God Untamed
Today we celebrate two beginnings in our church year: the First Sunday after Epiphany, and the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. Epiphany is at the beginning of Jesus’ life, when the Magi arrive in Bethlehem to worship the new baby king. And the Baptism of Our Lord is at the beginning of Jesus’ approximately three-year earthly ministry.
Both events challenge our assumptions and understandings about power and authority — and strength and weakness — and love and safety.
The Magi — mysterious VIPs from the East — leave Herod’s court in Jerusalem to follow the star to the manger side in Bethlehem to worship a baby, born King of the Jews, they said, and laid down to sleep not in a fancy royal crib, but in a manger — a food trough for animals. The manger itself was in a cave — the safest and most intimate place in an ancient Judean home, where a family sheltered their animals, which were their most precious assets and livelihood. The baby Jesus was brought into the heart of the home and family, not to a king’s court.
And Jesus’ power, authority, and strength as God was clothed in human skin, a brand new baby born of a teenage Galilean mother, far away in distance, and with a very different agenda, from the royal courts in Jerusalem.
Baptism
Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan — at the beginning of his earthly ministry — is filled with opposites too. Remember, John the Baptist was the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way for Jesus. The Baptizer has said from the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel that there is one coming who is much greater than he, and that John the Baptist is unfit to carry the greater one’s sandals.
And in this morning’s gospel, we hear that when Jesus shows up at the Jordan River to be baptized by John, the Baptizer puts him off.
Wait just a minute, he says. YOU should be baptizing ME, not the other way around.
But we see John the Baptist’s important role in this watershed moment in Jesus’ ministry. Not only is it the Baptizer’s role to baptize to fulfill all righteousness. We also see another power inversion here, which runs all through scripture. Jesus is greater than John, but Jesus seeks baptism by John to begin his ministry. And when Jesus comes up out of the Jordan after his full immersion, he sees the heavens open to him, and the Spirit of God descends like a dove and lands right on him. A voice from heaven says This is my son whom I love; in him I am well pleased.
Most of us baptized in the Episcopal Church were probably baptized as infants at a fount, like ours. You might think of a gentle splash of water on the head. Those of you who were baptized in the Baptist tradition of full immersion — and I know some of you were — have a different experience.
I saw a great Episcopal Church meme that gets at something really important about baptism — and about God. Jesus and John the Baptist are standing together hip deep in the Jordan River, and Jesus clearly is just coming up from full immersion, probably with a nose full of water.
YOU COULD HAVE JUST POURED SOME WATER OVER MY HEAD WITHOUT TRYING TO DROWN ME! Jesus says.
John replies, Sorry, man, but I’m John the Baptist. You must have been looking for John the Episcopalian.
Baptism is Dangerous
There is a part of baptism that is scary — and dangerous — in its awesome power. There’s a part of baptism that is about death — about giving yourself over to the point of actually drowning. And our Episcopal liturgy — even with a splash at a fount — acknowledges that.
In the Book of Common Prayer, we pray in the rite of baptism:
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
The immersion in water is a symbolic descent into Christ’s death, by which we share in his resurrection and are reborn by the Holy Spirit in new life. Baptism is our entrance — our starting point — into our life in love with God. A God whose own self is as humble as a baby and as courageously fierce as a lion.
Not just Jesus, but all of us must stand in this paradox. As Jesus tells the disciples later in Matthew’s gospel, Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. This gets right to the point of both baptism and our lives as disciples of Jesus. And right to the point of the nature of God.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Do any of you remember C.S. Lewis’s story of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? A family of children, sent to a country estate to avoid the bombings in London during World War II, find a wardrobe — a big armoire — in one of the many rooms in the huge, old estate.
They discover that the wardrobe is a portal to another world, where they walk in an allegorical Kingdom of God, where God — the Christ — is the lion Aslan. One of the children — Susan — asks Mr. Beaver, their companion in this alternate world, about meeting Aslan when she finds out that the ruler there is a lion and not a man:
“Ooh” said Susan. ‘I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…’
‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver … ’Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’
This is our God. He is not safe, but he’s good. This resonates in my heart as it illustrates that God’s love is not safe, but we can trust God because we know that God is good. As preacher Kat Banakas says, Christ’s love is wild and reckless. It is overflowing, enduring and never ending.
This love is an amazing power — poured out extravagantly and without measure. And we see that in the reading from Isaiah today — the reading that was likely on the gospeler’s mind when he was writing the gospel of Matthew that we read today — about John the Baptist baptizing Jesus to fulfill all righteousness. This is some crazy courageous stuff that God expects of the Messiah, God’s chosen one: The prophet Isaiah says
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
…
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
…
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Now this is a tall order. This is not gentle, timid work.
And our psalm today gives an indication of God’s awesome power we’re talking about here.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; *
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon;
6 He makes Lebanon — now, that’s a whole country — skip like a calf, *
and Mount Hermon — MOUNT HERMON —
God makes a mountain skip like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord splits the flames of fire;
the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; *
the Lord shakes the WHOLE wilderness of Kadesh.
8 The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe *
and strips the forests bare.
Our God is Untamed
Our God is on the loose. Our God is untamed, undomesticated. We are not in control of our God — when we experience God, and the magnitude of God’s awesome power. Our God is a little dangerous.
As preacher Sarah Hinlicky Wilson says, even if this God is the creator and righteous judge, would you really want to meet him without a sturdy raincoat, a pair of galoshes and a friend with an SUV who could pick you up and bail you out? It is an act of extraordinary faith on the psalmist’s part to conclude with the encouraging words, “May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!”
You can’t ride out this storm. You must flee from God to God — from the God who drives you out of your own sometimes stubborn, sometimes wrong-headed ways — to the same God who welcomes you home. This God has himself been on a fishing boat in the sudden storms that can come up on the Sea of Galilee, and this God has been immersed — not just splashed gently in the Episcopalian way — this God has been immersed by John the Baptist in the River Jordan.
This God of tender power is as fierce and strong as a lion and as vulnerable and innocent as a little baby, born of a teenager, laid in a manger right under the nose of the family’s precious milk cow, receiving the priceless gifts of Eastern diplomats in a state visit.
The power of this God, whose own voice breaks the cedar trees, shakes the wilderness, and can make whole countries and mountains skip like a young calf in an open field, is love. Boundless love. Tender, vulnerable love. Risky love.
This God loves us — each of us — inestimably — outside any limits, and HAS loved us from the very beginning of time. And this God — our God — as shrewd as a serpent and as innocent as a dove — asks us to chin to that same challenge: To love each other as God loves us. To unleash this awesome power in our own community.
Is our God quite safe, as Susan asks Mr. Beaver in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? No, not hardly. But our God, and this mighty love let loose in us by our baptism, is very, very good. Amen