The baptism of Jesus is a wonderful way for us to begin the season of Epiphany. It is the season of the Church that begins after the 12 days of Christmas. Epiphany comes from a Greek word which means “appearance” or “manifestation.” Epiphany has its roots in the appearance of the Christ-child to the wise men from the east who came to visit the Holy Family, as it celebrates the manifestation of God’s love, redemption, and presence in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
It’s also wonderful to be preaching on a Sunday on which we normally would have a baptism, but don’t. Typically when you preach on baptism Sunday there is a rule- keep it short and have one point. You’re often preaching to extended family members who are not familiar with the Episcopal tradition, or even the Church. And you have to contend with a crying baby. So it is nice to have this opportunity to more fully explore baptism, which is perhaps one of the least understood aspects of the Christian faith. What is baptism all about? I’ll get there, but first I want to explore perhaps the most important and most theologically challenging passage in the entire Bible.
“You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In our baptisms, the same is said of us as it was Jesus. God says to each of us- you are my son, you are my daughter, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Notice that in Mark, God says “you are my child,” not “this is my son.” God is speaking not just to Jesus, but to John the Baptist, to the crowd that was gathered that day watching the event, to you and to me.
So in this baptism event there are two things that happen- the first is this acknowledgment from God, and the second is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let’s explore this voice from heaven first. You are my son or daughter. This is the language of adoption. In the Hebrew custom, by naming a relationship, you consummated it. The marriage ritual was rather simple, the man would simply say “this is my wife,” and it was done. God is saying “you are my child,” and we are. The language of adoption is important. Under Roman law, a birth child could be disinherited, but an adopted child could not. Once the adoption took place, it was permanent. By using the language of adoption, God makes it clear that this is not a temporary relationship; God will not change God’s mind on this, you are God’s son, you are God’s daughter.
What I love about this passage is where the voice comes from- the heavens. But notice how the voice comes. In Matthew, it says that the heavens were opened. So maybe the clouds moved apart and the voice came, rather boring. But in Mark, our translation reads “torn apart,” in Greek, it’s the word schizo, which is violent and strong. It’s not just that God parts the clouds to come to us and call us God’s son or daughter, God is ripping the heavens apart to get to us. It’s the image of a mother or father lifting a car to save their child. It’s messy, it’s raw, but nothing, not even the heavens, will hold God back from telling you that you are God’s child.
Next, God names us as the beloved. In baptism, we are given our core definition: beloved. No matter what, our most basic name is beloved. And when I say that this passage makes the hardest theological statement in the Bible, this is what I’m referring to. People can struggle to understand the Incarnation, they’ll buy into the Virgin Birth because they believe in the power of God, they grapple with the Resurrection, they can’t figure out the Holy Spirit, but they trust in it. But how many of us believe that we are the beloved of God?
Now to be fair, most of us would acknowledge that God loves us. But how many of us put that at the top of the list. I’ll bet you my bottom dollar that if we all took out our business cards, none of them would say “beloved child of God” under our name. Henri Nouwen, in the book The Life of the Beloved writes about the trap of self-rejection which we all fall into. The world will call you a lot of things. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re worthless. You’re stupid. You’re lazy. Why can’t you get over your depression? Why can’t you just stop drinking? Why can’t you loosen up and be more outgoing? You’ve been outsourced. You’re dead to me. You’re a nerd. You’re unlovable. You’re selfish. And those are just the things that are rated PG. And we start to believe them. They start to take their toll.
The symptoms of this self-rejection are low self-esteem and arrogance. Either we define ourselves by these terms and are depressed, rejected, and always think that we could be better. Or, in a move of self-defense, we become arrogant. We start slinging the mud back at others, or we paint ourselves as pillars of virtue to make ourselves feel better. But the name that God gives us in much simpler- beloved.
Beloved doesn’t mean that you’re perfect, it doesn’t mean that you can’t improve yourself, it doesn’t mean that you stop working to better yourself and your world, it doesn’t condone poor decision making or sinfulness, but it does mean that, at your core, you are who you are supposed to be. You are complete, you are loved, you are sufficient as you are. You are loved, you don’t need to show proof in order to get this love, you don’t have to complete a task to earn the love, you are loved. And this is our end, our call, this is really all we need, to be beloved; that is our fulfillment. Making a big name for ourselves, building wealth- that’s all beside the point. You are the beloved. Scripture tells us that God watches over us, that God knows the number of hairs on our heads, that God knew us while we were in our mother’s wombs. You have always been loved, and you can’t be undeserving of this love; at your very core, you are loved.
But how many of us act as if that is true? Our economic system of capitalism is built on the premise that you aren’t complete and you need something to make you better. Make up, weight loss pills, or a fancy car would make you a better person and more attractive. If you just had more money your life would be better. If it was drilled into you from the time you were born that you were loved as is, how would you be a different person? If you tried to better yourself not to please your parents, not to impress your boss, not to position yourself for a raise; but instead, what if you did what filled you and allowed you to live as a child of God, how might you make decisions differently?
In saying “with you I am well pleased” God is affirming us. God is saying “you are who you are supposed to be.” Again, this doesn’t make you perfect or give you permission to do anything you want to do, but you are pleasing to God. God is happy with having you as a son, as a daughter. I can’t say it enough because the voice from heaven is easily overshadowed by the voices of this world, but you are loved. Theologian Paul Tillich once said that “faith is the courage to accept acceptance.” And so it is. We live in a culture of self-help books, of always trying to be better, of never being good enough. Our culture is one that is built upon self-rejection and the monetization of catering to people with low self-esteem, and it does take courage to go against the grain and accept your acceptance, to accept the fact that you are the beloved child of God and with you God is well pleased. It’s the hardest theological statement in the Bible, but if we can believe it with every fiber of our being, and realize that it’s true for each person in this world, then our lives and our world can be truly transformed.
So that is the first part of Baptism, becoming the beloved of God. And secondly, in Baptism we are bestowed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is a mystery of sorts. I recently read a transcript of an dialogue between Christopher and Peter Hitchens. Christopher died recently and was the world-famous, militant atheist. Peter, his brother, is the former atheist turned Christian author. What struck me in reading the transcript was that 1) Christopher clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. It would be like someone who has never tasted wine before trying to explain away the complexity of a vintage Bordeaux or Borolo. And 2) Peter fell into the trap that so many academic Christians do; he didn’t embrace the mystery of God. Mystery is not simply something Christians claim to win arguments which they’d otherwise lose, rather mystery is the acknowledgment that we are finite and only get glimpses of the epiphany, not the whole thing.
The Holy Spirit is one of these mysteries of the faith. Poet William Blake once penned that “he who sees the infinite in all things, sees God.” Ever since the Enlightenment, Christianity has been reduced to superstition, at least from the view of reason and the academy. If you can’t prove it in a lab, then it’s not true, such as a mystery. This takes us back to the question I asked earlier, what is baptism all about anyway? Well, without mystery, it’s just a cultish ritual that has no impact on our lives. Most Episcopalians would say that baptism doesn’t determine whether you go to heaven or hell when you die. A lot of good people have never been baptized and a lot of evil people have.
I read a story about a man who worked at the Ford plant in Detroit. Back before machines made cars, the factory workers would often take tools home with them and would rarely bring them back. The practice was widespread and no one knew how to address it. This particular man was preparing for baptism and conversion to Christianity. As he was learning more and more about the faith, he began to feel guilty about the tools that he had taken, so he returned them to his supervisor, who was shocked that anyone would do that. So he told his boss and it went up the ladder and eventually Henry Ford received a cable about it while in Europe. He replied and said “dam up the Detroit River and baptize all of them.”
That is what Baptism is about, the mystery of conversion; the mystery of believing that you are loved and taking that as a call to live a life of loving others. It is the mystery of the cross and the mystery of the empty tomb. What if life isn’t about what we know and understand, but instead is about the mystery? I don’t pretend to be an astrophysicist, but I find the theory of dark matter to be fascinating. We all assume that our world is made up of atoms which we can observe and describe. But the theory of dark matter says that as much as 83% of the universe if made of dark matter, which is relatively unobservable and unknowable to us. If that doesn’t scream mystery and “you’ll never know it all,” I don’t know what does.
Take the mystery, the Holy Spirit, out of baptism and you’re left with an empty ritual or a really fast bath. Part of the mystery of baptism goes back to the point of being the beloved child of God. As the beloved, you are sanctified, you are adopted, you are given salvation, you are initiated into the Christian community, you are given the Holy Spirit. How does this happen? I don’t know, but I trust that it does; I know that it does.
I read an interesting Facebook status this past week. A friend of mine from seminary was writing about belief in God. He wrote “there are things in this world that make me believe in God. I'm not talking about the certain modes of thinking. I'm also not talking about seeing a beautiful sunset and thinking ‘how could someone not believe in God?’...No, I mean that there are things that, when they happen, I am overcome, overwhelmed, and saturated with a sense of something so much greater than I could possibly put into words. Belief not as conscious decision, but as acknowledgment of a reality that pierces you to your core. One year ago, my daughter was born. This was one of these moments.” I think we’ve all experienced those sorts of moments, when there are no words, there are no explanations, there is only mystery.
And the love of God is one of those mysteries. Don’t try to explain it, don’t try to encapsulate it, you’ll ruin it. Just be loved. What was so powerful about this passage from Mark to the Jews gathered there that day was that there hadn’t been a prophet in at least 400 years; people assumed that God no longer spoke to people, that prophesy has ended. And we say the same thing, even the Church has said that the period of prophecy is closed. But I disagree.
I say that each and every day, God still calls out to us, “you are my son or daughter, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God is tearing the heavens apart to get us. Can you feel it? Do you hear God calling to you? If not, then I’d suggest taking up the practice of contemplative prayer, or using some other method to be quiet so that the voices and distractions of the world can be put aside so that you can hear the voice of your loving Father in heaven.
Henri Nouwen wrote “God not only says ‘you are my beloved.’ God also asks us ‘do you love me?’ and offers us countless chances to say ‘yes.’” You are the beloved of child of God. If you can accept and say “yes” to this love and share it with others, our world will be forever changed. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to do after Christmas? Instead of putting Christmas into a box and shoving it into the attic for 11 months, may we continue celebrating Christmas by sharing the gift of God’s love with the world.
Amen.
