Get in the Splash Zone: Baptismal Belovedness on the Feast of St. Mark

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on The Feast of St. Mark (Transferred), April 30, 2023 by the Rev. Holly Huff.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we have the pleasure of celebrating our parish’s patronal feast. It’s good fun: lion banner, thurifer, and flag bearers, oh my! As always but particularly on a patronal feast—important to remember that it is not we ourselves that we proclaim, but we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves in service of that gospel, that radical good news, that peace-bringing feet-beautiful salvation-announcing regime-changing proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near! We are blessed here in this place to be under the patronage of St. Mark the evangelist, the earliest gospel writer, companion of Peter, and all around quick-witted get-right-to-it town crier. “The kingdom of God has come near!” Mark opens not with an account of Jesus’s ancestry (like Matthew), or the Christmas story resounding with the songs of angels (as in Luke) or the rapturous new-creation philosopher’s poem to the eternal Word with which John Begins. Mark announces the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God—and we’re off to the races. John the baptizer appears in the wilderness and immediately we’re plunged with Jesus into the waters of the Jordan. 

We hear the account of Jesus’s baptism countless times through the liturgical year, in just about every season, and we need to. Because Jesus’s baptism is also our baptism. Those words spoken over him as he comes up out of the water and the heavens are torn apart and Spirit descends are also spoken over us: You are my Son, the Beloved. You are my daughter, the Beloved. You are my child, the Beloved. Unconditional love is washing over you in every moment, God has poured out God’s own self to love you. With you God is well pleased, in fact, not pleased because of anything you’ve done or achieved or produced or any way you’ve labored to prove yourself to be exceptionally righteous or moral. With you God is well pleased; simply as the being you are, before you’ve done a thing. As the spirit moved over the waters at creation and God declared it all to be Very Good, the spirit now moves over Jordan baptismal water and God declares to each one of us to be Beloved, a cause for delight, one with whom God is well-pleased.

For Mark, baptismal belovedness is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the sign that the kingdom of God has come near. Can we here in this St. Mark’s parish say the same? We too are called to start with baptismal belovedness as the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. Called to let love without condition flow over us and initiate us into that already-present kingdom where God is nearer than near. And that call to baptismal belovedness is not theoretical. It's for each of us to live out, flesh and bone. That’s the purpose of gospel witness, the inspiration that set the authors of holy scripture down with pen in hand. Like John the Baptist, they point away from themselves and direct us to encounter with Jesus. All the evangelists write in the hope that we will meet the God they witness to ourselves, as we step into and through these writings like a doorway, journeying on that Emmaus road ourselves, walking with Jesus, asking him to stay with us, letting him feed us. The evangelists invite us to go beyond knowing facts about God—a tenuous cerebral project more likely than not to keep us stuck in our habits of reinscribing ourselves onto and over every person we meet—the evangelists invite us to go beyond knowing facts about God to know God in relationship. To know God as love that liberates, love not as a concept but as a person, who in Jesus has descended to his people to set us free. This gospel is good news, the best news, regime-changing, world-altering good news, declaring that all the Pharoahs and Caesars of our lives have no lasting claim over us. Descending to the depths, Christ has made captivity itself a captive. There has been a change in jurisdiction, effected somewhere between that breaking through the water’s surface and the tearing open of the sky above. The proclamation goes out, the lion’s roar echoes: You are Beloved. You are Beloved.

So how do we let baptismal belovedness sink into our bones? That’s the question. Each of the saints in their great diversity call us to step into an embodied faith, a faith of our own that is lively, that is lived out. At diocesan convention last weekend Bishop Phyllis Spiegel made a call to all of us as Utah Episcopalians and moreover as followers of Jesus, to engage the Way of Love practices Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has been calling us to. Those Way of Love practices are—can you say them yet?—Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, Rest. These aren’t new. It’s a rearticulation for our context of the same good ol’ Jesus Way the church when it’s being faithful has always called us to: to lived embodied habits that root us in love, habits of turning to God in surrender and gratitude, starting again, day by day; learning the trustworthiness of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ by stepping into the stories of holy Scripture; setting aside a time of daily prayer, attending on the Lord of life, letting God give us what we need; gathering to worship in community as one Body knit together in love; blessing others with our time talent and treasure—not least of which is our attention; going out as living witnesses of the liberating love of God for others to join Mark and all the rest in that proclamation of baptismal belovedness, having tasted it for ourselves; and of course resting, resting in the strong love of the God who made us; resting in deep and abiding hope, being refreshed as we return to that Jordan stream over and over and over. 

This is eminently practical stuff. These habits of discipleship root us in love, they acquaint us with the trustworthy God who is mercy herself. Engaged day in and day out, they will move us from merely hearing the gospel witness of others to becoming living witnesses of good news ourselves, in our own flesh and bone.

In Christianity, God always does the heavy lifting. Baptismal belovedness will heal us and set us free. Our part is simply to receive it, to consent to God’s presence and invite Jesus in. Yes, we set out on the Way of Love, yes, we keep walking, one foot after the other, but it’s a sure bet: put yourself in the splash zone and you’re going to get wet. Jordan river water slung all over the place. You remember the bishop’s enthusiastic asperges on Easter Sunday, flinging water from the baptismal font out into every pew? Let that be your official heads up, a gospel proclamation: we’re all in the splash zone! Good news: you are beloved, the kingdom of God has come near, has come near near near. By grace God is building us up into the Body of Christ. Salvation is not a do-it-yourself situation. We are saved collectively, together with all our loved ones and all our enemies, saved not by any effort or merit of our own but by the strong love of God, poured out for us all. 

May we truly hear and receive the Good News, and may the Spirit drive us out from this place to share the same Good News with our neighbors.