Baptized by Fire -- Baptism of the Lord

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

January 13, 2019

I didn’t know the term “storm chaser” when I was in high school. To be honest, I could not have conceived of anyone actually wanting to get in their car and follow a storm to see what it would do and where it would go. But had I known about storm chasers, I would have predicted that a good friend of mine would have become one. My friend loved thunderstorms. Whenever there was a thunderstorm while we were in school, she would run to the window of the classroom. If she was home, she would run out on her front porch. She loved to be close to the storm. She confided with me once that the whole world felt electrified and exciting during a thunderstorm. The world came alive in a thunderstorm. The storm’s wildness and excitement exhilarated her, and she wanted to be as much a part of the storm as possible. She wanted to be close to it. That’s why she would go outside when a big one would hit. Like I said, if I had known that storm chasers existed, I would have bet good money that my friend would become one. We’ve lost touch since high school graduation, and I suspect that in the years since, she has changed as much as I have. However some things don’t change. I suspect that she still runs to a window or a front porch whenever a big storm rolls in. I imagine she still thinks the world comes more alive when lightning lights up the sky and the heavens open with a wild frenzy.  

            I consider this person a friend, a good friend, but I was not like her. I’m not a storm person, and I certainly have no future as a storm chaser. I don’t mind rain and even some thunder, but a wild and wooly storm does not motivate me to run to the window or go stand outside on my driveway. A wild and wooly storm sends under the covers. When I was a little girl, a really bad storm sent me under the covers in my parents’ room or my sister’s. The rain would beat so hard on the roof of our house, it sounded like it was going to finally push through the ceiling and flood my bedroom.

            When I read these gospel words describing the heavens opening, this is what I think of – rain and wind and lighting and thunder – all crashing down around my head.  But in this passage from Luke, when the heavens opened something very different happened.  In this instance the heavens opening brought the voice of God, and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. When the heavens opened in this story from our gospel passage, God’s voice spoke to Jesus, confirming his full identity, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

            The heavens opening are actually a familiar theme in Scripture. We read it in those scriptures concerning the end times. The opening of the heavens often signals that God’s presence is near or that angels or other heavenly beings are about to descend. The opening of the heavens signifies that God’s blessings, God’s mercy and God’s power are being unleashed on the world.

            All of this happens around the baptism of Jesus. Luke puts his own unique spin on the baptism of Jesus. In many ways, the baptism is described more passively than it is in Mark or Matthew, while John does not tell the actual baptism part of the story at all.

             Like John, Luke does not offer us a particular description of the baptism itself.  What we do read is that after all the people who came to John the Baptist were baptized, and after Jesus himself was baptized and praying, the heavens opened.  We could assume from what the text says that Jesus waited in line to be baptized, same as the other folks. Something else to consider is that in Luke’s gospel, the story of the baptism of Jesus follows the section where we learn that John has been imprisoned by Herod. Those are the verses left out in today’s story. John addresses the crowds that came to be baptized by him, first by calling them a brood of vipers and relating baptism very distinctly to repentance and forgiveness. Then when the crowds were duly chastised and wondered what they should do, he gave them instruction on how to live as people who have repented and been forgiven.

All of this leads to the statement in verse 15 that the people were filled with great expectation as to whether or not John was the messiah they had been waiting for. Scholars suspect that this might have been more of an issue than we realize, because all of the gospel writers go to great pains to show that John denied this vehemently.

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

As John said, he was not the one. He baptized with water, but one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

There are different connotations to the phrase, “baptized by fire,” beyond these words of John the Baptist. Martyrdom, being burned at the stake, was a baptism by fire. From what I have read the Mennonites hearken back to this meaning when they use this particular phrase. But there are other connotations as well. If you start a new job and immediately have to deal with difficulties or emergencies, you are often considered baptized by fire. One definition of the phrase is the first time soldiers face real combat. Another definition I found states that it is “any experience that tests one’s courage, strength, etc. for the first time.”

But what does it mean for us, for us who have been baptized by water, for us who will remember our baptisms a little later in the service? What does it mean for us to be baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire? Is this just a one-time event, or is it something that occurs over and over again, whenever the Holy Spirit blows through our midst? What does it mean for us to have baptism connected to the act of winnowing, of separating the wheat from the chaff?

If one understanding of baptism is that it symbolizes our adoption into the family of God, the body of Christ, the church, then does this mean that our baptisms separate us from others? Does a baptism by fire separate the good from the bad, the believers from the unbelievers? Is that what is happening in the winnowing? That’s certainly what it sounds like.

One commentator wrote that the description of One to come standing with his winnowing fork, separating the wheat from the chaff, terrified and disturbed her. It conjured up images of a “farmer God,” standing on the threshing floor separating the good folks going to heaven from the bad ones going to hell. But I wonder if something else is happening.

I have never seen wheat winnowed, but apparently the wheat is picked up on the winnowing fork and flung into the air. The wind does the work of separating. The wind pulls the chaff away from the wheat, and then the chaff is burned. If this is what happens to us with the coming of the Holy Spirit, with a baptism by fire, then maybe it isn’t so much about us being separated from them; good, saved, baptized ones from bad, unsaved, un-baptized ones. Maybe it is about the chaff within us, within each of us being lifted away, separated out. Maybe the winnowing happens within each of us. Being baptized by the Holy Spirit, baptized by fire, might just be an experience of being shaken up, stirred up, flung into the metaphorical air so that the wind can take away that chaff. Maybe being baptized by fire is about burning away that within us which keeps us from God, keeps us from being in relationship with God and with all of God’s children. Perhaps being baptized by fire is what must happen, over and over again if necessary, to burn away that chaff that exists in ourselves.

I realize that this does not necessarily sound comforting. Being baptized by fire is not a sweetness and light, warm fuzzy kind of thing. But if our baptisms claim us and name us, if they mark us as God’s own, then it seems to me that being baptized by fire, being shaken up by the Holy Spirit, is also a part of the naming and claiming and marking. It seems to me that to be baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire is not about harming but healing. It’s not about separation into eternal categories, but about being made more whole, more complete. It is about being refined and cleansed and burnished and polished until we reflect ever more clearly the image of the One in which we were made. Being baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire is good news. It is good news indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Our Light Has Come -- Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

January 6, 2019

I wandered so aimless life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord I saw the light
I saw the light I saw the light
No more darkness no more night
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord I saw the light

            Even if you’re not a country music or a Hank Williams fan, you may recognize the opening lyrics and chorus of Hank’s iconic song, “I Saw the Light.” As the song goes, his life was shut up in darkness, sin and pointless wanderings away from God. Then one day, “like a stranger in the night,” Jesus came into his life and he saw the light.

            This is a great song. I hadn’t heard it in years, and when I was thinking about using it, I went back and listened again to Hank Williams’ plaintive voice declaring that out of a life of spiritual blindness and waste, he finally saw Jesus and he finally saw the light. But did you know that the inspiration for this song really was a light? It was not a celestial light from the heavens – although perhaps it seemed like it was. It was a real, physical, tangible light.

Hank and his band were driving back to Nashville in the dead of the night after a gig somewhere. This was long before Nashville had a skyline with light that illuminated the landscape for miles. Hank looked out into that looming darkness and saw the light of the WSM radio tower. WSM was and is the station for the Grand Ole Opry, and its tower is unlike any radio tower that I have ever seen. It stands like a strange obelisk, reaching into the sky; and on that night when Hank Williams and his band mates were driving through the pitch black, the light from the WSM tower must have seemed like the light from a lighthouse guiding tired travelers home. Maybe it did indeed seem like a light from the heavens. But however Williams perceived it, it inspired this song. Praise the Lord, I saw the light!

I’m not sure that Hank Williams would have used this term, but what he described in the song was an epiphany. He saw the light, and when he saw this light, it illuminated the darkness he had been living in. If you’ve given any attention to your bulletin, you know already that today is Epiphany. Today is the feast of Epiphany, and we are now entering into the season of Epiphany; the season of light.

Although in our Christmas pageants we conflate the shepherds and the wise men together, having all of them show up at the manger on the same night, it is more likely true that the magi took several months to make their way to Bethlehem. It would have been an arduous trip. I have always been taught that these magi hailed from Persia, but one scholar that I read just recently stated that it is quite possible they came from Babylon. The magi, the title that give us our word, “magic,” were not magicians, but they were the astronomers of their day. They studied the stars. And while art and pictures, such as the one on the cover of our bulletin, depict three men on camels following a star, we don’t really know just how many magi there were. Matthew’s text gives us no count. They brought three gifts, so we assume there were three of them. Yet, regardless of their number, these men who watched the sky recognized that a great king had been born. They understood that this king was not your regular royal, and making the trip to pay him homage was the only right response. They saw the light.

How interesting that in Matthew’s gospel – a gospel which is considered by scholars to be a very Jewish centered gospel – the first people to witness to the coming of the Light of the world were gentiles. Not only were they gentiles, they were quite likely from the heart of the empire that had conquered Israel and dispersed its people to the far corners of the earth. These magi were the epitome of outsiders, others. But this did not prevent them from recognizing the birth of Jesus. Their otherness did not stop them from understanding that with the birth of Jesus, the world shifted. They were the other, but they still saw the light.

And while it is tempting to sentimentalize this story, just as we do the nativity in Luke’s gospel, the danger it describes is quite real. Our verses stop before Herod executes his horrific plan. But as biblical scholar Karoline Lewis wrote, Herod is a perfect example of what happens when oppressive power is confronted with truth.

Herod was no dummy. He knew that what the magi told him about the birth of a new king was a real threat to him and to his throne. He showed that he was willing to eradicate that threat by whatever means necessary. And he did. His quest to remain in power made refugees of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and it wreaked death and slaughter on innocents and their families.

No, the story of the magi, the story of Epiphany is not a sweet story. Nor is it a sentimental one. But it is the story of God that we see throughout the arc of the Bible. It is the story of God working through unlikely people in uncertain circumstances to bring about God’s purposes for this world, for God’s children, for us. The story of Epiphany is light shining in the darkness.

The story of Epiphany is our story. We still live in a dangerous and dark world. It is a world still filled with Herods, willing to end threats to their power by whatever means necessary. But our world is also God’s world. And God is still working God’s purposes through unlikely people from unlikely places and in unlikely circumstances. God is still calling us to see God’s light shining in the darkness. Epiphany is a season, but it is also a reality. It is wherever we see the light of God. It is whenever we feel compelled to follow a star.

Take a moment and think of when you have experienced epiphany, of when you have seen the light of God. Take a moment and remember your own stories. Epiphany does not belong to the magi. Epiphany is ours. It is our moments of seeing the light. It is our witness to the birth of a baby and to the resurrection of a Son. It is our stories. So think of a moment, a time, a place when you have seen the light. Think of this and give thanks that our light has come. I’ve seen the light. You’ve seen the light. Praise the Lord, we’ve seen the light.

Let all God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.