Sermon: "Named, Claimed, Called." January 12, 2020 Rev. Ingrid Brown
“Matthew 3 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
The Proclamation of John the Baptist
3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”[a] 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
4 Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 “I baptize you with[b] 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[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
The Baptism of Jesus
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[d] with whom I am well pleased.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 3:2 Or is at hand
Matthew 3:11 Or in
Matthew 3:11 Or in
Matthew 3:17 Or my beloved Son”
Now this story – this story comes from a long, long time ago. Before cars that could parallel park themselves, before Google – my children were astonished to learn I was older than Google. No, we have to go further back than rotary dial phones, before telephones at all. Back when grain was ground by hand and grapes were squished with feet and water was carried a good long way. For this story, we also have to travel, halfway around the world – yes, it was a long time ago in a Galilee far, far away. It was a time of oppression and suppression. A time when the religious and political elites held tremendous power over the people, squeezing them of more and more of their freedom and finances, lining their own pockets and behaving quite badly indeed – I know, difficult to imagine.
*
Ok, there’s this guy – oh boy. You and I, we have seen some characters in our time, but this guy – he’s one for the books. His hair: long, curly, matted, wild – accented with bits of the forest floor where he slept. A wild man of the woods whose garments were as thick and rough as the skin of his hands! And he almost never came out of the woods, so I don’t know what he was eating in there – I heard it was bugs and honey but I just don’t know who to believe anymore these days.
Anyway, this wild man of the woods starts hanging around the outskirts of town, watching – thinking. Then, a couple of days of this, and he gets to grabbing people as they are just going about their business, grabbing them and insisting that they need to change their lives – poor Sarah up the block nearly had a heart attack after her first encounter with him. So each day he gets a little bolder, a little louder, comes a little bit closer into town, and at first people sort of wrote him off…ok John, sure, we’ll make sure to change our lives…yup, God’s Kingdom is here..uh huh. But then, we start to wonder, hey wait a minute, this is like what the Prophet Isaiah was saying…sort of. Like, we’ve been waiting for a long time…for a voice…a voice from the wilderness – but John? I mean, Isaiah told us this voice would tell us when God was coming back, bringing comfort and rescue – a time of hope, forgiveness, of healing…So then we start kind of whispering to one another. John is saying that time is…now?
So, then people start to get a bit freaked out – what if he is right? What if God is coming? What if God is here? Well, I’m not ready! So, they start listening to him – gathering all around, down by the river – and start, well, getting ready!
Ready to really change their lives: to clear away all of the old, the bad, the ugly, and begin again on the right path.
And, man, once things started to flow, WOW, then people just came in droves! They were coming from all around – they came to get ready; they came for change; they came for baptism.
John was plunging them in to water of the Jordan and they were coming out, I don’t know, ready, eager for God.
And let me tell you, it was just chaos – men, women, children, animals: shouts, laughter, cries, the braying of donkeys, the creaking of carts; the smell of fire and food on the beach.
It was a wild and unruly scene, a cacophony of sound, and it was joyful.
But then, along come the Pharisees and Sadducees – and everyone sort of backs up – what are they going to do? Shut this down? Arrest him? No! Turns out they were there to be baptized too! So they get to the lakeshore, and John sees them, and he stops, the and look in his eyes changes – like to steel.
And his face begins to contort into anger, and he explodes at them, screaming, “you brood of snakes! How dare you slither down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It’s your life that must change, not your skin!” (3:7-10, MSG)
Then he turns to all of us and says, “I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom of God life. But the real action comes next: The main character in this story—compared to him I’m a nobody— he will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out.” (3:11-12, MSG)
And he lifted up both of his arms like this, and we followed his gaze to a man walking from the direction of Galilee – was this him? We stood in silence as he walked down to the river’s edge and asked John to baptize him.
John looked just as shocked as we did. The fire had drained from his face, his whole person softened and he stood, mouth agape, staring at him.
His head began to move side to side, No, he said, no, “I am the one who needs to be baptized, not you! But Jesus insisted. “Do it. God’s work of putting things right through all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.” So John did it.” (3:14-15, MSG)
And in that moment when he was underwater, it was like time stopped – no one took a breath, the hairs on my arms stood right up, it was complete silence. And as John brought him up out of the water, it was like the veil between heaven and earth was pulled away, like we were in heaven but on the earth – then all of a sudden, like fire, like a dove, like…I don’t know! Like, the Spirit of God came in from all around and landed on this Man. Then booming into the silence came a clap of thunder from all sides – a voice - “This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love.” (3: 17, MSG).
BIG BREATH
And then, just like that, we began to breathe once again, the sounds of the birds, the donkeys, the children, it was all there once more. And the man walked out of the river, past us all, and out into the wilderness.
*
As many of you know, the other church I serve is Weird Church in Cumberland, and at Weird Church this month our focus is the theme, resting in the moment. At our discussion group on Tuesday, we collectively agreed that mindfulness, being present in the moment, was a relinquishment of regret over the past and a letting go of anxieties for the future. And that being present was, in fact, desirable, though tremendously challenging. Not only because we exist in a culture that demands we keep moving, striving for more achievement, more productivity, more wealth: more! Better! Faster!
But because resting in the moment – really being present in each MOMENT – brings us face to face with ourselves. Face to face with God. There is nothing to distract us. There is no to-do, there is no news story, no gossip. This is beautiful and terrifying, for some of us. Because some of us have spent a good long while not being willing or able to see ourselves clearly.
This is the moment that John spoke into all those years ago. It had been generations since Isaiah had told of the coming of the Messiah, the one who would usher in God’s Kingdom on earth. Generations. Generations of “get ready, any day now.” Generations of waiting and…(shrug) nothing. Perhaps after a bit these preparations, this readiness seems a little less urgent.
And along with that softening of urgency, maybe, like us, the folks hearing John’s voice from the wilderness had been busy. And stubborn, and maybe reluctant or even scared to do that important work of looking at the ways lives had gotten off track, sharing about it with God and one another, and being ready to move forward in a new way. Their urgency was perhaps…diminished. Perhaps our urgency is…diminished.
At the risk of sounding crazy, hear me now, “The Kingdom of God is here!” God is present in this moment, in each moment. Are we ready?
John called for folks to repent, to confess their sins – not as an exercise in shame and humiliation, but that they would reject the political and social commitments that kept them from living their lives as the people of God.
John makes this same call to us today – and we have this example, a template from John and Jesus on how to recognize the presence of God and enter fully into it.
We first share our sins – we confess, we recognize, we acknowledge all in ourselves that is objectionable. We look at our part in our past hurts and harms and take responsibility, take ownership. Not because God wants us grovelling, knees bleeding at their feet.
But because it is God’s greatest desire to release us from the bonds of our own shame, that fear from the past that weighs us down, keeps us separated.
Every time we turn toward God with humility, we discover that God has already turned to us.
That is the first part of what John and Jesus taught us: acknowledging and offering to God our past and present brokenness.
The next teaching is about offering God our future. On our own, we fret about what is to come: war, climate change, money, food, family – a hundred things.
But God’s got this.
As we plunge into the water, we are released from the past, and as we emerge, we are placing our hope in God.
This scene of Jesus’ baptism is, in all four Gospels, in all four accounts of Jesus life, the start of his ministry. It is the place of shift for his life, and it is the place of shift for our lives. A release from a destructive way of being and an aligning or realigning with God’s will for us.
Baptism marks a fork in the road where one path is chosen and another is rejected.
An acknowledgement of the love God is already heaping on us.
It is our surrender to God’s way – a way that is not merely individual moral conduct but rather a turn towards relationships restored, deep healing, and a love beyond our understanding. It is a trust that there is something much bigger and more beautiful going on than we can even imagine.
So, the act of baptism – or the remembrance of our baptism – is a releasing of the past and an embracing of God’s hope for the future.
It is also us claiming our true identity as beloved and precious children of God.
And I wish I could tell you that as the heavenly hand has signed our adoption papers our suffering will end, our questions will be answered and things will be pure bliss from here on out, but that simply isn’t the way this works. Because friends, the story just isn’t over yet.
But we are a part of the story.
We are a part of the story that started long before Jesus, a story that only makes sense with Jesus, and a story that continues today as we live our lives as disciples of Jesus.
It is in the act of baptism that we honour and recognize what God has already done – God has named, claimed, and called us.
God has replaced every title we have ever borne with the only one that matters: child of God. May we proudly claim it, humbly wear it, and let our very lives be driven by it.
Amen.