Baptism of Our Lord, 8 Jan. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Isaiah 42:1-9. I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand.
- Acts 10:34-43. Anyone who…does what is right is acceptable to [God].
- Matthew 3:13-17. Let it go for now, for it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.
O God, manifest in us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Today is the day in the church calendar called The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. We are two days past the Feast of the Epiphany with its dramatic story of the Magi following a star with their extravagant gifts in hand. In the biblical narrative, we have advanced a generation from Jesus’ infancy to his mature adulthood. It feels too fast! I want to say, “Wait, go back!” So we have, in our first hymn and in our cantata for today; but otherwise, we are pressing ahead.
You might know that the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord was far more important a celebration in the early church than the Feast of the Birth of Our Lord. Traditionally, Christians celebrated three feasts of light during the short days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere: Epiphany, the story of people wise enough to seek after and find Jesus and then go home by another way; The Baptism of Our Lord by the incredulous John at the River Jordan; and the Wedding Feast at Cana, where the story goes that Jesus brightened up a gloomy situation by changing water into really good wine. These feasts of light were understood to illuminate the nature of God. The three feasts demonstrated to Christians who observed them, not only what God is like, but also Who (God) wishes us to be in community, in right-relationship to one another.
Once every three years, the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Matthew gets paired with Isaiah 42:1-9, which has the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the idea that Jesus was the servant about whom Isaiah was writing. But Isaiah was not writing commentary on Jesus’ baptism; it’s just the opposite. Matthew was writing commentary on Isaiah, a book written over at least a couple of centuries more than five hundred years before Jesus. Isaiah describes Israel moving from establishment to exile, from being centered in Jerusalem to being scattered in every direction. Was Isaiah predicting Jesus’ life and ministry? No. Did Isaiah have Jesus in mind? No. Did Jesus’ followers in Matthew’s community have Isaiah in mind when they witnessed Jesus’ life and ministry and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem? Yes! Isaiah scholar Walter Brueggemann writes: [1]
It is legitimate to see how the book of Isaiah fed, nurtured, and evoked Christian imagination with reference to Jesus. But that is very different from any claim that the book of Isaiah predicts or specifically anticipates Jesus.…[That] is a distortion [of Isaiah].
It’s appropriate for people, then and now, to look to sacred texts for meaning, direction, and hope. It’s appropriate to remember Isaiah’s strong testimony that God acts in human history, but it’s misappropriation to claim that Isaiah was writing about Jesus or Christianity. It’s misappropriation to claim that in the Book of Acts, Peter was anticipating Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston. But here we are, and here is Peter assuring us that in his understanding, “God shows no partiality, but in every people, anyone who is in awe of God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” Isaiah was calling the people of God, of the Covenant, of Love, to serve as an example of truth, gentleness, compassion, right-relationship, fidelity, honor, and sound judgment regarding economic and social justice to a world that desperately needed them. Jesus was calling for the same. When we are following Jesus, we are calling for the same as well.
This passage from Isaiah is understood to be from around 540 BCE, when the Persian Empire under the leadership of King Cyrus was growing and displacing the oppressive and despised Babylonian domination of the Hebrew people, which had lasted more than 150 years. The Babylonian Empire had exploited people and the environment. , According to our scriptures, corruption, greed, and utter disregard for human dignity defined Babylon, which had became a codeword for a rapacious, exploitative socio-political system, a government alienated from the compassion and mercy of the Holy One.
This portion of Isaiah is about the restoration by King Cyrus of Persia, of what had been lost during the 150+ years of Babylonian Exile, namely social, economic, and religious well-being. Just prior to our reading, the voice of the Holy One says: [2]
When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them. I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers…and fountains…I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water, I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive…so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.
This is new growth being promised, not a propping up of the dead wood of chopped trees! The writer of Isaiah reveals the voice of God calling the people to remember just who and Whose they are: people given breath by God; people worthy of respect; people taken by the hand by God; and people appointed by God to be a light for others, to shine and to show the goodness of living in Love.
That all sounds good until you think about what kind of shape these people were in. They had been exiled into slavery and stripped of their dignity. They were people who had not been treated as if they were worthy of respect and acceptance, as if their true nature was fundamentally good, beautiful, and dignified. They were exhausted, despairing, and demoralized. The amazing thing is that God was telling them that God needed them to become agents of healing for the world! God needed them to open eyes, to rescue prisoners from confinement, to deliver those who sit in dungeons of debt and despair, bereft of resources, and to stand with those who are accused. The servant being described in this song is not one person, but a people, who are called to practice vulnerability, to be attentive and useful to those who are weak, not to stir fear but to share well-being, shalom, for righteousness. This is what the early Jesus followers were to hear loud and clear, according to the Gospel of Matthew.
It’s worth noting that the first words that Jesus says in Matthew are in the passage we heard this morning: “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” I want to unpack that sentence a little bit. Let it be so is a translation of the word for forgive, loose, or let it go, as in what may be done with sins. Why forgive or let it go? For us (that is, John and Jesus together), to fulfill all righteousness, which is a most important theme in Matthew. By the way, righteousness is the exact opposite of self-righteousness, even though sometimes the two terms get confused. Righteousness means right-relationship. It involves honorable, moral, just, conscientious behavior. (Self-righteous means hypocritical, smug, sanctimonious, complacent.) Faithfulness to right-relationship is a passionate commitment to put right things that miss the mark of lovingkindness, justice, and mercy, as a manifestation of the Love of God.
Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE, wrote a piece about the word dawn for the monastery’s series called “Brother, give us a word.” I invite you to hear the word you as plural rather than singular in his essay: [3]
All your life you’ve been getting ready for now. The light is probably dawning on you – what God is calling you to be and do – and you could easily feel overwhelmed. But God is the source of the light, and God is behind the dawning. You will have the inner light you need on the path ahead. There will be provision. Go ahead.
It strikes me that as a people, a community, this parish is being called anew to reflect the light of Jesus Christ and show the lovingkindness of the Holy One working in and among people who are most vulnerable, and to inspire others to do the same. What happens here at Emmanuel Church, in the midst of suffering and healing, of birth and death, cannot be defined in words or captured in a sermon no matter how precise our language. What happens here is Love, also known as God, Who will not yield glory to another, not to science, technology, money, education, military might,, or even religious practice, when we make them into idols. Life lived in Love, according to our scriptures, is surprising, costly, and often messy. At Emmanuel, all our life we’ve been getting ready for now. The light (that is, an understanding of what God is calling us to be and do) is probably dawning on us. While we may easily feel overwhelmed, God is the source of the light, and God is behind the dawning. We will have the inner light we need on the path ahead.There will be provision. So let’s continue to live as if that were true.
I’ll close with the words of the great Howard Thurman about the work of Christmas. [4]
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
- Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah 40-66, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 6.
- Isaiah 41:16-20.
- Curtis Almquist. “Venting the Light”, 18 Oct. 2018, available in the Sermon Archive at Society of St. John the Evangelist.
- Howard Thurman. “The Work of Christmas,” The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Richmond IN: Friends United Press, 1985).