Beloved (Baptism of Jesus)

Scripture:        Isaiah 42:1-9                           Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43                          Matthew 3:13-17

I’ll start this sermon with a question to consider:  what are the defining moments in your life?  That is to say, what are the times or places in your life that have made you what you are today, or that set the course for everything that followed.  For many, it may be the moment you committed to a spouse and realized that you were going to share the rest of your life with this person.  Perhaps it was military service.  For me, not all, but many of my defining moments came by way of the various churches I attended.  Being around people who would ask me “how’s it going?”, and who really wanted to know how things were going with me, was a life-changing experience.  It’s part of the reason I became a pastor – having a caring community around me meant a great deal at some really vulnerable moments in my life, when things weren’t going well with my family at all, when I could easily have fallen through the cracks, and I wanted that same kind of caring community to be there for others.

In today’s Gospel reading, we witness a defining moment in the life of Jesus: his baptism.  All four Gospels include versions of this story.  In part, Jesus meant for this to be a defining moment, as he came among the crowds to be baptized by John.  Baptism was a rite of purification, and so the crowds came to John to be washed of their sins…and Jesus was among the crowds that came.  But this moment also defined Jesus’ life from that point forward because of the vision God gave him, of the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven calling him the Son, the Beloved, with whom God was well-pleased. 

We may ask why Jesus went to be baptized by John.  After all, the crowds came to be cleansed of their sins, but we believe Jesus was sinless.   In Jesus, God so radically identified with humankind that Jesus was baptized along with everyone else, not for his own sins, but for ours.  Jesus did this out of love for us.

As I said, I believe that Jesus’ baptism, with the spirit coming down like a dove and the voice from God telling him God loved him, was a defining moment for Jesus.  The first thing Jesus did after his baptism was to go into the wilderness to discern his call and to be tempted by Satan, and that voice of love gave Jesus strength to resist temptation.  Jesus ministry of healing, preaching, casting out demons, was about bringing God’s love to the people.   He spent time with those who were considered sinners, those who were told they were beyond the reach of God’s love.  Jesus taught his followers to see God as father, because of that voice from heaven calling him the beloved Son.  At the Transfiguration, he invited Peter, James, and John to the mountaintop with him, and they heard that same voice telling them, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”  Even when Jesus had harsh words for the religious establishment – and he said things to them and about them that were scathing – it was to point out offenses against God’s love, and to jolt people out of their complacency.  It was Jesus’ sense of being a beloved Son that sustained him when he prayed in the Garden, “Not my will, but Thine be done”. 

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.”  Romans chapter 6 says in baptism we are baptized into Christ’s death, so that as Christ died and was resurrected, we, too, die to sin – our sinful nature, that part of us that resists God’s love,  is put to death in the waters of baptism – and we rise to new life. 

I’ll ask again the question I asked a few moments ago at the beginning of this sermon:  what are the defining moments in your life?   Perhaps it was a high point moment in your life – when you met your partner or spouse and knew, just knew to the marrow of your bones, that this is the person you were going to share your life with.  Or you discovered you had some gift – for art, for music, for fixing cars – and that this was going to be your life’s work.  Or perhaps your turning point was a low point, hitting bottom in some way, knowing that your addiction or compulsion had taken you to some place at which you could hardly stand to see yourself in the mirror, and that however painful, your life had to change and you had to ask God for help in making that change….and that process of transformation is at the  core of your identity.

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.