The Baptism of Our Lord
Texts: Matthew 3:13-17;
Isaiah 42:1-9
FULFILLING ALL RIGHT ACTION
We've enjoyed the heartwarming story of Baby Jesus' birth, but like
all babies, he mostly lays
there looking cute. All the action happens to and around Jesus in
the first chapters of Matthew --
actions of his parents, shepherds, angels, three wisemen, and the
terrible actions of Herod trying
to find and kill this newborn king.
Now the REAL action begins!! Jesus takes over and directs the action
from here on out. Even
when it seems like he's a victim of circumstances beyond his
control, Matthew shows us Jesus
either knowingly in charge, or obediently following a God-guided
drama of which only Jesus
himself is fully aware. Pilate and the Jewish Council think they are
in charge of Jesus' execution.
But they are essentially pawns to the powers of sin and violence,
and they are about to collide
with the power of God's Love. If any person is directing the action,
it is Jesus, who knowingly
lets himself be executed so that God's triumphant power of love is
revealed.
It all begins innocently enough at the River Jordan, where Jesus'
cousin John the Baptist has
been baptizing followers. The baptism is Jesus' idea, and so he
travels to the River Jordan to be
baptized. John tries to resist, telling Jesus that he should
be the one baptizing John! But Jesus is
directing the action: "it is proper for us in this way to fulfill
all righteousness," he tells John.
Right from the beginning, this is big picture stuff. Jesus is about
to transform John's baptism for
repentance of sins into something much bigger - Love defeating the
powers of sin.
"Fulfill all righteousness," says Jesus. It seems like the only
place we even hear the word righteousness anymore is in
church. But what if we heard the word in a new way: as "right
action," or even as "the right thing to do." Jesus has come to free
our actions from slavery to the
powers of Sin so that we can become more and more able to do
the right thing.
So here's the Question of the Day. Before we know what the right
thing is, we need to know
where our actions are rooted -- what is the source of our
actions? What drives them?
We like to see ourselves as rational creatures, that our minds are
in control, and that our reason
is the source of our actions. We wake up each day with a plan, but
most days bring interactions
with others that can get us off track. Someone says or does
something, and before we know it,
we're not just acting, we're reacting. And our Question of
the Day quickly changes to: what is
the source of our reactions? We get angry, frustrated,
despondent. Where are these often
irrational reactions coming from? We can't see ourselves just as
rational beings. We also have a
whole range of emotions. The source of our actions is clearly deeper
than simply our rational
side.
That's my experience, at least. And I think it's true for all of us
-- our reactions are rooted much
deeper than we may be aware awareness. Isn't that what we mean when
we say "he's pushing my
buttons!" ? For example, I grew up in an alcoholic home. My dad is a
recovering alcoholic.
Growing up, I had realize that a big part of my identity is that I'm
an Adult Child of an
Alcoholic. That's not at all to blame my dad. We all adopted ways of
acting and reacting to
survive the chaos of alcoholism. Some of those ways aren't so
healthy since they come out of
relationships that aren't fully healthy. So a big part of my
maturing has been to take
responsibility for my actions today by being aware that sometimes
the source of my actions are
much deeper, still going back to when I was growing up. Becoming
more healthy involves
awareness of the source of many actions and unlearning them, and
even more importantly, to
more deeply form a new spiritual source for my actions rooted in
love.
Another sense of how we're rooted the deeper down comes through what
I've learned about
human desire. First of all, isn't Desire a good name for that deeper
down source of our actions?
How consciously aware of desires are we, at any given moment? Aren't
they at a deeper level
than conscious awareness? Once again, I'll mention modern
advertising as the illustration of this
fact. Advertisers place ads all around us, everywhere we look,
counting on the fact that
influencing our desires goes deeper than conscious awareness. And
the influence comes from
imitating each other. We catch our desires from each other, whether
it is seeing the latest
basketball star sporting the latest shoe, or subconsciously catching
our work habits that shape our
lives from parents or other mentors.
But there is also a problematic aspect to this way of human desiring
as the source of our actions.
Even when we positively model behaviors from others, we also tend to
then become rivals with
them. Rivalry builds envy, and envy harbors resentments, and soon
the deeper source of many of
our actions is resentment.
There's really only one exception to the human pattern of falling
into rivalry because we catch
our desires from each other. And that is when the desiring is truly
love, truly a way of serving the
other that puts them first. And the only one who perfectly loves
that way is God, the one who has
created all of us and all of this in love. And our Christian faith
says that the only human being
who perfectly embodied that love is Jesus. If we want the right
source of right actions, then we
need to follow Jesus. We have to focus our lives on him and learn
the spiritual disciples of
placing his love as the deepest source of our actions.
And it all begins with baptism, not just as the cleansing of sin as
John the Baptist began it. But as
the transformation which Jesus began in his own baptism. The
fulfillment of all right action
begins with the truth that each of us must learn to hear and trust
deep down, God saying to each
of us, "You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter. In you
I am well pleased."
It could be said that John the Baptist came to see and love in
himself what Jesus saw and loved in
him; and after him the disciple Peter. And the disciple Mary
Magdalene came to see and love in
herself what Jesus saw and loved in her. Jesus sees the "child of
God" in people with such clarity
and persistence that they begin to see it in themselves. But, in
order for him to see the "child of
God" in others, he must first know it in himself. In this sense,
Jesus' baptism by water and Spirit
is the precondition for the baptism by water and Spirit of all
Christians. The one who would
awaken others to love must first himself be awakened. Awakening to
love is essentially an
interpersonal chain. The awakened Jesus awakens others, and then
those awaken still others.
This, then, is the deep down source of our actions that we yearn
for. It is the deep down source of
our actions that begins at our baptisms, as God says to us, "You are
my beloved son. You are my
beloved daughter. In you I am well pleased." That is the Spirit of
love that fulfills all
righteousness, the Spirit promised to each of us as surely as it was
promised to and landed on
Jesus. It is the Spirit that we come here for each week to receive
anew in word and sacrament that
we might learn and encourage in each other the spiritual ways in
which to access that Spirit as the
source of our right actions.
Do you want to be able on a regular basis to do the right thing, to
fulfill all righteousness? Do
you want more and more to be a person whose actions have their
source in God's love? The
answer isn't in some high heaven. And it certainly isn't just a
possibility that can only be fulfilled
in some high heaven. No, all the right actions of God's love are
down not up. The heavens open
and the Spirit comes down. Mary's womb is filled by the Spirit and
she gives birth to it from
inside herself. No, the source of right actions is in the deep-down
of our lives, as our spirits learn
to access the Spirit promised to each of us.
How do we learn that? I confess that I'm still learning myself. In
addition to the Sacraments, and
the Bible Study, and the loving service of others, I'm just
beginning to learn more new ways of
prayer and contemplation that helps me to center myself in the
deeper down Spirit of God's love
-- the center for right action that increasingly hears, "You are my
beloved daughter/son. In you I am well
pleased." Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, January 9, 2011