SERM: Evangelical Request/Reminder/Encouragement

[Rev. Thomas & Mrs. Sally Handrick]

Dear Sermon Posters,

This is a wonderful forum and I as well as many others benefit from it.  
However, due to forgetfulness or newer posters not realizing the original 
guidelines many posters have become somewhat lacsidastical about including 
pertinent sermon information.

Ergo, I humbly and lovingly request/remind/encourage all posters to please tell 
us at least three very important things about your sermon when posting it.
1. The biblical text/pericope that you are exegeting and preaching.
2. The date you will deliver (delivered) your sermon.
3. The liturgical occasion for your sermon.

That information is especially helpful for us who save the posted sermons in a 
resource folder as it enables us to catalogue them in a manner that is easy to 
recall for future reference.

Thanks much, and God bless us all with a continued Merry Christmas as we 
journey through the remainder of this Christmas/Epiphany season and a wonderful 
New Year/2009!

Sincerely in Immanuel's service,

Rev. Thomas Handrick, Sr.
Immanuel Lutheran Church & School
Perryville, MO
Spring-Wayne 
'78___

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SERM: Mark 1:4-11, Baptism of Our Lord, LSB B

[Erik Rottmann]

Sermon for the Baptism of our Lord



The Kingdom of Heaven Has Suffered Violence



 Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord 
Jesus Christ! Amen. St. Mark wrote today's Gospel about the history of your 
Lord's Baptism. In this Gospel, Mark tells you essentially the same thing 
that Sts. Matthew and Luke also tell you in their Gospels. Yet even though 
the history of Jesus' Baptism is mainly the same in these three Gospels, 
Matthew, Mark and Luke each have small differences in the way they tell 
their story. The small differences bring you great benefits. One of these 
small yet beneficial differences is the main point of today's sermon.




 This is what Mark says in today's Gospel: "When He [Jesus] came up 
out of the water, immediately He saw the heavens opening." That is to say, 
at Jesus' baptism, heavens were torn open like a Christmas gift, ripped like 
the sleeve from your shirt, split like a ripened melon under a knife.




 Dear Christian friends,



 Matthew and Luke also tell you about the heavens opening when your 
Lord Jesus was baptized. However, Matthew and Luke both use a very stately, 
formal image to describe this opening of the heavens. For Matthew and Luke, 
the heavens were opened like a door on a hinge. As an analogy for the way 
Matthew and Luke speak, think of a knight in shining armor standing outside 
of a castle and calling out the greeting, "Open, says me!" The people inside 
the castle look out and see it is their hero at the gate. So they lower the 
drawbridge, swing open the mighty doors and send someone out to greet the 
champion. That is very much the way Matthew and Luke want you to picture the 
opening of the heavens at Jesus' Baptism: When Jesus went up from the water, 
the mighty doors of heaven immediately swung wide on their hinges for Him, 
like the great gate of a castle.




 In today's Gospel, Mark is much messier than all that, using a 
completely different verb than the one Matthew and Luke chose to use. In 
fact, Mark is downright violent in the way he describes the heavens opening 
at Jesus' Baptism:




·Mark does not want you to think of heaven's doors swinging wide on 
their hinges. Mark would have you picture Jesus at His Baptism ripping the 
doors of heaven completely off their hinges, similar to how Samson once tore 
the doors from the city wall at Gaza (Judges 16:3).




·Mark wants you to think of your Lord Jesus as splitting open the 
solid rock of heaven for you at His Baptism, just as He previously split 
open a rock in the wilderness, providing His people Israel water to drink 
(Isaiah 48:21).




The other Gospel writers-Matthew and Luke-have their reasons for describing 
heaven as opening on hinges, like a castle door. We do not need to concern 
ourselves any more with them today. The concern for today is Mark's Gospel 
of Jesus' Baptism, and this Gospel shows you the kingdom of heaven suffering 
violence (compare Matthew 11:11-12): "When He [Jesus] came up out of the 
water, immediately He saw the heavens opening." That is to say, at Jesus' 
Baptism, heaven was split apart like firewood (Genesis 22:3), torn from top 
to bottom like the temple curtain (Mark 15:38), even cut open like a gutted 
fish (compare Tobit 6:4-5 in the Apocrypha). Far from having you picture 
heaven's doors swinging on hinges, able to open and close again, today's 
Gospel would have you think of heaven's walls and gates tumbling down at 
Jesus' Baptism, in the same way that the wall around Jericho "fell down 
flat" at the coming of the Lord (Joshua 6:20.)




Through this specially chosen, violent imagery, Mark would have you know and 
believe that there is now no longer any barrier between you and heaven. Mark 
proclaims to you that, because of Jesus' Baptism, nothing shall stand in the 
way of your entry into the joy and bliss of eternal life in heaven with God.




This has not always been the case. There was once an impossible barrier 
between you and the kingdom of heaven. The barrier and wall that once 
prevented your eternal life in heaven was your sin-both the sin that your 
parents passed on to you and the sin you also began accumulating for 
yourself from the earliest days of your birth. Your sin, stacked brick on 
top of brick, made salvation impossible, access to your God impossible, 
entry into heaven impossible.




Those impossibilities went away for you when your Lord Jesus Christ came 
"from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan."




·In this Gospel, Mark is showing you that "Nothing shall be 
impossible with God" (Luke 3:37), not even the opening of the heavens that 
were once impossibly closed and locked to you.




·In this Gospel, Mark is telling you that "the kingdom of heaven has 
suffered violence," and here in Baptism "the violent take it by force" 
(Matthew 11:12). Jesus comes up out of the water and the walls that once 
preven