The Beloved

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

January 13, 2013

 The Baptism of the Lord

Tabula Rasa.  Before I offer the definition of this phrase, let me first say that I am a bit of a word nerd.  Actually, I’m more than just a bit.  I love words.  I love language.  They don’t just become part of my vocabulary list, they become intricately associated with the events in which I learned them.  They become a part of my memories.  That’s why I remember tabula rasa. 

I was taking a class on psychology at St. Thomas Aquinas Junior College, the school I attended for a couple of years before I transferred to a state university.  The class was taught by Father Nolan, who was one of the dearest, most wonderful persons I’d met at the time.  He introduced me to ideas of social witness, social justice, spiritual formation and tabula rasa. 

Tabula Rasa is the idea of, for lack of a better way to phrase it, a blank slate.  It is the theory that the mind starts off originally as a blank slate.  It’s also the idea of something still in a pristine state.  Untouched, unmarred by experience, life, anything. 

We were discussing tabula rasa in psychology class because we were dealing with the concept of nature versus nurture in relation to personalities and character traits.  If my memory serves, at one time the universally accepted idea was that when we come into this world we are blank slates.  Our minds are waiting to be written on.  Our personalities are just waiting to be formed.  Perhaps in today’s vernacular we should refer to this as we are born as new Ipads or Android tablets just waiting for apps to be added. 

But as knowledge of the human brain and development grew, the idea of humans as originally blank slates lost momentum.  Having watched my own two kids from birth to now, I can tell you they were born with distinct and unique personalities.  They were born with character traits that remain with them to this day, and probably will for the rest of their lives.  I’m sure my parents would say the same about my siblings and myself. 

But we are also shaped and formed by what happens to us.  Our experiences, good and bad, help to create who we are.  I have been formed by what has wounded me, and how I’ve learned and healed from those wounds.  I’ve been formed by all the good that has happened to me.  And the character traits I came into the world with, such as my impatience, those have formed me too.    

In other words, my identity, who I am and how I see myself, has been intimately shaped and created by the traits that I came into this world with and by the life I’ve lived, the people I’ve met and loved, the experiences that I’ve had, and the faith journey that I’ve walked.  All of us are unique combinations of nature and nurture.  I think that even applies, and some might be shocked by my saying so, to Jesus.

Luke’s telling of Jesus' baptism is not completely different from Mark and Matthew’s witnesses.  Certainly there are common elements.  But it’s not the same either.  In Luke, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove as in other versions, but the voice of God that speaks to Jesus while he is praying is heard by him alone. 

“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 

A parent speaking words of love and tenderness to a child.  “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

One of the questions that we often have about Jesus’ baptism is why did he have to be baptized in the first place?  Why was this important?  And it must be important, because every gospel recounts some version of this event in Jesus’ life. 

If we baptize as an expression of salvation and forgiveness of sins, does this mean that Jesus was sinful and needed baptism?  For some folks that’s really hard to get past.  Jesus could not have needed baptism for the same reasons we need baptism. 

Is it Jesus’ way of initiating the ritual of believer’s baptism?  If so, what does that say for our tradition which baptizes infants?  I realize that many of us in this congregation, with the strong influence of other traditions, may remember our own baptisms.  Not being raised Presbyterian, I certainly do.  But my children were baptized as babies.  And I agree with the theological justification for doing that.  God’s grace comes to us whether we are aware of it or not.  It doesn’t require our affirmation to be present in our lives. 

Baptism also symbolizes our dying and rising with Christ. It is about new life and resurrection.  We die to the self and are raised into Christ.  In the early church new believers were baptized on Easter, emphasizing the new life that they now live into.  Again, why would Jesus need to do that? 

Perhaps this is just a case of Jesus setting an example for us and nothing else.  It is something that his followers need to do, so we need to do it too. 

Yet what else does baptism mean?  When we are baptized we are baptized into a community of faith.  In our tradition, we don’t endorse private baptisms.  It’s not something that happens outside of the faith community, outside of worship.  We are baptized into the body of Christ in the world.  We are baptized into the family of faith – in a particular setting and into the larger faith family.  It’s not just the parents or the godparents or the believer who makes promises at baptism.  It’s all of us.  When we participate in a baptism, we all promise to love and support and nurture the one who is baptized.  We all promise to help this person grow in their life of faith.  We all promise to encourage this person in this new identity. 

There’s that word again.  Identity.  I think that perhaps this may be a fundamental reason for Jesus’ baptism.  It was a moment of identity formation. 

Earlier I said that I believe Jesus was also a unique combination of nature and nurture.  I know that sounds strange, but think about it.  We proclaim that Jesus is both divine and human.  I don’t believe that Jesus was born in a state of tabula rasa.  He was not just a blank slate to be written on.  Luke’s story of his birth makes it very clear that he was born with divine purpose.  He was God incarnate.  But if we accept that Jesus, God with us, was also human, doesn’t that suggest that he too learned and grew and was shaped by the experiences of his life?  He was both by nature the incarnation and in nurture a human being.  Luke is the only gospel that gives us any stories about his childhood.  But they stop at age 12.  So in those years he must have been growing, emotionally and spiritually as well as physically.  He must have been learning.  He must have been experiencing a variety of situations and people.  It’s often speculated that he would have had the opportunity to meet a variety of people, because he would have had access to the traveling merchants and traders on the Silk Route.  Whatever the circumstances of those years we don’t know about, Jesus must have been about the business of becoming the man who came to the Jordan to be baptized by John.  And in his baptism, he is shaped in his identity. 

I think that Jesus in his baptism, in the descending of the dove and his hearing God’s affirmation of him, experiences a moment of profound identity formation.  Jesus is God’s Son, the Beloved.  His identity as the Messiah is confirmed.  And yes, I think Jesus needed that.  Not because he might not have been the Messiah otherwise, but because of what he must now do.  After this comes testing in the wilderness, and then a public ministry that will move from crowds wanting him to heal them to crowds calling for his death.  It will be a ministry of love and compassion, healing and hope, as well as confrontation and finally betrayal. 

So Jesus needed that baptism, not because it changed him, but because it confirmed even more profoundly who he already was.  It further shaped his identity as the Son of God, as the Beloved. 

Isn’t that what baptism does for us?  It shapes our identity and sets us on a path of discipleship.  It isn’t magic.  It doesn’t transform us from one thing into something entirely different.  It doesn’t initiate us into an exclusive club or make us superior to others.  It reminds us that we are connected intimately to God and to one another.  Baptism deeply confirms our identity as children of God.  The more we remember this, the more we can see others and ourselves as God sees us.  We are beloved.  We are beloved.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

Your Light Has Come

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany Sunday, January 6, 2013

            There are two notes of music that literally have the power to inspire fear in our hearts.  Just hearing them sends shivers coursing up and down our spines.  For some people, this kind of fear is exciting.  For others it brings only a sense of dread.  But I guarantee you whatever specific reaction we might have to them, we probably don’t want to hear them at the beach. 

            What are these two notes of music?  (impression of the opening notes of the Jaws theme)  Even my faulty musical impression still brings to mind the movie Jaws and the excitement and fear and dread and chills that the movie inspired. 

             I was just a kid the summer the movie Jaws was released, which meant I was too young to see it.  But everyone was talking about it, so I knew enough about the story line to know the basic plot of the movie.  It terrified me.  I could be at the pool at the YMCA, which was an indoor pool mind you, and someone would jokingly imitate the Jaws music, and I would be out of the pool like a shot.  Just those two notes alone would send me into a panic that somehow a great white shark would find its way to Nashville, Tennessee – landlocked Nashville, Tennessee – and get me.  I even had a nightmare, which I remember to this day, about the shark showing up in the pool and chasing me. 

            I finally dealt with this fear by sitting up all night, a fact unknown to my parents, and listening to the radio.  I snuggled up in my bed, reading, with the radio on low.  And it seemed every hour on the hour the trailer for Jaws would run.  And guess what it would start with?  Those notes.  That theme.  Most children would turn the radio off or at least down when the scary ad for the scary movie came on.  But not me, I turned it up.  I listened to it.  It scared me but I forced myself to listen to it, because somehow listening to it over and over again made it seem less scary.  By the next morning I was exhausted but I could deal with Jaws.  At least I could deal with the scary soundtrack.  It took me another ten years before I actually got up the nerve to watch the movie.  But dealing with the soundtrack at that age was triumph enough. 

            The point of that story was not simply to show what a weird little kid I was.  I was, but that wasn’t the point.  The point is to illustrate that fear is a funny thing.  It’s peculiar.  It can be a tremendous motivator.  The fear from a health scare can motivate someone to change habits and get healthy.  Fear, and the adrenaline rush that goes with it, can transform us into superheroes – at least temporarily.  A man in New York saw a woman fall onto the subway tracks and jumped down to save her.  A dear friend of mine confronted gang members in Chicago with a commemorative Chicago Cubs baseball bat because they were harassing a neighbor.  Maybe in retrospect these actions weren’t smart, but they were driven by fear for the safety of someone else. 

            Yet fear can also cause the opposite.  Fear can shut us down.  It can rule our lives.  It can motivate us to do terrible things because something or someone is so unknown to us, so strange and different, that we fear it.  And too often what we fear we also try to destroy. 

            I think this kind of fear is a large part of Matthew’s story today; the Epiphany story.  I realize that fear is not something we automatically associate with Epiphany.  This is the story of the wise men from the East who see a great star shining in the sky, realize it is the sign that the Messiah has come, follow it bearing gifts and present them to the baby.  Often in our Christmas pageants Luke’s version and Matthew’s version are sort of mushed together so that the wise men show up just shortly after the shepherds.  Jesus is still a newborn.  Mary and Joseph still have that deer-caught-in-the-headlights-we’re-new-parents-what-do-we-do-now look about them.  And then all the characters gather around and stare lovingly at the baby king. 

            The reality of the story is very different.  Scholars believe that they were most likely from Persia.  They were probably Zoroastrian.  They were magicians, although not the kind of magicians we might think of, the ones who conceal rabbits in their hats.  They were astrologers, charting the stars.  They were definitely outsiders, others.  Yet their status as outsiders does not prevent them from recognizing that God’s Messiah has been born, that the world has been irrevocably changed, and that paying homage and bringing gifts is the only fitting response to God among us.  So they set out to Jerusalem.  And when they get there and begin asking about this new king, what is the response to their queries?  Is it joyful surprise?  Excitement?  Worship?  Alleluias?  It’s fear. 

            “When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.” 

            The wise men’s announcement that a king had been born, that not just any king, but the messiah of God, had been born doesn’t excite Herod.  It scares him.  It is a threat to his power.  So how does he deal with his fear?  He slaughters the innocents.  We all know too well that that kind of horror is real. 

            While we may not respond to fear by committing unspeakably horrible acts, it still has an effect on us.  It makes us pull in on ourselves, circle the wagons so to speak.  I think the fear of change is so overwhelming that many people and institutions – including churches – would rather die than change.  Sadly, they often do just that.  Fear of scarcity makes hoarders out of us.  Fear of rejection keeps us from reaching out to others.  Fear of failure keeps us from trying. 

            I think the most telling aspect of the Epiphany story is that those who should have been the first to welcome Jesus into the world, his own people, were the ones who were the most fearful.  Yet the ones who saw God in him were the ones on the outside, the strangers, the foreigners, the others.  The star that led them to Jesus shone for all people.  All people had access to that magnificent light.  The only difference is that the supposed outsiders greeted it with joy.  The ones who should have known the promise of God the best greeted it with fear.   For those of us who know the rest of the story, we know where that fear ultimately leads.  

            So what are our fears?  Do they motivate us or do they control us?  How do they prevent us from seeing the glory of God, the light of God made manifest?  How do they keep us from seeing God in our midst? 

            It seems to me that the surest antidote to fear is trust.  But trust is not easy.  Maybe the best way, the only way, to become more trusting is to act as though we already are.  Trusting won’t drive fear away entirely, but it just might make it loosen its grip.  We’re scared that there won’t be enough but we give anyway.  We’re unsure of the stranger next to us, but we treat them like a friend.  We’re shaking in our shoes at the possibility of failing but we try regardless.  We can’t prove by scientific empirical evidence that the claims of our faith are “real” but we believe anyway.  The more we act as faithful people, the more we become faithful people.  The more we trust that God will reveal Gods’ self to us in surprising, wonderful and sometimes scary ways, the more we are able to see that God is already doing just that.  God is already doing just that.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

A View From Below

            “Those whom God has joined together let no one separate.”

                                               Book of Common Worship, Christian Marriage: Rite 1

                                              © 1993 Westminster/John Knox Press

            A week before Thanksgiving my husband of 16 years moved out.  This was by no means abandonment on his part.  It was a decision that we reached mutually and as amicably as possible, and the impetus for separating came from me.  This blog isn’t an attempt to explain how and why we got to this point.  Suffice it to say that we got here.  While it is certainly true that there are two sides to the story of our marriage, and we both could probably do our share of pointing fingers and blaming, what I’m ultimately left with is sadness. 

            It is overwhelmingly sad when a marriage comes to an end.  When I first set out in my marriage, I had nothing but high hopes for our long life together.  Perhaps I was even somewhat smug about couples who created their own demise.  Never would it happen to me, to us.  But it has.  Certainly our years together were not a waste.  We have had some wonderfully happy moments, and most importantly, we have two amazing children.  They are the best of both of us.  So we work together to care and love them through this. 

            However the dark moments that come with this can also be overwhelming.  I think about the phrase from the marriage service quoted above.  Will I, as a pastor, ever again be able to say those words on behalf of two people and be taken seriously?  Will I be seen as more empathetic or not to be trusted when it comes to offering guidance to couples setting out in a life together?  I don’t know.  A few days ago I sat in an ecumenical meeting of ministers and listened to one minister making the case that the ills of the world can be traced back to the breakdown of the family.  He used the D word repeatedly.  I sat listening to his rant – for that’s what it was – with my heart threatening to beat out of my chest, believing that the reality of my separation must be emblazoned like a brand across my forehead. 

            As horrible as that was, I expected moments like that.  I expected judgment.  I expected to grieve.  I expected that navigating this new and narrow road would bring challenges and difficulties I couldn’t foresee.  What I didn’t expect was how hard the reality of failure would hit me.  I thought that being separated, ultimately divorced, would make me feel tainted somehow.  But the underlying stink is that of failure.  My marriage failed.  I failed. 

            Yes, I know the failure is not mine alone.  I collect pithy quotes from Pinterest about the necessity of failure.  The fact that I’ve failed means that I’ve tried.  Without failure there would be no wisdom, no growth.  To live is to fail.  Intellectually, logically, I know all of this is true.  I know I have to work through this failure and that when I come out on the other side, I’ll be stronger and better and wiser, etc. to the infinite power.  But the insidious nature of failure – at least for me – is that it restarts those tapes that I’ve worked so hard to shut off and shut down; the tapes of self-doubt and self-criticism.  They are the voices that have played in my head for years telling me I’m not enough.  Not smart enough.  Not competent enough.  Not brave enough.  Not pretty enough.  Not good enough.  Just not enough.  And they’re sneaky.  They start playing at a low pitch, so you don’t notice them right away, but they get louder.  They get a lot louder.

            A friend who has gone through his own break up told me that I would walk through the fire a while.  But one day I’d look back and realize I was through it.  I find this an apt analogy, but the image that’s been playing in my head is that of being underwater. 

            I love to swim.  One of the great triumphs of my childhood was when I could finally dive into the deep end of the pool, swim all the way to the bottom, touch the drain on the pool floor and swim back to the surface.  There was always a moment when I wasn’t sure I would make it.  I could see the top.  I would be kicking with all my might, my lungs begging for air, and my mind becoming more convinced I wouldn’t survive the ascent.  But then I would reach it, my head would break the surface, and I’d take a deep gulping breath, feeling brave for having done it. 

            Right now I’m underwater.  I know the surface waits above me.  I get glimpses of light and blue sky at that line where air and water meet.  I’m kicking as hard as I can.  Those voices, those tapes that tell me I can’t make it tempt me sometimes to just give in, to still my legs and arms, close my eyes and sink.  But then I hear another voice, my voice, saying just two words.  I repeat those words over and over, and I start kicking once more. 

           A while back I found a quote from Joseph Campbell that I cling to at the most difficult moments.  It says, “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

            I didn’t plan on this.  Who would?  Then again, some of the most wonderful facets of my life have not been planned.  So I keep kicking.  I keep swimming.  I trust – and when I can’t, I rely on others to trust for me – that somewhere above me is the life that is waiting for me.  It’s a life that contains joy and love and hope.  So I keep swimming.  And those two words I repeat over and over again?  I’m enough. 

The life that is waiting for me is up there somewhere