THE BELOVED
Luke 3
January 7, 2007
The Sunday of the
Baptism of the Lord
First Presbyterian
Church ~ Owensboro, Kentucky
Rev.
Jonathan E. Carroll, Th.M.
It
seems that we have enjoyed a fair amount of precipitation of late, only not the
kind that most like to see this time of year. For whatever reason (and there are reasons) we have had a good deal of
rain which has made the ground around our home, our church, and the
green-spaces where we enjoy spending time down by the river – it’s made it all
quite muddy. Mud and I..w. we go way back, and when I’m around it, I’m reminded
of the first day of my college career. Most people have one of those these
days: the first day of college. Mine was the third Sunday of August, (the 24th
Sunday of Ordinary Time) 1993. It was my own, personal, escorted tour of
college hazing incognito, and it always reminds me of the baptism of our
Lord. Just because Kendra and I attended
a small, liberal arts, Presbyterian
College that has somehow
escaped the nosy media doesn’t mean that we didn’t go through our fair share of
college initiation. At King College, once one’s teary-eyed parents finally
drove away from campus, upper classmen tied our hands in front of us, put
blindfolds over our eyes, lined us up single-file, and led us to what we were
certain was our own untimely deaths. Turns out, we would only be led into a
gauntlet where awaited more
upper-classmen holding vats of condiments like ketchup and mustard, flour and
corn starch, honey, peanut butter, dish soap, wet oatmeal, and canned dog food.
After having all of the above, and more that I cannot remember thanks to
repression, after having all of it smeared on our faces, in our noses and ears,
hair, lips, fingers, and toes, we were then led blindly, like prisoners, to
something which we could not see, thanks to the blindfolds, something we could
not smell, thanks to the dog food, and something we could not know, thanks to
our freshman naiveté. We were gently forced to get down on our stomachs, and we
were pulled by the arms through a thick, freezing cold, mushy, marshy,
mashed-up mess that we would later come to know and love as the Mud Pit. It was
awful. Terrifying. Full of icy cold water, big, jagged rocks, and pieces of the
planet small enough to fit into every unprotected crevice. My heart pounded, I
remember that. I was dying, I thought to myself. I just knew I was dying. And
my mother was on her way back home. Come to find out, it wasn’t my death, and it wasn’t considered by the police to be
“hazing,” either. It was called a “tradition,” and I ended up being one of
those who would so graciously lead others through the same terrifying mess for
the next three years. I remember being hosed off at the fire hydrant after my
initiation into the King
College tradition by
volunteer fire fighters with fire hoses that had a 1 million PSI of pressure
behind them so that the clumped earth wouldn’t stay in our hair forever, and I
watched as my horrifyingly muddy skin became clean. I had thought I was dead,
and I was being washed clean and was alive…living waters. I remember thinking
to myself, “If I ever get to design my own religion, this is how we’ll do
baptisms.”
Today’s
scripture lesson from Luke is the story of how Jesus joined us in the mud. Each
of the evangelists tell the story a little differently. Mark tells it urgently,
saying that as soon as Jesus came up out
of the water, the heavens ripped open, and the spirit came upon him like a dove.
Matthew’s telling of it is much more academic, for there, Jesus and John the
Baptist have a theological debate over who should do the baptizing and to whom
when just then John gives up and pushes Jesus in. The fourth gospel is so
careful about Jesus’ purity that the whole event is never mentioned at all. And
then there’s Luke, whose account is just as odd as the others’. Just before it
all happens, Luke tells us that Herod has John put in jail, so that there is no
mention of who does the baptizing at all, which is Luke’s way of keeping the
spotlight on the right place, not on John, and not even on Jesus, but on the
sky, the one that was torn open, the one where the Spirit like a dove came
down, the one out of which came that voice.
That’s Luke’s thing. The voice. “This is my Son, my Beloved. With you I am well
pleased.”
But
let us back up a bit, to the few days before today. John was preaching, he was
convicting, he was baptizing, all in the name of one he called Messiah. And everyone who heard him
preached was wondering if John was the One, the Christ. He sure was unusual
enough, just the kind of man God would send to clean up the world. He spoke
with authority. He pronounced judgment.
You knew where he stood on everything. No compromise. No grey areas. And the
fact that he thought everything around him was broken and needed fixing was
enough to convince everyone else that he was the one God had anointed to be
called the Savior. So they came out to get washed by him, touched by him,
indicted by him, and he called them “brood of vipers,” and somehow they liked
him even more, and liked their chances that they had bet on the right guy—he
must be of God!—which made him even madder. I baptize you with water, he said,
“but one who is coming is more powerful than I. I’m not even worthy to bend
down to untie his sneakers. He’ll baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
Baptism by the Holy Spirit didn’t sound so bad, a little gust of wind, and all
the dust got blown out of your life…but the whole fire thing…that was a little
scary. Fire brought purity, refinement, no doubt about it, and you might be
better for having gone through it, but make no mistakes, it’s gonna hurt, and
it’s gonna leave a mark, and the marks will be ugly. A God that cleans with
fire is some God indeed, and everyone wanted in on that. Imagine everyone’s
surprise, then, imagine John’s surprise, when one of the first people to sign
up for baptism after such an incendiary claim was Jesus, no ax-wielding
pyromaniac, but a gentle woodworker from just up the road, the one whom the
Holy Spirit chose for a roost. God claimed him for a Son, and many did not
believe it, just as many do not believe it now, because they found it easier to
believe in an angry God than a loving one.
But
what was Jesus doing in a place like that…John had made it perfectly clear that
baptism was for sinners, for vipers, for trees that had no fruit…John said it
was for sinners who came to be washed clean; what need did Jesus have of a bath
like that? According to every eye-witness who has chosen to speak, he was a man
set apart from all the others by his sinlessness; he had nothing to repent for,
nothing to ask forgiveness for. How climactic would it have been had he walked
up to John and said, “Thanks for setting up shop for me, my friend. I’ll take
over from here.” But he didn’t. In fact, there’s a question being thrown around
about whether Jesus baptized anyone. His disciples did, Paul did, I have, but
Jesus?, maybe not, because he did not come to claim power, he came to give it
away. He didn’t come in on his sleek, black tour bus and take over John’s rural
ministry…instead, he got in with a whole crowd of sorry-looking people and took
his turn in the river just like everybody else. Nothing unusual there. It was
after his baptism, as he was praying, that the remarkable thing happened.
Heaven opened. The clouds parted. White light poured through, and a thing, a
figure that looked a little like a bird, and a lot like something straight from
the heart of God, settled on Jesus as a voice from somewhere other than earth
explained what it was all about. “You are my son. You are my beloved,” the
voice said, “I am very pleased with you.” What words! What incredible
acceptance! And from heaven of all places. What had Jesus done to merit such an
event? It was the very beginning of his ministry…all he had done so far was to
say yes to it. Well, that and to join
all of humanity in the muddy waters of the river Jordan. He did do that. He did get down into the mud with
the world, and a voice from heaven said, “You are my son, and I am pleased with
you.”
We
live in a place, a nation, a world that seems to be growing more and more
biblically illiterate. Few people know the Bible anymore, few remember the
stories. What would have been amazing to us is to have stood around to hear how
many people would have known that when God said what he did to Jesus on that
day, he was actually quoting himself from two places. Psalm 2, “you are my
beloved Son,” and Isaiah, “with you I am well pleased,” which is the part where
God talks about his suffering servant, his chosen one, the one who will redeem the
world by sacrificing himself for it. Put those two passages together and you
have the perfect description of who Jesus is and what he has come to do, a
public declaration of what his ministry is supposed to be about.
And
that is what happens in today’s story, and that is what this particular Sunday
of the Church Year is all about, too: Jesus, who goes into the water a
carpenter and comes out a Messiah. Same person…new perspective. He is the same, his life is not. He
turns around and faces a new direction. Which is exactly what repentance means:
to turn around, to go another way. God’s way. So in that sense, it is true
enough that Jesus repented, turned to go another way, not of any sin, but of
going his own quiet way in peace. He went into the waters his own person, a
private man, and came out God’s person, a public figure at the center of every
controversy for the rest of his tragically short life. But that still doesn’t
answer the question. Why baptism? Why not some eloquent speech or an ordination
service with the laying on of hands to mark this important rite of passage?
It’s a mystery, like the Christmas mystery of the incarnation. Why did Jesus
become human when he could have stayed just God. Why baptism when he could have
stayed on the river banks and supervised? Why does he come to us where we are
over and over and over again, when he could save himself the grief, the pain,
the death, by insisting that we come to him where he is? Why does he get in the
mud with us instead of demanding that we pick ourselves up, clean off, and fix
us?
Because
he loves us, that is why, and because we are his, and because he is,
unbelievably, pleased with us, and because he has come to lead us through the
waters of life and the waters of death into life eternal. It has never been
God’s style to shout directions at us from the sidelines, from some safe place
of his own. He has always led us from within our midst, joining us in the
water, the mud pits of life, in the skin to show us how it is done when it is
done well. What if Jesus had not been baptized, what if he had chosen to
separate himself from us as he had every right to do. Thankfully, he did not.
Thankfully, he took the plunge of faith along with the rest of us, and so it
came to pass that he who was without sin was baptized with us to avoid the sin
of standing apart from us, of being without us.
He
is our servant, and he is our Lord. And he never asks us to go anywhere he has
not been first. From dust to dust and ashes to ashes, from the cradle through
the waters of baptism, through the injury and the illness, the thrills and the
threats, to the grave, he knows what we are up against, and he has showed us
how to live so that life never ends: choosing to go God’s way, choosing
whatever will bring us closer together, and above all, choosing the things of
earth—doves, water, mud, skin, and love—the stuff of earth to carry out the
purposes of heaven. You are accepted. He chose you. He chose us. He loves us.
And believe it or not, with us, because of Christ, he is well pleased. Amen.
