The Wilderness

Maria had never been in the woods. There were so few trees in Queens; but she had never thought about it. She just thought that concrete and graffiti were the way the world looked.

Maria lived alone with her mom. Her mom had lots of boyfriends that would come and go. Sometimes Maria's mom would not come home. So when she didn't come home, Maria would find something to eat in the cold of the morning. One morning, she decided to steal her mother's favorite red heels and wear them to school, along with her tight jeans. Maria loved it when the boys shouted at her and whistled.

Her grandparents lived less than a mile away in a little townhouse. If her mother was not home by dinner, she always knew that she could walk over to their house, but lately she didn't want to. They were always asking her questions. When did her mom get home last night? Why was she wearing those shoes? Had she done her homework? Up until 5th grade or so, Maria had done well in school. But in middle school she began to care less and less. She almost failed eighth grade.

She got her mom's heels all dirty that day so she thought she'd go immediately to her grandparents house. Maybe she could borrow a pair from her grandmother. Then when her mom asked her where they were, she could just shrug and act all innocent.

Her grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table when she arrived. "How's my girl?" he asked. Maria shrugged and looked in the refrigerator. She seemed to be talking less and less.

"Honey, I have great news for you!" he said, and then proceeded to tell her about this crazy outdoor camp where kids slept in tents and fished and stuff.  He told her that she was going.

"Are you crazy?!" she yelled. "There is no way that I am going there. No way!!"

The next few weeks were crazy. Maria even tried to run away once and slept at her friend's. But she came back, and when she saw the look on her grandpa's face, she knew she would be going to this camp.

They took her, along with a bunch of high school kids she didn't know, in a school bus. They drove for three hours. When they pulled to a stop, Maria stepped out. There was nothing. No concrete. No buildings at all. Just huge trees and sky. And there were stars, when it was clear at night.  She could hardly believe it.

The first thing that she noticed was the total silence. She had never heard anything like it. It made her realize how noisy her world was, with the cars, the TV, and the constant talking or music or noise.  Now there was nothing but wind and sky.

Maria didn't fit in. Her clothes were all wrong. She felt cold all the time. When they went fishing, she was so grossed out by the slimy scales of the fish that she dropped it. People were kind, but Maria had never felt so alone.

The campers were given time alone in the afternoons, time to write in a journal or time to sleep.  Maria found herself sitting under a tree and she began to cry. She cried and cried; the tears would just not stop coming. She could hardly breathe. It was scary. She felt such pain. But some part of her knew that this was better than the kind of living she was doing back in the city. And as the days sped by, she began to tell the other campers about her mom, how she lived to please men, how they sometimes hit her, how she sometimes didn't come home. She told about her life around the camp fire. And she began to learn who she was. And she felt alive for the first time in many years. She felt truly alive.

Jesus was baptized at age 30 and that baptism began the most important part of his life. Something happened to him when he was baptized. It was a jumpstart, a catalyst to a life that God had planned for him. His baptism marked him and God spoke from the clouds. "This is my son," God said. "I am pleased with him."

The sentence that follows Jesus' baptism in the Gospel of Mark is a strange sentence.  So much happens in that one line that it is almost mind-boggling. Mark writes that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The ancient Greek means to throw someone or something out, to force it, chuck it, push it. It was like whoosh! And Jesus found himself in the wilderness. He was made to go, no questions asked, no stopping to see if this was the right decision. No directions. No explanations. He just did it.

What was the wilderness? The ancient Greek for that word gives us great insight. It means, literally, the wasteland, or the place of loneliness.

So Jesus was thrown out into the wasteland alone. That was the first thing that happened to him, to the Son of God, after his baptism. He was uncomfortable and hungry and lacking any kind of direction. He was driven to a place where he was lost and alone.

Why? Why would God drive Jesus to a wasteland, a place of loneliness? Wouldn't some kind of a party or luncheon have been more appropriate to celebrate the baptism? Why send Jesus out alone to a place where Satan could tempt him?

I believe that God knew something that you and I don't know. God knew that the best place to grow is in the wilderness. God knew that there is nothing like pain and loneliness and even temptation to form Jesus into the Christ himself. Jesus was to know himself so that he could minister to others. He needed the silence of loneliness, the place of pain and hunger, in which to hear himself.

Why do we fast in Lent? Why do we try to do something that is hard, giving up something that we love? Why do we think of hard things, like how many children are starving in the world or all the mistakes that we have made? We do this because the pain of it causes us to grow. We do it because we recognize that running from pain and suffering causes us to remain immature and frightened, that the only way to God is through the pain. The only way to grow is to look at your life straight in the face and see where it is that you hurt and invite God to join you there.

Even the temptations that Satan provides, all the distractions and even the darkness of your thoughts, these too are part of the journey to God, for at some point you must decide if you can and will say no to them. It is essential for all of us to realize that we are tempted, that we are not God, that we think bad thoughts and want things that are not good for us.  And when we see the truth about the battle that goes on even in the minds of the best of us, then we begin to understand how much we need God. We see that we cannot do this on our own.

What is your wilderness? What is the wasteland inside yourself that you want to run away from? Do you have feelings of despair, of loneliness? Let the Spirit drive you there, throw you there, don't think about it too much, just go - to the place where there is no noise, where it is just you and God and all your temptations. Stand there naked and alone.

There is a lot of pain in the world. But God does not run from that pain. God moves to it and through it in the cross. Do not be afraid to listen to your thoughts, your fears and insecurities. The darkest places are often where He waits for you, where you will find that all of a sudden, you are not alone.

After Maria's wilderness experience, she knew that she needed to confront her mother. She ended up moving out of her mother's apartment and in with her grandparents. She got back in the groove of school and is now in college. Without the pain of that time in which to step back and see her life for what it was, she might not have survived. And now, she is alive. 

God's Will

When my son Max was about two, we went for a walk. I pushed him in the stroller around a beautiful duck pond near our house in Kansas. We planned on feeding the ducks with some bread from the pantry. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and the sun was out. As usual in Kansas, there was also a nice breeze.

We came to the duck pond and one of the ducks was swimming near the shore. Max got out of the stroller and started throwing pieces of bread into the water. The duck moved closer and began to eat.  More ducks saw the action and began to move towards this new source of food.

Then Max saw a plastic wrapper on the ground right near the water. "Mom! Trash!" he yelled. We had talked before about how you don't throw trash on the ground.

"Yes, Max, let me pick that up so the ducks don't try to eat it."

"Yeah! So the ducks don't eat it!" he agreed.

We fed the ducks and began the walk around the pond. But now that Max had seen one piece of trash, he saw more.

A bottle. "Mom! Trash!!"

A can. "Mom! Trash!!"

A McDonalds bag. A cigarette box. A plastic bag. A beer bottle. A container.

I was picking up and picking up and picking up.  I had to put the trash in the only plastic bag I brought, and soon it was full.  But I was so glad Max wanted to do a good thing that I kept on picking up and picking up.  Soon the bottom of the stroller was full. 

Why had I never noticed how much garbage there was around our neighborhood? It always looked pretty well-kept to me. All of a sudden, it seemed more like a dump. I started getting mad. How could people be so careless, so polluting? With my anger came exhaustion and resentment. I realized that I was no longer enjoying myself, no longer happy to be outside. I just wanted to go home. But I felt trapped. I did not want Max to see me giving up.

When we got home, we both had to take a bath. I had to clean the stroller with bleach. And I was in a bad mood.

Trying to do good is hard. Once you begin to serve God and to help people, it seems like all the problems suddenly become visible to you. You give one person some money, and five more ask you.  You make a donation to a charity and they start calling you at home, sending you emails and publications. Your mailboxes are full of junk just because you sent ten bucks to NetsforLife or the Special Olympics. And I start feeling like I'm drowning in requests. I get mad and resentful.  These people don't care about me, they care about my money! They just want to drain me dry!!

Speaking of draining people dry, I give blood when the blood mobile comes to church. I have O positive blood, the universal donor. Well, that blood mobile has taken to leaving me messages at home. I will give blood and about a month later they are asking for more. Sometimes I get to worrying that I won't have any blood left to give.

Most practicing Christians understand that we are called by God to give. We know that, and Jesus was very clear about it.  But what we don't understand is that when Jesus gave, he had a plan. Jesus gave his life away. He healed people and taught people and cast out demons. But he also walked away and said no and took time to be alone. Jesus had a strategic plan. He knew exactly what God had called him here to do and he did it, no more and no less. He was focused on HIS JOB, the job that God gave him. And he stuck to the plan.

Look at the gospel for today. Jesus is teaching and healing and curing sick minds and the entire village turns out to be helped by him. Women with abdominal pain, children with fevers, men who could not walk - he heals them all. When darkness comes, he goes to sleep, probably exhausted after giving all his energy during the day.

But before the sun comes up, he gets up and goes away, alone, to a quiet place to pray. And there, in the presence of God, he gets clarity.  He remembers why God has brought him to this earth and what he is supposed to do.

When the disciples find Jesus, he tells them that they are to move on. Even though there were still people who were ill, still people who were hungry for his teaching. There was some woman hoping to become well, a sick child, an elderly man. There were real people with valid needs who were searching for Jesus that morning and Jesus decided to leave them.  He left them and moved on because he knew that God wanted him to make an initial impression in these villages and then move. He left without answering all their questions or solving all their problems, for he knew that God had a plan and it was his job to follow that plan and not to deviate from it.

Had Jesus stayed in that one village and fixed every problem there, cured every illness, tended to every need, had he done what the people wanted, he might never have died on the cross for us. We would not have known him.

God's plan is always the best plan. You see, when you follow God's plan, there is what I like to call the ripple effect. If you do what God has in mind for you and only what God has in mind for you, you may not fix every problem, but it is like a pebble hitting the water. The ripples will impact and influence people in ways that you cannot imagine.

After I had served in Kansas for seven years, I began to believe that God was calling me to serve somewhere larger. Our church in Kansas had five services and it was full on Sunday mornings. I felt God urging me to begin to look elsewhere. But I didn't want to go. I loved those people. We were doing wonderful work. I was planning a sabbatical to Costa Rica so we could begin a Spanish service. We were planning a great new ministry on the college campuses.

But I believed that God had something in mind and that it was my job to preach and worship with more people, to give people the tools to serve God in the world. When my family and I were called to come here, to the very Cathedral where I had preached my first sermon, I could not believe it.

But this call from God had a ripple effect. In fact, now that I look back, God was doing so many things. It was not just about me.

We moved into a rental home in Mandarin. The day that we moved in, a woman in her seventies came to the front door with her little grandson to welcome us to the neighborhood. Her grandson was exactly Max's age. They lived next door.

The woman told me that her daughter, her grandson's mother, had been battling cancer since he was born. So the little boy spent a lot of time at his grandparents house. He could not have brothers or sisters.

When the house next door came up for rent, the woman said a prayer to God. "Please," she said.  "Please help a five-year-old boy move in next door."

And who should move in but Max. And those two boys have become best friends, probably for life.

I thought that it was all about me. But I was just the beginning. God was calling Max to be a friend.

As you prepare to serve God, ground yourself in prayer. Worship regularly and find yourself a small group to give you support. And then ask God for guidance. Don't just give to everyone who asks without prayer or plan. Reacting to people's needs does not change the world. Ask God for your focus, your personal vocation, and then stick to the plan. Don't let the results of your efforts or the overwhelming needs of the world deter you from what you and God have in mind. And you must check in with God daily to stay on track.

Find your focus, your particular role in the world and God will bless you with the ripple effect. Your small acts of service will do more than you can imagine.

A wise woman said something beautiful to me this week. She said that when Jesus hung on the cross and he said, "It is finished," it was not that all the problems of the world had been solved. He said "It is finished," because the job that God had given him was over. He had done the tasks that God had given him to do. His job was done. The Holy Spirit would take care of the rest, and the ripples of Jesus' life would change the face of the earth.

It is not your job to save the world. That is God's job. All that we can do is find out what God asks of us and do that. That's all that God asks.

Unclean

I was young, 29 years old, when I became Rector of my first church. There I encountered my first raging alcoholic. He was my Senior Warden and his story is one which he openly shares. It is the story of a war with an unclean spirit known as alcoholism.

Sometimes, particularly in the life of a small parish, the Rector has to call the Senior Warden at night. When I called Dewey, his voice would sound funny. It was slurred. I worried that perhaps he had a stroke. It took me about six months to realize that his slurred words, his red face, his falls were all caused by drinking.

When I realized the truth, I took Dewey and his wife to a rehab hospital. Dewey was still convinced that he did not have a problem. All of his physical ailments he justified in many ways.  His wife met him every evening at the door of their house with a glass of Scotch.

Dewey came to the treatment facility to humor me. His wife was beginning to realize that he would die. But she still hoped that she might be wrong. She still balked from telling him the truth because she was afraid that he might leave her.

They ushered us into a small room for triage, where we sat waiting.

The first person to enter our room was a pretty young woman. She seemed innocent and loving. She started with gentle, innocuous questions such as his age and weight. She took notes on a clipboard. After a few simple questions, she eased Dewey on with a gentle tone asking things like, "And how much scotch do you drink each day?" When he reported the enormous amount, she did not act shocked at all. She continued with a light tone, as if she thought all of this completely normal.  Dewey got more and more confident, more and more relaxed, and his true alcoholism came out. He began to be more open. You could hear how he justified his drinking, how he felt the he worked hard and that he deserved it. By the time the young woman left, she had completely exposed Dewey's alcoholism in all it's ugliness. You could hear it loud and clear, justified and smug. Dewey was relaxed. He was convinced that he did not have a problem. I began to feel afraid and wondered if I had brought them to the right place.

Then the doctor came in. A short man with glasses, he did not look like the warrior that he was. He came in with the clipboard that the young woman had completed. He pulled a chair up close to Dewey and his wife. And he spoke.

"I am a doctor. I am here to tell you that you are killing yourself, that you are poisoning your body with alcohol. Do you know that, if you continue to drink as you are doing, you will be dead in three years?" Then he looked at Dewey's wife.  "Do you want your husband dead? Yes? Then keep on doing what you are doing.  Dewey, all your physical ailments are caused by the drinking...you are poisoning your body."

It has taken me years to articulate what happened in that room. I had to learn how to name it in a new language. Because what was going on was not just medical. It was spiritual. And there must be a language, a spiritual language to describe it, but the language of the Bible has become so lost to us that it took me at least a year to find the right words.

In that little triage room, we were in the midst of a spiritual battle. What we were dealing with was an unclean spirit. But because of modern medicine, we no longer choose to use these words. They sound medieval, even superstitious. I want to be clear with you. This was an unclean spirit, a demon.

Almost everything we need to know about unclean spirits is given to us in this passage from the gospel of Mark.

Jesus enters the city of Capernaum, and when the Sabbath comes, he goes to the synagogue.  It is his refuge, the place of worship. He is drawn there. Just like he did when he went to Jerusalem at just eleven years old, Jesus goes to worship God.

As soon as Jesus arrives in the synagogue, there is a conflict, an incident. A man is not behaving normally. We don't know how this man behaved, how the spirit manifested itself. Mark does not take any time at all to describe the nature of this spirit or how it manifests itself. He is simply not interested in spending any time at all diagnosing this man. Does he babble? Does he hurt himself or others? We don't know.  All that is important is that this spirit is unclean.

Americans are embarrassed by these exorcisms in the gospels. Often we just ignore them. But unclean spirit in the ancient Greek means impure disposition, troubled mind, broken thoughts. All of us experience unclean spirits in the sense that we all battle wayward thoughts in the privacy of our own minds. Think of anxiety, depression, anorexia, addiction, self-hatred, rage...

It is important to note that Jesus encounters this spirit in church, not outside on the street, but in the very house of worship itself. You would think that everyone would be on their best behavior in church, right? But anyone who has been in church for awhile knows that sometimes our worst selves come out in church, our most infantile or insecure selves. There is something about the presence of Jesus that makes our dark sides emerge.

Most unclean thoughts do not want to be seen, articulated. They hide. And that is one way to identify a thought or feeling. Are you embarrassed to say it? Do you know, somewhere deep inside, that it is wrong? If you are hesitant to share a thought or inclination, that is an indication that your motivation is unclean.

The first sign of health is honesty. The first movement of God is to bring the dysfunction out in the open. And that is often the most misunderstood part of church. We all think that everyone should behave in church, that everyone should be kind and sweet, and so they should be. But somehow being in the presence of God can make the worst in us come out. In fact, all our unclean spirits will be exposed here in church. God does not protect us from them; God exposes them. The first thing that happens when Jesus walks into worship is that the unclean spirit is exposed.

Mark describes the spirit as unclean. Not evil, not horrible, just unclean. These are the thoughts in your head that are not of pure intent. The thoughts that might want to hide from Jesus. They don't have to be terrible, just muddied a bit. 

Unclean motivations operate out of fear. They are protective and defensive. If you are not open to feedback or the opinions of others, look at why. Unclean motivations are afraid of change and they are afraid of God. The unclean spirit is immediately defensive when Jesus arrives. "What have you to do with us, Jesus?" it asks.

When unclean thoughts are at risk, when they are at risk of being exposed as unclean, they make a lot of noise. Depression, anger, conflict - these can be the results when an unclean spirit is challenged.  And it does not mean that someone has done something wrong. Conflict is of Christ and can be a good thing. It is a myth that we should be surrounded by harmony in the church. Actually, when unclean spirits are involved (and they are all over us in this world), bringing Jesus in the room means more conflict and not less.

In the gospel, Jesus allows the unclean spirit to speak, to make itself known, and then he tells it to be quiet. He does not converse with it or answer its questions. He just tells it to be quiet.

Silence, he says.

Unclean spirits hate silence. They want you busy and noisy. For heavens sake, don't stop and really listen to what God might be doing in your life. The enemy of impure thoughts and motivations is silence. 

And then Jesus makes the unclean spirit come out of the man, but on it's way out it tears at it's former host, clings to him. Removing the unclean motivation is surgical. It hurts. It can be violent and painful and it can wound you on it's way out.

I felt that I saw a bit of Christ in that doctor that day.  But even with his truth and wisdom, Dewey still would not stop drinking. He refused to check himself into the hospital that day. In fact, after the doctor told Dewey the truth, he was furious. He stood and walked right out. And things got worse before they got better.

Exactly one year later, Dewey could not walk. He was seated in his chair at home drinking when the family and I decided to do an intervention. He said that he didn't care if he died, but when I told him that I was worried about the state of his soul, he got up. He went to rehab and he is still alive and sober today.

And almost every day, he goes to AA meetings where he tells the truth about his unclean spirit. He says, "Hello. My name is Dewey and I am an alcoholic."

If it hadn't been for his faith in Jesus, Dewey might never have gotten out of that chair. He is alive today because he believed.

When he became sober, we did a wedding in church. Dewey and his wife wanted to be married again, without alcohol. I will never forget that beautiful day.

What are the unclean spirits that you keep to yourself? What motivations drive you away from God?  What about yourself are you uncomfortable telling others? Bring these thoughts and fears to Jesus, into his silence and let him help you become clean.

"I will make you fish for people."

My grandfather was the quietest, most gentle man.  He used to make us lie on the floor and he would say "Stiff as a board! Stiff as a board!" and he would place his gentle old hands behind our little shoulders and lift us up to a standing position, tilting us like a board.  At first we would giggle and squirm, and he might make it worse by tickling us.  But sooner or later, we would learn how to be stiff as a board and he would move us forward and up.  He was so kind, so gentle.

My grandfather was a fisherman in his old age.  He retired to Sanibel Island mainly so that he could fish.  He parked his small boat in a little cove and every morning, early, he would putter out to sea and fish.

One day, my little brother Jonathan decided to go with Granpa on a fishing expedition.  Jonathan was about 5.  I did not ask to go; it simply did not occur to me.  But Jonathan made a formal request to fish and I remember how Granpa's eyes shined with pure pleasure.

They got in the boat early that morning.  We expected that they would not come back until lunch.  But by 9, we heard the puttering motor of the boat entering the small cove in which Gandpa's house sat. And we heard another sound: the sobs of a little boy.

My mother and I rushed outside.  Jonathan was weeping but he did not seem hurt.  He just kept pointing to the fish, lying dead in the pail.  "It couldn't breathe!" he gasped. 

Grandpa got out of the boat.  He was clearly quite disappointed and a little angry.  But in his simple, gentle way, he said, "I don't think I've got a fisherman here."

Jonathan became a vegetarian from that day forward.  That lasted about five years.  He also refused to speak to Granpa for the rest of the vacation, which I found to be a terrible shame.  Evidently, fishing was much more violent than Jonathan had thought.

Jesus said to his disciples, "Come to me, and I will make you fish for people."

There is no denying that fishing is a violent act.  The fish is swimming along, content in an environment called water, an environment which the fish could never identify nor articulate.  And all of a sudden it is yanked into another realm.  In this new realm, it has to die and give it's body for the nourishment of others.  It flails around helplessly, it's mouth and gills pumping, hoping to find water again, but it finds emptiness, air.  It is completely lost, out of its element.  Until it is caught, a fish does not even know that it is a creature of water.  It knows very little of its own existence, that's for sure.

What did Jesus mean when he said that the disciples would FISH for PEOPLE if they followed him? Did he really mean what he said, that they would be yanking people out of their comfortable lives into another level of existence, one in which they could not control their own destiny and they had to give their lives up?  Is that really what he meant?

A lot of us like to think that we spread the gospel in order to make people happy, to help them lead content lives.  We tell people about Jesus so that they can feel better, get their lives in order, right? That is such an appealing thought.  Sometimes I yearn to promise people that their lives will be easier if they become Christian and practice the faith.  But I would not be telling the truth.

In reality, we are introducing them to the One who will turn their lives upside down, the One who will ask them to give up everything, even their own lives, out of love and devotion to Him.  We are yanking them out of their comfortable lives into a realm in which they have little control, in which God alone has the last word.

A friend of mine has six children, and she agreed to house and temporarily adopt a little girl from Afghanistan.  This little girl had a severe heart condition and, through the efforts of a local charity, money had been raised to fly her here to Jacksonville to have surgery.  The little Afghan girl could not walk more than ten steps without getting out of breath.

The surgery was much more complex than the doctors had foreseen.  The little girls family had to be contacted in Afghanistan.  They had to hospitalize her for three months.  And when she was released, they kept her here in Jacksonville for another three months, just to monitor her.  My friend kept in close contact with her mother in Afghanistan.

As the little girl grew in strength, the host family took her to Disneyworld, where she was able to run and play for the first time in her life.  My friend took pictures and sent them to Afghanistan.  It was a miracle to see her play!

Finally, the little girl was ready to be sent home.  They filled her suitcases with new clothes and gifts for her family, marveling at the good work that God had done through the doctors.  They had saved her life.

A few weeks after her arrival in Afghanistan, the American mother got a phone call.  The little girl had died.

They don't know what happened, if it was the altitude that originally made her sick upon her return, but her parents got anxious and put her in the hospital in Afghanistan.  They have no idea what happened in the hospital but someone made a mistake, something went terribly wrong.  And her precious life was over.

Back in the United States, my friend was devastated.  How had this happened?  How could God have made this girl better only to take her life back at home?

The Afghan mother called again.  "I am calling to say thank you," she said.  "My daughter may not have lived long, but, because of you, she ran and played.  Because of you, she really lived."

I wish that I could tell you that fishing for people would make everybody happier, but sometimes living a life of sacrifice and learning to love God is like entering another Universe, where so much more is expected of you and you have so little control.  You flail around, doing the best you can, offering your life for something much larger than yourself.  You wake up to the fact that there is so much more to life than you can ever comprehend and sometimes the best outcome is the one that you least expected.

We do not follow Jesus to be happy.  We follow Jesus to be saved.  We follow Jesus because there is so much more to life than just being comfortable.  We follow Jesus because we get to taste eternity in Him and there is joy there, much better than happiness, there is joy.

On Martin Luther King Day, I walked the bookstore at Barnes and Noble and picked up a new biography of Dr. King.  Dr. Martin Luther King's close friends spoke of his loneliness and even depression, especially toward the end of his life.  He longed for someone who he could sit down with and share his loneliness, his pain.  He was not always happy, but he was saved.  Man, was he ever saved.

After the disciples were caught by the great Fisherman, they would go on to spread the gospel far and wide.  Many of the greatest disciples would be killed for their beliefs, but I bet, if you asked them, they would remember the day that Jesus walked by, the day that they were caught by Him, and they would give thanks for the gift of serving Him.  They would say that it was the best thing that ever happened to them, ever.  Because the gospel is about so much more than being happy.  It is about being caught by Jesus, belonging to him, and what that means for our souls.  It is about a life far beyond our existence here.  It is about joy.  It is about something greater than this life.  It is about God.

Worthy

Many years ago, one of my favorite movies was released. It was called Ordinary People. In the movie, there are two brothers, Buck and Conrad Jarrett. Buck is the older and the favorite of his mother. Conrad is quieter, and lives in the shadow of his brother.

One summer, the boys decide to go sailing. There is a terrible storm. The waves surge and the boat capsizes. Conrad manages to hold onto the capsized boat, but Buck drowns.

When Conrad returns, he is changed. He does not want to live. He feels that he doesn't deserve to be alive. He is depressed, despondent. After three months in the hospital, he goes back to high school. But all the things that he loved, he no longer cares about. Nothing means anything anymore. In a last ditch attempt to find help, he agrees to see a therapist.

The therapist is a Jewish man who works out of a small, dark office. He rarely speaks but mostly just listens to Conrad. For months, Conrad talks about how bad he is, how he doesn't care about anything. He is not interested in choir or sports or friends, nothing. He is lost. He believes that he is bad and deserves to die.

Late one evening, Conrad has a panic attack. In tears, shaking, he phones the therapist. "I need to see you now!" he cries. The therapist is smart enough to know that Conrad is at a pivotal moment.  He puts his coat on over his pajamas and meets Conrad at his office. Conrad paces the office and finally gets to talking about the events of the accident itself. He describes how the boat capsized and how he held on. "I should have let go and looked for Buck, but I didn't! I didn't!" In response, the therapist says something very simple: "Conrad, you are a good person....have you ever thought that you might have been stronger?"

With those words, Conrad begins to believe in himself again. Slowly, his life returns.

Stories of Jesus began to fly about after his resurrection, and it became so important for the people who saw Him, who knew him, to write their stories down. Mark was the first one to respond to that need.

The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four gospels. It is also considered to be the first gospel, the gospel that was written down the earliest.

Mark wrote his gospel with speed and precision. He only told the parts that he thought were most important. There is no story of Jesus' birth in the Gospel of Mark. No, Mark, the shortest of the gospels, gets right to the point. Mark does not consider how or where Jesus was born to be of importance. The first thing that Mark wanted to tell us was about Jesus' baptism, not his birth. For Mark, Jesus became Jesus at his baptism. It was baptism that began Jesus' life as the Son of God. The years before Jesus' baptism were just preparation for his ministry. Those years were important but they were preparatory. Jesus becomes fully himself, fully awake and aware, when he is baptized. Jesus was named by God at his baptism. And the words that God speaks aloud at Jesus' baptism are vital words; they are the words of life. Mark records only God's words, not Jesus' or John's, but only God's words.

We translate God's words into English in the following way: "You are My Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased." I have never really liked the translation "well pleased." It reminds me of my grandmother, who would tell us that she was "pleased" with our grades over dinner. So I went back to the ancient language of the New Testament. And I discovered something wonderful. The words that God spoke really mean not so much "With you I am well pleased'" but instead what God said was more like:

"I call you good."

Or

"I name you good."

When God created the world, God said that it was good. God saw the light, separated it from the darkness, and identified its goodness. All the parts of God's creation were good. Part of the act of the creation was the declaration that each part was good. It was created and it was good.

But when we fell from God, we separated ourselves from that One who calls us good. And we no longer knew who we were. 

This happens all the time in our world. Children are abandoned and no longer consider themselves good. Parents divorce and the child wonders why, was it because she was bad? A parent hands over a child to be adopted and the child wonders if he was just not good enough. He wonders for a lifetime.

We have been hosting leadership breakfasts on the plight of the child in Jacksonville. The roots of so much of the crime in this country stem back to parents who abandon their children, hit their children or neglect them so badly that the child begins to believe he is bad, that he is capable of violence, that there is no compassion left in him. And it is a short walk from there to hatred and fear. It is as if the parents are telling the child, in ways deeper than words, that they are not good, that no one wants them. And once a child thinks he or she is not good, their life is hard to retrieve.

I know a woman who counsels men who have abused women. Her great gift that is from God is this - she is able to search for the goodness that lies deep inside the man. She is able to see beneath all the pain and violence and hurt to something more, some hint of goodness. And in her eyes, they can begin to see themselves as good. Healing occurs when they believe that they are good.

What happens in baptism is so simple, so primal, and so vital. God declares what was once true before the fall of mankind. God says that in Jesus, we are given names, we are claimed by God and we are good.

Today we baptize Hunter, Owen and Kristen. Today God declares them good. And all of you, every single one of you, is now called to see their goodness. Witness to it, call them to it. As they live their lives, as they make their choices, remind them of who they already are, who God calls them to be. Good.

Remember who you are. Any voices that tell you you are not good are not of God. God created you good and names you good in your baptism. Never forget that.