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Baptism of Jesus

TWO KINDS OF DIVINE POWER

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a sermon preached by Bill Countryman at Good Shepherd Berkeley

First Sunday after Epiphany, January 12, 2020

Year A: Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

I’ve always loved Psalm 29—partly for its poetry and partly for its spiritual power. Not every encounter with God is like the one in this poem, but some of them are—like encountering something or someone completely overpowering. It starts in the heavens with angelic beings worshipping God “in the beauty of holiness,” when suddenly we find that we’re in the middle of a violent thunderstorm with flashes of lightning and winds powerful enough to twist oak trees and break giant cedars—so intense that it seems to shake the hills like an earthquake. And then suddenly, with all that in our minds, we find ourselves in the temple where all are crying “Holy.” 

But then what comes of all this power? Is it all simply God’s assertion of divine power? a way of saying, “I can smash you if I feel like it”? No, the Psalm ends with an assurance: “God shall give strength to the people; / God shall give the people the blessing of peace.” 

I suppose it’s one of the basic qualifications of a god to exhibit power. A powerless god is a contradiction in terms. And we certainly do think of God as immensely powerful. Start with the creation. What could demonstrate greater power than the ability to speak a whole universe into being? From our side of the event, that spoken word may sound more like a big bang. But from God’s side it was as simple as uttering a short command: Let there be light! And there was light.

But the thunderstorm is a more ambiguous image. It brings rain and renews the earth, but it can also hurl lightning and shatter great trees and start fires. Does God’s great power really guarantee that we will always be secure? In some ways, it seems almost indifferent as to how it affects us. It is so much beyond us that we may seem like little more than accidental witnesses. 

And if we suppose that this kind of divine power is the only kind, it can lead us into grave spiritual mistakes. Believers begin to suppose that they, too, can and should wield this kind of power. It’s the error that leads to Inquisitions and theocracies of all kinds and to the political entanglements of some contemporary Evangelicals as they try to impose their version of God’s will on the rest of us. (The finger, by the way, doesn’t point only at medieval Roman Catholics and modern Evangelicals. Our Anglican forebears in centuries past knew how to fall into that pit, too. It’s a standing temptation for all devout believers. It requires vigilance and humility to resist it. )Bap

But, stirring as this morning’s Psalm is, it isn’t the only form God’s power takes. We get another view of it in our reading from Isaiah this morning. This is one of a group of poetic oracles scattered through some of the later chapters of Isaiah that are referred to as “The Suffering Servant Songs.” This Suffering Servant is described as having suffered so profoundly that even the great powers of the world, more used to inflicting suffering than to noticing it, stand aghast.

But, for Isaiah, this suffering servant holds a new and unfamiliar kind of power. The servant is gentle and works by humble persistence: “He will not cry or lift up his voice, / or make it heard in the street; / a bruised reed he will not break, / and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; / he will faithfully bring forth justice.” Isaiah never says how this apparently weak and marginal person, so gentle as not to dispatch even the reed that appears to be near death already or stifle whatever small spark of light my survive in a rough world—never says how this person is to become the great agent of justice. Isaiah only says that this is another way God will work. The powerful God “who created the heavens and stretched them out, / who spread out the earth . . . / and gives breath to the people upon it” also knows other ways to work—quiet, humble ways that we would normally not think of as representing any power at all.

And just so, we read this morning of Jesus’ coming to John the Baptist to be baptized by him. John described his baptism as “a washing with water for repentance.” John looked at Jesus and apparently sized him up as someone who didn’t have much to repent of. A person who was interested in domination, in thunderstorm power, might have replied, “Yes, you need it. I’ll baptize you.” Instead, John demurs. Jesus, instead, answers, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” 

That’s a vague response, isn’t it? Puzzling, really. Especially since we often think of “righteousness” as a matter of doing everything according to rule. The word often sounds a bit priggish in our ears. But actually the Greek word also means “justice,” just as in Isaiah. What Jesus is doing is bringing forth justice, as Isaiah proclaimed. He says to John, in effect, “I claim nothing for myself. I am here simply as one human being among others. I don’t expect to be treated differently.”

And it is then, of course, after John has baptized Jesus, that the heavens open and the Spirit descends. It is then that the voice from heaven declares to those present, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It’s not any thunderstorm act that sets the scene for the divine voice. It’s Jesus’ humility, his refusal to make any claims at all for himself, his own virtue or goodness or authority. 

I’ve known people like that. I understand why John the Baptist could recognize it in Jesus. Sometimes it’s just so obvious you can’t avoid it. One person who stands out for me just now was Louie Crew, the founder of Integrity and the prime mover in helping the Episcopal Church wake up to its gay and lesbian members and incorporate them fully into its life. He brought the whole issue out into the open and even though he suffered a lot of abuse, he wouldn’t let it get dropped again. I met him only once, and I expected my own mental image of a social activist—someone blazing with righteous indignation and skilled in marshaling people to fight for the right. Instead, he was the mildest of people, very modest, almost shy. And I understand he was that way with everybody, including the people who most vehemently disagreed with him—people who were his avowed enemies. He took loving one’s neighbor not just as a duty, but as a way of life. 

That God’s power can also work through us in this way shouldn’t come as a surprise. Think of St. Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. Think people as you have known yourself—people in whose presence you realized you were in the presence of grace. You don’t have to be famous or obviously powerful to show forth this power of God. But the world around you will be changed, aided, renewed. 

This kind of power can disarm suspicion and hatred. Our story from Acts shows it in action. To fill in the background: Cornelius the Centurion has asked Peter to come to his house because of a vision he has seen. Peter is deeply reluctant. After all, Cornelius is an officer in the Roman army that occupies Judea. He is a powerful man. He’s a gentile and therefore unclean. If Peter goes to see him, it will be extremely rude to refuse to eat with him. It’s said that Cornelius believes in the Jewish God and is known for his generosity in almsgiving and devoted to prayer. But he’s an outsider. Worse than that, he’s a powerful outsider—thunderstorm powerful. 

But Peter can somehow tell that Cornelius has come to know the humble power of God. And Peter can see it in him and is converted by it. Peter came, worried about being compromised by even entering Cornelius’s house. But he sees God at work in the centurion, and he embraces him as kin. With every moment of this kind, God is at work recreating the world. What could we desire more than to be part of such moments, caught up by the unassuming, generous, power of God​?

Today is the First Sunday after the Epiphany in our Western Christian calendar. We apply the term “epiphany” to the visit of the Magi, another moment in which unassuming gentleness bridged the gap between people so very unlike each other. The magi saw it in the holy family. The holy family saw it in the magi. Both found it in the infant Jesus. 

When Eastern Christians speak of the Epiphany, they mean by it Jesus’ baptism, another instance of the same divine humility. And so, each year, we celebrate Epiphany twice, first in the stable with the Magi, then at the River Jordan with John the Baptist. Keep it in mind. God’s thunderstorm power is overwhelming enough. But the great power of God is this humbler form, by which we and our world are being transformed with grace.

READING MATTHEW, 4: EVENTS TURN A CORNER WITH JOHN THE BAPTIST

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After our detour to look at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we turn back to pick up the narrative in chapter 3 with the ministry of John the Baptist and the story of his baptizing of Jesus.
Who was this John and what is he doing here?
John was a common name in the first century, which makes it worth noting here that John the Baptizer is not the same person as the John who was one of Jesus’ Twelve Disciples nor the author (or authors) of the Gospel, Letters, and Revelation of John in the New Testament. He was a religious reformer in his own right, whom early Christians later regarded Jesus’ “Forerunner” (the title they subsequently gave him).
Wasn’t he Jesus’ cousin?
So Luke tells us. If Matthew knew that, he never mentions it. Even though comparing the gospels with each other can be very enlightening, it’s generally a good idea, as we read each one separately, not to supplement one gospel directly out of another. If we let each writer choose what he wants us to hear, we may get a better sense of the message he’s trying to impart.
For Matthew, the important thing seems to be that John fulfilled an ancient prophecy—”the voice of one crying in the wilderness”—and that his message focused on the approaching “Kingdom of Heaven.” He is poised, in other words, between the venerable tradition of Israel’s past and something new that is taking place.
Why the strange dress and food?
It shows that he had made a sharp break with the existing society. He lived off the land and dressed in cheap clothing and stayed on the fringes of civilization. He was an ascetic, who deliberately rejected the usual comforts of home and family. He also separated himself from the social structures of his world by living alone in the relatively deserted countryside along the Jordan River.
But people took notice. What kind of inner, spiritual strength did it take to walk away from all these things that other people treasured? And his message proved very attractive to people who felt themselves trapped in a world that they could neither escape nor find meaning in.
Why the baptizing?
Many religions use physical washing or purifying as a sacramental way of seeking spiritual renewal and nearness to God. In the religion of ancient Israel, it was a duty to cleanse oneself from physical impurities that might render you unworthy of coming close to God. John took that practice and made something new of it. His baptism wasn’t just a washing away of particular forms of impurity, such as menstruation for women or sexual ejaculation for men. It was a way, we could say, of starting one’s relationship with God all over again. People confessed their sins, received the washing, and were on a new footing with God.
John’s choice of the Jordan River for his ministry may have come partly just from its being a relatively deserted area. But it also reminds us that the people of Israel had long ago come into the Promised Land by crossing through the Jordan. John invited people to the Jordan to experience another, equally important personal crossing-over.
He seems to have welcomed most sorts of people. Why does he lash out at the Pharisees and Sadducees?
These two groups were the most influential religious leaders of their time and place and were locked in a struggle as to whose opinions would prove to be of greater weight. (By the time Matthew was writing, after the Jewish War and destruction of Jerusalem, the Sadducees had largely disappeared and only the Pharisees survived.)
John attacks these people savagely, perhaps more savagely than they deserved as individuals. We know of some Pharisees, like the great Rabbi Hillel, who were great saints and wise teachers. It is their role, rather, as figures of religious authority and people of high sacred standing that concerns Matthew, because he sees this as a source of corruption. This is not a narrowly Jewish issue for Matthew; as we’ll come to see, he is concerned that it will affect the Christian community as well as the Jewish one.
But why, then, would John have objected to baptizing Jesus?
Matthew tells us that John saw Jesus as belonging to the new reality that his mission was just bringing into existence. John’s mission was to help people enter the transition from the existing religious status quo to this new reality. And he says to Jesus, in effect, “You belong to the future, not the past. You are outside my commission.” Still, Jesus insists that all righteousness is to be fulfilled. Even as this great newness comes into being, Matthew emphasizes its continuity with all that came before.
Early Christians understood that some people considered John the truly significant figure and may have though of Jesus as a kind of renegade follower. This raises a large question: At what point does the new, even if is it is in continuity with the old, become a violation of the old? This is a problem that can never be answered fully in advance. It must always be an object of prayerful discernment, and will often be a source of controversy, as we find again and again in later Christian history.
Part of what Matthew is telling us about Christian faith here is that there is always a certain edge of uncertainty as we move through time. Jesus affirms his identification with the existing religion. But it will not prove to be enough. Jesus’ new work is confirmed to him by a vision of the heavens opened and the Spirit descending; Matthew doesn’t suggest that any one else saw it. A voice from the sky tells whoever is listening that this is God’s son. But we don’t know who was listening or how they responded—just as we do not always know clearly what we ourselves have heard or how to respond. Weaving old and new together is never an easy or obvious proposition.

Next up: THREE TEMPTATIONS AND THREE MOVES