THE ONE MORE POWERFUL THAN I

The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The First Sunday after the Epiphany
January 8, 2012

John the baptizer proclaimed, “After me comes the one who is more powerful than I; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” (Mark 1:7)

It’s that time again when many people will make a New Year’s resolution, and perhaps the goal will be to sign up for a gym membership. As for me, my resolution – already accomplished, I might add – is to resign my gym membership. Why? For one thing, I haven’t been there since last March, and I can think of better ways to spend the monthly fee. Why did I stop going? The repetitive motions of the elliptical machines were killing my knees and elbows, making me feel older rather than younger. I do better running outside, and I do need to get out more.

Then came the inevitable comparisons with other people at the gym. One day I was doing my little bit on a weight machine called the bench press. Soon I felt a presence hovering over me. I looked and there impatiently waiting for me to finish was a massive, muscular guy with biceps the size of bowling balls. Seriously, he looked like a Greek god; the only thing he lacked was a toga and a laurel wreath on his head. When I was done on the bench press he quickly set it to it’s maximum weight of 300 pounds. He gripped the handles and with seeming ease lifted the stack up and down five times. I counted. After the fifth rep he dropped it down with a triumphant bang, and it seemed like the whole room shook. It was an incredible demonstration of brute strength. You might say that after me came the one who was more powerful than I. In fact, were I to be given a lifetime membership at the gym, and complimentary personal trainers for all eternity, I still would not be worthy in that place to stoop down and tie the laces of his sneakers. So that’s it, I thought. I’m out of here. And my elbows and knees have been thanking me ever since.

Today is the First Sunday after the Epiphany, which is a day on the church calendar when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. We also witness the vows of others coming forward for baptism, and we renew our own baptismal covenant. What is it that we receive in baptism? Today’s readings suggest that one way to think about it is strength. In the Gospel of Mark we’ve heard about two very strong men. The first is John the Baptist. The word strong is perhaps not the first description we would apply to John. Words like fanatical, brazen, rough, or zealous might come to mind before strong. But strong is a word that definitely applies. John’s lifestyle was not one suited to anyone faint of heart of feeble of body. He lived in the wilderness – the desert – east of the Jordan, a place where hot days, cold nights, and total lack of physical comforts would sap the strength of any of us. He wore a coat of camel’s hair and subsisted on a diet of locusts and wild honey. The last description of him imaginable would be weakness. Jesus himself was impressed with John’s physical strength. One time a group asked him about John, and Jesus replied: What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind? To see a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, those who wear soft raiment are in king’s houses. No doubt about it: John the Baptist was a physically tough man – a strong man.

What is more, John’s strength was hardly limited to his body. From the little we know of him we can safely say that he was incredibly strong of spirit. John disciplined himself in the desert in the attempt to purge from his body and his mind anything that would divert his attention away from God. And with his strong spirit, John preached so vigorously that he reminded the Jews of Elijah. The force of his spiritual strength made him fearless, if not downright rude.

Even though John’s rudeness might be a put off, we can still marvel at his incredible demonstration of personal and spiritual strength. Neither must we adopt his diet of locusts or dress in his itchy apparel to agree that here was a man who had something admirable. We like to think of ourselves as strong against the forces of life that work to hold us down and slow us down and press us into the dust. The weights may be heavy, but by golly, we’re going to lift them. If we have a bad family background we will bravely overcome it. If we have any lingering feelings of inadequacy we will conquer them. If we grieve a lost loved one, feel guilty over a failed relationship, or have regrets for a patch of life, we will successfully manage these feelings. If illness strikes we will courageously battle it. As for age, we will defy it, if not beat it back. As for creaking joints, we will grin and bear them, if not power through them. We will carry all these weights, maintain our jobs and families, and above all, we will be cheerful and we will have a nice day.

We like to see strength. We want to be strong ourselves. One of the iconic sculptures of New York City is the figure of Atlas in Rockefeller Center. As you may recall from Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who went to war against the Olympians and lost. For his punishment, Atlas was condemned to hold up the sky for all eternity so that never again would heaven and earth touch. Later artistic renderings would depict Atlas holding up not the sky, but the globe, or the earth on his shoulders. Most of the statues show Atlas to be straining under the weight of the world, even as an older man nearly crushed by the load he must carry. But a weak Atlas is not the way we see it in New York City. When the sculptor Lee Lawrie created his great bronze statue, he gave us an Atlas who is strong, confident, even victorious. His look is defiant and his muscles bulge as he easily bears his burden. I’ve always admired the Rockefeller Center version of Atlas, even its overt, seductive message that we too can have the whole world in our hands by virtue of our own strength.

I ask you: what can be said for human might against the weight of the world? The writer of the Psalms had this to say: There is no king that can be saved by the multitude of his great army: neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength. A horse is counted as a vain thing to save a man: neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength. (Psalm 33:15-16). In other words, human strength, and human will, and human determination, no matter how impressive, are finally vain things that fail us. The Christian faith is not the story of human power and potential, no matter how we try to make it so. No matter how we try to preach of ourselves, the Christian faith, in the end, is the story of our mortal weakness and spiritual poverty. Time and gravity are going to get us all. John the Baptist, for all of his strength, was not strong enough. Jesus said of him: Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. John himself knew that he wasn’t strong enough, and he was waiting for the One who was.

This brings us to the second strong man we encounter in the Gospel of Mark: Jesus. When John saw Jesus approaching he said, Behold, the Lamb of God. And he said, After me comes the one who is more powerful than I. John’s proclamation is good news, because John is not strong enough, and we are not strong enough, but Jesus is. When you finally reach the place of grace where you know you cannot lift up or even hold up your life any longer, you can say, like John, after me comes the one who is more powerful than I.

Powerful and strong might not be the first words we would use to describe Jesus. Jesus is supposed to be meek and mild, isn’t he? Actually, no. Although we have not one word of physical description of Jesus, the Gospels portray him as a man of great personal and spiritual strength. The crowds of people that were everywhere watching Jesus as he healed the sick and cast out demons were not impressed with Jesus’ tenderness. It was his authority that amazed them. He cast out demons by rebuking them: Be silent, and come out of him! To a leper he said, Be clean! To a paralytic he said, Rise, take up your pallet and walk. To be sure, his heart and concern were always evident. He was moved with pity at one point. But it was not with pity that he cured, it was with spiritual force, it was with authority. He was strong. He was powerful, as John described him.

So what? Do we mean to say that in Jesus we just have yet one more strong figure to admire? No, in Jesus we are not just talking about an impressive figure from the past who happened to have bulging spiritual muscles. He lives today through the power of the Spirit. Death could not hold him down. The grave could not contain him. The Spirit of Jesus is as accessible and available to us as it was to his contemporaries. Through his Spirit, what Jesus was able to do for people then, he is able to do for you and me today. His strength, his power, his might, his life is what he wants to impart to us through Baptism and the Eucharist. In these two great sacraments of the church, he claims us as his own, and fills us with his grace and heavenly benediction, making us one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. Indeed, we heard today in the Book of Acts (19:1-7) today how those baptized in the name of Jesus received the Holy Spirit, and power to become his children.

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord? These are the key questions put to the baptismal candidates and families today, and these vows are up for renewal in the rest of us. You can think of them as New Year’s resolutions, if you like. Our resolve this year can be to rely not on our own perceived strength, but rather, to stand in Christ’s strength alone. You see, when we look to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith we truly can lay aside every weight and sin, and run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

I’ve always thought it a curious thing, even a preachable coincidence, that the great bronze statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center stands directly across the street from the great bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. What the two monuments’ opposing each other suggests to me is this: on one side of Fifth Avenue we have Atlas, a seductive image for aspiring masters of the universe who desire through their own strength and force of will to carry the world, or at least the weight of their own existence on their shoulders. You can choose this way. But remember, even the Greek mythologists glimpsed that this was the way to keep heaven and earth eternally apart from each other. We might go so far as to borrow a phrase from the baptismal liturgy and call this “the way of sin and death.” You can choose the myth of Atlas. Or you can repent, and turn, and choose another way on the other side of the street: the way of Jesus, represented by the door of St. Patrick’s. (Mind you now, I am not suggesting you run up and join St. Patrick’s Cathedral, although the last time I checked, they were pretty solid with Jesus.)

Baptism is the door to a gym of a different sort, with a personal trainer who will meet you in this life and get you ready for the next. You see, in Jesus, God doesn’t hold heaven and earth apart. Rather, in him we find that God has joined heaven and earth together. This is the one of whom John the baptizer proclaimed, “After me comes the one who is more powerful than I.”

+