The Words of God

The baptism of Jesus is a dramatic story, made even more dramatic by the voice that comes from heaven saying “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  If you think back to the first words of God in the Bible, “Let there be light” you can’t help reflecting on the power of God’s words.  But it is important not to confuse God’s words with the words written about God, or with God’s WORD, that is, Jesus Christ.  Here’s what I had to say about all of that on Sunday …

The Words of God

Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11

Mark doesn’t waste any time. The second gospel has no scenes in Bethlehem – no manger, no shepherds, no angels, no magi. The story does not wade in the water; it plunges right in and goes deep.

The story goes deep because John the baptizer is a powerful figure; he reminds us of the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. He speaks truthfully in a way that often sounds very harsh (though that is more evident in the first gospel, where he calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers and tells stories about the burning of the chaff when it is separated from the wheat). He lives in the wilderness, apparently in pretty dramatic fashion, since we are told that he wears a garment of camel’s hair and eats locusts and wild honey.

The story goes deep because John is talking about sin. Sin, if we take it seriously, always occasions deep conversation. To name our sin, we must first name the virtues that we are called to uphold, then fearlessly look at ourselves and be willing to identify and name those times and places where we have failed to live those virtues. It is troubling to make that inventory and embarrassing to speak the results out loud. To think about sin we must be willing to be wrong, willing to confess our poor or selfish choices, willing to face the consequences of those choices.

The story goes deep because John is talking about repentance, about turning away from one way of behaving, believing, and acting, and towards a different ways of doing those things. Changing even the smallest habits in our daily lives is difficult; how much more difficult to change the patterns of behavior that lead us into sin, or that fail to lead us out …

The story goes deep because John is talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the basic unit of faithful living. Until and unless we can cultivate the gift of forgiveness, we are stuck in our self-centered world, held captive by our own selfishness, our narrow mindedness, and our stubbornness.

Please notice that forgiveness is a difficult thing to participate in whether you are the one who is doing the forgiving or the one who is being forgiven. The very fact of unresolved anger, resentment, or conflict traps all parties in an unhealthy limbo – unable to move forward with confidence or to look back with appreciation or even nostalgia. Most of us have experienced how hard it is to be the forgiver – to let go of a grievance (which might, of course, be entirely justified) and be willing to start over. What is curious – and often startling – is how hard it is to be forgiven. Often our anger or resentment serves to keep us connected with someone we have deep feelings for; to accept forgiveness is to acknowledge that the relationship has changed, perhaps forever.

The story goes deep because John is preparing the people around him for an earthshaking event. Though his ministry was apparently powerful (he drew “all the people of Jerusalem” we are told …), he was persistently humble about it. He was just the one preparing the way; the one who was yet to come would be the one with power and presence.

And the story is deep, of course, because the one who was yet to come did come – came to the Jordan to be baptized by John. In the other gospel accounts John protests, but Mark does not take the time to report that conversation. In this version, Jesus simply comes to the Jordan and is baptized by John.

This gospel words are simple, but the scene that follows this baptism is extraordinary: Jesus sees the heaven torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And there is the voice – the voice: “You are my Son, the beloved: with you I am well pleased.” [Mark 1:11]

It is the voice of God, of course – the voice that we are always hoping to hear, always fearing that we will hear, always wondering if we have somehow missed hearing. In our experience – and in the reports of the gospel writers – this kind of clear, public speech by God is rare. So we listen with special care to hear what is said.

“You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus, it seems, has stepped into very deep water indeed. All of what is to come among the first disciples, all that is to come with all the disciples between the twelve he will gather in the first century to the millions who are gathered in the twenty-first century, all of that is begun here, with this extravagant statement by God. It is a statement that claims Jesus as God’s own, names Jesus as the son of God, and proclaims Jesus as beloved and pleasing.

These deep waters are the waters of baptism, and the words of God spoken to Jesus are spoken in some way to every person who has been baptized since that time. The form of the baptism doesn’t matter: the water may be sprinkled or poured or waiting in a pool or a river. What is consistent, across all of the ways that baptism has been practiced through the centuries, is this conviction: that God claims us as God’s own, names us as children, and proclaims that we are beloved and pleasing to the one who is the maker of the whole universe. When we remember this, when we hear this story in all of its extraordinary vibrancy, we can no longer think of baptism as just an pleasant little ceremony to welcome infants into the church (along with a few adults who somehow missed out on this passage along the way). When we remember God’s voice coming to Jesus through a break in the heavens, we recognize the creative power of divine words to form and transform us. When God speaks, we are changed. We do not belong entirely to ourselves, and the one to whom we belong holds us in love.

It is not the first time, nor the last, that we will encounter the power of God’s creative word. We were reminded this morning of the first great story of creation, in which God’s voice calls the worlds into being. And we remember the beauty of the beginning of the fourth gospel, when John proclaims “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1]

In all of this, we need not to confuse the words of God with the Word of God, nor with the words about God that are found in scripture. There are only a few words attributed directly to God in the Gospels and the book of Acts. The gospel writers were writing about Jesus and about the people around Jesus, so most of the dialogue that we hear comes from the voices of the human characters. We believe that we can come to know God through their actions and experiences, their words about God. The Word of God (capitalized and perhaps italicized), as we hear it in the prologue to the Gospel of John, is Jesus Christ himself. As you may know, this passage uses the Greek word “Logos,” which is only roughly translated by the English word “word.” Inexact as this familiar translation may be, it binds together the generative power of God in creation at large with the relational power of God in naming and claiming creatures in particular.

But here, in this story, we have all three: we have the words spoken by God, we have the words describing this event, and we have Jesus, the Word made flesh who came to dwell among us.

This story of the baptism of Jesus comes to us every year in January, and I sometimes think of it as the theological version of New Year’s Resolutions. The message of John the Baptizer is about sin, repentance, and forgiveness – and so are our New Year’s resolutions.

This year, I hope that you will plunge deeper into the water to make those resolutions. It is all well and good to resolve to exercise more or send more baby pictures to Aunt Gertrude. But we all know that there are parts of our selves – our actions, our beliefs, our inconsistencies – that truly need to be transformed. You might or might not use the word “sin” to describe these things, but each of us knows where the wrinkles are in our souls.

So at their best, New Year’s resolutions – whether for ourselves individually, or for our community, our nation, or the world – our New Year’s resolutions are about repentance, about turning and going in a new direction. We hear those words from our newly elected President, but we need to hear them also in our own hearts.

And New Year’s resolutions are about forgiveness. Sometimes the very flaw we have targeted is our own hard-heartedness about old feuds, old hurts, or old resentments. Sometimes the flaw is our participation in those feuds and hurtful interactions. Sometimes we need to forgive, and sometimes we are in need of forgiveness.

Either way, this is a good time to plunge into the waters. It is a good time to recall the words that tell the story of baptism, a good time to encounter the one who is the Word of God, and good time listen for the voice that speaks yet again, to each of us, those precious words: You are my child, the beloved; in you I am well pleased.

Amen.

Prayer for January 11, 2009

Note: This is not the prayer we used in worship on Sunday; seminary intern Val Veo offered the pastoral prayer.

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we offer our prayers this morning for the New Year.

We pray that this year we will pay less attention to what we want to have for ourselves and more attention to what you want us to do for others.

We pray that this year we will spend less energy making resolutions to change ourselves, and more energy receiving the transformations that you make in our lives.

We pray that this year we will spend less time on activities that are careless and meaningless, and more time doing what we truly and deeply value.

We pray that this year we may be effective advocates for peace.

We pray that this year we may be passionate workers for justice.

We pray that this year we may care more for reconciliation and healing than for we do for victory.

And we pray that this year we may be more faithful disciples of your holy way.

All these things we ask in the name of the one whose birth brought the light than the darkness cannot overcome, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us …