Summary: It is very likely that you have never realized that John the Baptist’s promise of one who will baptize with the Spirit is never fulfulled in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus never baptizes anyone. Instead, Jesus is Baptized by John who announces a promise of another Baptism. This unfulfilled promise tells us something important about the gospels: the story of Jesus continues into the future. Mark wants us to understand that we are part of the Gospel story. We do not read this Gospel like a history book. We proclaim this Gospel because it is about all people and all times. This Gospel tells us about the beginning of something that has not ended, and it will not end until the “owner of the house returns”. A baptism of repentence in water and the promise of a baptism in the Spirit, a Baptism of Fire, is what John puts before us at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel in the beginning of a new year of faith. More than repentence is expected. The Baptism of John is not enough. More is to come, and what is to come is not something that Jesus will do, but something we must do. Until we awaken the fire of the Spirit that is within us, we shall not be ready and prepared. This world needs more than repentance. What we do at that font is awaken the potential, proclaim the promise, raise the hope, and acknowlege who we are and where we are going, but there is more to come. The very presence of Jesus, his word and his work brings the fire of a new Baptism, and lest we think in his absence that it’s all over, Pentecost affirms that there is more to come after the earthly time of Jesus. Repentance turns us away from sin, and affirms a change of life. In our repentence we acknowlege our anger and hatred, our desire for revenge, our obsession with power, our manipulation of others, our greed and unwillingness to really help others in need by changing oppressive systems that hold people in the bondage of poverty and ignorance. But acknowledging these things is not enough. That doesn’t change anything. It simply recognizes the mess in which we have been living. The Spirit reveals that new world, that new heaven and the new earth. The Spirit into which we have been Baptized by Jesus Christ reveals what we have been waiting for and leads and teaches us how to get there. The dawning of the regin of God is not in the future for those who are truly Baptized in the Spirit it has come. It is at hand. This is not something done to us like the Baptism of John. This is a gift given to us; the promise of the Spirit that proposes a new way of living in this world: a way of life that revives and lifts up the weary and the worn, forgives, heals, and frees. This is a way of life we can choose, and when we do, watch out! The power of the Spirit will be unleashed upon this world. What we proclaim in this place now and every time we assemble here is that the Master is coming and we must be ready. While we await the return of the “one who owns the house” as one of the parables puts it, we are busy about things that matter, about what we know he must find when he comes: peace, justice, forgiveness, joy, and charity. He does not make these things happen, we do. It is what we are about now since Jesus has shown us what to do and how to live. Our faith, this Advent, our very existence in this world is to transform this whole life into the Kingdom of God, into paradise, into the very holy garden where we live without shame, in obedience, in peace, and in the most intimate presence of God whose plan from the beginning was that we should have no fear, no need or want, and no death. Our wilderness time is at an end. The voice in the wilderness has spoken the word of repentence. Now it is time to stir up and awaken that Spirit which Jesus has sent to those who are Baptized. In this news, we find reason to rejoice and be glad, for out time has come.
