January 13, 2008
The First Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 3:13-17, Isaiah 42:1-9
I hope by now, you have all figured out the Jesus can be a whole lot of trouble. Oh, nobody much warns us about that when we are signing up to be Christians, but the truth is that if we try to take this Christianity business seriously, eventually we discover that Jesus doesn’t always follow the rules. Our rules, of course. That is to say he isn’t always where we expect him to be or would like him to be. Just when we begin to wrap our minds around the sheep being separated from the goats--one of Jesus’ lines--we hear him saying that sinners will get to heaven before the righteous. Just when we are becoming sure that the gospel is all about taking care of the poor, he says it’s ok to stop and spend a little time just sitting with him because we’ll always have the poor around. Jesus is not often simply about this or that. He understands and embraces the complexity of human life and somehow manages conflicting needs and causes with compassion and with the deep conviction that God is always present. Even in places we might not expect that to be true. As soon as we think we understand Jesus, we run across a line of scripture, or we hear some bit of the liturgy with new ears and we hear him saying, “think again.” Jesus can be a lot of trouble.
And if that is true for us, who have had two thousand years and all those eminent theologians to help us figure him out, imagine what it was like for the first generation of Christians. They had to scramble to come up with explanations for Jesus’ actions, and we can still marvel at some of their work. The people who crafted the gospels out of the stories circulating about Jesus had their work cut out for them.
We will see something of what they were up against playing out on our TVs and in the newspaper in the coming months. If the primaries and the early election news is any indication, by November, we will know a lot more about all the candidates than we really want to. Now please understand, I am certainly not comparing any of the candidates to Jesus. I think that definitely would violate our tax exempt status. I’m not going there. But over the next many months, we will be able to watch those who feel responsible for presenting the candidates’ message scrambling at times to clean up something they were not expecting. We will hear things like, “a spokesman for the X campaign explained that.....” or “sources close to the candidate denied that.....” In a similar way, the writers of our gospels were often faced with moments in the story that did not seem to fit easily into the overall message. The baptism of Jesus, which we observe today, was such a problem.
Think about it. Jesus and John the baptist taught and preached at the same time. They were both phenomena in their region. Why would Jesus go out to be baptized by John? John’s baptism, we are told, was for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, we are told, was sinless. How do those two pieces of the story fit together?
The early writers had to wrestle with such questions, and Matthew and John did the most to explain away the trouble in the story. John’s gospel has John the baptist going on for half a page about how he isn’t the messiah, and about the one who is coming after him who ranks before him. Matthew, as we just read, has John establishing their proper ranking by having John try to prevent Jesus from being baptized. In a way, it looks like these two writers are scrambling to fix something that doesn’t really need fixing. The original version of the story from Mark, repeated in Luke and Matthew seems to take care of the problem by using the baptism not as a cleansing from sin, but as a moment of revelation. All three synoptic gospels report a voice from heaven saying, “this is my beloved servant, the one in whom I am well pleased.” John says he saw the spirit, like a dove, land on Jesus.
They all certainly had in mind the passage from Isaiah we heard a few minutes ago. Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom I delight; I have put my spirit upon him. In baptism, Jesus was commissioned as a servant...as the servant of God. The water flows over him and a servant is empowered by the spirit of God. Theology on the fly, handled beautifully by people who had never read Peak’s Commentary on the Bible, or seen a lap top. Amazing.
Within only a few years of Jesus’ departure, baptism became the sign of membership in the Church. Baptism was for those early Christians the choosing of a way.....this is how we will follow....listen for...deepen our understanding of God...... By going into the water we commit our lives to this path, this way. Very early in its life the Christian movement was called simply the way. Baptism had something of that Isaiah voice-from-heaven theology of being commissioned for a way of life.
Soon, people who were baptized came to be called believers. The word believe has caused a lot of trouble down through the centuries. It implies to us in its English translation being of the opinion that something is true.... It has gotten to the point that when we say we believe, or when we hear someone else say they believe, we often understand that to mean what one thinks about God.
The original language which we translate “believe” means not only thinking something is so, it also involves committing one’s life. It is so easy for us to forget that when we are baptized, when we bring our children to be baptized that we are not just choosing a way of understanding God, but a way of life. The story of Jesus’ baptism reminds us of the deeper roots of our sacrament. Only when it is tied to the servant song in Isaiah, do we get the full meaning of what it means to be washed clean and made new in baptism. In Isaiah the servant is commissioned, claimed, affirmed for service. Not for holding particular ideas about God.....not for membership in a particular community, but for work. The servant will do......justice, will be patient in helping to create, will gently nurture even the faintest hope of life........a bruised reed he will not break, a dimly burning wick he will not quench. (I take great comfort from that line.) Will not grow faint....will establish justice.
In our baptismal service, we talk a lot about being cleansed from sin. That language doesn’t seem to make any sense to me when I am holding someone like little eight-day-old Liam at the font. Sin? Come on. Initiating a child, though, or an adult, into a life of service makes great sense. In that context, everything we do in this community is about nurturing, nourishing and instructing believers--those who have committed their lives--for service as God’s people in the world.
The servant language is there in our baptismal vows. It just isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind when we think of what it means to be baptized. We who have been baptized need to be reminded to listen for the voice saying this is my servant, my beloved. We need to be reminded also to listen for the voice that says about each of us as in Isaiah’s song, this is my servant....she will .......... he will....... We are baptized so we can be a particular kind of people....so we will be related to God in a particular kind of way, and that shows in the way we live out our baptism.
As we renew our baptismal vows, let’s skip the part where we talk about what we believe. We talk about that part a lot. Let’s move straight to the part about who we will be because we have been named beloved servants.
Please turn to page 304
Will you continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? I will with God’s help.
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
I will with God’s help.
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? I will with God’s help.
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? I will with God’s help.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? I will with God’s help.
Amen
JB