Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Baptism of Our Lord January 10, 2016
Christmas is over, and here we are early in January. A new year offers energy and hope for new beginnings. We are ten days into the secular new year. Have you broken any of your New Year’s resolutions yet? Maybe a better way to ask this is, have you kept any of your New Year’s resolutions? I’ve gained wisdom in my older years. I don’t bother to make any resolutions. Maybe you have stopped, too.
Still, the whole concept of making New Year’s resolutions is fascinating. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of FaceBook, made his new year’s commitment to build an artificial intelligence system that will have the ability to control his home. If you have seen the movie Iron Man, this system will be similar to Tony Stark’s assistant, Jarvis. Most people’s resolutions are nothing like that. We vow to exercise more, stop smoking, and save more money. We promise to do or stop doing to make ourselves new and improved.
Even though I don’t make specific resolutions, I always promise myself that I will do better this year. Self-improvement is a hobby of mine. The other side of that coin is that it also says that I am not good enough, or my life is not good enough. And when you put your desires for a better self and a better life into the form of resolutions, which we can never keep, we then can add to that our failure. This whole cycle starts again when we then look for something or someone to save us. As David Lose points out, sometimes we look for new relationships, or maybe we hope that the people with whom we work will find us indispensable, or we look to our children to fulfill our dreams for us.[1]
Our reading from Luke this morning reminds us that our hopes for something or someone to rescue us are not unique to our time and place. Luke writes, “…The people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.” The people were hoping for a messiah. Maybe it would be John the Baptizer. Maybe your savior will be partner of your dreams. Maybe it will be the Weight Watchers instructor, your stockbroker, or the pastor.
I have quoted Nadia Bolz-Weber before, saying “I will disappoint you.” Please don’t tell me when I do. It’s not just me who will disappoint you. Your partner, your children, your stock portfolio—they all will eventually fall short of our hopes and expectations. They cannot save us. Jesus can. We know this. We are, after all, here today to worship Jesus as Lord, but do we live and breathe as if Jesus is our Messiah? Do we really get it? Do today’s readings jolt us right out of our seats? (Ushers, stand by!) Listen again to how amazing God is.
“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…” God in the flesh, which is astounding in and of itself, was baptized with all the people. This is God’s son, who joined us in the waters of baptism. Jesus comes to us where we are as we are. Jesus unites himself with us. It is an act of solidarity with a world full of damaged people. In and through his baptism, Jesus acknowledges our human systemic brokenness. What is the first thing that Jesus does after he is washed in the waters of baptism? He goes to God in prayer.
In case we have not gotten the point, God goes further. While Jesus was praying, the heaven was opened. You might remember that at Jesus’ death, the heavens were opened again. Karoline Lewis observes:
There is an intrusion here. An inability of God to be separate from whom God loves, whether we like it or not….God choosing to be with us, or God choosing to be one of us, or God choosing to make us God’s own should be its own epiphany. We get to see the true character of God, our God who would risk security and safety, laud and honor, distance and determination, so that God would know what it means to be among us and be us. Baptism is boundary crossing. Baptism is risk. Baptism is God’s presence when we may not want God so close. If we are honest, the heavens opening can be good news and not such good news, depending how close you want God to be, what you want God to see, and who you want God to think you are.[2]
In case we have not gotten the point, God goes further. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. The Holy Spirit came as something to be seen and heard and touched. It came in bodily form like a dove. We seem to have stopped thinking that the Holy Spirit can be tangible. God wanted to make certain we knew that just like Jesus, the Holy Spirit is here among us.
In case we still have not gotten the point, God speaks, and we are privileged to hear it. God says to Jesus, ‘“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”’ In baptism, God claims us, too. With Thanksgiving for Baptism, we began our worship with these words: “In the waters of baptism, we are joined to Christ. By water and the Word, God claims us as daughters and sons, making us heirs of God’s promise and servants of all.”[3] I’m not certain why in awe and wonder at God’s head over heels love for us we don’t stop breathing for a moment.
Jesus is our savior, the Messiah, the one who was born for us, baptized among us, suffered for us, died for us, and was resurrected. Jesus is our source of life. In the silence that follows, I invite you to reflect on these questions. What will it take to let go of what distracts us, confuses us, and redirects us away from that truth? What will it take for us, what do we need, to know with every fiber of our being that we are God’s beloved? How does knowing Jesus as our savior and ourselves as the ones God loves to death change how we live?
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/01/baptism-of-our-lord-c-expecting-the-messiah/
[2] http://www.workigpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4243.
[3] Taken from Thanksgiving for Baptism on page 97 of the ELW.