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
prevented your access to heaven came tumbling down.
· In this Gospel, Mark would have you believe that you now have open
and unobstructed access to everything that belongs to God, including "an
inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven
for you" (1 Peter 1:4).
"When He [Jesus] came up out of the water, immediately He saw the heavens
opening [splitting, tearing, cracking, ripping, splintering, shattering,
falling into separate pieces and being rent otherwise asunder]." With his
carefully chosen, violent way of speaking, Mark wants you to look at your
Lord's Baptism in a very particular way. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark wants
you to see that your Lord's Baptism is an assault-and a smashing
victory-against everything that once separated you from your God.
Mark would also have you look at your own Baptism in the same way. Mark is
the guy who taught you those words you learned in the Small Catechism,
"Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark 16:16). By telling
you to be baptized, Mark is telling you how you get connected to Jesus-and
not only to Jesus, but also to His perfect life, His sacrificial death, and
His victorious resurrection. Your Baptism links you to Jesus' miracles of
healing and exorcism and nourishment. Your Baptism links you to your Lord's
Baptism, and in today's Gospel Jesus' Baptism hammers the heavens open for
you so decisively that the door shall never again be closed for you.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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