Mark 1:4-11
Presented January 11, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The First Sunday after Epiphany
If you were to look back over the course of your life and consider the key moments, the critical experiences, that have given shape to the direction and quality of your life, which experiences would you list as most decisive? In my own life, critical moments include decision about marriage and family, calling and vocation, values and priorities. In recent years, the decisive moment is one that I did not choose—my wife Janice’s accident and death. Yet that event has given shape to so much of what has followed, including renewed struggle with my calling in life, grappling afresh with questions of faith and doubt, a deepened quality in my relationship with my children, and openness to new relationships and direction for my living. In the nearly three years since the accident, I have found myself in the process of creating, as must survivors of cancer and other pressing life challenges, a “new normal” for my life.
In his book The Only Necessary Thing Henri Nouwen asserts that for Jesus, the core moment of his life was his experience of baptism in the Jordan River, a time when Jesus heard those powerful words of affirmation from God, You are my beloved on whom my favor rests. It was the core experience of Jesus, the defining decision of his life, says Nouwen—a time when Jesus “is reminded in a deep, deep way of who he is.” The remainder of Jesus’ life—his public ministry, his proclamation of the unfolding realm of God’s love, his compassion and his reaching out to those on the margins of life, his challenge against those content with business as usual, his passion for justice, peace, and generosity, his willingness to empty himself and give his life for the healing and reconciling of all creation—all of this involved a continual claiming of his identity and calling as God’s beloved.