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BAPTISM OF JESUS, 01/13/2013
Sermon on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, by Paula L. Murray
15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, "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. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." 18So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.19But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done,20added to them all by shutting up John in prison.
21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22and 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."
I have by this time presided over far more funerals than I am comfortable recalling. I have buried members of the body of Christ and St. Jacobs Lutheran Church, people raised in this body but long separated from it by work or geography or a disinclination for religion, victims of murder or medical malpractice whose families were neighbors of the church, and total strangers whose families asked a funeral home director to find someone to say kind words over the body of the family's prodigal son or daughter. Prior to the actual funeral, there is time spent with the family, neighbors, mortician, lawyer - whoever takes final responsibility for the voiceless and sometimes friendless dead. The saddest words I hear are words like, "He alienated everyone in the family with the hateful things he said." Or, "She never told me she loved me." The day arrives, the words that mark the end of a life and declare our hope of the resurrection are said, the casket or urn is lowered; we walk away. What we are left with is what words previously said have made of relationships and reality.
A child is born, a daughter or son is given, and a biological relationship is established. What happens beyond that depends upon the words that are said from that point on, first by parents, then by others including, finally, the child. Words that speak of love and promise, of joys and burdens shared, of a commonly held hope larger and more transcendent than we are, those words build relationships and lives founded on and sustained by love. Most of us hear enough of these words to develop a sense of identity that is open to life and all it offers including real and lasting relationships with other people who have a similar capacity for love and sharing. But there are words that speak of contempt and futility, words that abort relationships in their birthing, and death and despair are the consequence. Worse yet, sometimes there are no words at all, no words to claim another for one's self, for love's sake or any other reason.
Here, though, in this morning's reading from the Gospel of Luke, are words that not only claim another but proclaim both love and delight in the being and the doing of the other. "This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." Jesus, no longer the child of last week's lesson but now a young man, comes up from the waters of his baptism. The skies are ripped open as when lightning and thunder cuts through the clouds of a raging storm. The Word is spoken as the Holy Spirit descends, as a dove, upon Jesus below. The whole family of the blessed Trinity is present. The Son ascends to the bank of the Jordon River, as do others there to make public witness of their repentance of their sin. But where they testify to their sorrow at aggrieving God, the Son, separating the waters of the Jordon as long ago he separated the waters of creation, inaugurates a new creation. The Father speaks the Word that claims the man as his own. This is my Son, the Beloved. The Word spoken is love. Love to form persons. Love to bind those persons together. Love to empower them for a ministry of redemption. The world's redemption, long in the making, is begun.
The ministry of redemption is not the result of humanity's yearning for lives free of the bleak darkness of sin and death, nor is it the work of humanity's hands. Where God gave light we turned to darkness. Where God gave life we sought death. We can only look at the mess we have made of our lives and pray for the chance to begin anew. God drives the ministry of redemption. It is his longing that we know the wholeness and peace he intended for us, his creation, that is the heart of this ministry that redeems. For this ministry alone the Son became man, that in his life and his preaching of the kingdom, in his death and resurrection, true light and true life might be reborn and sin and death be put to death.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. This is our witness in the creeds we speak as one body every Sunday morning. This is the Word given us that we repeat, that we might be formed by God's intent as disciples and as the body of Christ, the Church. The love that is the truest character of the Trinity - Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit - claims each of us as we come up from the waters of baptism, and binds us together as one people, one family, the family of God.
Though naming customs differ from peoples to peoples, families have names even as individuals do. Naming is claiming. The prophet Isaiah gave Israel this comfort, that they were sons and daughters of him who called them by name, who created them for his glory, who formed them and made them. The name of the family made by God in the waters of baptism is Christ. Christ has named us and claimed us; made us and remade us for his glory and that of the Father. As Christians we share the love of Christ, even as Christ shares that love with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Love gives shelter, protects, and purifies. "Do not fear," says the Lord God who has named us and claimed us, "for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."
The penalty for our sin has been paid by the one who would have required it of us, and we need not fear the fires of hell or even the fire of the Holy Spirit that burns away the Old Adam or the Old Eve and refines our faith. At the font we have been named and claimed, washed free of sin, and promised future mercies and life everlasting. This God has done for us through Jesus Christ his Son, in the Holy Spirit. Daughters and sons of the promise, heirs of eternal life, it is our duty and our joy to take the family legacy forward, to love one another as the Father who has claimed us through his claimed Son loves us, and to enter into the family business, the ministry of redemption.
It is way too easy to claim too little or too much for this ministry. Claim too much, and we mistake ourselves for God, thinking we may be gracious as he is gracious, and that we might respeak his word, and remake his creation after our own image. Claim too little, and we refuse to get off our haunches, thinking we may leave all up to God, even those aspects of the ministry of redemption that he clearly places in our hands.
The vocation of the family of God, named and claimed by him through his Son and the Holy Spirit in the waters of our baptism is the sharing of the love of Jesus. How, we might wonder, are we to do this? There is, after all, some disagreement amongst us as to what it means to share Jesus' love. Within a family, love is shared first in its naming and claiming. You are my daughter and I love you. You are my wife, and there is nothing you could ever do that would destroy my love for you. A family shares rituals which builds up their unity as a family, table grace, bath time games with the children, a glass of wine with the spouse and quiet conversation before bed. Family members do things both small and large that demonstrate love, everything from doing the dishes after dinner when it is someone else's turn to do them to giving up a much loved possession to finance tuition for a semester of college. A family shares both the joys of life, and its sorrows. The members of a family are there to mark new births, anniversaries of those births, and the last goodbyes given the beloved dead.
The family of God is that family spared the fear of death by God's life-giving, ever forgiving love. The love we share as Christians is marked by that grace-filled, divine love. We name one another and claim one another as brothers and sisters, sinners justified as are we by the compassionate mercy of our crucified God. In grateful tribute to the mercy offered us, we are a community characterized by our willingness to examine ourselves for sin and to forgive our brothers and sisters theirs. We gather with one another around God's Word and his Supper that we might together hear the Word that saves and receive the Bread that gives life. We pray for one another as need dictates, and to support one another when faith grows weak. We celebrate our family anniversaries and special days, days that bind us closer to God and to one another, the rites of Easter and Christmas, the days commemorating saints and martyrs. We share in events that celebrate our family, St. Jacobs Day, the Cookie Walk, Harvest Home and Vespers, events that draw us together across the many households of the church and even the generations. We give of our gifts to support the ministry of redemption, and those among us and in our community who are in need of help to cover their needs. We share Jesus' love with people who yearn for God's love, and meet them at the baptismal font when that love encompasses them. And when the time comes, we meet again at the base of that font to bid them a loving farewell and to commend them to the loving arms of their Lord and Savior.
Our Savior Jesus Christ walked into the waters of the Jordon River to be baptized, not as a sign of repentance for his sin, for he had none. He walked into those waters to fulfill all righteousness, to signal to the Father his willingness to take part in the fulfillment of the Father's plan for our salvation. He walked out of those waters to begin that ministry, and to gather together a people, a family, whose sins are cleansed by Word washed water, whose faith is refined by the Spirit's purifying fire, and who are promised eternal life. This family, like any other, is to grow in numbers and in grace, to the glory of God's holy Name.