“Poets don’t make arguments, they reveal mysteries.” (M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, p. 131) And I would hope you might keep that distinction in mind today as we consider what the Baptism of Christ is saying to us in 2012. Because, you see, neither the Bible nor our tradition ever fully explains WHAT is taking place during baptism and WHY it matters.
• Did you know that? Scholars and theologians clearly don’t agree; and the five major religious traditions – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Baptist and Reformed – are equally at odds with one another about the meaning of Baptism, too.
• What’s more, even the Bible itself doesn’t explain what is going on when we experience Baptism – or why it is important to us –and yet ALL denominations and religious orders agree that being baptized is an essential ingredient for faithful discipleship.
This is fascinating to me: our Holy Scriptures bring up the importance of Christian baptism six different times – check it out in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Romans – while the Bible only refers to the Lord’s birth and Christmas twice. Clearly the baptism of Jesus is more important that his birth but we still don’t really know why and what that means for us.
• First, how baptism can be a reordering of our lives like the creation narrative suggest in Genesis 1.
• Second, how the baptism of Jesus offers each and all of us a chance to welcome and honor God’s grace as it is poured into our hearts.
• And third, how the blessing of being God’s Beloved empowers us to live by gratitude, faith, hope and love in a confusing and often broken world.
Are you with me? Let’s see what the poetry reveals, ok?
The Biblical story in Genesis 1 opens with the Spirit of the Lord hovering over the chaos of creation in order to give it shape and form. The words of tradition say: In the beginning – but listen to how Peterson reworks it:
We know this isn’t science – although it doesn’t oppose or contradict science either as the Creationist would have us believe – rather this is poetry: a carefully constructed theological poem that uses symbols and images to teach us at least two truths:
First, knowing that this poem was written by the former priests of Jerusalem while Israel was being held in captivity in Babylon – between 587 and 538 BCE – scholars now understand that this creation story was intended to bring pastoral comfort to a people in bondage, shame and fear.
• It was, in fact, a way of reassuring them that even in the darkest and most chaotic times, God’s Spirit is still present bringing light into our darkness, hope into our despair and clarity into our ignorance.
• It is to Israel, if you will, what the story of Christ’s death and resurrection is for you and me: a way of revealing God’s truest nature in spite of our feelings and the objective evidence in the moment.
What I’m trying to say is that one meaning of this poem is comfort. The prophet Isaiah – in the same period of time – put it like this in what has become one of our Advent hymns: Comfort, comfort ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God; comfort those who sit in darkness, mourning 'neath their sorrows' load; speak ye to Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them, tell her that her sins I cover, and her warfare now is over. Are you still with me?
Specifically, he notes that Augustine took the first two verses of the Genesis poem: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…”
… and finds a reference to the Holy Trinity in these verses, reading the ‘wind from God’ as a reference to the Holy Spirit and ‘in the beginning’ as a reference to Jesus who, according to St. John 1;1, ‘was with God (the Father) in the beginning.’ Augustine ends his exposition, in an affront to modern evangelical sensibilities, by pondering the wide number of other possible interpretations you might get from Genesis – condemning the tendency to advance only one reading to the exclusion of others.
‘Since, then, so rich a variety of highly plausible interpretations can be culled from these few words, consider how foolish it is rashly to assert that Moses intended just one particular meaning rather than any of the others. If we engage in hurtful strife as we attempt to expound his words, we offend against the very charity of God for the sake of which he said all those things.’ (p. 121)
Augustine is doing in his time what Jewish theologians have been doing for millennia and what we are invited to do now: playing with the text in a careful and loving way to make connections with our own lives and grow closer to God’s grace. It is called midrash – a Hebrew way of exploring a biblical text – that “goes beyond the simple distillation of religious, legal or moral teachings… and fills in many of the gaps left in the biblical narrative regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at… on the page.”
As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has said: (Midrash) involves seeing the Word of the Lord in both the black letters on the page as well as all the white space around them, too.” So when we use the Genesis story in relationship to our baptism…
• Could it be that here is a separating and reunion taking place in baptism that offers us clarity within life’s confusion?
• Commitment to living deeper within God’s grace rather than merely treading water? What are you thinking…?
It is my hunch that Christian baptism is partially about reordering and bringing some clarity to our chaos according to God’s grace. Because I don’t think it is just coincidence that the four times in the church year we are asked to read the stories about Christ’s baptism – and listen to the Lord’s response as “You are my beloved” – are also the bookends to what we call the two seasons of Ordinary Time.
And while this may be arcane to some, I think the wisdom of the Spirit is at work here. After Advent and Christmas come to a close with Epiphany, there are two seasons we call Ordinary Time: One is before Lent – the days between the Baptism of the Lord and Transfiguration Sunday – the Sunday before Ash Wednesday.
And then the longer Ordinary Time that takes place after Pentecost – between Trinity Sunday and the marking of Christ the King – and each of those days includes a reference to the baptism of Jesus and God’s announcement that: This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
• Think about this for a moment, what does Jesus do in this morning’s story according to Mark’s gospel to be called the beloved of the Lord?
• Anybody have a Bible: would you please read Mark 1: 9-11?
What does the story tell us? Did Jesus do anything besides show up at the River Jordan? Has he faced down Satan and his temptations in the desert? Has he gone to the Cross? Has he been betrayed by those who loved him? Or even begun his teaching ministry?
No, he hasn’t done anything yet – he just shows up – and upon being lifted from the water by John he hears the Lord announce: behold THIS is my beloved. And this, too, is what we are offered in our baptism: we don’t have to earn God’s love or prove our value to the Lord. We are God’s beloved just as Christ is.I’ve been touched and convinced by the way the pastor, Brian Stoffregen, puts it in his commentary noting that Biblical scholar:
(CrossMarks @ http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x4.htm)
• John’s baptism appears to be conditional, yes? With John you have to DO something – do you recall what it was?
• You have to confess your sins – you have to think about them and name them – and then humble yourselves for repentance.
• Do you know Psalm 139?
Oh yes, O Lord, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb. I thank you, High God—you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
• What about Psalm 84?
What a beautiful home, O Lord of Hosts, you offer: I've always longed to live in a place like this, always dreamed of a room in your house, where I could sing for joy to God-alive! Birds find nooks and crannies in your house; sparrows and swallows make nests there. They lay their eggs and raise their young, singing their songs in the place where we worship. How blessed they are to live and sing there! And how blessed all those in whom you live, whose lives become roads you travel…One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship, beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches. I'd rather scrub floors in the house of my God than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.
So first, baptism is gentle and poetic reordering of our lives that empowers us by grace to move from chaos to clarity.
Second, like Jesus, God offers us this intimacy by the Spirit in baptism not by what we do but because of God’s deep love for each and all of us.
And then third, as the Beloved of the Lord, we are asked to live into the spirit of gratitude by our baptism – sharing light and clarity, hope and integrity with others – for this is one way the miracle is multiplied.
• Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire the freedom of new life in Christ?
• Do you promise, by God’s grace, to follow in the way of our Savior, resisting oppression and evil and showing love and justice to others as best you are able?
• And do you promise to be a faithful member of the church, celebrating Christ’s presence and furthering his mission in the world?
We live in a world that is crazy busy: our bottom line values are greedy and self-centered, we are terrified and addicted and compulsive, we have elevated speed to the status of idolatry and are entertaining ourselves to death. In the baptism of Jesus – as in our own baptism, too – God has offered us an alternative that has always been better – the way of the Lord – salvation.
From the beginning, this alternative has offered us humanity and holiness, rest and work and play, light and darkness, balance and grace, peace and justice. In fact, the word for salvation in Hebrew – yashah – “basically means creating space, making room and living without compulsion.” (Jaco Hamman, A Play-Full Life, p. 46)
In baptism, we promise the Lord to let Christ make a space within and among us to grow and mature – to heal and nurture – to bless and forgive. It is not we who bring salvation – and healing and hope – it is God growing within us. And, THAT, beloved is what the sacred poetry reveals to us about the good news for today.
credits:
1) theautumnrain.blogspot.com
2) loc.gov
3) anglicansonline.org
4) spu.edu
5) arthistoryhousewife.blogspot.com
6) evangelicalfellowship.ca
7) nmhistorymuseum.org
8) jbu.edu
9) monkschronicle.wordpress.com
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