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January 13, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-38, 42-43, Matthew 3:13-17
“Spirit-Born & Beloved: Simple Justice, or Special
Favor?”
Portrayal of a sad, cold- and lonely-looking Jesus steeped in the river with a dove
above him on the cover of our bulletin suggests he has seen and gone through everything
since the wise men’s visit to the manger a mere week ago! This looks like
no young upstart fresh out of seminary headed for first appointment – but like a
veteran of life’s crises weary already with weight of the world on his shoulders.
This is a serious moment of breaking with all conventional culture. Baptism
was reserved for outsiders converting to Judaism. No self-respecting, practicing
insider was thought to need confessing, repenting, cleansing, renewing. Jesus
is seriously placing himself on the very margins of respectability – and he looks
it!
Can we find ourselves in this picture of Jesus? This picture of Jesus in us?
This picture of someone who has literally grown up in a hurry? Though here
he looks not “up” but “down” – someone who is all the way “down” with us this day.
Someone who has been plunged into the depths of who we are and of what self-awareness
might cost us? Someone who has read Isaiah’s messianic job description and
applied it to themselves? Who is led from this moment by the same Spirit for
forty days in the wilderness testing the call and ways of responding to it?
Are we ready to accept our place with him in the waters of life, in the universe
of God’s life and God’s love, God’s vision and God’s hope for us – not only in 2008
– but in every last year and time of our lives?! Allowing ourselves to be
Spirit-born and beloved by God and the universe this morning?
Especially if you are looking and feeling like this Jesus, but no matter what’s
going on in your loveable life, in your precious person -- Come to the waters
this morning! The waters bring storms and floods to our lives, of course –
as near as the floods in Fernley, as devastating as those some of us are
preparing to go to New Orleans in solidarity with. Yet God’s promise to us
in the waters is cosmic -- perfected for billions of years! God is more
gifted, creative – the promise more complex, diverse – than ever we imagine!
And each of us comes to the waters like a new-born African child in the hands of
a parent lifting us to the vast skies at midnight and proclaiming, “Behold the
only power greater than your own!”
Brothers and sisters, the scandal of baptism -- passing through waters of life,
touching the universe -- is that each one and all of us play irreplaceable parts
in the cosmic promise and presence, the passion and power of God! We reap
the storms, we ride the floods. We stand before devastations and
destructions in life, even in our own lives! In the promise of baptism,
God stands with us – always! In all ways, in all things. God even
goes before us through waters – making way for us out of no way! The same
God who creates all in the beginning, who stretches our heavens and spreads out
the earth, says Isaiah, gives breath and spirit to all and to every last people,
person and creature who lives on the earth.
This very same One who creates the heavens and earth also takes – offers each day,
each moment to take – each one of us by the hand. God calls, even now, each
one in “righteousness” – in compassion and solidarity with one another, in communion
and struggle for one another. Even as in his world-weary watering by John
this morning, Jesus -- so clearly divine in his origin – embraces every last human
condition and circumstance – takes on every mission and ministry of our everyday
lives. Come to the waters this morning! The graceful embraces the sinful
in us! And offers us life, liberation, in the midst of all death, destruction.
God’s light in and through us is for every nation – not just for select and chosen
ones but for every nation – sight to all who are blind, freedom to all imprisoned.
For “God plays no favorites!” as Peter has learned. Or perhaps, God favors
everyone! God’s life, God’s love are free to us just as we are, just for our
being at all: “It makes no difference who you are or where you are from” – of what
nation, language, class, color, culture, faith, gender, lifestyle you are!
What does God ask and invite of us this morning? Only that we honor our own
createdness! That we embrace our own belonging to our Creator God as we do
to the universe, waters of life, all peoples, all creatures, everywhere– all of
whom love us and know us by name! Is that so much for this God to ask??!!
God asks and invites us, the best ways we can, to witness with our whole lives
to the Jesus who goes around doing good – not necessarily doing well but good! –
healing all oppressed by the Devil, by the fear and the practice of death.
This season beginning with waters of baptism and calling concludes in just a few
short weeks with oils of transfiguration and healing. For our calling is
simply to face all things in life! To face everything deeply and honestly
in our own lives—whatever that is at any given moment in time. Which means
facing all the powers that serve to put us to death, to a deadly kind of a life
– even as Jesus is put to death.
Baptism into life, death and resurrection – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – Creator,
Redeemer, Sustainer of Life – says that the dead -- the deadly and dying parts of
us and of our lives -- are no less a part of God and of God’s creation than are
we temporarily-living! In God’s hands our bodies are infinitely recyclable
– even as our lives are uniquely unrepeatable. Each one of us is both one
of a kind and everyone! It is the defining paradox of each life and of all:
unique unrepeating in the midst of infinite recycling. Today’s world is
more paradox than orthodox. What is constant and promised in baptism is,
Nothing created ever is lost to God!
Please join me in saying -- “I am beloved of God!” “I am a child of the universe!”
That is the highest, and deepest, office of life to which, to whom, any one, any
creature, may aspire – no matter what we hear from those campaigning madly all about
us! Imagine this world-weary Jesus -- completely immersed in the waters of
life, face to face with the powers that both heal and harm. Jesus goes all
the way down -- gets to the bottom of things! As he rises, preaches Ched
Myers, “He sees it all! He sees how good the world is, ecstatically
experiencing the untamed, juicy power woven into all of creation. He sees
how bad it is: alienated and degraded, hostage to the powers of greed and
objectification and domination. He sees a vision of the redemption of
everything! Then Jesus hears the voice – which both affirms his filial
identity and demands a rupture with business as usual! It is his
commissioning by the One who refuses to give up on us, refuses to compromise
with us, and refuses to leave us stranded.”
Jesus hears what each of us longs, and needs, and deserves to hear, this and
every morning – the ever-loving word of the ever-loving Spirit, source and
sustenance of our lives – “You are my child! And you are my child!
And you, and you, and you are my child! My beloved! With you each
and all I am well pleased!” Keep looking at the bulletin cover and find
this Jesus deep in ourselves. Say these words again with me – “I am your
child!” “Your Beloved!” “Child of the universe!” “With me.”
“Even me!” “You are well pleased!”
So come to the waters. Love and cherish each first and last drop! Touch,
and splash, and exult in the waters! Shout out the name by which you are known
to God and in all of creation! God’s word to us is like the waters: Cannot
live with them; cannot live without them! Yet they are always there for us,
drop by drop, from beginning to end. Every particle, every part of anything,
of anybody who makes up our lives, has been around, and will be around, in some
form, forever! There is no denying, avoiding, escaping this cosmic life!
Where else does anything, anyone have to go? Where else do we have to go?
But to the living word of a living God for a living people of a living faith by
the living Spirit of a living Christ? Come, let us live, let us love life,
together! Amen.
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