“Consent”
Matthew
3:13-17
Allen Huff
Jonesborough
Presbyterian Church
1/12/14
Recently, a detail in
Matthew's telling of the story of Jesus' baptism caught my attention.
Verse 15 concludes with that quick, three-word sentence: “Then he
consented.”
It seems straightforward
enough, doesn't it? “Then he consented:” A simple reference to
timing. But I think those three words are far more than filler, far
more than grains of sand on some beach. They are great stones,
stones that must get rolled away. Getting to “Then he
consented,” requires the same kind of push and pull as
it does for words like, “He is risen.” “Follow thou me.”
And “Don't be afraid.”
“Then he consented,”
constitutes a powerful and unequivocal “Yes!” to
the mystery of God's presence and initiative in and for the creation.
They convey the affirmation, commitment and hope of faith.
These words also have a
compelling hold on me because of their delightfully teasing
ambiguity. Think about it: Who exactly does the consenting? At
first glance is may seem obvious that Matthew is referring to John's
consent to baptize Jesus. After all, John does put up at least token
resistance to Jesus' request.
“I need to be baptized
by you,” says John in protest.
“Let it be so now,”
answers Jesus. 'You see, John, we're both inside a much bigger
picture right now. Strange things are happening, and they’ll
continue to happen. We have to learn to welcome the surprises.'
Then he
consented.
John consents by offering
his baptism of repentance to Jesus, even though to John, or at least
to Matthew, it seems to feel unnatural – like a house cat trying to
teach a fish to swim.
The undeniable reality,
however, is that Jesus also consents. He closes his eyes and leans
back into the wildness of his cousin's Esau-like embrace. He
entrusts himself to this desert rat whose hands tremble with
religious zeal, and who reeks of austerity, sweat, and flea-bitten
camel hide. Jesus surrenders to the same baptism to which everyone
who comes to John surrenders. And in so doing, Jesus takes his place
alongside each individual, and his place within the crowd as a whole.
He does so, perhaps, as a bit of yeast sits alongside a measure of
flour within a rendering of dough. Jesus comes to serve as an agent
of alchemy, of transformation. He comes to help make something new
of the flour, and water, and salt – something none of them can be
on their own. Still, regardless of motive, Jesus consents to John’s
baptism.
In John's and Jesus' acts
of consent we are reminded that consent implies much more than
standing aside while someone else takes action that we simply allow
or refuse to stop. The consent of both John and Jesus reveals their
active and intentional commitment to specific work, and their trust
in an ultimate purpose.
Their consent means that
they intend, willingly and vulnerably, to become something
brand new, something beyond than themselves.
Now, lest you think I am
denying Jesus his holy due, remember, immediately after his baptism,
Jesus embarks on a forty-day exodus in the wilderness. And during
that time he confronts and agonizes over the consequences of his own
willing and vulnerable baptismal consent. He faces a clear and
excruciating choice: He can use his unique capabilities and charisma
for his own worldly benefit and comfort, or he can offer himself to
the creation as an eternal blessing.
The story of Jesus’
temptation illustrates that this magnificent, vibrant earth, and all
who depend on it for food, shelter, inspiration, and belonging, we do
not need another wealthy, favor-mongering, celebrity politician. We
need the gratitude- and generosity-creating experience that in both
the best and the worst of circumstances, we are immersed in and
filled with the love and the grace of God.
Baptism is about
identity, not duty. The point of baptism is to declare that, all
evidence to the contrary, the creation belongs to God. As the
psalmist says: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)
That’s who we
are. Our lives keep and are kept by a sacred time, a time set by the
very heartbeat of God.
Our fundamental calling
is, I think, to consent to our identity as brothers and sisters of
Jesus. We, too, are the beloved children of a delighted God. Our
work, then, is to live as ones in whom God delights by recognizing
the deep and inalienable holiness within ourselves, within all other
human beings, and within the earth itself. We have been created by
Love to live in Love with and for one another, and with and for the
creation.
“Preacher, it sounds
like you kind of overdid it with the Christmas candy, don’t you
think? Come down off that sugar high, and then we’ll talk.
You need a little garlic in your peppermint. You need a little
realism to go along with all that optimism.”
I hear you. I know as
well as the next person that there are just some folks we can’t
stand to be around, folks who push every button we have and who get
on our very last nerve. I’ve experienced those folks. And not
only that, I also know, from experience, that very often I am that
person for someone else. What’s more, I am often that
person for my own conflicted self. No one causes me more grief
than me.
Once again I turn to a
timely insight from Richard Rohr. Rohr acknowledges that yes, we
often look at the world and the people around us and cannot help
seeing more darkness than light, more bitterness than grace, more
fear than hope. At that point it can be easy to give up, saying,
“That’s just the way things are.” But Rohr says, that more
often than not, when we see primarily brokenness and hopelessness, we
are not seeing things as they are. We are seeing things as
we are.1
I think that’s
profoundly true: Broken hearts and blind eyes see nothing but pain
and
darkness.
It doesn’t happen suddenly, as if by magic, and we have to learn over our lifetimes how to use them, but baptism does give us new hearts, new eyes, and new minds. The transformational journey of baptism does begin with consent, and another word for consent, another metaphor for change used by the Christian faith – as well as other enduring faith traditions – is that of death. Because death is a re-creation from which newness springs, it is not by accident that we speak of baptism as both dying and rising with Christ.
Episcopal priest and
theologian, John Westerhoff, tells the following and rather
uncomfortable story of witnessing an infant baptism in a small parish
church outside Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“As I walked in, a bit
late,” writes Westerhoff, “I witnessed a congregation on its
knees singing a Good Friday hymn.
“Down the aisle came a father
carrying a handmade child's coffin. His wife carried a pail of
water from the family well. Behind them came the godparents carrying
a naked baby in a serape. With tears in his eyes, the father
put the coffin on the altar; the mother poured in the water, and the
godparents handed the child over to the priest.
“As the priest
asked the parents and godparents the required questions, he put the
oil used in the last rites of the church on the child's skin. He
took the baby and, holding its nose, immersed the child in the coffin
with the words, ‘You are drowned in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit.’ As he raised the child out of the
water… [the] priest held up the child and exclaimed, ‘And you
are resurrected that you might love and serve the Lord.’
The congregation leaped up and began to sing an Easter hymn.”2
When I say that our
work is to live as ones in whom God delights by recognizing the deep
and inalienable holiness within ourselves, within all other human
beings, and within the earth itself, I am not skittering about on
too much high fructose corn syrup – or anything else for that
matter. I am simply re-stating a biblical challenge to all of us,
the challenge to take seriously, deadly seriously, our call as
baptized members of the body of Christ to die to all the false selves
and shallow desires that would have us live as if atrocities in
Syria, famine in central Africa, child prostitution in southeast
Asia, chemical spills in West Virginia, and relentless hunger in
Washington County, TN are all just the way things are.
Now yes, behind such
things there does gather a massive storm of human fear and greed.
And if we do nothing, we are consenting to let the powers of fear and
greed have their way.
Jesus does not consent to
such things, and he does not, I think, let us sit back in happy
comfort saying, “Thank God for Jesus; I’m going to heaven when I
die,” and then judging and disengaging from anyone who does not
share our ideas and ideals. That’s not salvation. That’s
denial. Indeed, it’s denial and refusal. It’s denial of
God’s presence, a presence real and powerful enough to make a
difference in healing what is broken, destructive, and painful in
this world. It’s also a fearful and falsely pious refusal to take
up our cross and follow Jesus.
Anything that allows us
to avoid the knee-buckling dare of baptism, the dare to consent to
dying and rising with Jesus, is not of Jesus.
So, while you and I may
be limited in what we can do for a specific eight-year-old girl being
forced to work long and dangerous hours in some sweat-shop in
Bangladesh, we can read the tags on the clothes we buy and know that
if it says Made in Bangladesh, we may well be supporting the
inhuman working conditions being endured by some of the poorest and
most ruthlessly abused of God’s beloved children
Buying what we want when
we want it may be the way of a free-market economy, but that does not
make it the way of baptismal consent.
You receive your
belovedness of God by recognizing your innate value as a human being,
and by embracing yourself as one who is worthy of God’s love. And
you are. And because that blessing applies to everyone else
every bit as much as it does to you, your calling, your ministry, is
to find, by the grace of God, the strength to consent to God’s
absolute declaration of redeeming love and grace for the whole of
creation.
You are invited and
challenged into the ancient, mystical experience of seeing as Jesus
sees. You are invited and challenged to see yourself, your
neighbors, “the earth…and all that is in it,” as tangible
expressions of God’s sheer delight.
1Richard Rohr, Falling
Upward Spirituality for the Second Half of Life, p __.
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