Luke 3.21-22, Isaiah 43.4
January 7, 2001 (1st Sunday after the Epiphany)
James R. Gorman
Some years ago I received a note from a young woman named Laura who had been in my first youth group. If she was 16 then, she is almost 40 now. Hard to believe really. I've lost touch with her, but she was one of the brightest young people I ever had in any youth group. She was also among the quietest. She hardly spoke a word. I never remember having had a lengthy conversation with her. Laura was sweet and unassuming in character. And, as I said, very quiet.
One day, several years after I had left that parish and gone on to my second parish, and she had gone on to college, I received a marvelous Christmas card from her telling me that I had been one of the most important influences on her life and she just wanted for me to know that. The note didn't go into detail about why, just that I was an influence.
The note was deeply touching for me, for it came at a time when my ministry had become very difficult. Some members of my last congregation had organized against me. I didn't receive any salary increases for two or three years running. The congregation was an urban congregation in a neighborhood made up of mostly Hispanic folks; the Anglos who were members of the church there were fearful about crime and property values and that fear came out occasionally in ethnic slurs.
One member had threatened to circulate a petition to have me removed for having spoken out against some of the racist remarks I had heard in the congregation and elsewhere. I confess that my remarks were less than generous and I should have said things differently, but there they were.
The petition drive might have been successful had it not been for one of the most conservative members of the church who was also an anti-communist. When the threat of a petition drive came to the church council, this anti-communist took an odd turn in logic. She said that this is not Russia. In Russia they tell ministers what to say from the pulpit and the officials of the secret police there sit in congregations and spy on ministers, reporting back to the KGB what the ministers have to say. This is America. We don't do that. Put your petition away. And the challenge ended.
Still, all this was difficult and wore on my soul, and I was questioning whether or not I had the personality or gifts for ministry when this note came from Laura: "You were one of the most important influences on my life and I just wanted you to know that."
What a renewal of my ministry that was! Right when I was beginning to feel uncertain about my own call to ministry comes this note of unconditional and unsolicited affirmation of my call to ministry.And a voice comes from the heavens to Jesus as he emerges from the waters, "This is my son, the beloved. In him I am well-pleased."These words spoken at Jesus' baptism are words of deep comfort and love, just at the moment that he is getting ready to depart for the most difficult of all journeys, the journey to Jerusalem and the calumny that awaits him there. Proclaiming the gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins, while welcome to those ready to hear it, is a bitter challenge to those who are not ready.
And the leadership of Jerusalem were not ready to hear it. Deep in Jesus' heart he must have known this, and he must have been afraid, or at least nervous about his reception there. Anxious about who might raise objections to his simple message of love for the unlovely and hope for the hopeless. And here at his baptism, he receives this most extraordinary word, "You are my son, the Beloved. In you I am well-pleased."
Not many of us will get such a voice coming out of the clouds. Not many of us will be encouraged by great flashes and pyrotechnic heavenly displays. We'll just have to settle for letters from Laura.
Baptism means a lot of things in the Christian community. Forgiveness. Cleansing. Entrance into the beloved community. Dying and rising with Christ. But there is a dimension in this passage that we often miss about baptism. Baptism gives us strength for the journey by a good word of comfort and deep affirmation. "You are my son, the Beloved. In you I am well-pleased."
The word has two phrases and emphases.
First, the word from heaven says simply, "you are mine." You belong to me and to no one else. Having heard this good word, we know all that we need to know about what it means to be alive. We know who and whose we are. This word is echoed in the Isaiah passage, "you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you."
Every parent should memorize those words and communicate them regularly to their children. You are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you. I don't think I said it enough while my children were growing. I say it now as often as I can. You are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you.
The second part of the phrase from the heavens at the occasion of Jesus' baptism is "in you I am well pleased."
At this point in Jesus' ministry he has not done much. No great teachings. No mysterious healings. No acts of suffering or heroic torment. Just Jesus, just as he is. He has done nothing to deserve or earn the Father's good pleasure. That's why this word is of such great comfort to us in our own baptism. We enter into God's good pleasure not because of any deserving on our part, but simply because we are God's special creation. We have, as Janet put it in a recent conversation, an "undeserved worthiness."
And we are loved not as a group or class; this is not class-action love here. We are loved as individuals. God loves you, Marcy; you, Jason; you Tess; you Vera; you Antonio; you Jim. And on and on. God loves you.
Despite all its decadence and romanticism I've always loved the old hymn In the Garden, in which we sing that "he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own." There is an intimacy there that is just so deeply compelling.
In a few minutes we'll receive Holy Communion. The body and blood of Jesus Christ given for you. One of the problems of the English word "you" is that it is both singular and plural. It could mean the body and blood of Christ given for all humanity and therefore by extension to each of you. Or it could mean the body of Christ given for Marcy and Jason and Tess and Vera and Antonio. For each of you just as you are. Without your having done anything to deserve it. It is for you.
I love those rare occasions when I've come forward for communion in conference meetings when we all are asked to wear nametags and the officiant says as he or she gives me the bread or wine, "The body of Christ given for you, Jim." I'm always devastated by that. Last year I went to a presentation given by my Old Testament professor, whom I hadn't seen in many years. Walter Brueggemann is now the preeminent Old Testament scholar in the U.S., and when I came forward for communion he handed me the chunk of bread and said, "Jim, the Body of Christ." I almost folded right there. Almost fell to my knees, and might have if it wouldn't have been so embarrassing.
For me. Not because of anything I've done, but because I am loved intimately by a God who knows all that there is to know about me. And because he knows all that there is to know about me, I am pretty sure that he knows that I am not deserving of this gift of his body and blood.
But we will all receive this gift from one another, passed through the pews quietly as we have our way of doing. And in so doing, we proclaim to one another, "You are beloved of God and this is his body. You are beloved of God and this is his blood. For you. For you."
What an extraordinary affirmation of who we are and to whom we belong. "You are beloved of God and this is his gift, given to you that you might have life and have it in abundance."
You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. What better words with which to begin a new year? What better words by which to live each day? God says to you: You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. You are my child, my beloved. I delight in you.(1)
1. This last paragraph is from Dick Johnson's sermon on the Baptism of Our Lord.