The Spirit moves in many ways. For some, they like their faith dark and mysterious. Like Luke Skywalker and Yoda in the swamp. An unexpected teacher uttering counter-intuitive phrases. The quest for hidden knowledge that can change a life’s course.

For others, faith is a long discipline in the same direction. On the surface, it doesn’t look like much, but the total story adds up to something amazing. Like showing up to church every Sunday. It might not look like much at first, but when you look over the work: feeding families, building homes in Costa Rica and Habitat for Humanity, delivering food to families, celebrating life or grieving death. It adds up.

Others like their faith shocking and dramatic. A huge, unmistakable sign from God. Like the one we have today.

Christ heads out to John, baptizing people in the Jordan for the repentance of sin. Christ, who is regarded as sinless, comes to be baptized. Let that sink in for a second. The one without sin came and repented. That’s shocking. What humility. What a display of ownership.

I don’t think I have that same ownership or humility. One of my favorite phrases is “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Yet I wonder if I’m callously throwing this phrase around on issues that are my circus, and those monkeys belong to me. God comes to us in Christ, born into our world. And in doing so, God owns everything we own. Our waking and our sleeping. Our eating and our hunger. Our greatest triumphs and our biggest failures. God says to us, “This is my circus, these are all my monkeys.” Shocking.

As Jesus comes out of the water, he sees heaven being torn open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. That had to be a shocking sight! I’ve never seen the heavens torn open. I saw an eclipse over the summer, and that was rather amazing! I can’t imagine how much more incredible that sight would be.

A voice comes from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” The text is ambiguous as to who hears this voice. Is it just Jesus? Is it John and Jesus? Do those waiting to be baptized hear that? The text doesn’t specify. It moves on saying that the Spirit then sends Jesus out into the desert for 40 days where he is tempted by Satan.

Mark’s gospel is short, fast and shocking. It starts with the thunderclap phrase, “The Military Victory of Jesus Messiah, Emperor.” And then moves to the baptism and the heavens torn open, and then to the desert. That fast. Mark is making the message as clear as it can be made: Christianity is a shocking religion, although many of its adherents have managed to protect themselves from its terrible impact.

The Rev. Alan Jones writes, “The shock of Christianity remains; the shock of its calling us into a messy and untidy intimacy. It clams that the body matters. It insists that history, the particularity of time and place matters. Above all it claims that in the end, nothing else but love matters.”

The shock breaks open the deadly everyday-ness that ensnares us and brings something awesome and terrifying to our reluctant attention. The believer’s name for that something is God.

Now I don’t know about you, but I can relate more to faith as mystery. There is just so much I don’t know and I’m curious about. What’s the more Biblical stance on a given ethical issue? How best can I live out the gospel? So many questions. I can also relate to faith as the long discipline in the same direction. I show up, I preach, teach, marry, and bury. I read. I pray. I give my time, talent, and treasure to the work of establishing God’s kingdom here on earth… Yet there are moments when this faith shocks and surprises me. Just when I think I understand the questions, God shocks me with new ones. Just when I think I understand something about how the world works, God reveals something new. And I’m shocked into another awareness.

Back when I was a manager at the construction yard before I became a minister, I had my mystery and my routine. The mystery revolved around profit margins and inventory numbers. The routine was showing up every day. I was unhappy because there didn’t seem to be any shock. My minister gave me two books to read. The first was Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

Borg’s history and writing were so clear and refreshing… How he put Jesus into the context of first century Palestine was shocking and I read that book through in a day and then re-read it two more times in a month. I couldn’t put it down. It shocked me into a new awareness of scholarship and of the life of Christ.

The second book was Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian. I was in my twenties. I was angry with the Christianity of my youth and what I was seeing in the culture. I was at war with a hypocritical church, and I’d be damned if I would be a part of it. Then I found the UCC and then I found Borg’s book… and then McLaren’s book… I resisted reading McLaren. After finding Borg, I figured McLaren would be a letdown. So I kept it in my truck, and it remained unread throughout the winter. Then came the spring and a nice day. I was stressed out so I decided to take a personal day. I hit the Great Falls park right near the George Washington Parkway. I thought it would be great to be surrounded by nature, just what the doctor ordered. On my way out of the truck, I spotted the book and on a whim took it with me.

I hiked around for a while and then found a bench on the tow path and cracked open the book. I loved what McLaren was writing. He was telling my story. He was talking about the frustration with the church yet still loving Christ. Then on page 46, I threw the book away from me. The setting for the scene in the book was Great Falls park, where I was sitting. I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked to my core. It was then and there that I fully said yes to my call as a pastor.

The shock of it all… To have had a book stashed away for months, ignored. To take it out on a whim and have it set where I was sitting… Now I don’t know what it looks like to have the heavens torn apart, but I can tell you what it feels like. In that moment, it was like the sky was torn open, and the Spirit descended like a dove. It was a great reminder that in the midst of working a job I hated, in all the questions and concerns that come with being 20-something… a time where you’re still sort of a kid yet you’re an adult but not one with much wisdom or experience… With all my doubts about this call to be a pastor thing and heading to seminary… with everything going on in my life, God was saying, “You are mine. I care. I love you. I am with you.”

I was angry at a church that existed only in my mind. In the UCC, I found a minister that cared enough that he lent out his books to me. I found a community that wanted to care for me and our community. I found a group that wanted to do some good in the world and say, “You are mine and we are yours. We are with you.”

God is saying things like this all the time. It’s why it’s so important to pray and to read the Bible and authors who write about faith. It’s why faith communities are so vital and important, you just might hear these words of ownership and affirmation. It might take a little while to find a community that speaks your language, but it’s so worth it. For the church is saying on behalf of God, “You are part of my circus. You’re my monkey. I care about everything you’re going through.”

In these moments, God ceases to be a subject for philosophical debate. As Alan Jones states, “God is no hobby. God is felt in places too deep for words; in depth beyond ideas and concepts. God is felt in the pain, sorrow, and contradiction. This, in itself comes as a shock since we tend to make religion only of our better moments.”

God was with me there. And God has reminded me in so many ways that God is always with me. God shocks me into new understandings and some of those shocks are wondrous movements of celebration and love, like the time on the tow path. And sometimes they are shocks that bring pain and heartbreak. Pain that people are suffering in the world, and heartbreak that we are capable of treating one another so poorly and callously. That we would say to one another, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

God won’t say that about us. And this God of ours knows pain. The pain of being born, of being hungry, of being confused. This God knows suffering, the suffering of others and the suffering of the Garden and the agony of the cross. This God knows shock as well, since Christ saw the heavens torn open and heard the words of affirmation.

The Spirit moves in mysterious ways. The Spirit moves in our traditions and disciplines over the long stretch of time. And the Spirit moves in shocking ways that bring joy and pain. The life of faith involves each of these aspects of faith. Each serves a purpose. May we be open to each style of faith as Christ is and models for us in the great gift of the Gospel.

May we live in such a way that when people here in Medina and around the world wonder if anyone cares, if they are seen and valued… they hear us say, “We do. We care.” Because that’s very, very good news.

When we talk about baptism and the shocking nature of it… you should be prepared to get wet. If you have glasses, you might want to take them off. May this be a reminder that you were each named and claimed in baptism. That in our baptism we are united with the heart and soul of Christ, of our Triune God. And this sign is a tangible reminder of the love God has for each of us that we are called to speak about and live out in our world.

Bibliography
Borg, Marcus. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Harper San Francisco. 1995

Jones, Alan. Soul Making; The desert way of spirituality. Harper One, New York. 1985. Page 84.

McLaren, Brian. A New Kind of Christian; A tale of two friends on a spiritual journey. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 2001.