The Light of Surrender

The Light of Surrender
Mark 1:4-11
Rev Alan Claassen
January 11, 2009


When did Jesus have his first full experience of the presence of God?
When did Jesus become, ‘the son of God?”
Where did Jesus learn all that he knew about Jewish scripture and wisdom?
Who was his teacher?
When did he receive his call to be a preacher, a healer, a prophet, the messiah?
Each of the great figures of the Jewish tradition had experiences of God that called them to begin their work on God’s behalf.
Moses saw a bush that burned without being consumed and from the bush heard the voice of God speaking to him.
The authority with which the prophets speak comes from their direct experience of God. In a cave on a mountainside Elijah heard God not in wind or storm but in a “still, small voice.”
Isaiah call to be a prophet began with a vision, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, attended by two angels who said to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.”
And for Ezekiel he had a vision where “the heavens were opened and I saw a visions of God.” And later Ezekiel says that he had the experience that the “Spirit of the Lord fell upon me.”
Even in the time of Jesus there Jewish charismatic leaders such as Hanina ben Dosa who heard God’s voice from heaven saying, “The whole universe is sustained on account of my son, Hanina.”
There were many charismatic leaders a the time of Jesus, and one of them, known as John the Baptist, may well be the answer to the question, “Who taught Jesus about the Scriptures and how to pray, how to become immersed in the reality of God.
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This morning we heard a reading from the Gospel of Mark. You may already know that Mark was the first gospel that was written. In the gospel of Mark there are no birth narratives, no angels, no shepherds, no Mary, Joseph, no manger, no wise men. There is John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness, baptizing people, calling them to repentance.
Those wonderful characters that we love to read and sing about at Christmas come to us from two other Gospels; some from Matthew and some from Luke.
And this wonderful story, which contemporary Biblical scholarship does not see as historical accounts, can influence how we might first answer the question I asked earlier, “When did Jesus first experience God?”
“According to the stories of his birth in Matthew and Luke, in which Jesus was conceived by the Spirit of God, God was in “Jesus” from his beginning.” (Jesus, Marcus Borg, pg 137)
And if we read the Gospel of John, Jesus was with God at the beginning of time, and so first experienced God with the very creation of the univers.
With the Gospel of Mark we come a little closer to seeing Jesus from a historical point of view. And many contemporary scholars believe we also have an answer to the question,
“Who was Jesus’ teacher?” Many believe it was in fact John the Baptist.
John the Baptist was an important figure in first century Judaism. In fact, he still has a small of followers to this very day. And the Jewish historian of the time, Josephus, gives more space to John than he does to Jesus in his book, Antiquities.
What can we learn about Jesus by looking at John the Baptist?
John dressed like Elijah, the great prophet of the Jewish Bible.
And John created, in the wilderness, by the Jordan River, a new seat of authority, that was a direct affront to the priests in the temple. There were many leaders like John, who had many disciples, who met together in the wilderness, who were critical both of the Temple priests in Jerusalem and the Roman authorities and culture that ruled their land and indeed all the Mediterranean in what we know as the Pax Romana.
“John subverted the temple’s role as mediator of access to God by proclaiming a means of forgiveness—repentance and baptism—that bypassed the temple.” (Jesus, Marcus Borg, pg 118)
John was an anti-temple prophet. And he publicly criticized the political leader of the land, Herod Antipas, and as a result was arrested and executed.
John and his followers were like many people at the time. They objected to the occupying Roman army and they objected to their own Jewish religious leaders who were cooperating with the Romans in order to keep their own powering place.
John’s baptism was both spiritual and political at the same time.
In the Gospel of Mark we are introduced first to John the Baptist and his mission, “John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism for the repentance of sins.” (Mark 1:4)
The word “repentance” meant something quite different in the time of the John the Baptist that it came to mean in Christianity where it came to mean “being sorry, remorseful, or penitent for one’s sins…It was associated with return from exile; to repent is to return, to follow the “way of the Lord” that leads from exile to the promised land.” (Jesus, Borg, pg 118)
That is why John the Baptist is preaching and baptizing in the Jordan River. Centuries earlier Joshua completed the journey begun by Moses when he led the Hebrew people into the promised land. They had to cross the Jordan River to enter the land of milk and honey.
The River Jordan is chilly and wide and it is deeply meaningful in the self-understanding of the Jewish people.
For John the Baptist and so many other prophetic communities of the time, the religious leaders of the day had abandoned the covenant. And the people had followed.
John the Baptist was renewing the Covenant, by calling people to return to their promise to God.



And in the act of baptizing people in the Jordan River John took a common purification rite of ritual washing for purification before entering the temple into an act of initiation for a band of followers who were going to re-enter the Promised Land remembering the promise made by Moses to faithful to the commandments of loving God and neighbor.
And Jesus was a follower of John’s. There is no way of knowing how long Jesus might have been with John the Baptist in the wilderness. We do know that the first story of Jesus as an adult is with John at the Jordan River and when he begins his public ministry he preaches the same message as John’s. Repent, return, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
And in this story of John and Jesus we also have a possible answer to my first question, “When did Jesus first experience the reality of God?”
As told in the Gospel of Mark, “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus came 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.”
Like Ezekiel six centuries earlier Jesus saw the heavens opened as if they were torn apart.
And the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice, “With you I am well pleased, My Beloved Son.”
“…the story of Jesus’s vision at this baptism places him in the Spirit-filled stream of Judaism.” (Jesus, Borg, 122)
And the fact that this baptism was performed by John, who may well have been Jesus’ teacher and mentor, places Jesus within the circle of many at the time who believed it was time for a change in Jerusalem.
From his own unique gifts as a human being, from his study with John, and from his vision at this own baptism, Jesus experienced the real presence of God.
Our visions of God are not likely to be as profound as the one the Jesus experienced. But there is something in the act of baptism that is a vitally important aspect of the spiritual life for all of us. And that is the act of surrendering.
The first act of Jesus life as an adult as reported in the Gospel of Mark is to surrender. Thinking of baptism as a symbol of returning to a God centered, to a Spirit Centered life, rather than a self-centered life, the act of trusting someone who will support you as you go under the water and come back out of it again is an act of surrendering. It is surrendering control, it is surrendering having to be in charge, it is surrendering having to be right. It is an act of humility and trust and somehow it is an act of freedom that brings a force greater than ourselves into play.
I was working with a Spiritual Director up in Portland. I would visit with her on a monthly basis, share with her what was going on in my life, where my moments of joy and my moments of struggle were and how I was responding to them. One day after I had shared my story she asked me, “Are you ever going to let God do anything in your life?”
More recently I was working with a Life Coach here in Murphys, which as it turns out has a lot in common with a Spiritual Director. Once again, I was sharing my moments of joy and frustrations and my attempts at trying to figure things out. The Life Coach warned me to be careful of my attempts to figure things out. It might just be another vain attempt on my part to be in control.
If we don’t surrender, on a spiritual level, if we are not practicing gratitude, humility, and compassion where can God enter our life?
Jesus, the great teacher of the way of the Spirit, began his own ministry with an act of surrendering.
As we continue to follow the ministry of Jesus over the next few months, leading up to Easter, we will see the act of surrendering in all its power.
I would like to close with the words of Brother Roger who founded the Taize community in France.
Hear these words from Brother Roger, Founder of the Taize Community in France.
"Without looking back, you want to follow Christ: remember that you cannot walk in Christ's footsteps and at the same follow yourself. He is the way, a way leading you irresistibly to a simple life, a life of sharing.
"Following Christ means choosing God as your first love. Simplify in order to live intensely, in the present moment: you will discover the joy of being alive, so closley linked to joy in the living God." Parable of Community Brother Roger