Joy of God

And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."(1:11)

There were two voices from heaven. One is "You are my Son" and the other is "with you I am well pleased." The first voice we meditated yesterday. Today we like to pay attention to the second one. What did the writer of Mark's Gospel like to say through the text "God is pleased with"?

The biggest problem for the Christians who have some kind of history for their faith is that they used to approch to the Bible texts only through the prefixed frame. They do not have time to think seriously to look through the Bible. Maybe there is no need to do that. They seemed to have such attitude to know everything through the repetitive Bible studies and preachings. Just like elementary students who copy their teachers to read a book. Under these circumstances the Bible does not open up in a fresh way to us. Let's read today's text to know why?

When you read the phrase that "I am pleased with you", what do you think? Maybe most Christians could think God is pleased with Jesus' baptism or with Jesus' starting his public life. Or God could be pleased with all of Jesus' personality or his fate. I am not saying that these are totally wrong ideas. But before to think like that, we should think the phrase "God is pleased" sounds very strange. Does it mean God has all emotions of joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure like humanbeings? Of course the Old Testament describes God as God of anger, and sometimes we see the description that he is laughing at.

In the age of Noah's flood, he was so angry because of serious sins of the humankinds that he wanted to destroy this world totally. And also God loves a person who he should love, and hates a person who he should hate one-sidedly. Is "Joy of God" for today's text similar to this?

The Greek mythological gods show much more humanly emotions than God in the Bible straightforwardly. What is worse, they did not stop fighting each other because of an amorous passion. Could we say that God in the Bible as well as Greek gods does act according to this kind of humanly emotions? Probably I might touch the problem that I could not solve. The contents of this theme are too broad for me to write in this short message. Now that I had started this topic, I like to point out some guidance for directions. It could be two directions. One is passive and the other is active.

In a passive way, it is evident that doctrine of Christology is not anthropomophism. I am telling you that God is not an absolute being, who has most extreme power with humanly emotions. He is not a God who gives more blessings when you listen to him, more punishments to the people who don't obey, as ususaally known to us. If you think God is a kind of the problem solver or a superman that must be definitely wrong image about God in Christology.

Positively speaking, God is not a person who is pleased, but joys itself. How could God, who is the ultimate foundation of everything, be differentiated from joy or peace? If we like to differentiate God like this way, it means we measure God by our ruler. It's like saying that mission for the whole world or buillding up the church is a joy of God. God and joy are ontologically in accord. Just like God and love are ontologically in accord with each other, God and his Sovereignty are of one accord. If we say joy could be God's soverignty, joy must be God's ontology.

Probably you might not be satisfied with theological explanation as above. I should make a little bit graceful conclusion. The fact that Jesus' baptism and his incident as well as his fate might be the pleasure for God means that Jesus Christ is in accordance with God himself. And it was described as His son or His joy. Therefore, today we should explain to the people in the world why the incidents of Jesus could be God's pleasure, and then we have responsibility to live on that level.

Lord, you are the joy itself. Worldly or religious achievements cannot be the ultimate joy, but your existence itself is. We like to participate in this kind of joy.

The Beloved Son

And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."(1:11)

The voice from heaven is saying like this: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." In a more precise explanation the core of confession for the early Christian community, just as the writers of each of the Gospels including the writer of Mark's keep on telling in their Gospels, is the proposition that Jesus is the son of God as mentioned in the beginning of Mark's Gospel. And furthermore, he is not only a son, but also through the Old Testament Jesus is analyzed as the one and only son of God.

Maybe Some people could wonder what the word "analysis" means, but as long as we keep on reading the Bible, this kind of wondering might keep on coming back, I think. The Jesus Christ event is a history. But that history is not established by evidence, but it is an analyzed history. You don't have to worry about if that event did not happen actually. The life and history of human beings could not be solved by saying so simply it is true or not. Not every objective fact could be meaningful. Through historical process, what it could be expanded with more blood and flesh, the basic meaning of the event could be much deeper. That means "analysis". This kind of problem will be mentioned again in a different situation, so that let us go back to the words of today.

How could the early Christian community know Jesus is the son of God? Jesus did not say for himself "I am a son of God". Just like he never tells that he is the Messiah to the disciples, he never tells he is the son of God. But there must be some traces in his words, which the disciples regarded him as the Son of God. Jesus used to call him "my father". Sometimes he even called him "Dad". Now we could acknowledge God as our endearing father who has been waiting for the prodigal son through Jesus with the early Christian community, not as the object of fear.

Now in here we don't have to argue about God as a father or a motherly image. This fathership in here means a father who has personal relationship with the human beings, not a father who has masculine characteristics. God is not a king in heaven who watches and judges and gives some punishment according to the rule of "cause and effect" from heaven, but he is who came to earth and lived among us as a human being. In his writing "God on the Cross" Jürgen Moltmann pointed out this as God who exists among pains and sorrows of human beings.

The fact that God descended from heaven to the place of a human on his body is described as "incarnation" by the theological lexicon and he is Jesus Christ. What Jesus is God with a human body is Christology and also it is doctrine of God. Jesus and God are different persons but basically they are one. To know Jesus means to know God. Mark explains such faith of the early Christian community by this mythological style. From heaven he says there was a voice which says "you are my beloved son." I like to tell some phrases from the Gospel of John. Pay attention to the report of the writer for John's Gospel, because it could have very important and decisive contents for this.

Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. (John 5:19-21, 24-27)

Lord, we came to know God as a father though you and enabled to trust the father. Holding this trusting heart I want to live in this world.

Voice from Heaven

And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. (Mark 1:11)

In a big frame, each book of the Gospels has a little different report about Jesus' baptism, but it reports three incidents happened at the moment with one accord. As I pointed out before, those are three incidents which are heaven being open, the appearance of the Holy Spirit like a dove, and a voice from heaven. Then what do these three phenomena mean?

Nobody seems to deny Jesus' baptism because of these three happenings. But we could reconsider this from a little different point of view. Jesus' baptism had happened before the disciples were chosen. If there were no followers who had been taught by Jesus and served him, who could watch the scene of Jesus' baptism and report in a concrete description? Can we say that Jesus told this incident to the disciples for himself? There is no evidence like that report in the Gospels. Then John did? No reports like this, either, in the Gospels.

In my opinion, this episode did not happen historically, but instead it seems like confession of faith in the early Christian community. In more details, I am saying that definitely Jesus' baptism happened, but there is more possibility that those three phenomena are like confession of faith. It is like the myth of Jesus' birth being not historical, but it is confession of faith from the early Christians who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

Today in the New Testament, we could find out the history of Jesus, on the other hand, the confession of faith about him. Some people consider that just the objective facts are important, but this is because they don't understand history in a precise way. History is not dead stories, but it could move up with power through interpretation. The interpreted history(Geschichte) is much more important than the factual history(Historie). The New Testament does not talk about the history of Jesus, but it is telling us the interpreted history in early Christianity. Those two different kinds of history are mixed up. Therefore from this point of view, three incidents even though they are not actual phenomena, are very important to us today. Among those three, the last one is a voice from heaven.

At this story we could be a little puzzled. What kind of voice on earth did it come from heaven? Of course Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus is said to see the bright light and to hear a voice. Many tribe leaders, Moses, Joshua, the judges, lots of prophets were said to hear God's voice directly. But it is impossible to think God was talking directly in Hebrew or in Aramaic to them. If we imagine God could talk through the vocal cords like a human, he should talk in Korean to the Koreans today, shouldn't he? Furthermore, he should understand hundreds of language on earth, shouldn’t he? To hear a voice from heaven does not mean an actual sound, but instead it seems to me to be a kind of oracle.

Even though it was not the direct voice from heaven, this could not be meaningless. It could have much deeper meaning because it is an indirect voice. The reason is that even today it is possible for anybody, if he has an open ear to hear a voice from heaven, to hear this voice. If you could hear real sound, it must be auditory hallucination, but if you could hear a sound in a different level, it could prove that your spiritual ear had opened up.

This year it would be bicentennial and 50 years since Mozart's birth. From 5 years old, he started to compose all different genres of music like sonatas, concertos for various kinds of musical instruments and also operas until he died young at the age of 35. How on earth did this kind of musicians compose such music? They could hear sounds. They could hear touching sounds of soul. They did only write the sounds on the music sheet. Ordinary musicians squeezed out music with difficulty, but the musicians who are indulged into the world of music and hear those sounds naturally make some music. You could say that they are not making up music, but let music transfer into them.

Today we should ask ourselves if we hear a voice from heaven. This is a question how much we, who are living among a flood of sound, could hear voices to revive life. Also can we hear a voice from heaven on the pulpit of Korean churches? Do we open up and declare mystery of life today?

Lord, we like to hear a spiritual voice. Please clean our spiritual ears. Amen.