SCHIZOMAI!

 Mark 1:4-11
Have you ever asked a child where God lives?  When I was three, I told my mother not to hug me so tightly because Jesus lived in my heart and I did not want to squash him.  But other than that one moment of clarity about God’s immanence, most of the time, I assumed that God lived up there—in the sky. Maybe you did too.  And my guess is that if we asked our kids where God lives, most of them would point up, as well. 

 This idea that God is above us, far away, beyond the boundary of the blue sky that we see is an old idea.  It actually reflects the ancient Hebrew understanding of the sky.  Our ancestors believed the sky was like an inverted bowl that separated the natural world from God’s heavenly domain.  Had Ina kept reading in Genesis, you would have heard that picture in the poetry of the 1^st creation story, too,

 And this ancient and contemporary sense of where God makes God’s home is actually quite helpful.  It is quite orderly.  It keeps things very nicely and neatly in their places.  Human beings, chaos, nature, sin—all of these things live below the dome.  Our human condition, our broken worldliness, is kept separate and apart from the things that are of God—of heaven.  And God’s realm, God’s home, the time beyond time, the space beyond space, eternal happiness and wholeness and joy, heaven—all of that is also kept nicely and neatly in its place above the dome.  Separate and apart from our chaos.  Far away from us creatures in our creatureliness.  Out of our space and time.  Beyond the boundary of the blue sky. 

 And while we might complain about this distance, this boundary, from time to time, echoing Isaiah’s cry and telling God to come down here and get to work, I do wonder if we might also be rather content with those boundaries being in place, all nice and neat and orderly.  The heavens contained.  Our broken worldliness predictable.  God living up there.  All of us living down here.  For when those boundaries are in place, then everybody knows what to expect.  For example, when folks look to the church and ask what we are doing in response to some social issue, we can respond “What can we do about it?  That is just the way it is in this world.  Our focus is on the next world.”  The boundary makes that response possible

 Furthermore, when those boundaries between God and the world are in place, then the boundaries and barriers we erect between ourselves can be kept intact as well.  Everything and everyone can be kept in its or his or her place.  These people here.  Those people there.  Conservatives here.  Liberals there.  Democrats here.  Republicans there.  Rich people here.  Poor people there.  Earthly brokenness down here.  Heavenly hope up there.  All of it separated by the dome, the boundary between heaven and earth.  Nice, neat, contained.  Just the way God wants it, right?  Wrong!

 Schizomai[i].  To rip, rend, tear apart in a way that cannot be put back together again.  Violent.  Loud.  Dramatic.  Chaotic.  Schizomai.  Mark 1:10 : “And as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens schizomai—being ripped, torn apart—and God’s Spirit came down like a dove and rushed into him, possessing him, driving him, calling him, birthing him into his mission.” 

 Before verse 10 in this first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, things still seemed rather orderly and ordinary.  Jesus made his way to the wilderness from his private life in Nazareth, where, more than likely, he had joined Joseph in the family trade.  And after he arrived and saw his cousin John standing on the river’s edge, Jesus, like everyone else, heard the invitation for baptism and responded.  Mark reports it all rather nicely, neatly, orderly.  But then Mark reports that God literally breaks open the scene.

 Schizomai.  God tears through the heavenly veil, the lovely dome, the nice and neat boundary between human brokenness and heavenly wholeness and God’s Spirit rushes down to take full hold of Jesus, God’s Love Made Flesh.  God possesses him with God’s wild Spirit and starts running loose in our world, daring us to keep up with the action. 

 For according to the eyes and ears of Mark, this tearing of the heavenly veil is to be the central call and theme of Jesus’ entire mission and ministry.  Mark’s overall message is this:  God desires a world in which the boundaries that separate people from God and from each other--whether they be holiness and purity codes separating Jews from other Jews; or laws and traditions separating Jews from Gentiles; or cultural norms or economic class separating families from families-- all of those things that keep people apart are to be torn down and broken through.  Schizomai.  Ripped apart, torn apart, never able to be put back together again in the same way, forever different, forever open, forever torn. 

 The God we see through Mark’s eyes is clearly not content with heavenly wholeness up there and earthly brokenness down here.  The God we see in Mark is clearly not satisfied with keeping all the boundaries intact, all the barriers in place, everything nice and neat and contained.  The God we see in Mark is clearly not happy with the way we let our need for boundaries and order infiltrate the rest of our lives—separating these people from those people, saints from sinners, rich from poor, gay from straight, brown from black from white, the clean from the unclean, everything and everyone in its or his or her place, as we see fit to determine it. 

 The God we see in Mark has watched all of that and shouts “No More!”  And Schizomai.  God tears apart the boundaries between God’s home and our home and says it is all going to change.  And when God tears open the heavens at Jesus’ baptism, God dramatically announces Jesus’ calling to be our God running loose in our world, tearing apart the social fabric that separates people, breaking through hardness of heart to bring forth compassion[ii], shattering the rituals that had grown rigid, smashing the chains that kept some folks bound, redeeming the landscape of human living, and requiring transformed lives in return from all of us who say “I believe, help thou my unbelief.”  At the moment of Jesus’ baptism, we see the testimony enacted that nothing will ever be the same again for the heavens were just torn apart and God was in the tearing.

 But, lest we think this is just a Jesus thing, this same kind of tearing open the heavens, possession by the Holy Spirit, “God on the loose” activity is also present at the moment of our baptisms, as well.  At our own baptism, though we may not see it, we believe that in the mystery of that sacrament, the torn apart heavens are again announced and God’s Spirit swoops into us, claiming us, possessing us, sealing us in a way we cannot explain but that makes us new creations and gives us our call, as well.  For like Jesus, through our baptisms, we, too, are called to join God’s actions of schizomai.  We, too, are challenged to no longer be content with the way things are, to no longer be content with keeping things or people nicely and neatly in their places simply because it is easier to live that way. 

 As J. Herbert Nelson said last Wednesday night when he preached to me and 900 college students at Montreat, “Young people, let’s get honest now.  You cannot be content with deciding to live life solely for yourself, with determining that if life is good for you, then all must be right with the world.  You cannot be content with that because all is not right with this world, in this nation, in your community.  And as baptized disciples of a Living Lord, we must be about more than just that.  We must be about more than just ourselves and our own comfort.[iii]”  No, friends, this is not just a Jesus thing.  Living out God’s schizomai is a disciple thing too.  It is our call—as individual disciples AND as a congregation.

 So following in Rev. Nelson’s footsteps, I will get real honest with you.  I have been struggling with what that looks like for us as BMPC.  I have been struggling with how we will live out God’s schizomai as a theologically and politically diverse congregation whose members will have very different ideas about how we should be in ministry within our community and world. 

 For example, what does a sustained response to poverty look like for us?  Is there something else God would have us do in addition to our Can in each Hand food drive each week?  I don’t know yet.  I’m hoping we can figure that out together.  I just know that in the week before Christmas, I visited with and helped three different folks with a tank of gas.  I met with a man and his pregnant wife trying to get home up east.  I met with a former Presbyterian Home kid who was making her way back to Georgia for a job and who remembered being a part of this congregation.  I met with a man with grease stained hands who felt the need to reassure me time after time he had never done this before but he needed to get to Tennessee and a new job at a chicken processing plant.  I met with an embarrassed mom and her two little coughing kids who did not need gas but 10$ for cough syrup from CVS. 

 And that is just in one week and barely the tip of the iceberg.  So I am feeling called to struggle with how we, as a congregation, can offer an even more intentional response to those who live all around us and even in this congregation who struggle these days to keep their heads above water and for whom it is not getting any better.  I struggle because I believe our baptism calls us to do so, to live out God’s schizomai of those boundaries that would try to keep their suffering all nice and neat and contained and far away from the rest of us so we don’t have to think about it or worry about it or try to do something about it because it is easier to pretend that if everything is all right with us, then it must be all right with the world.  It isn’t.

 And I am also struggling with how we, as a congregation, are going to make our way through what looks like will be a very long election season.  How are we going to resist the partisan boundary raising that is going on all around us?  Will we be able to talk together about important issues like the constitutional marriage amendment without giving into division or rancor?  Will we be able to live out the theological maxim “as long as our hearts are one, our minds don’t have to be?”  Or will we just pretend our differences do not exist, or worse, give into the temptation to categorize and pigeonhole each other because it is so much easier to live that way.  That is just what people do these days—they call names and make judgments.  But what will we do?  I am not sure yet how we can have those honest discussions together but I believe our baptism calls us to do so, to live out God’s schizomai of those boundaries.  But Berry and I are going to need your help in knowing how to do that in a way where all are honored as children of God.

 Those are a couple of the things with which I’ve been struggling recently.

But I will tell you one thing I don’t struggle with:  I don’t struggle to realize that God’s ripping of that boundary sure did make things messy.  God’s refusal to let us wall ourselves off from each other or from God sure does make life more complicated.  Living as the baptized or those preparing for baptism sure does keep things from getting too comfortable, too settled, too orderly, too self-centered, too staid. 

 For make no mistake about it:  According to the Gospel, shizomai—tearing apart the boundaries, ripping down the barriers-- is a part of our baptismal call.  It is what discipleship looks like.  It is what we are to be about as we try to follow together our God who is on the loose and who dares and hopes that we will try and keep up.

 Amen.