Baptism

Lent 2A: Hey…Just Take the Other Road

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the-road-less-traveledOLD TESTAMENT:  Genesis 12:1-4a

Read the passage from Genesis

Remember that the importance of Genesis is that it makes the first claims about God’s character, God’s relationship to the world, and about God’s relationship to humanity.  It is, then, the very foundation of our beliefs.  Genesis reminds us that God’s work does not occur in a vacuum, but is shaped by the world and the historical setting.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis focus primarily on humanity, which proved to be a pretty rebellious lot. First we get kicked out of some metaphorical garden, then we hear tales of deceit and murder.  Then a massive flood ravishes us and wipes most of us out.  So our answer is to build a tower to get up there and see exactly what God is doing.  We don’t start well.

So, in the twelfth chapter, as what we call the “Patriarchal History” begins, there is a shift to a focus on one particular family.  In the passage that we read, interpreters usually consider vs. 1-3 to provide the key for the rest of Genesis.  All of a sudden, the camera zooms in to a single family of nomads in a small town in Mesopotamia and, finally, to a single individual.  This is where the history of Israel begins.  And although Abram will never actually see his future, his response will shape it. The responses focus on nationhood and blessing for the entire family and others through them. The thing is, Abram is called to leave (in order of intimacy) his country, his clan, his home and journey to whatever it is that God will reveal to him.  But the divine promise will begin during Abraham’s lifetime.  And, further…those who treat Israel in life-giving ways will also receive a blessing.

Abram is chosen to be the one through whom God’s blessing is showered upon the whole world.  But in order for this to happen, Abram is told to leave what he knows, to in effect sever ties and go to a new place. (We at this point immediately jump to what that would mean for us.)  But remember that Abram’s family was nomadic.  They probably didn’t really have a concept of home anyway.  And there really wasn’t a family, to speak of—Abram had probably long ago outlived his parents and he had no children.  So what was he leaving?  Maybe God was calling him away from hopelessness and loneliness and finally showing him purpose, showing him home.

And the Lord promises that Abram will not be alone.  And, more than that, God promises blessing.  No longer is this just one person or one family; it is the conduit to God showering blessing throughout the world.  And yet, Abram was as unlikely a candidate as a candidate can be.  For one thing he was getting on in years.  And, besides that, this old married couple had no children.  Sarah was considered barren.  How in the world could she produce offspring?

So, Abram is being called into the unknown and is told to leave everything he knows behind.  Talk about wandering in the wilderness!  It’s a great Lenten passage.  How many of us would leave behind everything that we are and everything that we have and enter the unknown as a blank slate on which God can begin to draw a masterpiece?  Abram is called to be a blessing, the Hebrew Parshas Lech Lecha. It becomes an integral part of the Genesis story and is used eighty-eight times in the book.  A blessing is a gift.  It involves every sphere of existence.  It is more than what we 21st century hearers have allowed it to be.  It is not payment for a life well-lived. “Being blessed” is being recreated.  (For Abram, this meant moving from a life of nomadic purposelessness to being the “father of a great nation” and, thousands of years later, the patriarch of three world religions.)  It takes time.  I think to be a blessing means that one enters the story.  God calls, God promises, and God walks with us.  That is how God is revealed.  But the blessing doesn’t come and the blessing doesn’t continue unless one enters the story.  God calls, God promises, and God blesses.

 

  1. What is your response to this short passage?
  2. What does this speak to you about calling?
  3. So, what does that mean to you to be a “blessing”? How do we misconstrue that meaning?
  4. How does this passage speak to us in our Lenten journey?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Read the passage from Romans

The main part of the fourth chapter of Romans revolves around the idea that Christians, Jews and Gentiles alike, are now found to be part of Abraham’s offspring.  Now this in and of itself was quite a stretch.  After all Abraham was considered a unique part of what it meant to be a person of the Jewish faith.  But Paul is claiming that the promises and blessings of Abraham extend to ALL people.  But the audience that Paul was addressing was as diverse as our society is.  They all grew up with “acceptable norms” that Paul was now telling them was not even necessarily the way of God.  So, all these things that they thought would make them “right” with God didn’t really matter at all.  It had to be hard for them to hear.

The assumption had always been (and probably is for many hearers today) that Abraham was blessed because he followed God, because he DID was God told him to do.  But Paul is now contending that it had nothing to do with what Abraham did or what laws he followed but the fact that he had faith in God.  God is not waiting around for us to do something; God blesses us as children of God.

Paul’s claim means that Abraham was not made right before God because he had rightly observed the laws.  The right relationship was not something that Abraham had earned.  It was freely offered from God because Abraham believed in what God had promised and what God offered.  It wasn’t even BECAUSE Abraham believed.  It was just that Abraham’s belief meant that he was in right relationship.  Paul is almost contending that our belief is a fruit, rather than a reason for, a right relationship with God.  The right relationship is a free and undeserved gift.  (Sounds like grace to me!)  For Paul, God’s goodness was manifest in Christ and yet was also there all along.  And God’s goodness was there for all, whether or not they followed the rules.  Faith cannot be defined; it must be lived. This was a totally new way of looking at faith for these hearers.  Who are we kidding?  It’s new for many of us too!

 

An important part of the Lenten journey is learning to reject old patterns and old ways of being that keep us from accepting God’s gift of grace and new life.  But before we reflect on one such challenge, Paul’s challenge to the law, let us first think about how difficult and challenging it is to change something more mundane; something like crossing the street.

If one was raised in North America one learned, as a child, to cross the street looking first to the left, and then to the right. Why? In North America cars, by law, drive on the right hand side of the road. So, when we travel to the British Isles, something that is second nature to us — crossing, can become dangerous and life threatening. When stepping off the curb we must first look to our right lest we are hit by oncoming traffic. In London they recognize this is a major problem for foreign visitors. If you look down while standing at an intersection you will often see stenciled, in large white letters, the admonition “LOOK RIGHT.”

The old way of thinking about Abraham, Paul tells us, is to think that Abraham was honored and praised by God by his works. Paul wanted people to look in a different direction. Look not to the works of the law, but to faith. (From commentary on this passage by Lucy Lind Hogan, available at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/20/2011, accessed 15 March, 2011.)

 

  1. What is your response to this short passage?
  2. What, for you, is “righteousness”, or being in “right relationship” with God?
  3. What would change if we viewed our belief as a fruit of right relationship rather than a prerequisite?

 

 

GOSPEL:  John 3: 1-17

Read the Gospel passage

Note that Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, a Sanhedrin, under scrutiny, seeks out Jesus.  This is, obviously, a good thing.  But he does it under the cloak of night.  (“Those who prefer darkness to light”)  He cannot let on that he is following Jesus—giving in to this rebel, this radical.  But he publicly acknowledges Jesus—as rabbi (teacher), as “from God”, and as a leader of the community. In this passage, the Greek word anothen means both “from above” or “again” or “anew”.  So this passage becomes ambiguous.   To be born anothen speaks both of a time of birth (again) and a place of birth (above).  It implies that the Kingdom of God is both temporal and spatial. But Nicodemus focuses on one meaning (again) and protests that that is impossible.  But Jesus brings about new images, including those of water and the spirit (implying Baptism).

When you read this, you do sense that Nicodemus must have been a good teacher.  He was astute and knew what questions to ask.  He was diligent as he studied and explored to get to the truth.  But how could he believe this circular reasoning that Jesus was espousing?   Part of the problem, it seemed, was that Nicodemus and Jesus had completely different understandings of what “believe” was.  Nicodemus had, after all, accepted Jesus’ propositions.  He had probably even taught it.  But Jesus was not asking for people to believe what he did or believe what he said.

There is a difference between believing Christ and believing IN Christ.  Believing IN means that you enter into relationship, that you trust with everything that you are, with everything that is your life. It is much more visceral than Nicodemus was really read to accept.  Nicodemus wanted to understand it within the intellectual understanding of God that he had.  But Jesus was telling him that there was a different way.  Jesus was inviting, indeed almost daring, Nicodemus to believe in this new way, to turn his life, his doubts, his heart, and even his very learned mind over to God.

“How can this be?”  Those are Nicodemus’ last words in this passage, which sort of makes him a patron saint for all of us who from time to time get stuck at the foot of the mountain, weighed down by our own understandings of who God is, without the faintest idea of how to begin to ascend.  But there’s Jesus.  “Watch me.  Put your hand here.  Now your foot.  Don’t think about it so hard.  Just do as I do.  Believe in me.  And follow me….this way!

Jesus wants Nicodemus to see the difference between dead religion and living faith.  To borrow an analogy from Jewish theologian Martin Buber, he wants him to see the difference between reading a menu and having dinner.  Until you are born of God, you will always be an observer rather than a participant in the spiritual quest.

Yet the “menu” offered by religion may look so intriguing that the feast of transforming faith can be missed.  Menus describe.  They communicate information about the meals served by a particular restaurant.  This is what religion does.  It describes what God is like, what doctrines should be believed, what rituals should be practiced.  Nicodemus had religion.  As a Pharisee, he had been reading a menu for years, so preoccupied with knowledge about God that he had missed the joy that knowledge of God can bring.  (From From Sacrifice to Celebration:  A Lenten Journey, by Evan Drake Howard, p. 19)

 

  1. What is your response to this short passage?
  2. What does the term “born again” mean for you? What meaning is conveyed with these two meanings.
  3. What is the difference between believing Christ and believing in Christ?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

Blessing is one of the ways that God makes the presence of God known here and now. (Joan Chittister, in Listen with the Heart:  Sacred Moments in Everyday Life, p. 8)

There are few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into [God’s] hands and let themselves be formed by grace. (St. Ignatius of Loyola, 16th century)

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. (G. K. Chesterton)

Closing

 

My heart’s eyes behold your Divine Glory!  From whence does my help come?  My help comes from You, who created heaven and earth.  You strengthen and uphold me, You, who are ever by my side.  Behold!  You who watch over the nations will see all hearts awaken to the Light.  For You are the Great Counselor; You dwell within all hearts, that we might respond to the Universal Heart—Like the sun, that nourishes us by day, like the stars that guide the wayfarer at night.  In You we shall not be afraid of the darkness, for You are the Light of my life.  May You keep us in our going out and our coming in from this time forth and forevermore.  Amen. (“Psalm 121”, in Psalms for Praying:  An Invitation to Wholeness, Nan C. Merrill, p. 269)

Baptism of Christ A: From the Water

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baptism-of-jesus-bonnell
“Baptism of Jesus” (Bonnell)

OLD TESTAMENT:  Isaiah 42: 1-9

Read the passage from Isaiah

We are used to reading this passage and immediately going to the context of Christ.  In the preceding chapter, though (verses 8-9), the name “servant” refers to the Jacob-Israel-Abraham covenantal relationship with God.  This means that the “servant” is not only the ancestors but also the nations that derived and benefited from that covenantal relationship. (the “nations” to which justice shall be brought forth.).  So, in its original context, the “servant” is thought to be Israel or the prophet as a representative Israelite.

The main purpose of this passage, though, is to draw attention to the One God who is theirs (over and above other “gods”).  This passage is the first of the four “servant songs” from Second Isaiah.  (Remember that Second Isaiah encompasses chapters 40-55 and was probably written at the end of the exile, perhaps about 540 BCE.)  The other “servant songs” are 49:1-6, 50: 4-11, and 52:13-53:12.  These were first isolated in the 19th century as one literary unit.  The thinking was that they were from a hand later than the original author.  But it’s still important to think of them as set within the other writings.

Yahweh presents the servant as his chosen agent.  Gifted with the Spirit, the servant will execute the divine plan for the world and bring forth justice to the nations.  It is interesting to note that God does not openly “delight” in just anything according to the Scripture.  But God delights in the created world, the creation of humans and now, the Servant.  So the whole idea of how the Servant delights God is something that we should consider.  What does it mean to “delight”?

In verse 5, God is identified as Creator and the one who empowers the people.  On this basis, God calls and protects the servant, which has social consequences in the opening of blind eyes and liberating of prisoners.  Verse 8 is an affirmation of the one true God against all the other deities who were being presented to Israel during the Babylonian exile.  At the end of the passage, God announces that what was promised before has already happened and now new things are being promised.  In essence, the “servant” introduces a new way of looking at God and our relationship with God.  The traditional image of God as a “warrior” becomes the image of God as one who is birthing something new.

Now remember that the people to whom this was directed had never actually seen the Judean Promised Land.  They had heard about it from their grandparents and parents but they themselves had spent a lifetime living in what was essentially a sort of Judean ghetto in the midst of Babylon.  They were used to living within the worship of the Babylonian god Marduk and it seemed more and more that YHWH had been defeated and was long gone.  So, the idea of God bringing comfort was indeed something new.  It was always good to remember the past and to bask in it, but God is calling us to step forward into newness.

These servant songs, and probably this one in particular, have had much to do with the shaping of our own development of who we as Christians think Jesus Christ is.  Remember that they were not necessarily written with the intent of prophesying the birth of Christ, although we have sort of “usurped” them with that meaning.  But the idea of one who brings comfort and justice and a new way of being is exactly what we got.  Whoever the servant is, God uses this one to bring justice and righteousness and peace and newness into a hurting world.

 

  1. What comes to mind for you in reading this passage?
  2. What does the use of the term “servant” mean for us?
  3. What does it mean for us that the “servant” delights God?
  4. If we look upon the “servant” as Israel and Israel’s ancestors, what does that mean for us?
  5. How does this passage speak to us today?
  6. What does this vision of a just world mean for us today?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Acts 10: 34-43

Read the passage from Acts

Even though it is sparsely used in the weekly lectionary readings, the writing known to us as The Acts of the Apostles is important for us.  It began as a written conversation between a storyteller (Luke) and his story’s first reader (Theophilus).  But it is essentially an anonymous book.  The traditions assert that the evangelist Luke wrote both the Third Gospel and Acts, but that is not definitely known.  But the fact that we are not given definitive information as to who the author was (or even exactly when the work was written) indicates that the focus is (and should be) on the story rather than the writer’s identity.

Theophilus, the first reader of Acts, is otherwise unknown to us.  Evidently, Theophilus is a new, although socially prominent, believer.  His name, in Greek, means “dear to God”, leading some to speculate that the name is the writer’s clever metaphor for every new Christian seeking theological instruction.  (Not unlike the use of the “servant” as a metaphor for all of God’s followers.)

Acts was apparently written with several focuses in mind:  (1) To bring unity and reconciliation to faith communities, (2) To challenge idolatry and other theological crises, (3) To underscore the authority and importance of faith traditions for the future of the church, (4) To guide the church in its evangelistic mission. (Go make of all disciples.), and, probably most importantly, (5) To deepen the faith of new believers.  The passage that we read begins with the realization that the mission of God is inclusive.  But the Biblical principle of divine impartiality comes with a critical aspect:  Although God does not discriminate by ethnic group or nationality, God does indeed single out those “in every nation…who hear him and do what is right.”

The passage recounts the message of God’s perfect peace as coming first to Israel and is then spread through Judea and then throughout the world.  Essentially, God is Lord over all.  Peter’s witness to the resurrected Jesus presumes a special relationship with him and a privileged knowledge of him, which obligates him “to testify”.  Those believers who count themselves among God’s “elect” are often including the notion that God has not chosen anyone else who disagrees with their beliefs and their customs.  Yet what became crystal clear to Peter is that to do so is not our prerogative.  It is God alone who judges the living and the dead.  One of the most surprising features of Acts is the diversity of people God calls to be included among God’s people.  God has no favorites.  God delights in what is right and just.  Essentially, it is not about us.  Rev. Rev. Bill Long said that “we miss more than half of the message of the resurrection of Christ if we view it as a story of our own personal salvation.”  Perhaps our spiritual walk is not so much about doing what we think God wants us to do as it is about being awakened to the way God is leading us through our life.

 

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. This seems to debuke the idea of God choosing a specific group of people. What does that mean for you?
  3. What does it mean to think of the Gospel as something more than a personal salvation story?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 3: 13-17

Read the Gospel passage

This passage is pretty interesting the way it begins.  Think about it…we’ve heard the birth story.  We’ve lived with mangers and shepherds and magi for the last several weeks now.  But then, the story seems to stop, suspended for thirty years while Jesus grew and matured (with the exception of the eleven-verse glimpse that Luke gives us with the story of a twelve-year old Jesus going into the temple.)  And then…look at the way it begins.  Then…as if now was the time.  As if now Jesus is finally ready.  As if, finally, the world has room.  Then…

Thirty years was the traditional time for a rabbi to wait to commit himself to God.  Jesus would have been caring for his mother, making a living, and preparing himself for ministry.  I don’t really think that, contrary to what some may say, Jesus was confused about these roles.  He was always serving God.  But now…then…the time had come.  And as eternity dawns, Jesus is ready to begin.  And so he goes to John at the Jordan to be baptized and for a very short amount of time was then actually a disciple, a follower, of John’s.  Then…Jesus is ready to begin.  Eternity dawns.

John was used to baptizing people as a sort of ritual cleansing of those who had repented, who had turned their lives around. Cleansing was usual throughout the Old Testament. (“Create in me a clean heart”…”Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.”)  But that was a action of John’s.  So you can understand why he was so uncomfortable.  But Jesus reassures him.  And as Jesus is baptized, the action shifts.  Then…the heavens open up and spill into the earth and the Spirit emerges.  And we hear what all of Creation has strained to hear:  “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  The work has begun.

In her book, Calling: A Song for the Baptized, Caroline Westerhoff says that “at baptism we are incorporated into Christ’s body, infused with Christ’s character, and empowered to be Christ’s presence in the world.  Ministry is not something in particular that we do.  It is what we are about in everything we do.”  In other words, our own Baptism sweeps us into that dawn that Jesus’ baptism began.  Westerhoff also refers to our baptism as our “ordination” to ministry.

When God calls, people respond in a variety of ways.  Some pursue ordination and others put pillows over their heads, but the vast majority seek to answer God by changing how they live their more or less ordinary lives.  It can be a frustrating experience, because deciding what is called for means nothing less than deciding what it means to be a Christian in a post-Christian world.  Is it a matter of changing who you are—becoming a kinder, more spiritual person?  Or is it a matter of changing what you do—looking for a new job, becoming more involved at church, or witnessing to the neighbors?  What does God want from us, and how can we comply? (Barbara Brown Taylor, in The Preaching Life, p. 26.)

This story of Jesus’ Baptism calls us to remember our own.  It, too, is our beginning as the gift of God’s grace washes away those things that impede our relationship with God and gives us new birth, new life.  It is our own beginning, as we are named “Christian”, begin our own journey toward God, and become who God intends us to be.  And for each of us, whether or not we noticed it, the heavens opened up and the Spirit emerged.  And we, too, were conferred with a title.  “This is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

“Remember your Baptism”.  Martin Luther said that “A truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism once begun and ever to be continued.”  It is remembering every single day who we are, whose we are, and how beloved we are.  God has made something new.  But we have to be willing to let go of the old.  Nelle Morton said that “you are destined to fly, but that cocoon has got to go.”  So, let go.  Then…the journey begins.  You are part of something beyond yourself, beyond what you know, and beyond what you can remember.  Rainer Maria Rilke once said that “the future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”  And from the water, our future happens and we are made into something new, and once and for all, we see that we are truly a beloved son or daughter of God, with whom God is well pleased.  From the water, we become who we were meant to be.

 

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What meaning does this bring to the remembrance of your own baptism?
  3. What does the notion of your being “ordained” to ministry mean for you?
  4. In what ways do we as a community fall short of realizing that?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

The desire to find God and to see God and to love God is the one thing that matters. (Thomas Merton)

Later, after the angels, after the stable, after the Child, they went back…as we always must, back to the world that doesn’t understand our talk of angels and stars and especially not the Child.  We go back complaining that it doesn’t’ last.  They went back singing praises to God!  We do have to go back, but we can still sing the alleluias!  (From “Later”, in Kneeling in Bethlehem, by Ann Weems, 86)

What we are looking for on earth and in earth and in our lives is the process that can unlock for us the mystery of meaningfulness in our daily lives.  It has been the best-kept secret down through the ages because it is so simple.  Truly, the last place it would ever occur to most of us to find the sacred would be in the commonplace of our everyday lives and all about us in nature and in simple things.   (Alice O. Howell, The Dove in the Stone)

 

 

Closing

 

Think about it…Jesus was still wet with water after John had baptized him when he stood to enter his ministry in full submission to God.  As he stood in the Jordan and the heavens spilled into the earth, all of humanity stood with him.  We now stand, wet with those same waters, as we, too, are called into ministry in the name of Christ.  As we emerge, we feel a cool refreshing breeze of new life.  Breathe in.  It will be with you always.  Then…it is up to you to finish the story.  Then…the journey begins.  So remember who and whose you are.  Remember your baptism and be thankful for it is who you are.

 

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

More than once today I have thrown down my notebook, my pen, and finally myself onto this bed.  Jordan springs from either eye, and it may look like I am weeping from this wrestling, but really I am standing at the water, looking for the one who will pull me under and holler out my name. (“Jordan”, in In Wisdom’s Path, by Jan Richardson, 36