I Have …

Sunday, January 9th, 2005
(Third after Christmas)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 3:13-17; Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ 15But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented. 16And 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. 17And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

Isaiah 42:1-9

1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 2He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 5 Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, 7to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. 9See, the former things have come to pass, and new
things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

We’re still at the beginning of the year, in relation to the calendar. So it seems entirely appropriate to be reading of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The event marked by his Baptism in the Jordan River. Most often it is quoted in the context of a service which includes a Baptism or two. My friend Jay Voorhees is doing just that this morning at Antioch United Methodist church in Nashville. He’s drawing the parallels between how we approach Baptism and how the Jewish faith celebrates Yom Kippur; as a dedication of the upcoming year to God. Again, an entirely appropriate and meaningful parallel. There are some differences in how Methodists and Baptists approach the act of Baptism, but one thing that he noted made me sit up and think.

What we read in the text is that after Jesus came up out of the water, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove.” As Baptists, we traditionally emphasize the fact that following Christ in the waters of Baptism is a sign of obedience.

It is.

We should “so seek to follow Christ ourselves” that that would be a step we can take willingly and joyfully, an act that reminds us of the death, burial, and resurrection not only of Christ, but of ourselves – to our old life, and of being reborn in the newness of life in Christ. Our focus is on the responsive nature of our action. In other words, we do it in response to what God has done in our lives. But let’s try this morning to look at it from another angle.

Baptism is a powerful thing. To be honest with you, when I first met Father Duffy, the priest at St. Timothy’s over in Tappahannock, I was surprised. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned a man who was attending church there and wanted to join the parish. This man had apparently been a member here at some point in the past, and Father Duffy wanted to confirm if the man had been baptized here. His reason was simple. The Catholic Church does not re-baptize anyone if they’ve already been baptized in another Christian tradition.

What surprised me about that was that there really is more going on in the act of baptism than simply an obedient response on the part of the person being baptized. It is somewhat foreign to me, this idea that there’s more going on … I’m not always comfortable with anything that smacks of mysticism, but I have come to the realization that in order to embrace faith, there is a mystic element to the practice of faith that MUST be present in order for us to allow for the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our hearts, and in our work. Consider for a moment that the act is not just one of obedience, but that it is also a signal, a marker to us that God is at work in our lives from then on – and usually BEFORE the – on.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings tells the story of an angel that is blown down to earth by a violent rainstorm, while on an errand from God. A peasant couple, Pelayo and Elisenda, find him. They are shocked when they find him, but they never falter, or question his existence. In THAT sense, they take the fact that they came across a heavenly being on their walk through the country completely in stride. “Before the arrival of the angel, they are a simple, poor family with a dying son. Once the angel is captured, the son recovers and the family uses the angel for financial gain. Marquez shows us true human nature. An incredible being falls to the Earth and the humans use it to make a fast buck.” [1]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author, uses the hallmark of his style of writing – what has come to be regarded as a genre unto itself – ‘Magical Realism’, throughout the story.

"Magical realism expands the categories of the real so as to encompass myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena in Nature or experience which European realism excluded"[2]

I’m not proposing we should adopt a form of literature to provide the guideline for how we should live our lives, but we could take a hint from it.

If we hold God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world today to be central and true to our faith, then we can live every day with a Magical realism that far surpasses any literary attempt to put it into words.

I was looking through a promotional brochure last night for a young adult conference, and the tag line was ‘blur the line between faith and life’.

I’m thinking there should be no line – blurry or otherwise – between faith and life. I can understand what the promoter was trying to say, but I’m not so sure we should allow for any distinction between how ‘faith’ operates in our lives and how we live our regular, day-to-day lives. It gives the impression that we can appropriately separate the two.

We can of course. It’s easy if you miss the point. The question is, is that something you WANT to do, or something that just happened without your realizing it?

If our example is Jesus, and he is, then there was no compartmentalization going on in his life and faith. For him, to breath was to be in communion with God. To confront the Pharisees and Sadducees, and to heal the lepers and the paralytics were all just as much acts of worship as they were events that found their way in to the run-of-the-mill daily occurrences in the lives of the people of Galilee and Judea. He didn’t save the good stuff for Sundays.

Let’s jump to the Isaiah passage. It picks up where the passage in Matthew lets off. In it, God continues to extol the virtues and acts of the Messiah. (Read).

Notice the shift from the second person (he will bring forth justice, he will not cry, he will not break …), to the first person (I have called you, I have taken you, I have given you …).

In those few sentences we see the whole movement of the Gospel: from the distant to the immediate, from impersonal, to the personal. From the other, unknowable God, to the God who walked among us. From the vengeful, angry, jealous God, to the God who would invite us each to gather around the table and join him in the feast, and walk with him in relationship, in love, and in discipleship.

And so we come to the table, at the invitation of the most high God.

Let’s pray.


[1] Gabriel García Márquez, eds. Bernard McGuirk and Richard Cardwell, p 204.
[2] Ibid, p 45