YOU ARE MY SON (6 OF 49)
Scripture: Mark 1:4-11
This content is part of a series.
You Are My Son (6 of 49)
Series: Lectionary, Year B
Christopher B. Harbin
Mark 1:4-11
We often struggle with a sense of belonging. We struggle with feeling alone, cut off, not really participating in the life of the world around us. In a season of winter, holiday, pandemic, and political turmoil, that can all seem too much. All too often, we maximize those words and markers that intimate some lesser status of our participation. Meanwhile, we minimize received messages that we indeed have value to people around us. Depression comes along with colder weather, cloudy days, and shorter hours of sunlight, and we bow deeper into despair. Why is it so difficult for us to hear words affirming that we belong and have value in the sight of God and others?
John the Baptist was a kook by most any definition. He was eccentric. His clothing was outside the norm. His diet was fine in regard to Jewish definitions of kosher, but it was very much off menu, uncivilized, and worthy of garnering attention. He was in so many ways a throw-back to some imagined version of an earlier time when Abraham was a nomad with no settled place in which to live. As much as John was a misfit for Jewish society of his time, it was his message that drew attention. He was striking a chord with people who flocked out of civilized and developed society to hear him speak and bow to being immersed in the Jordan River by this madman, this relic from an era long past.
Perhaps the people did not really know what they were looking for, but they recognized in John something they needed, something different from what they had been hearing and experiencing. Life as they had known it was letting them down. They were antsy for Yahweh's intervention and this voice crying out in the uncivilized territory near the Jordan proclaimed a message that did not mesh with the status quo. John called them to metanoia, what we generally translate as repentance. He called them to a change of course, a new direction, ...
Series: Lectionary, Year B
Christopher B. Harbin
Mark 1:4-11
We often struggle with a sense of belonging. We struggle with feeling alone, cut off, not really participating in the life of the world around us. In a season of winter, holiday, pandemic, and political turmoil, that can all seem too much. All too often, we maximize those words and markers that intimate some lesser status of our participation. Meanwhile, we minimize received messages that we indeed have value to people around us. Depression comes along with colder weather, cloudy days, and shorter hours of sunlight, and we bow deeper into despair. Why is it so difficult for us to hear words affirming that we belong and have value in the sight of God and others?
John the Baptist was a kook by most any definition. He was eccentric. His clothing was outside the norm. His diet was fine in regard to Jewish definitions of kosher, but it was very much off menu, uncivilized, and worthy of garnering attention. He was in so many ways a throw-back to some imagined version of an earlier time when Abraham was a nomad with no settled place in which to live. As much as John was a misfit for Jewish society of his time, it was his message that drew attention. He was striking a chord with people who flocked out of civilized and developed society to hear him speak and bow to being immersed in the Jordan River by this madman, this relic from an era long past.
Perhaps the people did not really know what they were looking for, but they recognized in John something they needed, something different from what they had been hearing and experiencing. Life as they had known it was letting them down. They were antsy for Yahweh's intervention and this voice crying out in the uncivilized territory near the Jordan proclaimed a message that did not mesh with the status quo. John called them to metanoia, what we generally translate as repentance. He called them to a change of course, a new direction, ...
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