In
my Bible study group this week one of the clergy said he had three baptisms
this Sunday, and he couldn’t image any more difficult readings than today's for
such an occasion. Then with a
smile he suggested, “Guess I’ll preach on the Collect.” Although he was cracking wise, the
collect for this Sunday could be preached on. It ties the lessons together well and could certainly be
preached at a baptism. AND because
the long “green” season of Pentecost should be a time when we consider
scriptures that teach us how to live, our Collect for the day would be a great
place to begin.
The
Collect opens with: “O God, from whom all good proceeds . . .” In searching scripture for a way to think about God’s
goodness and something called “original goodness” (as opposed to “original
sin”) we need look no further than the creation story in Genesis—“In the
beginning . . .” In this account,
drawn from the imagination of divinely inspired humans—or as Professor Luke
Timothy Johnson calls them, “God-intoxicated”—since no humans were around
during these eons of creation—we can hear the narrator’s pronouncement on God’s
work: (from the Common English
Bible translation)“God saw how good it was.”
Even
human beings embodied the goodness of God: (again from the Common English
Bible) “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God
created them, male and female God created them.
But
as we have been taught, something went wrong, and all that goodness became
broken, sullied, and separated from the original intention of God. How did it happen? In the 3rd chapter of
Genesis, a narrator continues with the story of the crafty, talking serpent and
tree in the center of the Garden of Eden.
According to the serpent, eating the fruit of this tree will give one
the knowledge of good and evil—just like God has. Once we humans ate, our innocence was lost and our original
goodness, severely stained.
Theologians claim this sullied original goodness came from the exercise
of humanity’s free will—a gift from the Creator that allows us to make
choices—and which allow us to act against God.
The
collect continues with the first half of a prayer petition: “Grant that by your
inspiration we may think those things that are right . . .” When we pray these
words, we are asking God to guide our free will. St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, puts it
this way: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is
being renewed day by day.” In
Paul’s view the stain of sin damages our outer nature. Exercising our free will, we made poor
choices and fell into sin. Yet
God's grace continues to work within us—working to restore us—not to innocence
(which can never be regained)--but to a renewed relationship with God. In this we are being prepared,
according to Paul, to “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” We will make right choices as Jesus
heals us—God will raise us as God raised Jesus.
And
then the last part of the petition follows: “ . . . and by your merciful guiding may do them [the things
that are right].” Faith that God
will inspire us know what is right gets us only partly there. The words of the
collect insist that we take action under God's “merciful guiding.” In our reading
from Mark's gospel this morning, we hear Jesus defending his decision to heal
on the Sabbath (at the beginning of chapter 3) and to continue healing despite
the uproar this caused among the crowds, following the Sabbath healing.
Jesus'
family believes he has gone mad and the religious authorities call him
possessed by the Devil. Do Jesus'
actions—which occurred before the passage we heard this morning—spring from his
free will rightly exercised? We
see the fall-out as Jesus takes on the religious scribes and even his own
family. Jesus confronts them in the strongest possible terms: “. . . but whoever blasphemes against
the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness.” From Jesus' viewpoint his healings fought against the power
of sin and the forces of evil. He
was following God's will! For God wants renewal for all people to wellness of
body and soundness of mind. Jesus
teaches (and provides) a new way of acting that responds to God's goodness: “.
. . whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
When
Jesus' walked among us to, following him wasn't easy, but Jesus was there to
ask for clarity. Now a couple of
thousand years later, following Jesus is still difficult, and how to follow him
is not so clear either. The promises made for us--or by us—at baptism spell out
what the church believes we must do—with God’s help. Yet when putting these promises into specific actions in our
lives, we frequently founder on the shoals of our sinfulness.
Is
there no way out? God's grace and
God's loving-kindness—we must trust these aspects of God to inspire us and
guide us. First, to help us
discern what is right and, then, mercifully to guide us to do it, “So [as Paul
explains] we do not lose heart.”
The innocence of original goodness can never belong the humanity again,
but we can live confidently that, beginning with baptism, God will work within
each one of us to heal us and to adopt us as Christ’s sisters and
brothers. God’s healing us will
not be instantaneous—although there can be moments when we will experience a
feeling of God’s overflowing love.
But our healing will take an eternal lifetime, which is exactly what
each of us is given.
And,
so you see, these lessons can be preached at a baptism!
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