Beloved

Scripture:        Isaiah 43:1-7,     Psalm 29,   Acts 8:14-17 ,          Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Today’s gospel gives us a very brief description of Jesus’ baptism, the formative moment that launched Jesus’ earthly ministry.  This event is described in all four gospels.   Like Matthew’s gospel, Luke’s gospel does a sort of time hop from the birth and infancy of Jesus to the baptism of Jesus as an adult – though Luke’s gospel gives us a snapshot along the way of Jesus in the Temple at age 12.  Mark’s and John’s gospels, of course, do not tell us about the birth of Jesus, but begin with the baptism of Jesus as an adult. 

Today in mainline churches, infants are baptized more or less as a matter of course to join the community of faith, but that was not the case in the Judaism of Jesus’ day – in Jesus’ day, circumcision was the rite performed on infants as a sign of their inclusion into the community.  Adults could be baptized as a sign of purification.  John performed what he called a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River on adults seeking to leave behind the sins of their past lives and align their lives with God by joining the renewal movement John was leading.

Crowds were coming, and Jesus was among the crowds.  As he approached John, there was no halo over Jesus’ head, no neon sign pointing down at him saying “this is the one”.   As John put Jesus down in the water, Jesus was just one more face in the crowd.  But we’re told that as Jesus came up out of the water and prayed, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”  So at his baptism, Jesus literally heard a voice from heaven telling God, “I love you.”

We may wonder why Jesus came to be baptized in the first place.  John’s baptism represented a turning away from sin, and we believe Jesus was without sin – so why was he baptized?  It’s because Jesus, God the Son, so radically identified with sinful humankind that he was baptized along with them, not for his own sins, but for ours.  And he did this out of love.

Beloved.  The word Jesus heard at his baptism was “beloved – you are my beloved”.  This word “beloved” shaped Jesus’ life and ministry from that day forward.  One thing that’s striking, though we tend to gloss it over, is how different Jesus was from John the Baptist.  John the Baptist was harsh, demanding, accusatory, calling his listeners “a brood of vipers”.  He threatened his listeners with fire, fire, unquenchable fire.  The word “beloved” or even “love” was not to be found in his vocabulary as captured in the Gospels.   John baptized in order to prepare the way for the one coming who was greater than he, and his message seemed to be that of an angry mother whose children had just trashed the house or otherwise misbehaved badly:  “Just wait till your father gets home.”  The expectation of course is that when father gets home, the kids are getting a spanking, or at least a stern yelling at and being sent to their rooms without supper.  John’s ministry came with the message, “turn or burn”, a sense that his listeners would be punished unless they got right with God. 

But the ministry of Jesus began with the word “Beloved”.  Love was present at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus.  Love would be a part of Jesus’ ministry all the way through, as he welcomed sinners, hung out with them, even invited himself to dinner in their homes.  It’s as if, after angry mom told the kids, “Just wait till your father comes home,” father comes home and proceeds to hug the kids and pick them up and play with them – and yes, tell them that they shouldn’t have trashed the house, but that he forgave them and would give them a second chance.   The contrast, the seeming disconnect between the ministry of John and the ministry of Jesus could not be more stark, so much so that after his imprisonment, John would send his disciples to Jesus asking, “Are you the one, or should we be looking for someone else?”

Beloved.  The word that defined Jesus’ ministry was his sense that he was God’s beloved, reaching out in love to a world that God so loved.  Now,  I don’t suspect most of us have heard a voice from heaven telling us, “You are God’s beloved” – possibly none of us have - and how different our lives could be if we had.  But just as Jesus was baptized, not for himself, but for us, the voice from heaven calling Jesus the beloved was for us as much as it was for Jesus.   Indeed, as sinful and broken as we are, we are God’s beloved.   Our sacrament of baptism, whether performed on children or adults, is a sacrament of love, as the pastor says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, and afterword pronounces the words, “Receive the Holy Spirit, child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.”

Our baptismal identity – beloved daughter or son of God, disciple of Christ, member of the church, beloved member of the community of faith, is at the very core of who we are as Christians, at the very center of our lives as Christians – that we are beloved, and that because we are beloved by God, we can be loving toward neighbor.  We love, because God first loved us.  And it makes sense – after all, we can’t give to others what we don’t have ourselves.  In our relationships, we can’t treat family, friends, neighbors as whole and holy people if we ourselves feel like dirty, damaged goods.   We can’t bring healing to others if we haven’t experienced at least some measure of healing ourselves.   Our wounds, once they have healed somewhat, can help us minister to others who are similarly wounded – but if we haven’t experienced healing, if we still carry gaping open wounds, all we’ll do is bleed on other people, and that helps no one, not them, not us.  We can’t give love to others if we haven’t experienced love ourselves.  So the sacrament of baptism is first and foremost a sacrament of love, and our identity as Christians is first and foremost an identity grounded and centered in love.  As Christians, love is at the very center of who we are. 

As you leave church today, as we leave church today, go out to begin  your week believing and knowing that you are God’s beloved children.  You are God’s beloved, we are God’s beloved, not because of what we’ve done, but because of what Christ did.  From Genesis we believe we are created in God’s image, with something of God inside each of us.  As baptized followers of the Risen Christ, we believe that we are children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church.  Go out into the world knowing that everyone you encounter is also created in God’s image, also carrying something of God within them, however hidden it may sometimes be. And so that of God within  you can connect to that of God within others, if we let it, if our need for control and our egos don’t get in the way.   You will meet sisters and brothers in Christ who are also children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church.   The Christ within you can connect to the Christ within other Christians, if we let it.  If we let it.

At the start of his ministry, Jesus heard the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased.”  And that sense of himself as being beloved helped him to be loving toward others, and shaped his whole ministry, and ultimately changed the course of human history and the fate of the human race.  May we come to know ourselves as beloved men, women and children created in God’s image, beloved children of God, beloved disciples of Christ, beloved members of Christ’s church.  May our sense of being beloved help us to be loving toward all we encounter. Amen.