Remember You Are Loved. And Be Thankful
Isaiah 43:1-7
Luke 3:15-22
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Jan. 10, 2010
Isaiah 43:1-7
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3.For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. 4.Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. 5.Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; 6.I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— 7.everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
Luke 3:15-22
15.As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16.John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17.His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 18.So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19.But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20.added to them all by shutting up John in prison. 21.Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22.and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The best way to handle an embarrassing PR situation if you are a public figure is to hope that something else happens in the world that grabs the media attention so that you can slide under the radar.
I’m thinking Karl Rove might have appreciated that in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, the world focused on an attempted terrorist threat. And that the announcement of his divorce from his second wife might just slip by the media radar.
Some of you might recognize that name as the person who is seen as the orchestrator of Bush’s political regime while in office. For those who suffered 8 years under his presidency, Rove was almost a non-human, diabolical being. Part of his legacy included pushing Bush’s legislation through that reinforced the Victorian images of marriage and crafting language around the importance of marriage in society and culture.
And now he is getting divorced. Second time. The commentator who wrote on the story admitted that there was a little gloating in seeing Rove in such a position, and yet, the reality is that marriages fall apart all the time. Something like 1 in 2 marriages will end in divorce. We have all seen in our friends and in others lives and in our own lives that the ritual of marriage doesn’t always lead to a happily ever after life.
I’ve yet to have a couple preparing for marriage come in my office and with joy and excitement say they are so thrilled to be getting married and they know that it will end with them going their separate ways over money, sex, and who left their socks out for the 1,000th time.
Marriage is a ritual that is only the beginning of a lifetime of growing towards one another, with one another and through one another. If you stop with the ritual itself, it grows meaningless and the roots can’t grow deep enough to survive the winds.
Take any ritual and remove it from its meaning and you have nothing more than words that are stacked like a house of cards. Apart from meaning and purpose, the ritual no longer becomes sustainable.
Daily exercise can be like this – remove it from its meaning and it can be just one more thing to do and before long, you are not doing it. Sometimes our friendships with family and non-family can become this way too…take meaning away from them and it just becomes one more thing to do, and, one more thing not to do.
Take any ritual and live into its meaning, whether it be the ritual of marriage, or exercise or, for the sake of example let’s just take the ritual of Baptism because it’s Baptism of Jesus Sunday, and you find that what awaits you is the opportunity to manifest love.
And who couldn’t use a little more love in this world, to be somewhat cliché?
So this morning we hold together the beautiful language of Isaiah 43 with the in-flesh story of John baptizing Jesus.
We have a left-over, lingering image of John from Advent. If Luke 1 and 2 intertwined him in a way that he interrupted our sanitized Christmas celebrations, we might appreciate how Luke brings him into chapter 3 as the launch to Jesus’ ministry then politely escorts him off-stage by saying he upset the powers that be and got himself thrown into prison.
Today’s text paints vivid pictures.
It might be easy to get stuck on the image of John’s words that Jesus now comes with a pitchfork in his hand looking more like a cartoon devil than the Savior of the world. Reading this Scripture with a sacrificial hermeneutical lens means that you will stop at the image of Jesus as the one who brings judgement, to separate the chaff from the wheat and the good from the bad.
And for those of you who don’t get stuck here, you might get all the way to the end of the passage to envision this physical dove descending on Jesus, the two bathed in the light from heaven. An artistic scene that could be rich for meditative practices.
I invite you today, though, to visualize what Luke alludes to in this passage. He speaks of people gathered around, buzzing with expectation about who John is, waiting for their turn at baptism.
Baptism was practiced in communities for different reasons. Certain synagogues practiced proselyte baptism when accepting in non-Jews. This of-course would be the one-time baptism. But there is also evidence that baptism was an often-done ritual where people could repent and experience again that there souls are new again, their hearts made light.
There’s only one John baptizing, and there’s people gathered, so in genteel fashion a line, or queue forms, of people waiting and hoping that somehow, someway, this ritual might be different, lasting, or permanent.
I can imagine the people standing in line waiting for this cleansing experience, the murmurings around them…Do you think that John is the Christ who we have waited for? Do you think that he might be the Messiah who will save us? If that’s true, do you think when HE baptizes me I will finally be able to let go of this guilt I’ve carried for years? I wonder if this baptism will finally solve that ache I’ve carried for a long time? Will this time the ritual bring me the peace that I’ve sought my entire life?
I imagine some people whispering their hopes and desires to one another while standing in line, wondering if this time will feel different, while others just keep to themselves as the line inches slowly forward, about 15 people still in between them and their hope that finally this ritual will be the one that matters.
And somewhere in the line of people who want their pains eased, their souls comforted, their minds set-free, is one man who seems to be keeping to himself and yet fully content in the process.
There he is, Jesus, in-line with everyone else, fully experiencing one of the most universal human experiences: Get in-line and wait your turn.
And with this, we know that Jesus is fully human because he can wait in line, and, at the same time, fully divine because waiting in the line doesn’t make him cranky like the rest of us.
And it comes to Jesus’ turn in the line, John baptizes him, the dove descends, and the voice speaks, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
This story of Jesus’ baptism is told by Matthew, Mark and Luke, each with their own spin. Matthew chooses to focus on why John is there while Mark gets creative with his vocabulary focusing on a distinctive verb about the skies ripping open.
Luke wants to be very clear about his point: this is not any person standing in line waiting for baptism. This is Jesus.
Luke wants to establish Jesus’
full credentials:
1. Claim of identity: You are my
Son
2. Claim of promise: the
Beloved.
3. Claim of authority:
the
Holy Spirit
descending/has
pleased God.
After you read this story, Luke wants you to know that the child in chapter 1 and 2 has now matured 30 years, the stage is now set and the public ministry can now begin. Jesus has the identity, the promise and the authority to do what God has called him to do.
With these things, Jesus is now ready to enter the world’s stage and win gold, so to speak.
Speaking of entering the world’s stage, upon entering the office on Monday for my first weekday of full-time being Gary, the first thing I did was check my voicemail. 8 messages. 7 of them being from the same person who wanted me to know that it’s official, it’s only 451 days until Armegeddon and if I could only repent of my ways and convince my congregation to repent and be cleansed, well, we could all have a one way ticket up to heaven.
For a minute there, I thought I was back in the Bible Belt with that kind of hell and brimstone speaking. Our phone evangelist would probably read today’s Scripture and stop with the image of Jesus holding a pitchfork, ready to separate the good from the bad, the heaven-bound for the hell-bound.
And to be honest, every so often it’s good for us to hear a hell and brimstone kind of message… keeps us in-line and keeps teenage hands off of each other.
So, yes, baptism is about repentance, but no where in here did Luke say that Jesus’ baptism was about Jesus repenting for his previous sins and making promises to do better.
Jesus stands in the line today not to repent of his sins—we affirm him to be sinless--. He is inline today to claim his identity. NEXT IN LINE…
We are invited to stand in line with him. For all of us who are constantly looking for the next best thing that will soothe our souls, quiet our minds and simplify our lives…the next recipe, the next diet, the next relationship, the next job, the next promotion, the next house, the next child, the next retirement…
NEXT IN LINE – John’s call across the crowd sends a wave of anticipation through those waiting.
The invitation we have today is to stand in line with him, and instead of seeking the next best thing that will temporarily aleve us of our anxiety, Jesus invites us to see our own baptism in his baptism and to see our own identity in Jesus’ identity.
In other words, while you are
standing in line
with Jesus waiting your turn, the
invitation is to see in
Jesus’ credentials
your own full
credentials:
1. Your Claim of
identity: You
are a child of God.
2. Your Claim of
promise:
You are
precious in my
sight, and
honored, and I
love you.
3. Your
Claim of
authority: God is moving in
and through your life to bless
this world.
YOUR AUTHORITY: Hear the good news of Epiphany: God is moving in and through your life to bless this world. Right now, at this moment, your spirit and soul are interacting with God’s even if you don’t know it. Sometimes we are aware of how God works through us, and other times we are not.
YOUR PROMISE: You are precious in God’s sight…You are honored. God says, “I love you.” This is our 2nd claim, the promise that we have in this world, the promise that we hear in Isaiah 43. We will pass through waters, we will pass through rivers, we will walk through the fires—there is no doubt—the Psalmist assures us that we will be scattered, torn apart and and cast aside—but do not be afraid, for God is with us.
As we stand in line with this guy named Jesus, and he gets to go before us, overhear what was said to him: Receive love that never runs away, never lets go, even in the desert, even on the cross, then we too can apply that promise to our own dark places, deserts and crosses.
YOUR IDENTITY: Jesus’ baptism announces his identity, and it announces ours too. Jesus’ baptism joins us to him and him to us.
So you are standing next in line behind Jesus, waiting for your chance at a baptism that maybe is finally the ritual that will take away the pain and hurt and loss and grief, maybe even take away the things that we think are sins, the ways that we act out of pain and in so doing hurt ourselves and those around us…maybe this will be the thing that will finally allow you to be what you think you should be…I mean, we are standing in line next to Jesus…
If I can get rid of this sin, then I will finally be like Jesus, the one standing in line right here next to me. A poet said:
Our Flesh His Dwelling the Truththe Truth against which the power of hell cannot prevail.
So often, we have created Baptism to be about repentenance for our sins and we’ve created a God that will love us when we become something else. (and in so doing, we’ve created us to be people who can only love us when we’ve lost 10 pounds, achieved that promotion, bought that car, lived in that house).
Baptism states clearly that God enters where you are in this life inviting you to live into another reality of this life where you have an identity, a promise and an authority to be YOU.
Maybe you saw the movie “Precious” a few months ago, the story of a teenage African-American girl who has everything going against her. She constantly daydreams that she is someone else and that this someone else could be loved, whole, “precious.”
Baptism means you don’t have to be somebody else, that even in the hell in which you live, in all the things that keep you enslaved, God declares that you are precious, honored, and, that God loves you.
Baptism of Jesus Sunday isn’t about the past. It’s about remembering that you are loved. It’s about remembering to be thankful for this love. For those of you who came here today, as you stand in your own line, hear this good news.
Now let’s deal with this first claim: We are a child of God, fully human. One theologian wrote that “all of our sin, when you really think about it, is actually the rejection of the truth of our humanity.” Think about the people standing in line waiting for John’s baptism hoping that this will be on the ritual that will take away that burden. The person who has had an affair causing harm to their body and the other person’s life; the person who has too much but also can’t give so feels poor all the time;………..
May all the people waiting in that line hear this good news: Jesus’ utter acceptance of our humanity reverses our sinful rejection of our creatureliness.”
“Simply put, when we are creative, we get to feel a bit of what God must have felt at the original creation and at the baptism of Jesus, when, looking at the young earth spinning itself out of chaos and the head of Jesus emerging from the waters, there was the spontaneous utterance: “It is good, very good!” “This is my beloved child in whom I am well-pleased.”
So this is what Jesus actually had heard at the Jordan.
What kind of human experience was this in which Jesus hears a voice from heaven speaking to him?
Scholars note that it is an experience in an altered state of consciousness or an experience of alternate reality. On average, 90 percent of the world’s cultures regularly have such experiences and find them useful and meaningful in their cultural context.
Only the industrialized West has managed to block this pan-human potential. Even scholars who would insist that the baptism of Jesus is an interpretation from the evangelist’s hand must admit that the evangelist built wisely on the culture and made the point with very persuasive cultural plausibility.