Occasional Sermons

The virgin birth, the angelic host, the adoring shepherds, the star of Bethlehem, the wise men from the East… – the portents of the great destiny to which Jesus was born. But of what followed these portents, the Bible tells us almost nothing. One wonders how Mary and Joseph shared with their son that he had been born to a great destiny, and how he bore that knowledge those long years in Nazareth as he waited in obscurity for that great destiny to come to pass. But one is left to wonder. The Bible tells us only that when Jesus was a young man of some thirty years, the prophet John the Baptist appeared in the Judean wilderness with an urgent proclamation. John proclaimed that the people must repent of their sin, and as a sign of their repentance, be baptized, for God’s messiah was coming. News of John’s proclamation must have stirred something within Jesus. Jesus must have sensed that John’s proclamation had to do with him, that the great destiny to which he was born was now to be made known to him. And so he summoned himself from the life he was leading in Nazareth and went down to Judea to be baptized by John. And of course, Jesus was right. Upon his baptism, the heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended upon him, and the voice of God declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” The great destiny to which Jesus had been born was thus made known to him. Jesus was God’s messiah. But that was not the fullness of that which was made known to Jesus at his baptism. The voice of God also made known to him that the vocation of God’s messiah was to sacrifice himself for human sin. For you see, the “the Beloved” of God, and the vocation of “the Beloved” of God had been described by the prophet Isaiah some five hundred years earlier. Isaiah foretold that God’s Beloved, when he came, would be held of no account, would be oppressed and afflicted; would be despised and rejected by humanity; and finally would be cut off from the land of the living -- but that his wounds would be wounds for the sake of human transgression; his punishment would be that which would make humanity whole; and that out of his anguish, he would see light. Yes, at his baptism, the great destiny to which Jesus had been born was made known to him, and too how that great destiny would be wrought. And it is through what was made known to Jesus at his baptism – that he was God’s messiah whose vocation it was to sacrifice himself for human sin -- that his ministry must be understood. For instance, immediately after Jesus’ baptism, he was led by the Holy Spirit into the dessert to be tempted by the devil, but tempted how? Clearly, he realized, tempted not to sacrifice himself for human sin. Recall with what the devil tempted him – worldly dominion, the ability to save himself from peril, to deliver himself from need. But Jesus withstood the devil’s temptation, “Away with you, Satan.” Jesus then called twelve disciples, but why? To attempt to teach them that he was indeed God’s messiah whose vocation it was to sacrifice himself for human sin; to teach them so as to prepare them, to teach them so that they would someday teach the world. Recall his continuous attempts to get through to his disciples. His first time: “Then he began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed… He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and rebuked him.” And his second time: “They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him….But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” And his third time, this time in graphic detail: “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. He took the twelve again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” Recall Jesus’ words to James and John near the end of his ministry when they blindly made a bid for preeminence in Jesus’ coming kingdom, “You don’t know what you’re asking; are you able to be baptized with the baptism with which I have been baptized?” Jesus never did get through to his disciples. He was left to hope and trust that in the giving of the Holy Spirit they would recall his words and recover their meaning. The night before Jesus was crucified he instituted a ritual meal. But why? So his sacrifice for human sin, his broken body and shed blood, could be commemorated by his disciples, as it is to this day. He then went to the Garden of Gethsemane where he threw himself to the ground in anguish and prayed to his father to find another way. But why? Because the immediacy of his sacrifice for human sin made it dreadfully and terrifyingly real to him. It is one thing to consider your death abstractly or from a distance, quite another when it is squarely before you. Yes, it is through that which was made known to Jesus at his baptism – that he was God’s messiah whose vocation it was to sacrifice himself for human sin -- that his ministry must be understood. And it is something we must guard and keep very close, for a number of reasons. Principally, of course, because we affirm with the witness of the New Testament and the Christian Church throughout the ages that the cross of Jesus was no mishap or accident, but “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” It is the mystery that lies at the very heart of our faith – The cross of Jesus, on which God’s messiah sacrificed himself for our sin. And too we must guard and keep it very close because it underscores the utter greatness of the man we follow. Jesus was a man, vulnerable in the face of suffering and death, like us. Yes, in Jesus the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell, but as the apostle Paul explained in his epistle to the church in Philippi, In Jesus, God emptied himself, humbled himself, and was born in human likeness in the form of a servant. God was hid within Jesus. But we don’t need Paul to affirm that Jesus was vulnerable in the face of suffering and death. If Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane was not enough, recall Jesus on his cross, broken and shattered in body and spirit – “Eli, Eli, lema sabbachthani.” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And as a man, vulnerable in the face of suffering and death, amidst all the clamor and turmoil of his ministry and as lonely as he must have been in the knowledge, he bore what was made known to him at his baptism with faith and obedience, bore it through to its bitter conclusion, for our sake. And finally, we must guard and keep it very close because it bears upon our understanding of our own baptisms. For as St. Paul explained in his epistle to the church in Rome, it is through our baptisms that we become beneficiaries of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin. “Therefore,” Paul declared, “we have been buried with Jesus [through our] baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” And the benefit we receive from Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin, we learn too from Paul, is newness of life. It is newness of life, by which we know that Jesus sacrificed himself for our sin. It is newness of life by which we know that his sacrifice for our sin has too overcome the death our sin has merited us. It is newness of life by which we know the great destiny to which we were born is eternal life with God. It is newness of life by which we know Jesus will return and swallow all of creation in his glory; and newness of life, friends in Christ, by which our lives and all life have hope. And so, how are we to respond to all that inheres in the baptism of Jesus for us? How are we to respond? By simply receiving the newness of life with which our baptisms have made us beneficiaries and by growing in that newness of life in his truth, less for our own sakes than the sake of our larger world, which needs his truth now more than ever. Amen.