January 13, 2019: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Well, by now, I am sure that you have your Christmas tree down, decorations put away, and said goodbye to your guests, and hello to your New Year’s resolutions to get those holiday pounds worked off by Valentine’s Day. Good for you. As for me, my tree is still up, the decorations too, and I haven’t taken a single step toward the treadmill. In fairness, part of the reason is that my tree is still drinking water and fairly fresh, and part of it is that I just love how pretty it all looks, but the result is that I am past the insanely busy moments of the secular nature of this period of time, and yet I am still basking in the glow of the birth of Jesus, especially as I sat writing this sermon near the full nativity scene in my family room.
Now for liturgical purists out there, don’t be too alarmed…I assure you that over my next few days off, all will be properly put away, and like the rest of you, I will soon be vacuuming up pine needles until next Christmas. But this imagery touches my heart on this Sunday, because today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus – and no, not as a baby, but as a man about to embark on his call, his life purpose, his ministry.
The baptism of Jesus is in all three of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It doesn’t appear in John, as the community that likely wrote that gospel would have considered this something antithetical to their understanding of Jesus. There are some differences in the accounts of the baptism in the synoptics that are important to note, particularly between Matthew and the other two, especially this: that after he is baptized, while all three have the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove and a voice speaking, in Matthew it is saying “Thisis my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Yet, as we hear today from the gospel of Luke, and also in the parallel story in Mark, the oldest of the gospel accounts in terms of date of composition, the Holy Spirit is heard in this way “Youare my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Matthew is a third person proclamation to those standing around witnessing this moment. It fits with that author’s gospel focus on the Jewish kingship of Jesus – which is why those magi visit Jesus in this gospel. It is also a bit distant and impersonal. But the gospel of Luke was focused more on the people Jesus would see, heal, and restore to relationship with God – just like those shepherds who were the ones in that gospel to visit Jesus – not kings.
And so, as I gaze on my not-yet-put-away nativity scene, I am drawn to those shepherds, the poor and outcast of that time, and I am reminded why that second person singular “You” is so life giving – not only to Jesus, but to all of us. Because that scene reminds all who view it just how important love is, most especially to those who do not know it, and why the greatest gift of all was found in that manger.
How many of us feel from time to time a sense of unworthiness, or loneliness, or of being unloved? It happens to most everyone in life. Perhaps we come to this through a divorce, or a lost job, or a death of a loved one, or by the hurtful actions of another. Yet we yearn, deep in our souls, to feel loved.
There’s a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Now, I don’t know if that story is true or not, but the metaphor is so very powerful, because it speaks to a truth about the importance of being loved, being special to someone, having someone be pleased with us just for who we are, nothing more. God knew that if we were ever to be who we were meant to be in the world, we needed to feel the kind of love only God can give – complete and unconditional, full of grace and for all time. So God became incarnate – the Word was made flesh in Jesus.
Yet for all the love that the incarnation was meant to bring to the hearts of all of God’s creation, it is ironic and deeply disturbing that it is sometimes the hurtful actions of the church, or people claiming to be the church, that cause some people to feel unloved. I can’t tell you how many times I hear from people, who have either returned to church, or those who never came back, how sometime in their lives, often in childhood, they were wounded in some deep and personal way by a clergy person, or a Sunday School teacher, or somebody’s hateful interpretation of scripture. I often hear people talking about wanting to get young people back in church, and they think that the answer is to make church more entertaining, when many of those young people left because they would not tolerate an intolerant church.
Just this week, some who unbelievably call themselves Christian make this very point. According to the story in NBC News (though it appeared everywhere), “The U.S. Senate last month unanimously passed a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime. [this is a good thing, right?] Not everyone, however, is pleased with passage of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act. Liberty Counsel, an evangelical nonprofit that opposes gay rights, and its chairman, Mat Staver, are taking issue with the bill’s inclusion of LGBTQ people.” Let me remind you that we are talking about lynching – the hanging of people because you hate them – and a group of followers of Jesus are saying that some people should not be exempt from being lynched.
What kind of hate must you have in your heart to want anyone lynched? It is a brutal, horrific, hateful act of bigotry that can only come from a place of self-loathing that is so deep, so dark, so full of fear, that love has been snuffed out from the heart. It is clear that these are not followers of Jesus, any more than the Romans who crucified him, because they are crucifying him again in their hate against their LGBT sisters and brothers.
It is clear that God was aware of the darkness that invades an empty heart, this kind of darkness – a heart that doesn’t know love – then and now. So God came into the world to show us that we are loved, because God knew that love – real, abiding, and deep love – is transformative! It can change the world! And this baptism, and all baptisms, make that point very clear – not because God begins to love us then, but because God proclaims that love for all to hear – most especially for us to hear.
We all know that before the baptism, Jesus was already claimed as God’s own long before that dunk in the Jordan, and with a resounding almighty YOU proclaiming it, right? We heard it in the annunciation to Mary, his mother, that YOU will bear a child, the son of God. We heard it in the proclamation of the angels to the shepherds, that unto You a child is born. Jesus did not become God’s beloved child in baptism, he wasn’t claimed as God’s own then, but long before his birth in our world, and that he was there for YOU. And the best part is…the same is true for every one of us! When we are baptized, we are not made children of God, we are not then claimed by God, or made worthy of God’s love – that happens the moment we are created – the moment YOU are formed in the womb.
So why baptism then? Ahhhh, now we get to why that “You,” is so important. In baptism, we are anointed by God’s grace. See, while the community of faith plays an important role in every baptism, something happens between the baptized and God, that is the very definition of sacrament – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The outward and visible are the water and the oil, and the inward is proclaimed when the baptized is anointed with these words “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
“You” – you are sealed, you are marked as Christ’s own. How powerful is that! God sees you, seals you, marks you as God’s own forever. And what is so wonderful about it is that it is done for each of the baptized individually, not “They” but “You,” just like with Jesus, because God knows that in order to love we must first know love – know it deeply – know that it is for truly for ourselves. Perhaps that is why we are told to love ourselves, as we love God and our neighbor, because we cannot love our neighbor, if we do not love ourselves, and it is hard to love ourselves, if we do not feel loved, if we do not feel special to someone, to God.
So while Jesus’ baptism, like ours, doesn’t claim us as God’s own – that is done from the moment we are created – baptism seals us in that relationship – each one of us – bonding us to God deeply and for all time. And, we renew and restore that bond every time we gather here at this table, and every time we do what Jesus did after his baptism – go out into the world to those other YOUs out there, and to let them know that God claims them too – just for who they are – loving them for all time, without condition.
Or put another way by one of my favorite commentators, the Rev. Dr. David Lose, “Jesus hears God say these unbelievably important words of love, affirmation and identity: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the incredible, shocking, unexpected, and even scandalous thing is that in our Baptism, we hear the same thing: “You are my child, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Athanasius, my favorite theologian of the early church, put it this way: Jesus became one of us – scandalous! – so that we might become like him – even more scandalous yet!”
Indeed, for those words of anointing “You are marked by the Holy Spirit, and sealed as Christ’s own forever” are another way of saying what we heard was said at Jesus’ baptism “You are my child, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.”
The world is full of people who do not know love, who feel lost, who feel afraid. Love is meant to be shared – God’s love most especially. God claims us as Her own, that we might then change the world one person at a time – one almighty YOU at a time. And Athanasius is right, it is scandalous in a way – this radical love of God – not for the dictionary definition of the word – something that is offensive or wrong – but for just how outrageous it must seem, how counter-cultural it is. Because unlike the way humanity can often be, placing conditions on who or how much we love – God offers us love without any conditions at all. Just because each one of us are the YOU God claims – the YOU God loves for all time – just like Jesus.
And folks, this is one scandalous thing this world actually needs.
God claims YOU!
God loves YOU!
Now go get scandalous!
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
January 13, 2019
Epiphany 1 –Year C –Baptism of Jesus
1stReading – Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
2ndReading – Acts 8:14-17
Gospel – Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
