Podcast Summaries

The Bible reading can be found in Mark chapter 1, and we're reading verses 1 to 11, and it can be found on page 35 of your Pew Bibles, or on the screen. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside, and all the people of Jerusalem, were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming 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. This is the word of the Lord. Great, thank you Rachel for reading for us. And it's a pleasure to be with you this morning. As Gemma said, my name is Julian, and along with Caroline, my wife, we usually worship with the 9 o'clock service. Although, of course, in a few weeks' time we'll be all together and seeing more of each other, I'm sure. Before I start, why don't we pray? Our Father God, I pray that you would take these words of mine, and by your Spirit, use them to speak to each one of us. I pray that you would encourage us, strengthen us, and grow us into the likeness of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. When the historians of the 22nd century look back on these times of ours, I wonder what they will call them. It could be the age of anxiety. Last year, the American psychiatrist Jonathan Haidt published a book on the desperately high levels of emotional distress and mental ill health among young people. He called it The Anxious Generation. Haidt pins the blame on social media, but stir into the mix the environmental crisis, the technological revolution, the pandemic, spiralling debt, economic stagnation, and rumours of war with Russia. And who is surprised that people today are anxious? If, like me, you sometimes wonder whether there will ever be a 22nd century to look back from, it kind of underlines the point. So what is it that makes you anxious? I guess that for most of us, our anxieties are much more personal. It's ironic, isn't it, that as we prepare for Christmas, which is when we celebrate peace on earth, we should find the preparations so stressful. For some of us, it's the daunting prospect of noisy parties and difficult family reunions. For others, the consciousness of loss and the dread of loneliness. For some, it's worries about whether the money will stretch far enough. For others, the challenge of figuring out what on earth do you give the man who already has everything. So here's my question this morning. At times of anxiety, in an age of anxiety, how can we stand out as people of peace? I don't just mean being peacemakers between others. I mean, how can we be people who are fundamentally, through and through, at peace? At peace with God, at peace with others, at peace with our situation, at peace with ourselves. In our Bible reading from Mark, I think we find some answers to that question. If we look closely, we'll see three things. We'll see that Jesus makes peace comprehensively, that he gives his peace abundantly, and perhaps surprisingly, we'll see that peace comes through penitence. Those are our three points this morning, and you may find it helpful to have Mark's Gospel open in front of you, chapter 1, page 35 of the Church Bibles. Firstly then, Jesus makes peace comprehensively. The opening verses of Mark's Gospel introduce the life of Jesus with a massive claim. Jesus of Nazareth, Mark tells us, was confirmed by Almighty God to be the fulfillment of all the hopes of Israel. So John the Baptist walks onto the scene as the quintessential prophet. Just like the great prophet Elijah, he lives in the wild and he wears the same clothes. Just like you can tell Gemma is the vicar, you can still tell that Gemma is the vicar because she's still got her dog collar on. When she's got her robes on, you definitely know that Gemma is the vicar in the same way you can tell that John is a prophet because he's wearing Elijah's clothes. But more than Elijah, he represents the beginning, the end, and the middle of Israel's story. That's there in verses 2 to 4. See, I'm sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. That's a composite of three references. First, there's the messenger of God, the angel who went before the people of Israel in Exodus 23 to guide them into the promised land. And then very quickly, Mark connects that image of the messenger of God to Malachi 3 where we find another messenger, the messenger of the covenant, who will announce the return of God to the temple at Jerusalem. To purify the people of Israel forever. And then he lands the biggest quote in the middle with this voice we find in Isaiah 40, a voice that announces to the people of God that their time of exile in Babylon is over. The glory of God is about to be revealed to the whole world. So John the Baptist is all of these prophecies rolled into one. He represents the whole of the Old Testament and he pulls it together and he points it at Jesus. If he is the angel of God, Jesus is our promised land, a place of freedom, not slavery. A place flowing with abundance, milk and honey, grapes and figs, fine wheat, rich wine. A place where the poor, the widow, the alien and the orphan are cared for. Where everyone is satisfied. If John is the messenger of the covenant, Jesus must be the one who fills the temple with his glory. Who purifies a people to worship him in truth. If John is the voice in the wilderness, Jesus is the one who ends our exile, our alienation and estrangement from God. Jesus is the one who brings shalom, that Hebrew word meaning holistic

thick peace and well-being, the peace that Israel hoped for and which we all long for. Jesus brings peace comprehensively. And in case you're not convinced by John, Mark tells us that this massive claim was confirmed by God with a double witness. Verses 9 to 11. Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan, and just as he was coming 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. When Jesus is baptized by John, the Spirit descends and there's a voice from above. Old Testament law required two witnesses in evidence of any claim. Here we have them, the Spirit and the Father confirming the identity of the Son. And Mark tells us that when that happens, the heavens were torn apart. It's a very distinctive word. We've got to think of ripping an old bed sheet in half. It's a very satisfying feeling, isn't it? It's torn from top to bottom. And it turns up just once more in Mark's Gospel. In Mark 15, you may think of it at the point of Jesus' death, the temple curtain is torn from top to bottom. The barrier between God and us has been ripped apart. Heaven has been thrown open. No more sacrifice. No more complex ritual. Nothing. We are at one with God. He has made peace. And like the dove returning to Noah, announcing that the floodwaters of God's judgment had subsided, carrying an olive branch, showing that new life was springing up, so the peace-bringing, life-giving Spirit of God rests upon Jesus. Jesus makes peace comprehensively. And secondly, we see that Jesus gives his peace abundantly. John offered his baptism to everyone. We read there in verse 4 and 5, he appeared in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him. It's obviously an exaggeration, but it makes the point. This baptism, this offer, is for everyone. And of course, this baptism that John provided wasn't just some symbolic sprinkling like we have in church. Nowadays, it was a total immersion in water, right under the water, to symbolize complete washing, complete purification. But then John says, verse 7, the one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. This baptism that John offers as a sign of repentance, of confession, is nothing compared to Jesus. Jesus is so powerful, so great, that compared to him, John is not even up to the status of the bottommost servant or slave. Think about it. Untying someone's sandals after a hot and sticky walk across a dusty land was unpleasant and socially demeaning. It meant you were the bottom of the pile. And John, who is all the prophets of God rolled into one, John, who is the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets, says, I am less than the bottom of the pile when it comes to Jesus. Why? Because I only baptize with water, but he will baptize you with the Spirit of God himself. Not just some symbolic sprinkling, complete and total immersion, drenched, soaked through in the peace-bringing, life-giving Spirit of God. Do you see the claim that Mark is making here? It's massive. Jesus takes all these Old Testament promises, all those centuries of longing and hoping for shalom, for comprehensive peace, and he tips them over us. A great cascade of living water. What we are promised here is a totally different order of spiritual experience. Jesus makes peace comprehensively. He gives his peace abundantly. So come back down to earth. Why do I have so little of that peace? How can I get more of it? And the answer that this passage suggests is perhaps a little surprising. Peace becomes personal through penitence. When John prepares people to receive Jesus, when he promises the future baptism in the Holy Spirit, he calls them to repentance. There in verses 4 and 5, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and people came out to him confessing their sins. We tend to think of this, don't we, as a picture of how we become Christians in the first place. How do you become a Christian? Repentance and faith, symbolized in baptism. But repentance is not simply a one-off event. It's a fundamental principle of spiritual maturity. For a long time, I used to think that confession involved calling to mind all the wrong things I had thought, said, or done recently, saying sorry, wiping the slate clean, and starting again. Now that's not exactly wrong, but it's seriously inadequate. It's actually quite dangerous because it risks becoming legalistic or pharisaical. What do I mean? It implies that basically I am okay, but that occasionally I muck up and that needs dealing with, and then I'm okay again. And I don't know about you, but when we come to the time of confession in church, I often struggle to think of anything concrete that I have done wrong in the last few days. Mind goes blank. And that really does risk turning me into a Pharisee because then confession in church becomes the time in the service when I'm encouraged to discover that I really am quite a good person after all. Confession is something much bigger, much more important. As Luther insisted, he was absolutely right. We are at the same time right with God and sinners through and through. We're at the same time right with God and sinners through and through. Confession is the systematic acknowledgement of and sorrow for, lament over all the ways I and the world I find myself in fall short of God's loving purposes for me. All the ways I am less than what he calls me to be. It's a deliberate emptying out of myself so that I can be filled by him. So confession starts with truth-telling. Truth-telling about the world in all its brokenness and alienation from God. If you're short of material, look at the news. And that should move us to lament the way God is dishonored and people get hurt. And then we place ourselves into that picture as those who are caught up in patterns of thought and behavior which are less than loving, less than holy, less than good. This isn't primarily about assigning blame. You see, we are all onlookers of sin, victims of sin, and perpetrators of sin. The wonderful thing is that we don't need to disentangle that. We can confess all of that complex mess so that we're ready to receive. When I was a boy, I used to tidy up my toy cupboard on Christmas Eve. It became quite a sort of personal ritual for me. And I would get everything out.

Onto the bedroom floor, lay it all out, throw out anything that was half broken, or the outgrown bits and bobs, the experiments of six months ago that didn't quite come to anything. Get rid of it all, and then I put everything that was valuable and worth keeping back in the cupboard, nice and tidily. And I did all that not because I was a particularly virtuous child, I don't think I was ever told to do it, I simply wanted to make space for all the new presents I was about to get. When we repent, we empty ourselves out, we dispose of the rubbish so that we may be filled. How can I expect to be full of the Holy Spirit if I am full of myself? Penitence unlocks all the fruit of the Holy Spirit, but it particularly speaks into this question of inner peace. Why? Because so many of my anxieties can be traced back either to too big a view of myself or too small a view of God. I expect too much of myself, and I expect too little of him. Remember what John the Baptist said elsewhere in John 3? He must become greater, I must become less. So here's an example, I might be worrying about a new lecture that I'm going to give next week. So I think, well what exactly am I worried about? It just might not go well, it creates anxiety in my mind. Sure, I want to do a good job, I want the students to enjoy the lecture, I want them to learn from it, those are all great, that's good motives. What really makes me anxious is the thought that I might not do it very well. And what really makes me anxious, really, really, is the thought that students might leave the lecture thinking, ah you know that guy, he's not very good, he's not very good at lecturing. They go out saying he's useless, don't know why we bothered going, won't go to the next one. That's what's freaking me out, and that's pride. So I can confess the pride that underlies that anxiety, I can be released by God from it, set free to do the best I can and leave my reputation up to him. Or I might worry about my health, and sure sickness and illness and death are marks of the brokenness of this world. They're not my fault, I'm just caught up in it. But you see the thing is, illness tends to make me grumpy and feel rather sorry for myself. It tends to make me self-focused. And then I doubt God's goodness to me and his care for me. That's me getting caught up in that brokenness. And then I might realise that actually I tend not to care very much about other people's illness and suffering. My own takes over. That's also a mark of my brokenness. And I can lay all of that out before God in all its complexity and messiness. Lament it, confess whatever is of me in it, empty myself of it, and ask him to fill me with his spirit instead. That brings peace. St Augustine was one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time. There are two Augustines, and the one I'm talking about is the 5th century Bishop of North Africa, not the missionary to England and the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 6th century. So the first Augustine, Augustine of Hippo, in his Confessions, he famously wrote these words. You may know them. Words about peace. You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. On his deathbed as an old man, when Augustine was too weak to move, we're told that he asked for the penitential psalms to be written out and pinned, pinned up where he could read them. And he lay there reading the penitential psalms and weeping until the Lord took him home. I don't think that was a sad experience. I think this was a man who understood that peace becomes personal through penitence. As we dig deeper into confession, so we are opened up more and more to the spirit of God and all the blessings that Christ stands ready to pour out on us. And we will discover that we hear more and more clearly those words at the end of our reading which are spoken also to us who are in Christ. You are my son. You are my daughter. My beloved one. With you I am well pleased. You see to go through each day having bathed, having been baptised in the Father's pleasure is to be a person of great peace. Amen.