Dear friends,

We just heard part of the story of Haroen and the sea of stories written by the novelist Salman Rushdie.  It’s one of these magical child-line stories.  Sometimes we have heard Bible stories so often that the wonder of it has faded for us. It’s like one of those flowery shirts you buy on vacation. Years later, after many washers and few visits to the dry cleaners, the colors are still there, but they’re not as vivid.  Today we read Mark’s account if Jesus’ baptism and it seems we just talked about that just yesterday.  We know about John the Baptizer’s clothing, about his unusual eating habits, his humility and Jesus’ humility to be baptized by John. Then we remember the voice of God they heard and the dove.  But we heard it so many times that it doesn’t move us anymore. Have we lost that sense of wonder, or is it just because we know how it’s going to end, because it ended the same way last year and it ended the same for a hundred years and it ended the same for two thousand years.  Or is there something wrong with the way we tell it? Do we tell it perhaps like a newspaper story or even like a financial report?  So let me try to tell a story around this event of the Baptism of Jesus in a different way:

A long time ago in a place far far away there lived a people who were very tired.  They were a people tired of the rule of rulers. They had been ruled by foreign tongues for so many centuries now, by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans.  The people felt like fruit that had been moved from their land to other lands on conveyor belts, to the South, to the North and to the East. Their rulers had unpronouncable names like Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar and Tiglath Pileser and Artaxerxes.  For centuries these rulers had ordered them sent on conveyor belts to these far off nations.  Many of them simply dropped off the side of the belt, never to be seen again.  So many were lost forever, like fruit blending in with the fruits of the local market, indistinguishable.  For centuries this had been going on.  The people didn’t have any rulers of their own, at least not for very long.  It seems they were always ruled by some foreigner.  Thank God for the prophets.  Their names had nothing to do with money, for you spell that differently.  No, they were people who specialized in speaking words and they spoke them with great conviction and passion.  They were so loud that the people believed they spoke the truth and since God and truth are very close to being the same thing, the people listened to these loudmouths. At times they refused to listen but then they got such an earful from these bearded prophesiers, that for weeks they heard their insults ringing in their ears. Mind you, at times the people scratched their heads and wondered what on earth, and in heaven for that matter, these men were crowing about.  But in the end this just made the people think the prophets were that much smarter than them.  Still the country became a backwater. Until the day of this story in fact.  They had reached the time of the Romans and false Kings with names such as Herod and Herod Antipas and of the religious scholars known as Sadducees and Pharisees.  The people didn’t understand why the Romans were allowed to run the country, why the fake kings had so much money and why the scholars were so petty.  They watch the three bicker from the sidelines and the people got sick of being bystanders.  But the people never gave up hope. There was always someone that reminded them of a prophet, including this eccentric man called John. Now he really reminded them.  He could have gone very far in prophethood or prophetdom, but the fellow kept talking about one who was greater than him.  There were rumors that man was the Messiah.  He was smarter and wiser and more compassionate than all the prophets of all time put together.

Well, friends, on that day something happened on the bank of that river. It was a sunny day with light breeze coming from the sea.  It has been said that on that day the river than always ran from north to south reversed course for two hours to run from south to north, but this has never been confirmed.  Something happened on that river that brought together heaven and earth and made any thought of hell completely disappear.  It was simple, but also very momentous.  I forget to tell you that years ago the people had stopped singing.  All the songs, religious hymns and pop songs and romantic ballads had frozen in mid air at a B flat. However, this too could never be confirmed.  One more thing that cannot be confirmed, because it is so long ago and it was in a place so far away, that just moments after this important event, those who had stopped singing picked up their singing, at the exact same syllable where they had left off.  Legend has it that at precisely that same time a dove had been seen diving from the height toward a man being immersed in the river by the Prophet-like John. A voice was heard thundering across the barren hills, a voice so deep and beautiful and honey like that it made those who heard it shiver.  Two shepherd boys who witnessed the event from behind a rock on a south-facing hillside swore that they heard the words:” This is my Son in Whom I am well pleased.” Thanks be to God.  Amen.