The Water is Calling

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Baptism of the Lord

10^th January 2016

Did you notice something odd about Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism?  Perhaps we know the story so well that we miss it.  There is, though, something missing.  There’s something unique about Luke’s telling.  Here it is. Ready?  We don’t actually “see” Jesus baptized.  It’s not there!  It happened, but we don’t “see” it.

In Luke’s Gospel, we have the story of John the Baptist preaching and baptizing in the River Jordan.  Twenty verses in chapter three describe John’s ministry.  The people approach the riverbank wondering if John might be the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ.  He says, “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” (Luke 3:16).

We’re missing, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ arrival at the river asking to be baptized, we’re missing John’s initial refusal to baptize Jesus.  We’re missing Jesus going down into the water.  We’re missing Jesus coming up out of the water as a dove descends upon him and the heavens declare his identity.  We never “see” Jesus’ baptism.

Instead, Luke writes, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 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” (Luke 3:21-22).

What do we make of all of this?  How does it shape our understanding of Jesus’ baptism? Does it impact the way we view our own baptism?  All of this seems relevant on this Sunday as we remember Jesus’s baptism and consider our own, as we receive new members into the ministry of this church, and witness the sacrament of baptism, not for an infant, but for an adult.

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) is correct when he says, “The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.”[1]  Both Protestants and Catholics alike need to remember this. 

We lessen the meaning of the sacrament when we think of it only in terms of membership into the church, whether it’s the baptism of an infant or an adult.  We also lesson the meaning of baptism when we think it’s only about being engrafted into Christ’s family tree, welcomed as a member of God’s household, the Church.  Yes, all of this is true.  These views form part of what baptism has come to mean in the Church, all for good reasons.  However, baptism meant something very different both for Jesus and for the first Christians. 

Baptism was originally an act of initiation, initiation into the life and work of God.  It was a ritual of consecration, in which one was identified and affirmed as a child of God and then set apart for God.  It was an act of preparation, which paves the way for something else to happen, for what comes next, which was, in many respects, the whole point. Baptism prepares you to claim your identity as God’s beloved, and then to discover why you were born in the first place, to discover the reasons for your existence, to fathom the depths and desires of your soul, and then to serve God with all your soul—and heart, and mind, and strength (Luke 10:27).
               

Poet Mary Oliver once asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”[2]  Why is it so important to recognize the “divine gift of [your] birth”? Why were you born? Why are you here? What is being asked of you in the time you have? Baptism is, in many ways, an ancient-yet-modern rite that helps us answer these questions.  And it’s this aspect of baptism that has even greater meaning for us as adults.
               

What’s so striking about Luke’s account is that, yes, we have water (and that’s important) and the act of baptism itself (which is also important), but he seems to be placing greater emphasis upon what happens after baptism. Because it’s only after he’s baptized—note, as Jesus was praying—that the heaven was opened to him.  It’s only after his baptism that the Holy Spirit then descends on him “in bodily form.”  And it’s only after his baptism, not during it, that he hears the voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

All of which leaves us with the impression that baptism is an act of preparation, a ritual and practice that helps us to claim who we are in order to discover then what is expected of us.  The water calls us, invites, summons us to enter into its depths, to go down deep and enter into the flow of the water, bathe in it.  Allow the water to wash over you, cover you, bury you, allow the water to cleanse you. Its soluble waters have the power to symbolically loosen all the dirt and grime of your life, all the things from your past, all of your burdens and regrets and sins that need to be washed away.  

Baptism is a kind of death, where we put to death or remove the things in our lives that devitalize us, that no longer serve us well, that are no longer in service to life, are no longer life giving. They’re washed away.

               

But we don’t stop there, in the washing.  The washing clean, the dying to former ways is done in service to what comes next, to the rising up to new life, to resurrection-life, ready for what comes next.  Having been bathed, cleansed, and refreshed in the water, we’re now ready to pray and in our prayer be attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Attentive in prayer we become open—isn’t that what prayer is, being open?  When we’re open we’re ready, finally, to hear what our baptism has prepared us for all along, open and ready to hear and fully fathom what we couldn’t hear or understand or know before we were baptized.  And what we discover is what Jesus discovered, that we, too, are the Beloved of God. 

You are a child of God.  That’s who you really are, at the heart of your being.  This is what we discover here after moving through the waters.  In many respects, it’s easier for us to say these things to infants and to children when they’re baptized, to assure them that they are, right from the start, beautiful children of God, which they are.  What about us?  As we grow up and gather the dust and dirt of our lives sometimes it’s tough for us to know or remember that we, too, are God’s children.  Sometimes the poor choices we’ve made along the way as adults, the mistakes and hurts and wrongs and regrets cause us to question our identity and place in God’s family. These waters remind us who we are.  This is why it’s important for us to claim the meaning of our baptism—as adults.

But we can’t stop there.  Yes, the waters help us to hear the voice: You are God’s Beloved.  However, this is merely the starting point for the journey.  Now, as a child of God: live like one and love like one and give like one and serve like one.  Isn’t this what Jesus discovered at the Jordan? Wasn’t this the pattern of his life?  Didn’t this then shape his ministry? Of course.  Are we not baptized into Christ?  The same goes for all of us.  He is the pattern.  He is the way.  He is our way.

For Luke, there’s greater emphasis on what happens after baptism; baptism prepares Jesus to hear the summons and then the experience sends him into ministry.  In Luke’s telling we learn Jesus is God’s Son, so we have his divine lineage.  And then, in verse 23, Luke provides us with his genealogy that goes back to Adam.  And so we’re given his human lineage.  Knowing his divine-human identity, Jesus is then sent into the wilderness we’re told, “full of the Holy Spirit.”  After enduring his ordeal in the desert, Luke tells us, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee” to begin his ministry in Nazareth.  Then we find Jesus reading in the synagogue there, reading from the scroll of Isaiah, reading these words: 

                “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
               because he has anointed me
               to bring good news to the poor.
               He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
               and recovery of sight to the blind,
               to let the oppressed go free,
               to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

To be baptized is to be claimed by God.

If claimed then anointed. 

If anointed then called. 

If called then sent. 

His work is our work.

His work is your work.

This is why you were born.

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[1] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child (Ignatius Press, 1991).

[2] Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day.”

Starwise

Waldmar Flaig (1892-1932), Der Stern von Bethlehem (1920)

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany Sunday

3^rd January 2016

This is a brilliant story that we have here in Matthew’s Gospel. There’s so much going on in twelve verses.  Drama and danger.  Mystery, suspense, and intrigue.

We have a frightened, insecure despot in King Herod (d. 4BC), who was actually King of Jews, declared king by the Roman Senate (in 37 BC), who ruled at the will and pleasure of Caesar Augustus (63BC-19AD). 

We have magi or magicians or astrologers from some exotic place in the Orient. They show up from nowhere searching for a “child who has been born king of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2), which is why Herod is so scared by their arrival because he’s supposed to be King of the Jews.

We really don’t know much about the magi, who they were or where they were from.  We suspect they were from Persia.  They certainly weren’t kings.  We don’t know how many made the journey to Jerusalem.  The old carol tells of “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” but the text doesn’t say this. And we don’t know their names. What we do know is that they’re “wise."  They were priests.  They definitely weren’t Jewish. They were Gentiles.

We have an entire city set on edge by their appearance.  And we have chief priests and scribes of Israel, the religious authorities, scrambling, searching through their ancient texts to find a reference as to where the Messiah would be born.  They remember: “Bethlehem, in the land of Judea.”  Then Herod “secretly” (Mt 2:7), the text says, summons the wise men to discover the exact time the star appeared. 

And then you have Mary, with the child Jesus (probably two years of age), with no mention of Joseph.  The magi’s arrival at the home of Jesus called forth from within them worship, homage; “they knelt down,” and opened their “treasure chests” and offered him “gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11).  Then, being warned in a dream, they left by another road.  Joseph, too, had a dream and was warned to flee, to seek refuge in Egypt (Mt. 2:13-15).  When Herod discovered that these wise guys pulled a fast one on him, he was furious, and unleashed his fury on children and their families (Mt. 2:16-18). All because of the birth of a baby whose name means “God is with us.”

And there’s one other character in this story, something that moves the narrative along and it’s the star.  It’s the brilliance of a star that weaves its way through the narrative.  This is a star that moves.  It’s a star that summons them to move.  It’s a star that seems to be alive, intent on communicating with them.  This star knows something that the wise men don't.  This star is wise. 

The seventeenth century scientist and theologian Thomas Browne (1605-1682) once wrote, “Ice splits starwise.”[1]  This is where the sermon title comes from.  But I’m using this wonderful word, starwise, in a different way to talk about the wisdom of the star, a wisdom that captures the attention of people who are wise, wise enough to trust the wisdom of this star and go wherever it leads them, to destinations unknown.

Scholars and contemporary astronomers love to guess about the nature of this star.  It fascinates us.  But we don’t know what it was.  Whatever it was it was no ordinary star.  It was more like an ancient GPS system than an astronomical event.[2] It moved for a period of time.  It rose in the East and led them to Jerusalem.  Then from Jerusalem they set out for Bethlehem, about seven miles away, “and there, ahead of them, went the star” (Mt. 2:9).  And then the star “stopped” because they had arrived at the home (not a manger, but the home) of Mary and Joseph and Jesus.  And, in a sense, the magi arrived home, although they had never been there before.

For the wise men, it’s all because of a star.  But for the star they would never have left home.  They had to leave home in order to discover what the star knew.  And as they came to know, the brilliance of that star among stars mirrors and reflects the brilliance of God’s glory that was born in Bethlehem.  Jesus’ appearance, the fullest manifestation of God’s glory and light in this child, is an epiphany—a manifestation of God’s glory, a light for the entire world to see, not only for backwater Bethlehem, but also for all the nations of the world.  Gentiles, meaning the nations, will see in Jesus the glory of God.

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In a remarkable section of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians we have these words, which describe the meaning of Jesus’ birth.  They’re written by someone who never read Matthew’s Gospel or Mark’s or Luke’s or John’s, who knew nothing of magi or shepherds or mangers, yet could write: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

It is no wonder that when the magi saw “that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy” (Mt 2:10).  Overwhelmed with joy.  Joy overwhelms them. Joy knocks them off their feet.  Joy causes them to kneel. The star did not fail them.

On this Sunday we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the birth of light, light that is all the more brilliant when it shines in darkness.  The brilliance of the star is best revealed at night.  The magi, seemingly, arrive at their destination at night. 

The magi trust the wisdom of the star and are willing to go where it leads, leading them through the night, through the darkness.  They place their trust in nature and the movement of the stars, this cosmos, to guide them. They assume that the cosmos, the universe, that God is on their side, working with them and for them.  They have enormous trust, going off on this hard journey to a foreign land to find a baby.  They have trust in Divine Providence leading the way.  They must have second-guessed themselves countless times, thought themselves foolish, not wise, and yet they ventured forth into the unknown.  They went. 

Something of the same is asked of us.  Trusting the providential care of God, we too are summoned forth on the journey of our lives, to follow the star that leads to the place of joy. Where is that place for you?  What is the source of your deep joy?  What star are you following?  Is it the star of Bethlehem leading you to the Christ child?  Will the star you’re following lead you to a similar place of joy? Or is the star your following leading you astray?  These are good questions to ask here at the “gate of the year.”

Sometimes it’s tough to see the star.  Sometime it’s tough to see the light that shows the way.  But, like the wise men, we are called to trust.  Sometimes, in order to discover the star, we have to go out into the night, enter into the darkness, and then wait for the star to appear.

Years ago, way up in a remote corner of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, I came across a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), called God Knows, written in 1908.  It was on a plaque on the wall of an old crofter’s cottage.  One day Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth gave a copy of the poem to her father King George VI (1894-1952).  He was so moved by the poem that he included it in his Christmas Day broadcast to the British Empire in the dark days of 1939. 

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’

Many think the poem ends here because this is the section most often cited, but it continues.

“So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.

And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”[3]

The star of Bethlehem emerges in the dark.  

This is the star that leads us to daybreak, 

that leads us to the dawn, 

the star that leads us to new light.  

May it be so.

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[1] Thomas Brown, The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Vol. III (London: George Bell & Sons, 1889), 378.

[2] Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’s Birth (Harper One, 2007), 143ff.

[3] Minnie Louise Haskins, “God Knows,” The Desert (London, 1908).  The poem also known as “The Gate of the Year.”

And Was Made Flesh

John 1:1-5, 14-16

Christmas Eve 2015

In a few minutes, with the sanctuary full of dark and shadow, we will hear the majestic prologue to John’s Gospel, read from the light cast by the Christ Candle. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Toward the end of the reading we will hear these words, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” 

This is how John tells the story of Jesus’ birth.  No annunciation. No shepherds.  No manger. No magi.  Instead, John, echoing the opening verses of Genesis, says, “In the beginning….”   ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος (en arche en ho logos).  Drawing on Greek Logos philosophy John makes an amazing theological claim: in the birth of Jesus the Divine Word that created all things has become creature and taken on the weight of the created order. The source, the ground, the origin, the divine creativity that creates and recreates the universe and holds it all in being (see Colossians 1:15-20), the very pulse and rhythm of life itself is enfleshed in this person Jesus.[1]

God is with us…in the flesh.  What’s so new about this?  There are plenty of places in the Bible where we are told that God is with us, that God’s presence goes before us, leads the way, is known in the still small voice.  The religions of the Greco-Roman pantheon also claimed a kind of presence in one’s life.  What we find in the Christian claim, however, is something different.  In his poem, “The Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” the eighteenth century English poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771), captured its significance:

God all-bounteous, all creative,

Whom no ills from good dissuade

Is incarnate, and a native

Of the very world he made.

Smart alludes here to the mystery of the Incarnation.  This is what tonight is about. Incarnation.  As the Nicene Creed put it: Et incarnatus est, “and was made flesh.”  If there’s one thing you leave here with tonight with, I hope it is this:  the birth of Jesus decisively affirms that God desires to be with us and desires to be enfleshed in the world, it was true then and it’s true now.

The incarnation stands at the heart of the Christian experience and yet, unfortunately, the Church has done a good job disincarnating Jesus; that is, thinking of Jesus as if he didn’t have a body. There is a very deep and destructive anti-body heritage in Christianity, which privileges spirit over body, which values spirit over matter. These ideas make it difficult for Christians to be, well, wholly human – real, embodied, with feelings and emotions, and bodies that freely know desire and pleasure and respond to beauty – and to do all of this without guilt or shame.  I’m told the hanging of Christmas stockings originated in Germany, where each stocking contained five gifts, one for each of the senses in celebration of the Incarnation.[2]  Still, the shame runs very deep. 

True story.  Several years ago I was in the Holy Land and went to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.  It’s an enormous Roman Catholic Church built, as tradition has it, on the site of the home where Mary first heard that she was going to bear a son. Deep underneath the church is a cave, where there’s been an altar since around 384 AD.  Carved in the floor in front of the altar are these words:  ET INCARNATUS EST HIC.  And was made flesh here.  Right there!  Now, earlier that day the group I was there with went on an archeological dig. We were dusty, dirty, sweaty, but cleaned up best we could before heading off to Nazareth.  The women were told to make sure they brought something to cover up their shoulders, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed into the church.  They were prepared.  What the guys didn’t know is that we couldn’t wear shorts—and we were wearing shorts.  As we approached the high wall around the church we found the guard at the gate was checking for skin.  The women went in first.  Some of the guys got through because their shorts covered their knees.  Not mine.  I was barred from entry.   I was mad.  I had come all that way and I was determined to get in.  So I pushed my shorts down as far as I could and still walk and then stretched my t-shirt down to cover the difference.  It was quite a sight.  I was allowed in and had a very funny walk through the church.  In Nazareth there are two churches of the annunciation.  One is Roman Catholic, the other one is Greek Orthodox and they’re just as strict about skin, if not worse.  I tried my trick again, but they wouldn’t let me in.  

How ironic that there in a town that claims the actual site of the Incarnation itself, the church still has a problem with bodies, skin, flesh.  Obviously, God thinks flesh is good.  How can exposed shoulders be an affront to the gospel?  And—for God’s sake—what’s so scandalous about my knees?

Tonight we celebrate God’s embodiment in the world.  The incarnation tells us something about God’s style, what God values and honors; that the world is saved through a body.  God seeks embodiment in the world in Christ because of love, God’s love for us as bodies, and God’s love for creation as heavenly body.  The way of Christ is the way of God and the way of God hasn’t changed.  God continues to seek embodiment. God desires to dwell in you and me, to dwell with us, together, around us, through us, for us, God wants to take up home with us, hang out with us, and, most of all, grow in us, come to live through us.

God wants to be born in humanity.  The German mystic Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1327) once said, in his commentary on the prologue in John, “It would be of little value for me that ‘the Word was made flesh’ for man in Christ as a person distinct from me, unless he was also made flesh for me personally so that I too might be God’s son.”[3]  That I too might be God’s son…  That I too might be God’s daughter…  That I might come to see myself, personally, existentially as one in whom God dwells, “full of grace and truth.”  Know that God is among us, within us, with us.  This is your birthright.  

This is what we claim tonight, that we, the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, that we may know ourselves as daughters and sons of God, can know who we truly and authentically are—we are objects of God’s immeasurable, fathomless love that moves through the cold, dark expanses of the universe in order to be born and born again and again in us. This is what the fallen, fearful, friendless places in the world need to hear this night.  This is the reason for our joy![4]

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[1] Basil of Caesarea (330-379) refers to Jesus as the Cosmic Christ, “the Word of God who pervades the creation” from the beginning to the present day.  Gregory of Nazianus (c. 329-389/390) said, “This name [Logos] was given to him because he exists in all things that are.”  Humanity participates in this presence of the Cosmic Christ by “mirroring forth the presence of the creating Logos,” as Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335- after 394) put it.  See also Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Comic Christ: The Healing of the Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (HarperOne, 1988), 108ff.

[2] I’m grateful to Fritzi Scott, former member of the Catonsville Presbyterian Church, for this story.

[3] Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem (LW 3), n. 117, cited in Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thoughts of Meister Eckhart: The Man From Whom God Hid Nothing (New York: Herder & Herder, 2001), 117.

[4] The last two sentences allude to Dan Forrest’s composition “Carol of Joy,” with text by Eileen Berry, which was sung by the choir right after the sermon.   http://www.danforrest.com/satb-accompanied/carol-of-joy/