Jesus Cures our Sin-sickness
Baptism of our Lord – January 8, 2012
The TV show House is an entertaining medical drama. Every week follows the same basic formula – someone collapses in the middle of their everyday lives, and is raced to the ER, where the doctors are stymied, mystified at the cause, utterly unable to figure out what is causing the patient's symptoms. And so eventually, Dr. Gregory House gets called in. He's a crankypants of a guy with all sorts of personal issues, but a brilliant mind, and so as much as many of his colleagues would like to have nothing to do with him, they respect his diagnostic skills, his ability to get to the root of the problem – eventually, by the end of the hour, after several missteps along the way, and only really with the help of his team.
I'm always drawn into the mystery of the show. What is the problem? Will they figure it out in time? Because of course, the illness is usually some exotic, rare thing, and as the show goes on, the urgency, the desperation to figure out what it is and how to fix it grows and grows; symptoms get worse and worse, until you realize if they don't figure it out, the patient is doomed to die. And until they can find the cause, they can't really know how to treat it.
And so House's team of young doctors asks a million and one questions – of the patient, of their family or co-workers or whoever might have some answers. They also break into the patient's house, because the doctors don't trust them to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That's one of House's mantras: “Patients lie.” They hold back crucial details, out of shame or embarrassment or just ignorance of what might be important and relevant to their illness. But until the whole of it is known, until everything is revealed, there is no hope for healing.
In our gospel story today, people are coming to John as patients turn to Dr. House. They come, and they come in droves, Mark says, because they know that they are sick. Not physically sick, but spiritually sick. They know that something in their lives is killing them. They gather at the river, drawn by this strange, wild man, because they know they need this baptism he proclaims, the one that is for the forgiveness of sins. Some of them are more obviously sick than others; the disease is further along for them. They can point to specifics, particular actions or behaviors; perhaps they can look back at the progression as sin took over more and more of their lives. Others perhaps won't be able to point to any one thing, but know that something isn't right, even if they can't put their finger on it and want to be seen by someone who might be able to help them. And John the baptizer proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – and they come, wanting to be washed clean, wanting to make a public stand of their desire to start over and live a different way, wanting to turn around, and start down the road to healing and wholeness again.
Andy & I have a book called Dinner Table Devotions. Each day has a topic or theme, with two or three related scripture passages and a reflection followed by questions for discussion. The other night was entitled, “Are You a Sinner?” No beating around the bush for that author. No trying to pretty it up – just a bold, bald question: Are you a sinner? “None of us like to think of ourselves that way,” she says, but try as we may to avoid that truth, much like the patients in House, until we tell the whole truth about ourselves, we won't recognize our need for Jesus. “We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.”
Let me say that again.
“We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.” Sin goes deeper than our actions, deeper than our intentions, deeper than our thoughts. Sin is a deadly, congenital disease, flowing through our bloodstream, infecting our lives, and the individual sins are just the symptoms of the underlying problem. Many of us can go a long time through life without feeling the mortal consequences; many of us can pretend to ourselves that we're not sick, but sooner or later, the symptoms start to appear. Ultimately, sin will sicken us and kill us all, unless we can find a cure.
The good news in all of this is that this isn't an episode of House. The thing causing our symptoms is no mystery – and neither is the cure! But John's baptism only goes so far. Certainly we need to repent. We need to come clean. We need to confess. But if that's what it took to cure us, we'd be in sad shape, because we really can't heal ourselves. We'd just end up back in the ER over and over again. We need something more, a miracle cure, something that comes from outside ourselves and our own efforts! And we see the beginning of that in this first chapter of Mark's gospel today. Because after the crowds have gathered, as people are confessing and dunked in the river by John, he tells them this. “I'm not the guy. There's someone else, someone more powerful than I am, someone whose sandal I'm not even worthy to untie! I've baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” I love the way the paraphraser of the Scarlet Letter Bible website puts it, “I just got you wet. He'll set your life on fire! That was when Jesus came.”
Jesus comes from way up north in Nazareth of Galilee and joins John in the wilderness in the south, in Judea. He shows up on the scene and lines up with everyone else for John to baptize him, and at that moment in the river, immersed in the muddy waters that hold the sin of all who came before him, Jesus sees the heavens torn apart. The Spirit comes down. A voice speaks from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This one, God's own beloved Son, is the medicine we have been seeking. He takes our sickness on himself, and offers his blood as the cure to the sin that is killing us, much as an antidote to poison, or a life-giving antibiotic. This gift of healing, of restoration, of new life is ours, because our lives are linked to his in baptism! In our own baptism, our lives and deaths are joined to Christ's. In our baptism, we see God tearing open the heavens and coming down to us, for us! We hear God claiming us as beloved sons and daughters, opening the way for us to enter new life, inviting us to live as new, whole, healed people. Baptism is the turning point, the day by which we mark time – before baptism & after baptism; the day we learned that we are God's beloved children, embraced, accepted, forgiven, loved. True, we may not be all we should be, but thank God we aren't what we used to be. We are people who were at death's door, and though Jesus, have been given new life! May our lives be transformed by thanksgiving!
Amen.
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