Luke 3:15-17; 21-22 January 10, 2016 The Church of the Pilgrimage Getting In Line Even if you aren t coming to the confirmation class on the Bible today following worship it may interest you to know that this story, the story of Jesus baptism, is one that to some extent gets mention in all four gospels. All four gospels cover it, but they do so in different ways. Mark puts the baptism as the very first thing. That s right no angel visitations, no baby born, no flight to Egypt to escape Herod s wrath. The baptism sets up Jesus as arriving on the public scene, into ministry, into adult life, for immediately following the baptism Jesus goes into the struggle of temptation, a time of testing in the wilderness. While Mark, Matthew, and Luke all describe the baptism, John does not. It is only alluded to. There s no accounting of it, no narrative with a heavenly dove descending. Only John saying he saw it, that it happened. Despite these differences, all four gospels have a message to get across. It is Jesus, not John who is the major event. Apparently there was some confusion back in the day. People following John, thinking he was the Messiah. The baptism of Jesus, however it is accounted for tells us the proper order, who is who. I noticed something when looking for a bulletin cover image of Jesus baptism. There are no pictures that include other people. There are many artists renderings of Jesus and John standing in the river Jordan, just the two men, alone. And there are plenty of scenes with angels inserted, angels gathered round, though the bible never mentions that. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, showing other people gathered there when Jesus was baptized. I found that too bad, because what leaps out in Luke s gospel
the reason I was hunting for it -- is that there were other people there, Luke makes a point of telling you that. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized The sense you get is of Jesus as one among many, of Jesus standing in line. In fact, the Spirit in Luke doesn t come down, the voice doesn t speak of Belovedness, of specialness, until after Jesus is baptized, when he is off praying. What Luke seems to want to say in his particular telling is that Jesus was baptized pretty much like everybody else. We used to wrestle with this in seminary. Not so much Luke s telling, but the fact that Jesus was baptized at all. If Jesus was God in the flesh, if Jesus was sinless, why was it necessary for him to be baptized? Doesn t baptism have something to do with being washed clean, with having a new start? What need did Jesus possibly have for that? There is a theologian named Marjorie Suchocki who is among the many who ve wrestled with this. She suggests that Jesus presented himself for baptism as an act of solidarity with a nation and a world of sinners, that he was in coming to earth and then to baptism identifying with everyone who had been broken by the wear and tear of this world, and had all but given up on themselves and their God. When the line of downtrodden and sin-sick people formed in hopes of new beginnings through a return to God, Jesus joined them. At his baptism, he identified with the damaged and broken people who needed God. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol 1, p. 236) I was asked yesterday if I still wanted the banners up for worship today. Yes, I said. It is still Epiphany. Not the day of, but the season. And Epiphany is not just about stars and wise men. It is a time to pause and reflect upon the meaning of the incarnation. What it means that Jesus comes to us as a Human One. As someone like us. Last week in Downton Abby the Countess Dowager, played so artfully by Maggie Smith, was getting lectured by her cousin Isobel with whom she perpetually struggles. Giving her one of those looks she asked Does it ever get cold on the moral highground? People loved that line.
I m sure it has a place on the top ten Countess Dowager lines, If not of all time, at least for Season Six. Its why we watch Downton Abby, why we mourn it s the last season but don t get me started on that. In her book Fall to Violence, Marjorie Suchocki opens with reflections on her experience serving as a jurist in a case where the defendant was found guilty. Although she believed that the individual committed the crime for which he was convicted, after the trial was over she began to reflect on her own place in the system that formed and eventually indicted this man. As a member of an interrelated system, she felt she had some relation to the man s crime: The sorry world of the crack house had seemed so distant from my world as the academic dean of a theological seminary. But in truth, that other world was only a few miles from my home. Where did that world start, and where did it stop? My world was geographically close, but had I ever intentionally done anything at all to touch the lives in that other world? Was I only involved to judge its inhabitants? Or was there not a sense in which I was a participant in that world as well as mine, even if that participation were as an absentee neighbor? ( Feasting on the Word, year C, Vol 1, p. 238) There is, you see, this tragic structure to life and I think Downton Abby works on that. The tragic structure of life is that we are removed from one another in ways that surely go against the Inclusive Good. There are times in Downton Abby when the Lords and Ladies come downstairs, not to issue orders but to celebrate the end of a war, or someone s name being cleared. There are these moments when the whole household sings carols around the Christmas tree, and they aren t just shining moments, they are moments meant to make you question why we often live so separately, so separately from one another. We are removed from one another in ways that surely go against the Inclusive Good. But Jesus gets in line. All this week Luke s telling of Jesus baptism has been the lens through which I have viewed life and all interactions. I have found it very illuminating. I ve seen, perhaps in high definition, how when we struggle We so often speak of ourselves as being removed from others. We engage in self-deprecation, and we are less than those other people. We feel unappreciated or misunderstood, and we are alienated from other people. We feel frustrated with other people s way of doing business, or living their lives,
and we disengage so as to protect ourselves. Sometimes it is necessary to make this boundary, to step back and away from. But sometimes in times when we are feeling these sorts of feelings toward our fellow human beings, we might pause and ask ourselves Am I creating a false boundary, or division, between these other people and myself? If so, why am I doing that? Now I am going to quote my husband, and before I do that I must empathize. It must be odd after all these years in ministry, after all those years of telling stories on your wife, to now be back there, sitting amidst the choir, hearing your wife tell stories on you. But I am going to quote my husband today, not tell a story on him. Because Mike has this great thing he says so simple, but so true. I know over the yeas I have not been the only recipient of this response, But here is how it works: When I am feeling frustrated, or vulnerable, or voicing something about my own limitations, or perhaps something really tender, like my own awakening here in midlife to the reality of our shared mortality Mike will listen, look at me and with a grin say Well, Welcome to the human race. I am feeling like I am not a great parent. Or that my kids aren t shaping up as I would have them shape up. Well, Welcome to the human race. I am questioning why we have to lose people dear to us. I am realizing how hard it is in certain situation to find words to comfort. Welcome to the human race. Sometimes it makes me grimace, sometimes it makes me smile, Sometimes it makes me laugh out loud, at myself, or at life. Welcome to the human race is both a chide and an encouragement. It reminds me I am never so alone as I imagine. Welcome to the human race. I suppose that is another way of saying Get in line. Get in line with Jesus and everyone else too. Yesterday at our Leadership Retreat we spoke a great deal about what it means to be community in a world that feels ever more fractured and frightening. We talked about opportunities that are always there to break down the barriers that exist between people. Diana Budge, who has asked us to pray for her daughter Liisa, who is living with cancer and undergoing a new clinical trial shared how Liisa has a sneaker ministry. She has these god awful sneakers, gold sparkle, ones that light up, You name it, Diana says. She goes into Dana Farber decked out in these,
and it gets conversation going. God at work in the Dana Farber chemotherapy waiting room. Liisa getting in line with Jesus and with everyone else. Welcome to the human race. Cathy Sampson, a new old member of the church, was at the retreat yesterday. As we were talking about where we feel the Spirit s urging, of what it is that God might want us to be paying attention to, the conversation kept coming round to being attentive to one another, and to the quality of our life together. But it doesn t just happen in church we said. We come here and are sent out, and how we hold ourselves with others really matters. Cathy told the story of a woman whose car, a BMW, was broken down by the side of the road. A young man in a rather old truck came by, stopped and changed her tire, helped her out. She pulled out her purse and tried to pay him. No, he said. Don t do that just pay it forward. So the woman went on her way and stopped at a local diner. She had a tasty meal, but as she was served it, she noticed how tired the waitresses eyes looked. When she finished her sandwich and made ready to leave, she left a hundred dollar bill to pay for her meal with a most sizable tip. With joy that waitress came home to her husband who happened to me the very man who had helped the woman change her tire and said, look at the tip I got today. This will help pay our bills! Yesterday our leadership retreat was not so much about setting big bold goals. It felt more like a pause, to stop and assess where we are. We have much to celebrate here in this church. There has been a lot of hard work done, with more work asked of us. But mostly yesterday felt to me to be about relationship. Our need in a troubled world, in frightening times to know each other, to be kind to one another, to affirm each person for their gifts and unique contributions. I invite you today to look at the flip chart sheets from our time of celebrations. You will see there three names. Paul, our door man, our Amen Paul, who greets us each day. Amy, who writes tender notes of encouragement to so many people and who regularly comes up with these sweet bulletin boards in Allerton Hall, (I particularly encourage you to seek out the one up right now.) And finally Max, who is like us all, a beloved child of God Precious Max who often shows up in the most interesting garb and falls out of boats in Easter pageants
and tenderly strokes the head of baby Jesus in Christmas pageants. We are a church. We are a whole collection of Human Ones. We get in line with Jesus, and Jesus gets in line with us. And there s a whole lot to celebrate right there, just in that. Amen.