Sermon: Life Commandments

LIFE COMMANDMENTS

Mark 1:4-11

Sermon preached by Dr. Mark Smutny

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Mark 1:4-11 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” ⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The human mind is capable of believing anything. Some of these beliefs, these life commandments, can propel us to act like a gyroscope with amazing force with an internal guidance system. Ponder, for a few moments, these examples from different cultures and diverse human belief systems, yet eerily similar.

During World War II, young Japanese pilots would climb into fighter planes filled with explosives, pledge fealty to the Emperor, climb into the sky, then dive bomb into American aircraft carriers believing, according to their Shinto belief system, in death they would be united with the great guardian spirit protecting Japan.

Christian martyrs, in the late First Century, refusing to bow down before Caesar, allowed themselves to be eaten by lions and killed by gladiators, believing they would receive their reward in heaven.

A young Muslim, a teenager, a member of Al Qaeda of Iraq, drives a motorcycle into a crowded Baghdad market, his vest strapped with dynamite. He pulls the switch. It goes off, killing dozens of men, women and children. He unleashes this brutality because he believes he will find favor with Allah in paradise.

The human mind is capable of believing anything and acting on it.

It’s also true of you and it’s true of me. When I little, about six years old, the Cuban Missile Crisis was going full steam. I thought for sure the world was going to end in nuclear holocaust. I had nightmares about it, night after night. All I wanted to do was dig a big hole and hide. I was obsessed with the idea. I fantasized all the time about digging holes and warrens where my family would be safe when the end came. Maybe those of you who were alive at that time thought so as well.

When I was a little older, I used to think that I could stand in front of people, command their attention, and talk and talk and talk and enjoy being the center of everything. I did just that in school: in speech, in the science club and in debate. It felt pretty good. A pattern was established: a life commandment that propelled by behavior where I would regularly speak in front of people on a regular basis. I still can’t help it.

More seriously, I used to believe that work was everything and that work was the be all and end all of my existence. I secretly believed that anyone who didn’t agree with me was a slacker. Okay, maybe I didn’t keep my belief a secret. That’s what I used to believe. It was a life commandment: a deep, inner belief system that drove my behavior. It worked for me for awhile. For example it worked on the family farm where I was reared when work is what you do from before the sun rises until after it goes down. It worked as a way of getting my parents’ approval. It worked for getting A’s in school and in college. The life commandment that drove my behavior that work was the most important thing: it worked.

And like most life commandments, they are adaptive in some situations and maladaptive in others. I discovered the hard way that life is far richer than all work and no play. I needed prayer and therapy to discover that work had become an obsession for me. It had become an addiction for me. I discovered that work taken to extremes can crush the human spirit. It can damage relationships and extinguish joy from life.

I discovered what may be obvious to you but wasn’t obvious at all to me that joy can be found in play like when I hike with my two dogs Abbey and Troy. Now my two dogs teach me about God. Dog is god spelled backwards. Dogs teach me about play. Most of what dogs do is play. Now, I love to garden and cook—which I’ve always done but now I do less seriously with more room for error. I’m less fastidious and more relaxed. I don’t look like I’m working when I cook and garden.

Amazingly, for over a decade, I no longer get tense in my muscles when I’m not working. I used to get muscle tension if I was away from work for too long. I was really messed up. With God’s help a new life commandment has been re-written in my soul, sealed in my sinews, grounded in my gut that says, “Mark, even when you are not working, you are my beloved.” “Really?” I ask. God says, “Mark, go take a nap.”

It is like I have been born anew, baptized into a new way of life, into a fresh new way of being. The past is finished and gone. A new life has begun.

I think my experience must be something like what must have been going on as the parade of people were lining up to go down to the River Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist in our Gospel story. People were ready for a new beginning. The old life commandments weren’t working for them. They were ready for something new. They were ready to know in their very being that they were loved. They were ready to know that they were free. They were ready to know they were precious children of a God who claimed them as God’s own. So they lined up, one by one, to receive the cleansing waters of baptism: to be born anew, to be baptized into a new way of life, where the past is finished and gone, where a new life unfolds, where the sin that clung to them could be washed away.

There are so many belief systems, so many life commandments, deep, inner belief systems that can drive a person’s behavior. Some are for good. Some are for ill. Some can be purely destructive and downright evil.

Most of the life commandments we act out of echo from the time when we were young, often very young. You may have been told (and you may have believed what you were told) that you were stupid, defective, an idiot. Maybe you heard these words repeated again and again by an insecure parent who didn’t know any better, by a cruel brother or sister, and you heard these words so many times, that there is a very good chance that a life commandment took root in you and you began to believe it and internalize it that you were defective.

Maybe you were told that you would never amount to anything and you believed it. Maybe you were never given affection, maybe you were not held enough, so that basic trust is difficult for you even decades later. Maybe you were told that to be a good little girl or a good little boy you needed to make everybody like you and your life commandment to be a people pleaser still gets in the way when there is a conflict and you find it difficult to stand up for your rights. Maybe you have that kind of life commandment inside of you.

More darkly, maybe in a time of terrible fear, in a time of deep upset, a life commandment was sealed in your being and seared in your memory that you were to deny the abuse that was going on and that you should never tell. They told you not to tell. Maybe you were told to buck up and deny your feelings. Maybe whenever you felt hurt you were told that you didn’t feel that way and you now have an internalized life commandment that tells you emotions of any kind are confusing. So emotions tend to come out sideways or maybe they come out as anger when you’re really feeling pain. Maybe you have a life commandment that is afraid of seeking justice.

Maybe you have a life commandment that is unhealthy in relation to God. Were you told that God was an angry God who would send you to hell if you didn’t obey? Were you told that you were a horrible sinner, unworthy, a pile of unworthiness before an angry, capricious God? Do you have that type of fear-based religion, that kind of life commandment in you lurking somewhere beneath the surface?

Or conversely, were you told from the very beginning, that you were loved—all the time? Were you treasured? From the day you drew your first breath did you know that you were a precious child of God? As a girl were you told that you could do anything? As a boy were you taught that girls and women were to be respected? Did a life commandment take root in you, a core belief that you should treat everyone with respect and dignity? Was God always to you a loving God? When disappointment came, when failure came, when you did wrong, were you harshly judged or were you forgiven and loved back into new life? Was a life commandment placed in you that Jesus loves you; that you are gifted, precious, a wonderful creation of a loving God? Were you told again and again that you could take the gifts God had given you and you could make something wonderful from them and you believed it? What life commandment do you believe that propels your behavior today?

When Jesus came down to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, the first words Jesus heard when he emerged from the baptismal waters were, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Sealed in Jesus’ baptism are the perfect words, the life commandment, the deep belief system that will provide the gyroscope to direct Jesus’ behavior for the rest of his life. Jesus is God’s beloved. Nothing could be more precious, more secure and more foundational for what lay ahead for him. The God who is love declared Jesus beloved that the beloved might spread the Gospel of love through his ministry, through his death, and on to his glorious resurrection.

If only each one of us could hear that divine voice above all other voices and have it sealed in our hearts that we are beloved. If only each one of us could hear the life commandment, the internal compass, the gyroscope to guide us as we emerge from the fresh waters of our baptism, “You are my beloved.”

My friends, the hope, promise and reality of this new day is that in Christ everything has become fresh and new. In your own baptism, you have taken on a lifetime of renewal, of dying to sin, of being born anew into the life of Christ. This journey did not end when you were baptized. It only began. Before you lies a lifetime of growing into the likeness of Christ! From this day forward may you grasp more fully the divine gift of God’s love for you. May you hear more fully the divine voice saying to you, “You are my beloved, my beloved child, my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.” May you hear God’s voice. Write it in your hearts: a new life commandment. May it drive your behavior like an internal compass—a gyroscope—a guidance system. And then, knowing you are loved, let us be a loving people, loving God, loving neighbor, and yes, loving ourselves. With God’s help, make it so. Amen.