The Beatitudes and the Ethos of Christ (Sermon)

“The Beatitudes and the Ethos of Christ”

Micah 6:1-3, 6-8 and Matthew 5:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/29/23

 

Hear what the Lord is saying:
Arise, lay out the lawsuit before the mountains;
        let the hills hear your voice!
² Hear, mountains, the lawsuit of the Lord!
        Hear, eternal foundations of the earth!
The Lord has a lawsuit against his people;
        with Israel he will argue.
³ “My people, what did I ever do to you?
        How have I wearied you? Answer me!

 

⁶ With what should I approach the Lord                          
        and bow down before God on high?
Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings,
        with year-old calves?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
        with many torrents of oil?
Should I give my oldest child for my crime;
        the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit?
⁸ He has told you, human one, what is good and
        what the Lord requires from you:
            to do justice, embrace faithful love,

and walk humbly with your God.

(Micah 6:1-3, 6-8 – CEB)

 

 

         This morning, our New Testament text is Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes—the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s version seems more spiritually nuanced than Luke’s version which, in very stark, exclusive terms, blesses poverty, hunger, grief, and persecution, then pronounces “woe” on wealth, satisfaction, and contentment. While Matthew’s Beatitudes sound a little more palatable, these nine statements present a radically new way of understanding God and engaging the world. And in Matthew, the Beatitudes are inclusive blessings. One may opt out, but no one is left out of Christ’s invitation to his new way of imagining God, and, therefore, his new way of living.

It's also worth noting that Jesus sequesters his disciples for the Sermon on the Mount. So, the Beatitudes, and all of chapters 5, 6, and 7, are presented as instruction to people who are just beginning to follow Jesus in his new, Creation-embracing movement.

With that background, we’ll read the Beatitudes. And to get a broader perspective, we’ll layer the NRSV and The Message versions.

 

Matthew 5:1-12 — NRSV and The Message

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ² And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

³ “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

⁴ “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

⁵ “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁵ “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁶ “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

⁷ You are blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

⁸ “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

⁸ “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

⁹ “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

⁹ “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

¹⁰ “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹⁰ “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

^11-12 “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

 

         In their book, The Way of Blessedness, Marjorie Thompson and Stephen Bryant suggest that the Beatitudes are not a list of disconnected blessings, or as someone in our Sunday school class said, the Beatitude platitudes. The Beatitudes, say Thompson and Bryant, can be read as stages of the spiritual life. Beginning with poverty of spirit, each statement includes and builds on the one before it.¹

         When you see people who are poor in spirit, says Jesus, you see ones who are foundationally reliant on God. They experience blessedness because they so deeply root themselves in the mystery of God’s realm that they live each moment in its presence. Freed from the illusion of self-sufficiency, their spiritual poverty is not a lack of well-being. Reliance on God is a blessed release from all that is shallow, confining, and lacking substance.

         Imagine, then, that we see a brother or sister offering mercy to someone else, and that someone else is known for doing violence to others. Think, perhaps, of a prison chaplain offering communion to thieves and murderers, and saying to them as I say to you, “This is the bread of life broken for you. This is the cup of salvation poured out for you.”

         While those offering mercy may look like they’ve compromised justice, or betrayed the prisoners’ victims and their families, to see someone offering Christ’s mercy in that context is to witness the steadfast power of meekness finding passage into a suffering world. These meek and merciful disciples know their true homeland. They inhabit a place that defies all worldly boundaries of prejudice, retribution, and fear.

         Their meekness and mercy lead them deep into the blessedness of spiritual mourning. They mourn not just for lives lost, but for the pervasive lack of human kindness. They mourn the overabundance of injustice in the Creation.

Together, meekness, mercy, and mourning compel followers of Jesus toward the blessedness of purity of heart. That is to say, they trust that in God’s kingdom there is steadfast love, without end, for all people, and they’re single-minded in their commitment to recognize and to love God—whose image is everywhere.

         True followers of Jesus may discover that their faithfulness evokes a hostile response. Many and angry are those who prefer a vengeful god, and who prefer retribution over reconciliation. Embodying and extending God’s mercy may lead those disciples into their own suffering. And yet their faithfulness, says Jesus, is a mark of true discipleship, and a holy blessing.

         That’s a lot to expect, isn’t it? Who, then, besides Jesus, can be truly faithful? Well, with the Spirit’s help, we can—occasionally, anyway. Occasionally, we do deal with others, ourselves, and God not out of fear or selfishness, but out of gratitude and generosity. And as we do, we may sense that what we’re doing doesn’t sit well with reason or reality. Still, we trust that it’s God's will for us to incarnate love and compassion for all people because, when all is said and done, lives defined by spiritual poverty, mournful meekness, hungry righteousness, merciful purity of heart, and fearless peacemaking most faithfully demonstrate God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.

         The Beatitudes in Matthew include, with each condition of blessedness, a kind of recompense: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It’s telling that the recompense pronounced on those who know poverty of spirit, those at the beginning of their journey, is the same recompense pronounced on those who find the strength and the will to follow Jesus even into their own persecution. At both of these “stages,” and, really, for all stages, the blessing is ultimately the same: “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

         Entering and engaging a Beatitude life empowers us to imagine both God and God’s realm in a whole new way.

In his book The Great Spiritual Migration, Brian McLaren says that one unnecessary struggle the Church has imposed upon itself is to have tried, for 2000 years, to reconcile Jesus’ profoundly new vision of God “with the old visions of God that it challenged.”² Those old visions include gods of violence, domination, and exclusion. So, says McLaren, “to follow Jesus is to change one’s understanding of God.”³

The God Jesus introduces through his life and teaching is incompatible with gods who bless empire, violence, and material excess. Jesus’ new vision of God as nonviolent, abundantly generous, mercifully just, and long-suffering is the God revealed in the Beatitudes. And that God is always creating, for all Creation, an ethos of love.

Most of us probably have a default image of God, a holdover from our childhood, perhaps. And that god may be something distant yet anthropomorphic like Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of a white-bearded white guy in the clouds. Maybe it’s something fearsome and vengeful like Zeus, armed with storm clouds and lightning bolts, or maybe something naïve and self-serving like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. And as people of faith, we worship, pray, and live according to the images of God we hold.

So, here’s the crux: A transformed understanding of God transforms the way we worship, pray, and live. The Beatitudes remind us that God is the relentless Energy of love, compassion, and shared suffering we encounter in the midst of our experiences of life on earth.

And we experience God not simply when we need reminding that the realm of God embraces our suffering, but also when we are needed to remind others that God is real by embracing their suffering.

And doesn’t that pretty much sum up the life and ministry of Jesus?

 

¹Marjorie J. Thompson and Stephen D. Bryant, The Way of Blessedness, Upper Room Books, 2003. This book is part of the spiritual formation series, Companions in Christ.

²Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian. Convergent, New York, 2016. P 93.

³Ibid.

Compassionate Repentance (Sermon)

 “Compassionate Repentance”

Isaiah 9:1-4 and Matthew 4:12-23

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/22/23

 

Nonetheless, those who were in distress won’t be exhausted. At an earlier time, God cursed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but later he glorified the way of the sea, the far side of the Jordan, and the Galilee of the nations. 

²The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.
    On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned.
³ You have made the nation great;
    you have increased its joy.
They rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest,
    as those who divide plunder rejoice.
⁴ As on the day of Midian, you’ve shattered the yoke that burdened them,
    the staff on their shoulders,
    and the rod of their oppressor. (Isaiah 9:1-4 – CEB)

 

 

¹² Now when Jesus heard that John was arrested, he went to Galilee. ¹³ He left Nazareth and settled in Capernaum, which lies alongside the sea in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali. ¹⁴ This fulfilled what Isaiah the prophet said:

¹⁵ Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
        alongside the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,
¹⁶the people who lived in the dark have seen a great light,
        and a light has come upon those who lived in the region and in shadow of death. 

¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to announce, “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!”

¹⁸ As Jesus walked alongside the Galilee Sea, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, throwing fishing nets into the sea, because they were fishermen. ¹⁹ “Come, follow me,” he said, “and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” ²⁰ Right away, they left their nets and followed him. ²¹ Continuing on, he saw another set of brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee their father repairing their nets. Jesus called them and²² immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

²³ Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues. He announced the good news of the kingdom and healed every disease and sickness among the people. (Matthew 4:12-23 — CEB)

 

 

         One reason I wear this robe is that science and math humbled me. Mercilessly. I do, however, remember one thing my high school physics teacher said. She said that there’s no such thing as cold, only a lack of heat.

Driven by physical interactions on a molecular level, heat moves toward places that lack warmth. And that motion from warm toward not-as-warm is constant.

         In a similar way, under the influence of gravity, a liquid of any kind always flows toward its lowest point—thus the saying that water always seeks its level.

         These things remind me of another adage: Nature abhors a vacuum.

         The reason that someone who prefers Scrabble over Sudoku is pondering such things from a pulpit is that today’s passage opens with the announcement of a vacuum and an immediate response to it.

John the Baptist has been arrested. His prophetic voice has been removed from the public square, so, the story of God’s presence and intention in the world encounters a kind of vacuum—a silence. When Jesus hears about John’s arrest, he springs into action. Like heat toward lack of heat, he radiates himself into the void for the sake of love, that is to say, for the sake of justice, compassion, dignity, and peace.

         In quoting Isaiah 9, Matthew suggests that Jesus’ arrival on the scene fills a vacuum in a manner that is completely natural and purposed. “The people who lived in the dark have seen a great light.” Like heat, light is always trying to seep into places of darkness.

And it makes sense. Jesus spends most of his time and energy seeking relationship with people who are out of relationship—lepers, disabled people, strangers, tax collectors, and all manner of people the gospels label as “sinners.”

Even those whom Jesus pulls in as disciples are prone to exclusion and violence. Remember, Judas Iscariot is a kind of right-wing extremist who betrays Jesus when it’s clear that he’s not going to muster an army and try to overthrow the Roman government. A few hours later, Peter tries to start that messianic war in the Garden of Gethsemane by attacking the high priest’s servant.

Jesus confounds so many people because, instead of avoiding the places where people wander in sin, illness, and hopelessness, he inhabits them. He brings healing, wholeness, and strength where it has been lacking. So, wherever peace is offered into unrest, wherever reconciliation is taken into brokenness, wherever joy spills into grief and despair—there God’s realm of grace is filling a vacuum.

Isn’t that Jesus’ point when he announces the coming of the “kingdom of God”? In the Christ, the fire of the Spirit is moving toward iced-over hearts. In him, living water is seeking its level among us. In Jesus, The Light of the World is shining into the darkness.

It seems to me that Matthew wants us to recognize all of this vacuum-filling grace in the story of Jesus calling his first disciples. And seems is the best we’ve got. Matthew doesn’t explain Simon, Andrew, James, and John dropping everything and following Jesus. We can only assume things like the pull of Jesus’ charisma, or maybe the young men’s boredom with the family business and their thirst for adventure. We can also imagine, but cannot know, that the fishermen had heard and been baptized by John. And if so, maybe John had created a vacuum in the fishermen, a vacuum in the form of a hunger for God’s radical grace.

Could that be it? Could preparation for receiving and sharing the Christ involve, as much as anything else, a gracious exposure of emptiness within us? Could it be that when we feel an acute, spiritual vacuum, we are being prepared to receive a deeper awareness of God’s presence and love?

Over the millennia, the church has dealt with that place of disorientation by focusing almost exclusively on individual sin. We’ve been taught that the emptiness we feel results from our being “bad.” And if we understand repentance as nothing more than naming and regretting all that bad stuff, then, when John the Baptist and Jesus urge us toward repentance, we’ll likely see ourselves as Jonathan Edwards described humankind: “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”

But is shame, guilt, and fearful regret all there is to repentance?

Well, we all participate in unfaithfulness. And our unfaithfulness can do all sorts of damage to ourselves, to others, and to the planet. I also think that repentance involves more than just confession, more, even, than setting ourselves on paths of greater faithfulness. I think repentance involves taking a long and deeply compassionate look at ourselves. As we consider the things we do and don’t do that distance us from God, neighbor, and the earth, we begin to see within us places of spiritual receptivity that our unfaithfulness has clogged up.

Where we judge or persecute people different from us, we have congested that part of us through which we encounter the creative wholeness of God. And that’s scary because in it we recognize that God is bigger than our own nationality, race, or religious tradition.

Where we are susceptible to lust, we are avoiding a deep desire for intimacy with God. And that’s scary because in that place we realize that God already knows us through and through, warts and all.

Where we abide violence and crave domination, we have cluttered with weapons and greed that holy place where we depend on God alone. And that’s scary because in that place we have to learn to trust what we cannot see.

So yes, one way to understand the first disciples’ drop-everything willingness to follow Jesus is to imagine that they had heard and understood John the Baptist calling them to what I will call compassionate repentance.

Compassionate repentance is not about heaping guilt on ourselves or others. It’s not about appeasing an “angry God.” It’s about making room. It’s about clearing the dock so that we can continue becoming God-imaged, grace-driven human beings.

Compassionate repentance has the potential to prepare in us the way of the Lord because it’s about exposing in ourselves a built-in spiritual vacuum that God alone can fill. And God fills it with a holy call, and with holy belonging. And maybe that holiness is, as it seemed to be for Simon, Andrew, James, and John, something our hearts and minds embrace the moment it appears.

As a way of life, compassionate repentance prepares the way for holy warmth, living water, and guiding light by prompting us to ask ourselves, continually:

Does this new possibility deepen my awareness of love and my capacity to love?

Will this opportunity further the cause of justice on behalf of those suffering beneath prejudice, poverty, or grief?

Will it ask everything of me while also creating new space for the Beloved within me?

When we learn to ask questions like this, we are being prepared to respond to Christ’s presence, and to follow him.

And even now, in this moment, he is calling us.

Living 'As Though' (Sermon)

Living 'As Though'

 Psalm 130 and 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/15/23

 

²⁹ I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, ³⁰ and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, ³¹ and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:29-31 — NRSV)

 

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
²     Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
    to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered.

⁵ I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
⁶ my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with him is great power to redeem.
⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities. (Psalm 130 – NRSV)

 

Whether persecuting Christians or being persecuted as a Christian, Paul lives with unmistakable passion for his convictions. In spite of all that he seems to get “right,” though, the apostle also lives in the grip of some mistaken convictions.

         From the Christian perspective, Paul is initially mistaken in his denial of Jesus as the Christ. Because of that mistake, he commits the more wide-ranging mistake of trying to terrorize Christians into recanting their faith.

After his Damascus Road experience, Paul focuses his energies on preaching Jesus. And one initial premise of his preaching is the mistaken notion that Jesus will return—immediately and literally—to lead God’s people into a messianic reign on earth.

A theocracy doesn’t appear to be God’s intention, though. And when Jesus doesn’t return exactly as Paul expects, one can imagine him, like Jonah, crying out at God for letting him down. Paul, however, sows the seeds of his own peace in his first letter to the church at Corinth.

         The embattled congregation faces deep disorientation. As groups in the church begin to identify with and to revolve around particular individuals and ideologies, the community fragments.

“It has been reported to me,” says Paul in Chapter 1, “that there are quarrels among you…that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos, or…to Cephas, or…to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided?” Paul asks. His point is that if the community is to survive, it must revolve around the indivisible Jesus, not someone else. And it must revolve around divine love, reconciling love, not anything else.

         In Chapter 7, Paul assures the Corinthians that even when it looks like God’s promises are unraveling, God is faithful. No matter what happens, he says, God, in Christ, is with us.

Paul’s words to the Corinthians in the year 1 hold relevance for us in the year 2023. The gospel is always challenging us to evolve ever more deeply in our understanding of who God is and who we are as creatures made in God’s image. I hear Paul calling us to live in our here-and-now moment as though God’s kingdom has arrived in its fullness.

While Paul’s teaching may sound like an invitation to self-deception, living in the As Though of faith is not an act of make-believe or denial. Living As Thoughmeans engaging the timeless, creative, initiative-taking Purpose and Process who, billions of years ago, ignited a seething chaos into the magnificent Creation we live in and marvel at today.

Living in the As Though of the realm of God means inhabiting our present reality with an eye toward and a heart for the eternal Reality that gives every moment its meaning. Living in God’s As Though transforms marriage, mourning, rejoicing, owning, and even politics into platforms for experiencing and sharing God’s presence in and grace for the Creation. For in the As Though of God’s realm, all is being redeemed and renewed. The tricky thing about all of this is that we constantly move in and out of various As Thoughs.

Worldly As Thoughs tempt us to live as if human existence were defined by scarcity. When I give into that temptation, I treat almost everyone as a competitor to defeat—economically, politically, militarily. I treat strangers with suspicion. I fear people whose skin, language, or religion are different from mine.

In the As Though of scarcity, I don’t just resign myself to war, I make it a holy endeavor. I twist the greed, fear, and nationalism that cause war into spiritual gifts. And I teach the generations behind me that their highest calling lies in a willingness to kill and be killed.

The As Though of scarcity also regards the physical creation as fundamentally corrupt, so I treat the earth and human bodies as if they were resources to be exploited rather than sacred gifts to be treasured, cared for, and shared.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And the Civil Rights Movement he helped lead stood against the scarcity-bred and violently racist As Thoughs of people like George Wallace and Bull Connor. Today those As Thoughs have been taken up by people like David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Nick Fuentes—all of whom are, themselves, creatures made in the image of God. And I pray that they, like George Wallace, come to understand the harm they do to themselves as well as to those whom they fear and hate. I pray that they, too, become part of the solution. For the As Though of scarcity continues to motor on. And in that As Though, a person whose skin is not white might be killed, but seldom murdered—because they’re less than human. That’s why George Floyd’s death sometimes gets described as merely “unfortunate.”

Dr. King and others like him live in the As Though of Jesus, the As Though of equality, equity, and justice—the As Though of “original blessing” rather than “original sin.” Within the As Though of Jesus, his followers not only advocate for justice, peace, and loving stewardship of all Creation, they discover an almost inhuman strength to forgive those who persecute them.

I’ve said this to you before, but it bears repeating. Desmond Tutu once said to his fellow black South Africans, “Be nice to the whites; they need you to rediscover their humanity.” It’s no accident that Tutu’s words sound a lot like Jesus saying, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34a)

The As Though of God’s realm is arriving in Jesus. So, says Paul, “let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.”

Are we literally to stop marrying, mourning, rejoicing, purchasing what we need, and engaging the world around us? To quote another Pauline phrase: “By no means!” I do think, though, that it’s all-too-easy to mistake physical pleasure, material comfort, and worldly power as signs of God’s favor. So, Paul is challenging us to take seriously that the “present form of this world” is manifest in scarcity-driven fear and selfishness. And living in that worldview distracts us from the new form of the realm of God, which is emerging in Christ.

Laying “the present form” down takes all the spiritual discipline we can muster. As the lives of Jesus, Dr. King, and other people committed to God’s justice have demonstrated, living in the As Though of God’s realm is counter-cultural. It’s not the easiest and safest existence, but living in the As Though of love is exactly what Jesus means by “salvation.” It’s what Paul means when he says, “the appointed time has grown short;” from now on, then, we live differently. We let go of the “present form” and live according to the law of love.

Letting go is not the same as giving up. Spiritual letting go is the psalmist’s proactive “waiting on the Lord” with whom there is “steadfast love, and…great power to redeem.”

Holy letting go means, in the seething chaos of our own moment, inhabiting God’s realm of shalom, which as we just proclaimed during the Christmas season, is here. And now. Today.

Service: Our Prophetic Call (Sermon)

 “Service: Our Prophetic Call”

Isaiah 9:1-4 and Matthew 3:13-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Baptism of the Lord Sunday

1/7/23  

 

But here is my servant, the one I uphold;
    my chosen, who brings me delight.
I’ve put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring justice to the nations.
² He won’t cry out or shout aloud
    or make his voice heard in public.
³ He won’t break a bruised reed;
    he won’t extinguish a faint wick,
    but he will surely bring justice.
⁴ He won’t be extinguished or broken
    until he has established justice in the land.
The coastlands await his teaching. (Isaiah 42:1-4 – CEB)

 

 

¹³ At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. ¹⁴ John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?”

¹⁵ Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”

So John agreed to baptize Jesus. ¹⁶ When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Heaven was opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him. ¹⁷ A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.” (Matthew 3:13-17 — CEB)

 

         Through Isaiah, God says, “Here is my servant, the one I uphold, my chosen, who brings me delight.”

         In Matthew, the voice from the heavens says, “This is my Son whom I dearly love, I find happiness in him.”

         Again, from Isaiah: “I’ve put my spirit upon him; he will bring justice to the nations.”

         And again, from Matthew: “Heaven was open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him.”

         One defining feature of Matthew’s gospel is that the writer takes great care to connect the advent, birth, baptism, life, and ministry of Jesus to Israel’s prophetic tradition. Matthew wants his readers to understand—Jesus of Nazareth is the “one who is to come,” and no, they need not “wait for another.”

Those two phrases come from later in Matthew when John is stuck in prison and starting, one imagines, to feel abandoned and hopeless. So, he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask the specific question: Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Instead of answering yes or no, Jesus says, “Go tell John what you hear and see.” Then he quotes Isaiah 35: The blind see. The lame walk. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. And the poor receive good news.

Ancient prophecy, the gift of baptism, and God’s call upon our lives are all part of one, unified movement of grace. They can’t be separated. Nor are they to be withheld from anyone—period.

God’s sending of Jesus recapitulates God’s presence in and love for all humankind and all Creation. The point of Jesus’ baptism, then, is to demonstrate God’s delight in and purposes for us as well as for Jesus.

No, we’re not Jesus. As human beings, however, we are imbued with the image of eternal and universal Christ, in whom and through whom all things exist. (John 1:3a) And learning to recognize, trust, and cooperate with the Christ in ourselves is intimately and inextricably tied to learning to recognize, trust, and cooperate with the presence of the Christ in our neighbors and in the Creation. That’s why our faith tradition is, fundamentally, a community-oriented tradition. We’re more complete, and we’re better when we, in all of our God-given diversity, worship and serve together. That’s why Jesus himself assembles twelve disciples to follow him and work with him. Now, given the way the disciples always need correcting, forgiving, and long-suffering patience, it would seem much simpler for Jesus to go it alone, wouldn’t it? Nonetheless, with prayerful intent, Jesus chooses companions with whom to serve.

One might argue that, in some ways, when Jesus gathers a community of disciples, he limits himself. But think about it: What’s harder to argue is that in gathering a community of disciples, with all their foibles and neediness, Jesus demonstrates that even the likes of us have far more capacity for embodying Christ than we would otherwise give ourselves credit for. Through Christ, we can love as we are loved.

Today, we ordain and install a new class of officers. For the next three years, and for the sake of all of us, they are committing their time, their energy, their gifts, their love, their capacity to embody the Christ. And as we do this, we remember and reaffirm baptism in general and our baptisms in particular. And in that, we reaffirm our proclamation that we, too, are chosen, gifted, and loved by God. We claim that God delights in us and calls us to follow Jesus in his prophetic ways of reconciliation, peace, and society-transforming justice.

I thank God for all who are serving, who have served, and who, in the future, will serve as elders of Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. Your commitment to God, and your love of the people of this congregation reflect God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. And your willingness to serve demonstrates your trust in Jesus, the Christ, the one who has come. The one who is here. Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, you see, all of that has come and gone. Our wait is over.

Now we receive our prophetic call: As God’s beloved community, we, together, follow and serve God’s incarnate, Creation-restoring Christ.

*Very short sermon because of several other things going on during this particular worship service. To those who didn't get their full nap, I apologize. ;-)