The Ultimate Love Story

GENESIS 1: 1-5

MARK 1: 4-11

Did you know that biblical scholars like to debate if the first 12 chapters of Genesis truly happened or not? Actually there are whole books of the bible that are debated if they really happened as it was written or if they were taken from other religions and reworked as a part of our theology.

For some, knowing that one part of the Bible may not be completely accurate somehow makes the whole of the Bible less in their minds. For others, they do not look at the bible as a historical or scientific document and so it doesn’t matter if everything happened in that exact way.

The point of the Bible is not to tell us how long the earth has existed or how it was created. The point is to tell us that God had a hand in it all and that God cared enough to make this world a livable and beautiful place where we have dominion over the birds of the air as well as the animals on the land and in the seas. Does it matter if what we call one day in Genesis is 24 hours or a couple million years? Human beings only consider a day 24 hours because that’s how long it takes us do a full rotation as we revolve around the sun. God created the sun, therefore, what is a day to God? I don’t understand how that kind of minute detail takes away from what the Bible is trying to tell us.

God loves us. God created us. God created the world. God saw how lost we were and so God created a covenant first with Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob. When even that was not enough to help us along he showed us His power through Moses and gave us the Ten Commandments and gave us the Promised Land. When we still went astray, God finally decided to take matters completely into God’s own hands and became a human being for us.

God humbled God’s self and took on human flesh for US. That’s the point of the Bible. It is a divine love story that shows us how important and beautiful and significant we are to the most powerful being in the universe. If we quibble over details like if Jonah was truly swallowed by a fish or if the Magi got there when Jesus was a baby or a 2 year old or since the Bible is only so many thousands of years old then the earth can only be that old – we diminish and overlook the true point of it all. We also limit the power of our Lord and Savior and why would we ever want to do that?!

The point of the Bible is that it guides us closer to God. It shows us when we are at our darkest moments that we are not the only ones that suffer and hurt. It shows us that God knows the pain we feel intimately through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who is there with us and experiencing it all over again because God loves us that deeply. God wants to be our parent and guiding force in this world. God wants to have a deep, intimate, unending relationship with every one of us and if that is not the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard then I need you to get up here and share what could be more amazing!

God, all powerful and all loving, cares SO MUCH about you – insignificant and disobedient and sinful you – that God lived and died for you so that you may join God in heaven and live forever in peace and happiness.

That is a miracle, my friends. It is the greatest miracle we will ever experience and we each get that miracle. Every person that believes in God gets to be with God.

Next week, I'm going to be baptizing a father and a son. There is such a special relationship between a father and his child. There is a bond there and next week it will be strengthened even further because on the same day we will make a promise to them and the father will make a promise to his son to walk this journey of faith with him every single day. The same way God sent Jesus to us and was with Jesus every step of the way, experiencing the pain and frustration and struggles of a human being so that God may truly understand who we are and why we do the things we do.

Baptism is an outward sign of an invisible event. Baptism is a recognition that God is with us all of our earthly days and lives inside us through the Holy Spirit. It is a welcoming into the family of Jesus Christ, we are adopted sons and daughters. In baptism, God becomes our parent and guiding light. Jesus shares with us his birthright and saving grace. We are welcomed into the bond between Father and Son – the ultimate love they have for each other - and we get to be smack dab in the middle of it!

The next time someone starts trying to debate the accuracy or empirical truths of the Bible with you, I want you to look at them and say it has nothing whatsoever to do with facts and everything to do with love. The love a parent has for their child. The love God had for Her creation and the love it took for the Son to do the Father’s bidding to save this world that had gone astray. The love Jesus had for us and for his Father to give up everything so that WE may receive everything. In that moment that Jesus hung from the cross, dirty and bleeding and gasping for a breath that wasn’t filled with pain, he cried out in a broken, ragged voice, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

In that moment, as close as Father and Son had always been and will always be, Jesus had taken into himself every sin and disease and awful thing we have done and will do and he became those sins and took that awfulness and became UNRECOGNIZABLE to his own Father. In that one moment, there was no longer a communion between the two. And then Jesus died.

He went through all of that for us. God did that for us. The bible has nothing to do with science or history. It does not matter if you believe every single word or just most of what is written. What matters is that you understand the whole of the Bible is the greatest love story to ever be written. It is about sacrificial love and redemption for a world that did not deserve to be redeemed. No matter how dark our world looks at times, no matter how far off course it seems we may get – God will not let the darkness extinguish our light. God will not let us go.

Through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will always have a place with God as long as we want it.

The question is – do you want to be with God? Then show God’s love to everyone you meet because that is all God asks of us for this beautiful, amazing, and miraculous gift!

Amen.