Mark 1:10 - "Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove."
Well, we had one kind of fireworks here at Special Camp last night with our middle child Cassidy's 21st birthday and the Cupcake Piñata bust that we shared, as the piñata was filled with sugar free candy. Happy Birthday, Cassidy!
We also have a regular fireworks night coming up here at Special Camp when all the campers and counselors alike will lean back and ouuuuh and awwwww at one of the best fireworks displays you'll ever see. The regular fireworks are an annual reminder for our family of our oldest child, Calley, (who's now 23 AND DID GREAT ON THE MCAT with the help of so many of your prayers), ouuuuuhing and awwwing at her first fireworks when she was two years and eight months. As a little child, Calley watched the fireworks and said, "It's just like being baptized!" That was a two year old! Remembering her baptism! From when she was two months and twenty days old!
It still makes me wonder what spiritual fireworks infants see when they're baptized. But I'd guess they probably see a lot like Jesus saw in today's Bible verse from Mark 1:10 when he was baptized, and, being in tune with the Father, "Just as [he] was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove."
I wonder if the Special Campers see the same. Like infants. Like the Son of God, Jesus.
Like God wants all of us to see. Before we get into earthly adult mode. And we stop believing that God wants to show us amazing things. Like "heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on us like a dove."
But it's never too late to start seeing the things of heaven like God wants to show you. All it takes is a child-like, "I-don't-care-if-the-world-thinks-I'm-a-fool" faith in Jesus. Really!
Consider this. The Greek word that we translate "torn" in today's Bible verse from Mark 1:10 is only used in one other place in the whole Bible, Matthew 27:51, which is when Jesus dies on the cross and the curtain around the most holy place in the temple is "torn" in two, from top to bottom, from heaven to earth.
This tearing open of heaven and seeing spiritual things come to us from God is significant!
God made the first man and woman to be able to see God and the spiritual things of heaven. It wasn't until they zoned in on eating material fruit from God's "Don't-Eat-This-One-Thing-and-You've-Got-to-Trust-Me" tree that they became blind to seeing God and his heaven.
But what the first people, who after sinning were named Adam and Eve, messed up, Jesus the Son of God, the new Adam, came to fix. Magi and shepherds come to see the infant Jesus. Simeon says he's seen salvation when he sees the young Jesus at his Presentation. Mary sees Jesus when he calls her name Easter morning. Later that day, the disciples tell Thomas, "We have seen the Lord." Stephen sees heaven opened up and Jesus standing to honor him at the right hand of the Father. And Saul, who'd be renamed Paul, sees a vision of Jesus that turns him from persecutor of Christians to persecuted Christian.
All these people and many others saw God because they had a child-like faith, taking God at his word, as when Jesus said in Matthew 5, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." How do you get to be pure in heart? By putting a radical-trusting, childlike faith in Jesus and his saving work!
In the end, Jesus was baptized, not because he had any sin to be forgiven or a confession of faith to make in himself. Jesus was baptized for the same reason he died on that cross, namely, to testify to us all that God is eager to tear heaven open and pour out the incomparable power and authority of the Holy Spirit on all who believe. Jesus humbly stands with us (in his baptism) and pours out his infinite love (on his cross) so that his love will be as clear to us as adults as an amazing fireworks display on a beautiful starry night at Special Camp!
Dear God, help all of us to believe as purely as infants in our arms and Special Campers in a field, receiving in awe the wonder and display of the fireworks of your love! Amen!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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