, church, because in a dangerously polarized culture it’s really hard to talk about these things. But we must. We must talk about them.
Some of us feel very strongly that talk of politics doesn’t belong in church. Some of us believe that faith is really a private matter…that it’s about our own salvation; our own personal relationship with Jesus. And of course it is about that. But it is not only about that. One of the things that keeps me in this church body – one of the things that keeps me Lutheran – is our theological tradition’s insistence that, while faith might be personal, it is not meant to be private.
While faith might personal, it is not meant to be private.
Martin Luther recognized God’s activity in our personal lives – God’s ability to transform our souls through Word and Sacrament, prayer and worship. But Luther also recognized that God is active in the social, economic, and political realms of our lives, working through people and structures and institutions for the flourishing of human community and of the whole creation. In fact, Luther understood government to be one of the most important institutions through which God works in our world. Strange as it sounds in light of our currently fractured system, Lutherans believe that government is a gift from God, because it is intended to protect and provide for the well-being of people, communities, and creation. It is intended to be a tool through which God works to channel love, justice, equity, and dignity into the life of the world. And so when government fails to protect the well-being of our neighbors – especially those who are most vulnerable among us – Lutherans believe that our faith calls us to vigorous engagement with that government.
In other words, for Lutherans faith is about our personal relationship with Jesus. And, it is also about our politics.
Now, hear me clearly. When I say that our faith is about our politics I’m not talking about the politics of the so-called right and the so-called left. I’m not talking about the politics of the Republican Party of the Democratic Party or of any other party. I’m talking about the politics of God’s reign. I’m talking about the politics of baptism.
Today’s scripture from Mark begins with John the baptizer, who appears in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People from the whole Judean countryside come to be baptized by John, and Jesus joins those crowds. John dunks Jesus into the water and as Jesus comes up he sees the heavens torn apart, the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
Jesus sees the heavens torn apart.
It’s the tearing apart that gets me this week, church.
Maybe those words catch me because it already felt like the whole fabric of our COVID lives had been torn to shreds before last Wednesday, and now we have to reckon again
with the ripped-up fabric of our entire democracy,
with the torn-up hearts of those whom our democracy is supposed to protect,
with the split-apart story of our country, where liberty and justice has never actually been for all,
with the rending cries of our Black and brown siblings – including our own Bishop – who are asking white folks to humble ourselves enough to listen to what this America feels like in their skin…who are pleading with us to sit in the tension and awkwardness that their witness often creates in us who are white.
It’s the tearing apart that gets me this week, church.
But here’s the thing about the tearing apart. It separates, disrupts, and divides; yes. But it also creates a space – an opening – for something to move through. And in today’s gospel, it’s God whose on the move. Just days after we witness another violent tear being ripped into the fabric of our democracy, here comes God, tearing apart the very heavens to get at us, to scoop us up out of the watery grave of baptism, to hold us in God’s heart, and to remind us who we are – God’s beloved ones. Even still. Even now. God’s beloved ones.
That’s what happens in baptism, friends. God rips apart anything and everything that would separate us from God and says, “From this moment on, you are mine. I am in you and you are in me and even on the days when you’d rather box me up and keep me distant, I will not be separated from you.” By our baptisms we belong to God.
But you know who else we belong to? Each other.
Today we remember the baptism of Jesus. Allowing himself to be baptized is Jesus’ first act of ministry in the gospel of Mark, and it’s a radical act of solidarity. Jesus had no need for repentance, but he chose to cast his lot with us anyway. He got into line behind the tax collectors and sinners – who look exactly like all of us – and he stepped into those muddy waters, entering fully into the messiness of our human story, binding his reputation and his destiny to ours. And when the waters of baptism were poured over our heads, or when we were immersed in the pool or the lake or wherever we were baptized, our lives, too, were inextricably joined not just to Christ, but to every created being that God so loves. Our baptisms, too, were an act of radical solidarity. To embrace the promise of baptism is to embrace the wild truth that we belong not to ourselves but to each other; that we are connected, interdependent, one.
So what does that mean? How do we live this week as though the promises of our baptism are real? This is a question that I hope we literally spend our entire lives answering together. But maybe, this week, it means we join God in the tearing apart:
– tearing apart the pride or assumptions or simple inexperience that keeps us from really hearing the truths of our neighbors who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color;
– tearing apart the quietism that keeps us timid in the face of pain or injustice;
-tearing apart the “us-and-them” categories that we are so quick to create, even unintentionally;
– tearing apart the temptation to believe that any of us are exempt from taking responsibility for this broken body politic;
-tearing apart the privilege that allows some of us to be shocked at what happened last week, while so many of our siblings know it as just one more chapter in a long, painful history of unchecked white nationalism.
Yes, church. Maybe we join God in the tearing apart. Because tearing apart separates, disrupts, and divides; yes. But it also creates a space – an opening – for God to get to us, and for us to get to each other.
Amen.
headline photo credit: jose luis magana/AP
Heidi Torgerson 