Scripture Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (NRSVUE)
As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, 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.”
Sermon “We Trust Our Belovedness”
We have been asking ourselves one question since December 1: How does a weary world rejoice? We’ve asked that question in the context of the remarkable and unlikely stories of the births of two men. That story has suggested to us that we must first name our weariness—to acknowledge that the world isn’t as it ought to be, and it sometimes feels like a lead weight in our hearts. But then it suggests we find others to connect with—a kind of Weary Souls Club—where we can be ourselves, and tell our truth, and realize that we are, indeed, stronger together than we are hiding in our corners.
Then the story shows us how joy can be found in amazement—in awe, in wonder. In a season in which we were beginning to look to the skies with longing, wondering when the star would show up, this made perfect sense to us. One of those men show signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence when he gives his mother a good swift kick three months before he is even born. He is dancing with joy. She is awestruck, and then the joy comes for her, too. By this time, we were ready to sing songs of hope—songs that reminded us that, the world is not as God wants it, and God is getting ready to do a new thing. Finally, we explored the joy of making room—for a new baby, for a few shepherds, for some foreign exchange-magi, and for a world that might just be getting ready to be better.
After the tumult and drama of both these birth stories, plus an approximately thirty-year cooling-down period, these men emerge on the relatively small public stage of a wilderness with just one river flowing through it. Meet grown-up John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, also called “the Baptist” (or “Baptizer,” if you’re worried that John has already sided with one Christian denomination over all the others). And meet Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, son of God, and the one for whom John was tasked by God with getting everyone ready. The gospel according to Luke tells us that “the Word of God” came to John in that wilderness, and so he set himself to baptizing people who wanted to change their lives, who wanted something better, in themselves, and for themselves.
John became known as a prophet and a possible contender for the role of Messiah, but in our passage, he squashes that real quick. I baptize with water, he says. The one who’s coming will set your heart aflame.
And then the one who’s coming shows up, ready to be baptized himself, which, itself is strange and wondrous. In those days, if you baptized someone, they became your follower. But John has already said he isn’t worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals—by which he means, he isn’t worthy to be Jesus’ slave. And yet, here the men stand, face to face, and now the awe is in John’s eyes, as he sees that the one he has been preparing for wants to be baptized by HIM.
And into the water he goes. Some of you in this room were baptized by immersion. I had water sprinkled on me when I was just four weeks old, and I confess to having just a little immersion jealousy, and not only for the reason that I love a swim. It is also because that is how our Lord was baptized, and there is something wild and beautiful in the vulnerability of falling backwards into the water, trusting that you will be caught, and raised up out of the water still breathing. This sentiment was only strengthened by the image on screen, which is also on the cover of our bulletins this morning.
The artist, Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, confessed in her artist’s statement that she thought hard about how to create this image. There are many fine pieces of historic art depicting the moment when Jesus comes up out of the water, and the Holy Spirit descends looking for all the world like a dove. Rev. Pittman decided to go in a different direction. She went underwater—to the moment when Jesus is fully immersed. Look at the image. The water is cradling him. On the surface, toward which his left arm is reaching, the waters are choppy. But in Pittman’s words, “… two fish are drawn to the light of his halo, foreshadowing his companionship with fishers and his miraculous feeding of the five thousand. All of creation is leaning into his call. This is what trusting your belovedness feels like—muscles and bones relieved of gravity’s burden, serenity, weightlessness, oneness with creation, and the warmth of God’s love permeating every cell of your body and every corner of your soul.”[i]
This is even before Jesus hears the words of God. That’s because, as the wonderful Rachel Held Evans reminded us, “Jesus did not begin to be loved at the moment of his baptism, nor did he cease to be loved when his baptism became a memory. Baptism simply named the reality of his existing and unending belovedness.”[ii]
And that’s what it does for us, too. Baptism is a reminder of our existing and unending belovedness. I think of the parents who carry or lead their children into this sanctuary to receive the sacrament. I think of the tenderness with which they hold those children, the love that radiates from them as they experience the presence of God’s love at that same moment. Again, a love that didn’t just start because the child had water poured on them, but a love that was there all along, even before the beginning.
We live in a culture that is pretty sure we don’t love ourselves. That is why we are besieged with advertising for everything from facial serums to hair conditioner to the latest weight-loss scheme to the gym we should be joining… and much, much more. Our dollars are sought with the certainty that we don’t love who we are, what we look like, our lack of a six-pack, or our plus-size clothing. The gospels tell another story, one you may have heard, that story that God so loved the world… so loved it, and us…that God thought we probably could use a reminder in the form of God’s own presence among us. As one of our Confirmation Class reminded me at a Bible Study before Christmas, “in 1 John chapter 4 it says that God is love.” And so it does.
In a culture that pushes this message into our consciousness every chance it gets, knowing we are loved and loving ourselves becomes a radical act, revolutionary. This is what Held Evans called “The great struggle of Christian life…to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved, and to believe that is enough.”[iii] To take God’s name for us hearkens back to the Isaiah passage, when God tells God’s people in exile, “Do not be afraid. I am with you. I have called you by name. You are mine.” A few lines later, God continues, Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…”[iv]
We find joy in this weary world when we embrace the fact that God loves us, simply because we are, we exist, and God created us. And that is enough. That is enough when the news makes us want to hide under the blankets. That is enough when those we have trusted fail us. That is enough when our knees are wobbly before an interview, or we are bracing ourselves to hear the diagnosis, or we feel helpless as we are being rolled into surgery. Do not be afraid. I am with you, God whispers, again and again and again. You are my beloved child. And there it is… “muscles and bones relieved of gravity’s burden, serenity, weightlessness, oneness with creation, and the warmth of God’s love permeating every cell of your body and every corner of your soul.”
Trust in this love. Trust that you are loved by God. Trust that you are enough. Live in that comfort. Live in that joy.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Lauren Wright Pittman, Artist Statement, “Beloved,” Inspired by Luke 3:21-22, A Sanctified Art | @sanctifiedart.org.
[ii] Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2015).
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Isaiah 43:1-7.