Mission Drop

Amazing Stories – Mission Drop
Sycamore Creek Church
Mark 1:1-11 & Acts 2:38-41
Tom Arthur
June 24, 2012 

Peace Friends!

What’s your life mission?  Are you on a mission?  Or are you just plodding along each day reacting to whatever comes your way?  Being on a mission adds a deep sense of purpose to your life.  Many of us wander around aimlessly because we haven’t signed up for a mission.

I remember the first deep sense of mission I received in life.  I was in a class in college called “African American Experience.”  We were watching a Dateline undercover investigation of racism in Chicago. Not the deep south.  North. Chicago. Midwest.  Big city.  Two guys, one black and one white, went around town with hidden cameras and interacted with the same people and situations.  They both went to a used car salesman.  The white guy was given a “rock bottom” price $1500 cheaper than the black guy.  They both went to a department store.  The white guy was given great service.  The black guy was followed around the store by a sales associate who didn’t talk to him.  They both went to rent the same apartment.  The landlord was courteous to the black guy who went first, but when the white guy asked about the neighborhood, the landlord said, “It’s OK, but it’s going downhill.  I showed it to ‘one of them’ earlier today.”  I came out of that class furious, with a righteous anger I had never experienced before.  In that moment God signed me up for a mission: to make right the injustice I had just seen.  Later on I gave that mission a name: racial and economic reconciliation.

What’s your mission?  Today we’re in the middle of a series called Amazing Stories.  We’re looking at some of the lesser known but still amazing stories in the Bible.  There are a lot of different stories in the Bible about being on a mission.  Today I want to look at a story of the beginning of Jesus’ mission.  And it’s a mission that we all can join.  It’s the amazing story of baptism.  Let’s read it.

Mark 1:1-11 NLT
Here begins the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.
In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God said, 

“Look, I am sending my messenger before you,
and he will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the wilderness:
‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!
Make a straight road for him!'”  

This messenger was John the Baptist. He lived in the wilderness and was preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had turned from their sins and turned to God to be forgiven.  People from Jerusalem and from all over Judea traveled out into the wilderness to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from camel hair, and he wore a leather belt; his food was locusts and wild honey. He announced: “Someone is coming soon who is far greater than I am — so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave.   I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and he was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  And when Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.”

Here we see Jesus joining the mission of God.  Have you ever seen one of those spy movies where one spy drops a case or bag or box or envelope in one spot for another spy to pick up and run with the mission?  That’s kind of what’s happening here.  John the Baptist is making a mission drop with Jesus.  Jesus is picking up the package (or going under the water) and running with the mission.

Now this story by itself doesn’t tell us much about the amazing character of this mission.  For that we have to look elsewhere.  One great place is in a sermon that Peter, one of Jesus’ fellow “spies”, preaches after Jesus has ascended (it’s the same sermon that Gaelen McIntee preached on a couple of weeks ago on graduation Sunday).  Let’s take a look at parts of that sermon and we’ll see that the character of the mission of God is closely related to the character of water itself.  Maybe that’s why baptism is done with water.

Death: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is a dangerous thing.  Water can mean death.   This past week I took my 19-month-old son to the tot swim at the Holt Jr. High. He had never seen or been in a pool before.  He was naturally anxious and nervous as we stepped down into the pool.  For about the first thirty minutes he had a choke hold on me and wouldn’t even consider letting go.  He had a healthy respect for the dangerous situation he was in.  Should he let go, I think he instinctually knew that things would not turn out well (of course, as his daddy, I would do all I could to never let that happen).  Water is death.

When we sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, something in us has to die.  We have to turn from our sins.  This is called repentance.  You have to give up every other mission you’re on to join this one. It’s no good to think you can be on two missions.  You can’t.  If you’re going to join God’s mission, all other missions in your life must be put to death in the waters of baptism.  This doesn’t mean that you no longer care about other things.  It means that you now see all things you care for through the lens of the mission of God.

The mission of God is characterized first by dying to self, repenting, and turning toward God.

Cleansing: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

One of the important uses of water is to clean dirty things.  This past week I had drywallers working in my basement.  I was amazed at the speed with which they worked.  They put up seven rooms of drywall and a hallway in a day and a half.  One time I went down to see how things were going, and one of the guys was putting screws in a piece of dry wall on the ceiling while a fine dust was showering down on top of him.  Later that day when they left, he said to me, “I’ll give you an ‘air’ hand shake because my hands are so dirty and dusty.”  I looked at his hands and was glad he didn’t want to shake my hand.  He was dustier than I had seen anyone in a long time.  I’m sure when he got home he immediately jumped in the shower to wash away all that dust, and when he got out of the shower, I’m sure he felt like a new man.  Water cleanses.

When you sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, you die to the sin in your life and you are cleansed from it.  The mission of God is characterized by forgiveness, God’s forgiveness of our sins, and our forgiveness of others’ sins against us.  Just as water cleans the hands after a long day of working, so too does baptism clean our souls and make us pure before God.

The mission of God is characterized by the forgiveness of sins.

Life – New life through Union with Christ: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is life.  Have you ever run out of water and been unable to get water for an extended period of time?  There’s an amazing survival story about a guy named Aron Ralston that’s told in a movie titled 127 Hours.  Aron was hiking by himself in slot canyons out west when a boulder fell on him and pinned his hand to the side of the canyon.  He was pinned there for 127 hours before freeing himself by cutting his own forearm off.  Public Service Announcement: The biggest mistake he made in this whole ordeal was that he was hiking by himself and he hadn’t told anyone where he was going.  So how was he going to survive?  Almost miraculously there was no bleeding, so Ralston really had to confront one major obstacle: how could he stay alive until someone found him.  What’s your number one problem in this situation?  Besides staying warm, it’s water.  You can live for days or weeks without food. But you can only go a fraction of that time without water.

Water is life, and the waters of baptism give you new life in Jesus.  If we die in the waters of baptism, then we die with Jesus.  But when we come up out of the water, we also join in the resurrection of Jesus.  Our dead dry bodies are given new spiritual life.  We are in a very real sense, reborn.

Life – Holy Spirit: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

There’s another sense in which we are given new life in the waters of baptism.  We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  What exactly is the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence working in you (transformation) and through you (ministry to others).  God’s love being made real in your life.  God’s friendship helping you to learn new habits and continue to turn from all those old ones.  Because even though we’re cleansed and forgiven of our sins in the waters of baptism, those old habits continue to intrude on the mission of God.  They’re like old enemy spies that keep showing up at inopportune times.  Except the difference is that God’s presence, God’s love, God’s friends, God’s Holy Spirit walks with you in a new and powerful way helping you to overcome those old habits and sins.  As one preacher has said, “Sin remains but it does not reign” (John Wesley).

The mission of God is characterized by new life in the waters of baptism.

Community – Acts 2:41 NLT
Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church — about three thousand in all.

What do all these things have in common: soda, tea, coffee, beer, wine, juice?  There’s probably a lot of things that they have in common but here are two that are pertinent to our discussion this morning: they’re mostly water, and they’re best shared with friends.  Water is something that community gathers around.  We gather around it when we choose where to live.  We gather around it at the table, in a restaurant, at the café, in a coffee shop, and around the communion table in worship.

Water is community, and in the waters of baptism you join the community called the church.  Baptism is the door to the church.  Now the church gets a lot of negative press in the world these days, some of it earned, but at its most fundamental level, the church is the community of friends seeking to follow Jesus.  It’s a community on a mission, and that mission is best done with spiritual friends.

The mission of God is characterized by the community you join in the waters of baptism.

So there’s only one question left for you today:

Will you join the mission of God?