Year: 2017

John 9:1-41    

Fourth Sunday in Lent  

 

This reading from John’s Gospel is a great text for Lent if we consider that Lent is traditionally the season of preparation for those who will be baptized at Easter. This is the season of instruction for the candidates who will be asked, “Do you wish to be baptized?” To answer “yes” each candidate ought to know into whom or what he or she is being attached through the sacrament of baptism.

If you want to get to know Jesus, this is a powerful reading.

The scene is full of questions and answers – kind of like an instant Catechism Class right on the spot.  Listen to all the questions flying about.

Rabbi, who sinned?  This man? Or his parents?

Neighbors: Isn’t this the man who used to beg? How were your eyes opened? Where is this man?

Pharisees ask –

How did you receive your sight? How can a sinner perform such signs? What have you to say about this Jesus?

To the parents: Is this your son?  Wasn’t he born blind? How come he can see now?

Again the Pharisees ask the man –

What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?

An exasperated man replies –

I told you already – why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to be his disciples too?

Pharisees outraged: “How dare you lecture us?!”

Do you hear all the doubting, all the scrutiny, all the opposition to Jesus?

So we join with the candidates for baptism this Lenten season and ask ourselves, “Am I like the blind man who needs to receive sight? Do I suffer from spiritual blindness?”

“What is Jesus wanting to make clear in our own hearts and minds about the nature of God?”

“What darkness lurks in our attitudes and thoughts that needs to be exposed to the light?” “How do I resist Jesus or show opposition to his gracious ways?”

Better yet, how can we join the man born blind after he has received his sight in giving testimony to what Jesus has done for us?

Just as I listed all the questions posed in John chapter 9, here are the words of the healed man when asked endlessly about receiving his sight – for that is quite a miracle, you know…

“I am that man who used to sit and beg.”  I am one in need of the gentle healer’s touch today.

“The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go wash at Siloam, which I did, and then I could see.”  Jesus invited me to the waters of baptism so I went. He gave me his Holy Spirit.

“I don’t know where the man is now.”  He is not mine to tether – he might be helping someone else.

And to the Pharisees: “He put mud on my eyes and I washed and now I see.” (Pretty simple, really)

“What do I have to say about him? He is a prophet.”  He is the light of the world.

“I don’t know if Jesus is a sinner or not. All I know is that I was blind but now I see.”  He has rescued me from sin and death.

“I have told you and told you and you still won’t listen.”

And the final remark of an exasperated healed person:

“That is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the one who does his will. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing to heal me.”  Jesus is the Christ – the Messiah who gives sight.

All of which leads to the man being thrown out of the synagogue.

The final conversation is between Jesus and the healed man.

It could just as well be a conversation between Jesus and me or you.

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“Who is he, Sir?” “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

“You have now seen him; it is the one talking to you.”

“Lord. I believe.”

The modern man or woman, whose spiritual sight is restored by a loving Savior might leave the synagogue, rejected by the religious yet filled with new faith in this man they call Jesus and pull up his Facebook account.

Go to his status page under “relationship?” and think about what to type.

Given everything he went through he just might write: “It’s complicated.” But it’s the best thing that ever happened to me, the day I met Jesus.

I am a new creation!

Now I can really get on with life!

~Pastor Terrie Sternberg

 

John 3:1-22    

Second Sunday in Lent

When you are in the dark, how do you feel?  Do you feel at peace, enveloped by the quiet?  Are you unsettled and afraid? Does darkness feel more secure than what you might discover in the light, or vice-versa?  Are there things you would rather do in the night? Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark of the night.  Of course, they had just changed the clocks, so now it was dark an hour earlier than it was the day before.  Try explaining that to your dogs.

Here’s what happened before setting the clocks forward an hour.  Passover was near, and people were gathered in the Temple.  It smelled of cattle and sheep.  There were dove droppings on the pews.  Everything was for sale, and don’t worry if you do not have the right currency.  You could buy that there, too. Jesus could not tolerate the house of God becoming a marketplace.  He turned over tables, threw stuff around, and dumped money on the floor.  Then he shouted, “Stop!  This is my Father’s house.  Get out!”   The finance chair called the treasurer, and the treasurer called the property manager.  It was not long before word of Jesus’ actions and his claim to be God’s son got around town.

Is this why Nicodemus comes in the cover of darkness?  A bit of trivia for those of you who may not know,–this is where the expression “Nick at Night” comes from. Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  His religious education was stellar, and he was well respected as a leader in his community. In the Gospel of John, dark and night are contrasted by light and day.  Jesus will say, “’I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’” [1]

“Rabbi,” Nicodemus addresses him, acknowledging Jesus’ status.  Then he says, “’We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’”  The things Jesus does, the signs that he shows, are outside any human ability.  They are different than Nicodemus’ knowledge of how God works.

“Very truly,” Jesus says.  “Very truly” is our clue that what follows is very important.  What Jesus said is very important, but sounds a little crazy, too.  “’No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’”  The Greek word translated “kingdom” has more of a sense of experience than a physical place.  “Realm” conveys the meaning more accurately.  No doubt you have heard “Born from above” translated as “born again.”  The Greek can be translated both ways.

As we have been studying Martin Luther’s writings, here is what Luther writes in his sermon on this text:

Christ’s words are as if to say: ‘No, my dear Nicodemus, I am not moved by your beautiful words.  You must give up your old life and become a new man….   [This] is not concerning what you must do or not do, but concerning what you must become.  It aims not at the performance of new works, but first at being born anew; not at a different life, but at a different birth.”[2]

Born from above, not a different life, but a different birth, Jesus says and Luther writes.  This is not a distinction between those who “truly believe” and those who just say they do.  It is not a measure of religiosity.  It’s an experience of the realm of God.  Being born from above, this different birth, is not something we can do ourselves.  Being born is not a decision that we make, is it?  Birth is more work on the one giving birth than the one being born. The one being born comes out vulnerable and fragile.

Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. 

“How can these things be?” Nicodemus wants to know.  “How can these things be?” we want to know. The light of Jesus draws this Pharisee out of the dark, calling him to be open to God in a new way.  Jesus calls Nicodemus to go beyond his training and his boundaries of rules and laws and logic. God calls us to go beyond what we know so that we can see what really is.  The light beckons us to go beyond our human assessment of who in in and who is out, and who God loves.

For God so loved the world, the world as shown in John’s gospel to be hostile to God.[3]  For God so loved this world [that hated him], that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

For God so loved the foreign Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well, and the man blind since birth, the woman who bled for twelve years, and the Gerasene man with evil spirits. For God so loved the poor, and the one in prison.  For God so loved Peter who said, “Jesus who?” and Judas who betrayed him.  For God so loved the condemned criminals, hanging on crosses to Jesus’ left and to his right.  For God so loved Nicodemus out of his darkness so that he would to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.  For God so loved the world.  For God so loved you and me, we who have lost our way in the darkness.  Claimed as God’s children in the waters of baptism, forgiven through bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, we are called to love the world, too.[4]

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] John 8:12

[2]  Bruner, Frederick Dale.  The Gospel of John:  A Commentary.  Grand Rapids:  Wm B. Eerdmans, 2012, 172.  Referring to Sermons of Martin Luther 3:412 and 3:326.

[3] See John 15:18-25, 16:8-10, 20, 33, and 17:9-16.

[4] Stjerna, Kirsi, ed.  The Large Catechism of Dr. Martin Luther, 1529.  Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2016.  Concerning baptism, Luther writes: “This is the simplest way to put it: the power, effect, benefit, fruit, and purpose of baptism is that it saves.  For no one is baptized in order to become royalty, but, as the words say, ‘to be saved.’ To be saved, as everyone well knows, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, to enter into Christ’s kingdom, and to live with Christ forever.   …our works are of no use for salvation.  Baptism, however, is not our work, but God’s work…(393-394).

 

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

Ash Wednesday

 What kind of crazy are you? This is the question we should be asking on our first date, so states Alain de Botton in his article, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.  Apparently, this is either people’s most deep seated fear, or their dreadful reality; this was the most read article of 2016 in the New York Times.[1]

Please note that Botton uses the term “crazy” without prejudice or disrespect, and not intending offense to those with mental illness.  He writes, “…we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others.  We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.”[2]  How are you crazy?  If you don’t know, just ask your family.  Botton wants us to be aware that “every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us—and we will…do the same to them.”[3]  Again, just ask your family.

I’ve had my share of frustration, anger, annoyance, maddening encounters and disappointments.  And that was just in the last hour!  Actually, that was Monday.  Monday was a very full day!  My crazy usually impacts someone else.  When I become uprooted and thrown into a pit of emotional chaos, I in turn become someone who frustrates, angers, annoys, maddens and disappoints people.  My focus becomes me, myself and I.  In fact, my focus can become me, myself, and I all by myself, not prompted by anyone else.  This is attested to by the number of shoes in my closet and the amount of dark chocolate that I can eat in one sitting.

While in themselves these things don’t sound so bad, they are manifestations of my shortcomings, and serve to distract me from loving myself, others and God in healthy ways.  They are only a couple of the many ways that my relationships become distorted.  I know I am not alone.  There are moments when we don’t love our neighbor, or talk about our neighbor–not in the best Christian light.  Not to mention the times we want the very thing our neighbor has, ignore those neighbors who need our help or our voice.

There is a churchy word for all of this.  A theological dictionary expresses it this way, and I quote, “…people suck at being human the way God intends humans to be because of a condition known as sin,”[4]

We help others and practice generosity, but eventually we find it hard to forgive someone, or are haunted by self-doubt, or any those things that come with being a crazy human.  We may be sorry and have regret.  But if we view these things as anything other than sin, and respond in a way that does not include repentance, turning again to God, then we are in danger of thinking we have the power to save ourselves, that we can, on our own, make things right without God’s grace, without God’s mercy and forgiveness.  We can talk ourselves into believing that we can always act without self-interest and self-benefit.

We need Ash Wednesday, this day that we confess to God, to one another, and before the whole company of heaven that we cannot extricate ourselves from that which separates us from God and from one another.  We need this ashen reminder that we cannot save ourselves. The cross made of ashes is a confession that we cannot accomplish what only God can.  Our ashes are also a confession of hope, hope that things can be different.

Tonight, the cross of ashes will be placed on our foreheads, on top of the cross placed that marked us as God’s in our baptism.  It is a reminder of whose we are.  God claims us, and the promise of new life underlies even death.  Love and life brought out of death and ashes are tangible signs of God’s reversals. Tonight, because we admit our mortality and our sinfulness, we return to our God of promise and hope.

This is why Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite days of the year.[5]   Tonight is the night we confess, “God, I want to love you with my whole heart.  I want to love you with all my heart, but part of my heart gets tangled up with other things. Sometimes part of my heart feels like a closed fist aimed at those who think differently than I do. Part of my heart is frozen with fear of I don’t know what–being unlovable, looking foolish, not having what I need, of being alone, of dying.  Part of my heart wonders if I will ever be good enough.”  Tonight is the night that we confess, “God, I am crazy like this.” Tonight is the night God responds, “I know!  But I am crazy in love with you. Let’s start again, together.”

Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.[6]

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] This article, from May 28, 2016, can be accessed on-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html?_r=0.  Krista Tippett’s interview with the author, Alain de Botton, The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships, February 9, 2017, is available as a podcast, http://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Jacobson, Rolf, ed.  {Crazy Talk}: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms.  Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress, 2008.  p. 161.

[5] While it may seem strange that Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite days, being honest about my sin is a relief.  To say out loud that I need God, that I cannot save myself, is a statement of hope because if salvation is up to me, I am doomed.  Ash Wednesday is a tangible reminder of God’s promises given to us in baptism and lived out in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I love Ash Wednesday!

[6] Joel 2:12-13

 

Matthew 5:21-37    

6^th Sunday After Epiphany

 

W.C. Fields, the great comedian known for his womanizing and drinking, was a self-admitted agnostic, and so it surprised his friend, Gene Fowler, to find Fields reading the Bible. ”’What are you doing, Bill?’ asked the incredulous Fowler.  ‘I’m looking for loopholes,’ Fields whispered.”[1]

W.C. Fields isn’t the only one to look for an easier way out.   Years ago, I attended one of my husband’s high school reunions in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.  Griff’s friends gathered around to greet us.  He introduced me and told them that I, his wife, was a preacher.  “And y’all thought I was going to hell, didn’t you?” he said with that beautiful big grin on his face.  Looking into the eyes of his friends, I replied, “He still is.”[2]

Jesus’ exposition in our reading this morning might have you looking for loopholes.  “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”  When is the last time that you were angry with someone?  When is the last time that you insulted someone, even if it was not to their face?  And when is the last time you called someone a fool?

Jesus’ discourse escalates.  “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away…And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”[3]  Jesus never mentions anesthesia.

Our readings seem to reinforce the image of God as a law giver, and a harsh dispenser of judgment.  It may be easy to lose sight of the fact that the law is given to us as a gift.  God gave the law to Moses to give to God’s people, not so that they could earn their way to God by adhering to the law and climbing the ladder of perfection to reach God.[4]  God gave the law so that we can live with one another.

The first way God uses the law, in the words of Tim Wengert, is:

to promote the life of creation and to restrain evil. Luther noted that God, “who overflows with pure goodness,” uses creatures who “are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings.” But God also forces humanity to come face to face with its sin (the second way God uses the law).  In all of this, however, Luther’s point was that God uses the law on humanity, not the other way around, and uses it to benefit life on earth and life with God. [5]

Jesus strengthens the law, and it becomes clear that we cannot justify ourselves. Jesus intensifies the law so that we don’t excuse ourselves for our neglect and mistreatment of others. He catches us looking for loopholes, we who say we never murdered anyone while at the same time speaking of people in the worst possible way.  Luther, in his Large Catechism, which we will be studying, explains the fifth commandment, “Many people, although they do not actually commit murder, nevertheless curse others and wish such frightful things on them that, if they were to come true, they would soon put an end to them.”[6][7]

The law is about relationship.  God gives us the law, and Jesus strengthens the law, because God created us to be in a right relationship, with God, with those we love, and with those we do not love.  It’s that important.  We test Jesus on this all the time. Remember those little plastic Jesus’ on our dashboards?  You haven’t seen them recently, have you?   People are too ashamed to let him hear all the things we yell at other drivers.  “Who is my neighbor?” we ask, hoping that it does not include the guy who took our parking space, or someone with a different gender identity, or the one who needs a job, or the one fleeing from another country.

We have a long family history of trying to escape compliance with God’s desires for us ever since Adam wimped out, saying, “SHE made me do it!” Then there was King David, and that whole scandal with Bathsheba and the Uriah cover-up.  Judas violated his relationship with Jesus for money, and a short time later, Peter tweeted, “#notmymessiah.”

Have you been hurt by things people have done or have not done?  Are there people you have hurt by things you have said, or have not said? Can you picture someone’s face in your mind’s eye?   Jesus tells us to pluck out our eyes, and hack off our hands.  Our connection to others is that important.  We all have all disappointed people, and we have all been let down.  When it comes to relationships, we seem to have the knack for messing them up. Yet God has told us that there is nothing more important:

… a lawyer asked [Jesus] a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.[8]

The very thing that God asks us to do is the very thing we can’t.  We have not loved God with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have all sinned in thought, word, and deed.  Together, after we confess our brokenness, we are reminded that in the mercy of almighty God, Jesus Christ was given to die for us.  We will eat his broken body in the bread, and drink his blood in the wine, consuming Jesus that his love will consume us, and that receiving his forgiveness, we can begin again, giving thanks that for Jesus, in

Jesus, there are no loopholes.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/05/08/loopholes/  Web.  Accessed February 8, 2017.

[2] Please know that I was just kidding! Griff is baptized!  See Luther’s Small Catechism, The Sacrament of Holy Baptism, the second statement.  [Baptism] effects forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe, as the Word and promise of God declare. [Taken from The Book of Concord.  Tappert, Theodore, ed.  Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1959.  348-349.]   

[3] My hope is that Biblical literalists do not take this literally!

[4] For further reading on this aspect of Lutheran theology, see Gerhard O. Forde’s book, Where God Meets Man.  Minneapolis:  Augsburg Books, 1972.

[5] Wengert, Timothy J.  Martin Luther’s Catechisms.  Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2009.  32.

[6] If you don’t know what the fifth commandment is, come to the study!

[7] Kolb, Robert and Wengert, Timothy J., eds.  The Book of Concord.  Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2000. 411.

[8] Matthew 22:35-40

Isaiah 58:1-12, 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, Matthew 5:13-20

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Lectionary 5)

In my reading this week, I was struck by this passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”[1]  It’s amazing how Paul’s warning is so applicable to us today.

Tuesday mornings, our local pastors gather to talk about the readings for the coming Sunday.  In recent weeks, politics and their effect on people in our churches, in our country and around the world have been dominating our conversations. Within our congregations, there are differing opinions on every issue we face.  People embrace God’s mandate to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God, but there are disagreements on how best to do that.[2]

In listening to the news, reading comments on FaceBook, and hearing conversations, I’ve become more aware of how we label people, thereby dividing them into categories. Those labels then become people’s identity, as if that is all there is to a person.  Now days when we hear “the conservatives, the liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians, Jews, whites, blacks,” it is usually said with judgment attached.  There is not one day when anger and divisiveness are not made public. How we see each other, and ourselves, is channeled through this lens.  “There’s something strangely sweet about negative or accusatory feelings,” writes Richard Rohr.  “It’s a strange way to achieve moral superiority…”[3] The impact of all this on our well-being cannot be understated.

That people divide into factions is nothing new.  The Corinth community had their own difficulties with this.  Before Paul came to them preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, they were known for their unruliness and promiscuity.  For a year and a half, Paul taught them the gospel, and showed them how to live as a holy people of God.  Then he left for Ephesus.  Sometime later, Paul received a report that “factions had developed, morals were in disrepair, and worship had degenerated into a selfish grabbing for the super-natural.”[4]

Paul’s letter in response to the Corinthians, part of which we read this morning, does not preach the wrath of God.  Paul does not label people; they have labeled and divided themselves. He does not pit one faction against another.  Paul’s letter to the Corinthians focuses on love.  In fact, the first thing he says to them is, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus…”[5]

How can he say this to a quarreling community? What gives Paul perspective is Christ and the cross.  “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” Paul states.[6]  The cross signifies God’s intervention into the dark places of our humanity.  It stands for love that culminated in Christ’s giving his life for all people, both the righteous and the unrighteous.  Paul views everything through this lens.[7] Paul begins with the cross of Christ.  When we begin from a place of judgement or fear, we cannot see accurately.  When we begin from a place of judgment or fear, we struggle to get to a place of love.

Paul’s vision of the world through the cross challenges how we see.  It looks beyond our view of power, and beyond the letter of the law.  Looking at our world through Christ crucified clears our vision so that we recognize our common humanity.  It provides a way for us to speak our truth in love.[8]

In order for us to speak our truth in love, we first must know that we are loved.  Scripture frequently assures us of that.  “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ^]—by grace you have been saved,” St. Paul writes. [9]  This morning we hear Jesus tell us, “You are the salt of the earth.”  “You are the light of the world.”  Not, “I was hoping you would be,” or “if you do this,” but “you are.”

As salt and light, how do we respond to our current climate?  First, look at the cross of Christ, and then look through the cross to our neighbors.  Know that you are loved. Know that your neighbors are loved, too.  From that perspective, speak the truth in love, without judgment, and without condemnation.  David Lose, president of the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia, suggests that, “Perhaps part of our congregational calling is to be places that gather people who may differ on approach to being salt and light but commit to pray for deeper understanding, for wisdom, and for courage to speak and act in line with our faith, and for each other.”[10]

Listen again to the words of Isaiah:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. [Isaiah 58:9-11]

Let your light rise in the darkness, in the name of Christ.  Amen!

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] Galatians 5:14-15

[2] Micah 6:8

[3] Rohr, Richard.  Everything Belongs.  New York:  The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003.  p. 109.

[4] Peterson, Eugene.  The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language.  Colorado Springs:  NavPress, 2002.  p. 2064.

[5] 1 Corinthians 1:4

[6] 1 Corinthians 2:2.

[7] Marcus Borg [read Convictions:  How I Learned What Matter Most.  New York:  HarperOne, 2014. p.144.] points out:

[Paul] doesn’t simply say that Jesus died, but that he was crucified.  In the world of Paul and Jesus and early Christianity, a cross was always a Roman cross.  The gospel of ‘Christ crucified’ intrinsically signaled that the gospel challenged the way the authorities, the powers, put the world together.  The gospel was an anti-imperial, [anti-Roman Empire], vision of what the world should be like.

[8] Galatians 5:6 states, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

[9] Ephesians 2:4-5.  See also John 3:16 and Romans 8:38-39.

 

[10] Lose, David.  …In the Meantime.  Epiphany 5A – Promises, not Commands.  Web, accessed 1/31/2017.

 

Matthew 3:13-17    

Baptism of Jesus     January 8, 2017

 

Do you remember your baptism?  I don’t remember mine, but I do remember the dress I wore.  My parents wanted me to be baptized in a Lutheran church, and so they waited for one to be built in our town.  My sister Karin and I were wearing matching dresses when we were baptized.  She was 12 years old, and I was 8.  Do you remember your baptism?

Martin Luther remembered his baptism every morning.  When he washed his face, he would splash the water on his face and remember his baptism.  He would remind himself, “I am baptized.”  Present tense.  Not “I was baptized,” but “I AM baptized.”

John the Baptizer had declared to those who had come out into the wilderness, I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Jesus came to John to be baptized. John did not understand why, since John’s baptism was one of repentance.  Baptism washes away sin, and Jesus was the Messiah.  How could the son of God put himself in such a humbling position?  John tried to talk Jesus out of it.[1]  (Yeah, like that could work!)  This lowering of status would come to define Jesus’ life and ministry.  He told John that his baptism would fulfill all righteousness.  In Matthew’s gospel, righteousness is doing God’s will.  God’s righteousness relates to God’s establishing and maintaining right relationships.  Jesus fulfilling all righteousness entails love, justice and redemption.

By being baptized, Jesus joins us in our humanity.  Jesus joined the multitude of sinners in the waters of the Jordan. When the Word made flesh was dunked under the water until he bubbled, the Word and the water joined together to bring salvation to us in and through our baptism.  Jesus stands with us at the font, plunging into our despair, our lies, our shame, our loneliness, our weakness, our sinfulness.

It is in Jesus’ baptism that it becomes clear who he is:  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well please.’  In our baptism, it becomes clear who we are.  We are God’s children; we are God’s beloved.

One of my favorite movies is O Brother Where Art Thou.  It’s not just because George Clooney stars in it.  This comedy, loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, takes place in the Deep South during the 1930s.  Three escaped convicts, Everett, Pete and Delmar, search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them.

My favorite scene is when the three men see what appears to be a congregation, a group of women and men in white robes, walk through the woods and right into the river.  There, the preacher takes them one by one and dunks them in the water, holding them under until they bubble.  While Everett mumbles something about “everyone’s looking for answers,” Delmar runs into the river and wades to the front of the long line.

Pete expresses his surprise:  “Well, I’ll be a sonofagun. Delmar’s been saved!”

Delmar stands up, dripping wet, turns towards his friends, and says, “Well that’s it, boys. I’ve been redeemed. The preacher’s done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It’s the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting’s my reward.”

Practical Everett, who has no need of religion, responds:  “Delmar, what are you talking about? We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Delmar: “The preacher says all my sins is warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.”

Everett: “I thought you said you was innocent of those charges?”

Delmar: “Well I was lyin’. And the preacher says that that sin’s been warshed away too. Neither God nor man’s got nothin’ on me now. C’mon in boys, the water is fine.”

It must have been a Lutheran congregation.

Knocking over the Piggly Wiggly, and lying about it, washed away by the water and word through God’s gift of baptism, as if Delmar had never committed those sins.  It seems over the top, and too good to be true.  We can substitute our own sins in place of knocking over a grocery store.  An illicit love affair, cheating on your income taxes, over consumption of alcohol and/or drugs, a lack of concern for those who lack the basic needs to live, unkind gossip or hateful words…  Fill in your own blank.

Delmar, and his cohorts, saw him as a robber and a liar.  But in his baptism, he shed that identity and became God’s child.  He was no longer defined by his sins, but rather by God’s love for him.  When someone asks you to tell them about yourself, do you answer with what you do, such as such as an accountant, or a stay-at-home parent?  What defines you?  Is it things you have done? Or maybe who you think you are is defined by things that have happened to you.  I am a cancer patient, I am a rape victim, I am divorced.

These are ordinary things that may be true, and they may describe us.  But they should not be what defines us. They simply don’t tell the whole story.  In fact, they don’t tell the most important part of our story. In our baptism, we become children of God.  There is nothing in this world that can change that.  In his baptism, Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for us.  In our baptism, we are joined to Christ, and we became God’s beloved.  Professor David Lose explains that this is why Jesus came, to convince us that God loves us more than anything.  The implications of this are profound.  He writes:

We become “children… who are not dominated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, not defined by our limitations or hurts, and whose destiny is not controlled by others.  Rather, we are those persons who know ourselves to be God’s own beloved children. [2]

Baptism isn’t simply about getting into heaven.  It is about relationship.  In the water and the Word, it is God who comes to us, giving us God’s unconditional love.  We are invited and empowered to live in that relationship – or not!  God gives us the option, the awful freedom, to choose to live with or without him.

In this relationship, I suspect that at times we frustrate, disappoint, and anger God.  But even with all of our shenanigans, there is nothing we can do that will make God stop loving us. There is nothing we can do for which God will abandon us.  Herein lies our hope.  God is always there, like the father of the Prodigal son, waiting for us to come back.  When we stray, or simply forget whose we are, our relationship with God can be restored, and our hope is that we can once again find ourselves living in God’s love for us.  Believe it, live it, share it and you can change the world.

Every morning when you wash your face, or step under the rain of the shower, say to yourself, I am baptized.  Present tense.  Come on in!  The water’s fine!

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] This conversation between John and Jesus is mission from the account in Mark and Luke.

[2] www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2980