Rev. Sandy Lacey
February 18, 2024
On our journey together in Lent, the Gospel of Mark has us start at the beginning. Right away we hear God’s voice. Unlike Matthew and Luke, there are no genealogies and birth narratives for Mark. There is no visit of the Magi like we find in Matthew. There is no long theological poems like we find in John – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . .” There is no opening drama that leads up to the big point – no, not in Mark. Mark gives you the point at the very beginning – he tells us who Jesus is. God’s voice declares Jesus is God’s beloved son and that God is pleased with him. The punchline is in the beginning . . . and the rest of the Gospel fleshes out what that one declaration means. Mark is in a hurry to “let the cat out of the bag” and then spends the rest of the Gospel demonstrating that the disciples do not understand what God spoke. (In fact, in the Gospel of Mark, it is only the demons who know who Jesus is.) Jesus hears God’s voice in his baptism and God’s voice declares who he is and that he is loved.
I’ve heard voices my whole life. When I was very young, I heard the voice that God loves me from my church community. And through the education and nurture of the adults around me in that church, I learned that God’s people love me too. As I grew older, I also heard the voice that God expects something from me, that I am blessed to be a blessing. In my youth group, I heard the voice of quiet acceptance when I had questions and dared to wonder something different from prescribed formulas of faith. In college and late adolescence, I heard the voice to question everything and discover my own faith. I was fortunate as a child and young person to have parents that took me to church, whether I wanted to go or not because those voices I heard back then will always stay with me.
I wish all the voices we hear in our childhood and youth are positive voices . . . but alas, they are not. Some of us hear that we’re not quite good enough, that we don’t measure up, or that we won’t amount to anything. Religiously, many of us have heard the voice that we must believe a certain way or follow a particular script in order for God to love us. Some of us hear that we are to be afraid of incurring God’s wrath. Or we hear that we must somehow earn God’s favor and love, that God’s love is conditional.
As adults we hear all kinds of negative voices too. We hear the voice that we must get ahead, that our worth is related to how much money we make. We also hear that we deserve certain things, that if we work hard, we deserve to have the things we want. We hear that we are not whole persons unless we fit a certain mold – often married, children, college, job right after college, mortgage, etc. We hear that if we work hard enough, we will succeed. And if we are not succeeding, then we must be lazy or doing something wrong. Many of us have heard and said the phrase that God helps those who help themselves and, therefore, we are only responsible for ourselves and not others.
Hopefully, we also hear some more positive voices as adults . . . “you are part of this community and you are loved. God has known you from the beginning, claims you, and will love you your whole life long. No matter what you have done or not done, no matter who you are – what skin color, what income level, how you dress, your level of faith, your sexual orientation, no matter who you are – you are welcomed, loved, and accepted.” Hopefully we have heard that voice. When I was in college, I participated in a campus ministry program and the campus minister had a kind of mantra that he would say to us regularly. He said, “God loves you no matter what!” It is a voice that I am grateful that I continue to hear.
In the chapel service I do each week for our preschool children, I do a ritual with them about lighting the Christ candle. Each week we talk about how the candle reminds us that God is with us, with us when we sleep, eat, play, color, when we do the right thing, and even when we do the wrong thing and have to sit in time-out. “God is always, always, with us and God always, always, loves us” is what I say each week and I have them repeat it after me because whether they ever go to another church service, I want there to be something in the back of their mind and heart, a voice that might surface every now and then – a voice that says God is with them wherever they are and always loves them.
What are the voices you hear? Is it a voice that promotes well-being toward yourself and others? Or is it a voice that isolates you and keeps you from being who you were created to be and doing what you were created to do?
I read a book a while back by Parker Palmer entitled, Let Your Life Speak in which he wrestles with his personal struggle of vocation.[1] He laments the many years he wasted in listening to others’ interpretation of his strengths and gifts rather than listening to the still quiet voice of God that spoke early on his life through his play and interaction with others. Not listening to your life, he says, only leads to depression as you struggle to live up to other people’s expectations of who you are, rather than celebrating and living the life you were created to live. The trick is discerning God’s voice among all the other competing voices.
In thinking about voices, it is helpful to be reminded of the beginning of things. The very first part of the Scriptures we read in the Bible is the first part of Genesis. It is one of the creation stories in which we hear that God is a creating God who speaks everything into existence and then declares it to be good. God speaks light from dark; God speaks the sky into being; God speaks the creation and the separation of land and water; God speaks vegetation, seasons, a natural flow from daylight to dark; God speaks creatures that live in the water and creatures that live upon the land; and God speaks male and female human beings into being and gives them a purpose – to steward/care for all that is created. And all that God creates is declared by God to be good. Good – hear that voice clearly!
Today’s Scripture beginning, however, is Jesus’ baptism and the inauguration of his ministry. There are all kinds of baptism stories out there – funny ones with baptismal pools being overfilled with water and large persons losing their footing and making big splashes. It’s always awe inspiring and interesting to watch babies and children being baptized – you never really know what will happen – could be screaming, laughter, who knows! There are other stories of adults weeping at the new knowledge of how much they are loved and of youth being overwhelmed by the display of God’s grace in their lives.
The point, the punchline, however, is not the stories or the music we hear and sing. The point is God’s voice, accompanied by God’s Spirit, tearing open the heavens and making a declaration that you belong to God. You do not belong to whatever addiction has a hold on you; you do not belong to the culture of fear that is around you; you do not belong to the workplace; you do not belong to the gangs and drugs trying to seduce you; you do not belong to the voices that say you are nothing; you do not belong to yourself even – you belong to God. You are God’s child, forever and ever, no matter what.
It is a good place to begin a journey, to know that you are loved and cared for, that indeed nothing can separate you from God’s love ever. We will need that voice for our journey, because just like Jesus, we face all kinds of temptations to be less than who we are created to be. Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and we will be in the wilderness more than once in our lives.
Just like individuals, the same is true for a community of faith. We know about competing voices too. Those voices who seek to pull down rather than build up. They seek to isolate and condemn rather than gather and encourage. Those voices are loud, destructive, and persistent. Knowing that those competing voices are indeed being heard and followed by some in our culture, our responsibility and calling is urgent. God’s voice (often audibly heard only through the community of faith by those who do not know God or recognize God’s voice) must be stronger, must be clearer, must be more persistent, must pierce any darkness, and must be demonstrated. The Community cannot simply say it – we must demonstrate/we must live it. John Doe, Sally Jones, so and so community, and so and so nation may not hear a voice directly from God, but they could hear our voice. So let us be in concert with the creating, redeeming, and sustaining voice of God. Let us agree to do our best to make God’s voice heard. People’s identity formation depends upon our faithfulness. AMEN.
_____
[1] Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishing, 2000.)