Will Rice - Sermon #57 - "Baptism of the Lord"

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 3:13-17

We are reading today from Matthew’s gospel, chapter 3, starting with verse 13. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we were doing something similar to watching a television series out of order. We did something like this: Jesus was born, the wise men left, then the wise men came. Well anyway, according to Matthew, what happens next is Jesus’ baptism. In Matthew’s account, we miss from, from what we can guess, Jesus at age two, to Jesus as an adult, leaving us to guess whether or not Jesus was a difficult toddler and whether or not the Son of God as a teen ever snuck out and went hot-roding with Joseph’s mule.

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.

I get a question about this passage a lot which goes something like this, “I know what baptism means to Christians, but what were the Jews doing here?” Remember, John the Baptist was a Jew. In this scene these are all Jews coming to be baptized. What is going on? If we turn to the Old Testament, we will see.

You see for us, as Christians, the waters of baptism are part of a central sacrament of our faith. As people are brought into the community, they are baptized in the name of God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. But water had powerful ritual importance in the Jewish tradition as well.

In Exodus 40, God is instructing Moses as to how to make an offering to God once the tabernacle is completed.

¹²Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and shall wash them with water, ¹³and put on Aaron the sacred vestments, and you shall anoint him and consecrate him, so that he may serve me as priest.

If we look in the book of Leviticus, there is a whole section in Leviticus 8 on the ordination of the priests where it tell us that Moses,

⁶Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward, and washed them with water.

This is clearly a ritual washing. There was clearly an understanding that one had to be clean to enter in God’s presence. The idea of ritual washing was not only for priests. The Jewish law is very concerned with the idea of clean and unclean. There were many things that could make one ceremonially unclean. For instance, touching a dead body. Now, the way to get ceremonially clean again was to follow the ritual which included: Leviticus 19:19(b)

Then they shall wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water, and at evening they shall be clean.

The Jewish ritual of cleansing, Mikvah, unlike our Christian baptism was a repeatable rite. It could wash away impurity, it could wash away sin, it could restore one into community. Let’s back up in Matthew a little bit to get some perspective on what John the Baptist is doing here. Matthew 3:4-6:

⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

So basically what John the Baptist is doing is not the same as what we do, but this Mikvah has the similar idea. Baptism, for us, is a sacrament. We define a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We believe that God has given us physical representations of things that we can’t really see. John wasn’t actually washing sins away, he was using water as a sign of what was going on. In baptism, God is at work through the Holy Spirit and water is the means by which we see it.

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

This is one of the most truly awkward moments in the Bible. John knew exactly who Jesus was and knew that he had no need to be ritually cleansed. John’s water was washing away sin and Jesus didn’t have any. John was aware of what would be later written in Hebrews 4:15:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

But Jesus is quite insistent.

¹⁵But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

There is a lot in this passage. In fact, I could preach a whole hour just on that phrase,
to fulfill all righteousness, but today on this occasion of the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, we come to take the opportunity to reaffirm the commitments we made in baptism. As United Methodists, we do not re-baptize, because we believe baptism is God’s work and therefore cannot ever be undone. Unlike the Jewish Mikvah, baptism is not a repeatable write. But, just like the Jews who returned to the river, we can fall away from our side. We can wander away from our baptismal vows, whether for a moment, or for a day, or for a year. When that happens, when we are not following our side of the bargain in baptism, God is still faithful to the promise. On days like today, we can take the chance to reaffirm what we believe and allow the water to be a powerful reminder of the cleansing grace of God.

Before we reaffirm our commitment to God and allow the water to wash over us, let’s look back at our scripture. John gives into Jesus’ request.

Then he consented. ¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

There is so much going on in this passage. You should count yourself lucky if you have been here the last two years to hear John the Methodist preach on it. But I just want to point out one more thing in here.

¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

In this moment, the boundaries between heaven and earth grow strangely thin. This is one of those moments in scripture when God’s kingdom seems to be breaking into our world in an unnervingly powerful way. The boundaries of separation between God’s reality and our reality are, for a moment, not so clear.

¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Something I believe about the sacraments of the church, Holy Communion which we celebrate nearly every week and baptism which we will take a time to remember this morning, is that, in them, this same sort of thing happens. When we come to the table, when we come to the water, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the boundaries of heaven and earth grow strangely thin and if we listen, very closely, through the ordinary things like bread and wine and water, if we listen very closely, we can hear the almighty God speak clearly to us.

John the Baptist used the water as a sign of people’s repentance for sin. The water represented a washing away of sin. For Christians, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that truly washed away our sin. But the water is the outward sign of that amazing gift. Water has amazing power. While God never turns away from the promise of baptism, some of us turn away again and again and the water has the power to bring us back.

Pastor John and I are about to do something you might not all like, we are going to get you a little wet. We are not going to baptize you. We are not going to rebaptize you. We are simply going to sprinkle you with water. Here is the invitation: Let this water wash over you. Let it remind you of your baptism, how the water poured over you claimed you and named you as a child of God and how it is still at work in you continuing to re-create you in the image of likeness of God. If you have never been baptized, let this water wash over you and hear it as God’s invitation to you.

After we are done with the water, you are invited to a time of prayer. There will be no formal benediction today. After we are done with the water, you are welcome to pray in your seat. You are welcome to come to the rails. Come considering the promise that God made to you in your baptism, to love you with an everlasting love that will never let you go. And consider the promises you will proclaim to God again today.

Will Rice - Sermon #56 - "Thre's More to the Story"

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 2:13-22

I have a miraculous piece of technology hooked up to my television which allows me, with the touch of a button to record a television show and watch it later. Ours is called a DVR, some people have a thing called a TiVo. I probably shouldn’t watch much television, but without this little box, I doubt I would watch any. In case no one has ever noticed, as a pastor, I work some pretty strange hours and am not often home during prime time. My wife, Alisha is the resident expert on this device and I count on her to record shows that I might want to watch. Because of my schedule, I might not have time to watch a show until Alisha has already recorded four weeks worth of episodes. We have to be very careful when we do that so that we are sure to watch them in order. If you watch shows, especially dramas out of order, you can get a little confused. If you watch CSI, you might wonder why they are still investigating a case the solved last week. If you watch House, you might wonder why a character who got fired last week is still there.

That is sort of what we have going on with scripture this week. Next week, according to the church calendar, we will celebrate Epiphany Sunday, the coming of the Wise Men. This week, however, is appointed a scripture that takes place after they the Wise Men have already left. So try not to be too confused.

¹³Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

Matthew’s gospel is not nearly as poetic about the birth of Jesus as Luke’s. In my introductory Bible course, people are often surprised that most of our understanding of the birth comes from Luke. In Matthew, this is pretty much what we get:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea…

But for today’s purposes, that tells us what we need to know. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, one of the most contentious places on earth. A little background on Bethlehem: Bethlehem was the hometown of David, the shepherd boy who was anointed King of Israel. That’s why Mary and Joseph were there in the first place. There was a census taking place and, according to Luke’s gospel:

⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.

Bethlehem, like the rest of the Middle East is a tinderbox. Today it is under control of the Palestinian Authority under the watchful eye of the Israelis. It is at the center of the ongoing conflict over God and land between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Palestinians and other Palestinians and even among the Christians.

As Bethlehem is believed to be the city of birth of Jesus it is home to the Church of the Nativity, built on the spot where Jesus is believed to be born. (Obviously the barn was torn down.) Every year, of course Christmas Eve services are held there and this year, they were followed by a massive brawl between Greek Orthodox and Armenian Priests. The fight was seemingly about Greek Orthodox ladders encroaching on Armenian space while the priests were cleaning. Two Palestinian policemen were also injured in the melee.[1]

Bethlehem is a tinderbox.

As an aside, Bethlehem is also where Rachel is buried according to Genesis 35:19. Don’t worry, we will come back to that.

So Joseph, in a dream, is told to leave this dangerous place,

¹³Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

Silent night, Holy night, all is calm, all is bright ‘round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Run for your lives!

Joseph and his family aren’t the first ones to find safety in Egypt. There was another Joseph, the son of Jacob. Genesis 37 (12-36) tells us how his brothers sold him into slavery and how he was taken to Egypt and how Egypt eventually became a place of refuge for his family from the famine in Canaan. (Genesis 46-47)

Our Joseph is told to go and he listens.

¹⁴Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

If we look at the prophet Hosea, chapter 11, verse one, we see the scripture being quoted here. The author of the Gospel is using this prophecy as sort of a proof, pointing to Jesus as the chosen one. But it is more than just proof, it is poetry.

Remember I said this isn’t the first Joseph to go to Egypt? Let me remind you of what happened with that. Things went well in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who wasn’t so fond of Joseph and his people and forced them into slavery until God raised up a prophet Moses who led God’s people out of Egypt. God, through Moses, called his people out of Egypt.

God saved God’s people by calling them out of Egypt led by the prophet Moses. God will again save God’s people with a savior who is called out of Egypt. There is wonderful poetry and symmetry in the Bible stories.

The Bible is very cool when you read closely.

Then something horrible happens.

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Today, we call this sort of thing genocide. It seems Herod was acting out of paranoia here. We see a better picture of what set him off if we back up to the story of the wise men but remember, we are watching episodes out of order. In simple terms, he senses a threat to his power and lashes out. He is not sure who the threat is, so he kills all the boys. Though there is evidence that with the size of Bethlehem at the time, this was not of the scope of genocides in our lifetime. However, this doesn’t make the scene of Roman solders barging into homes to kill babies any less horrifying.

I just don’t know what people were thinking assigning this text when we are still singing Christmas carols. There is symmetry here though as well. This has happened before. Exodus chapter 1 tells us that when the Hebrew people were in captivity in Egypt,

²²Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."

Pharaoh sensed a threat to his power, the Hebrew people were becoming too numerous, too prosperous, too powerful, so he lashed out.

You may have heard that one of these boys survived by being put in a basket on the Nile. He was found by Pharaoh’s daughter who named him Moses, the guy who led God’s people out of Egypt.

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Alright, just a little more background, I promise. This quote is from Jeremiah 31:15, which I have to tell you, needs a whole sermon of its own because it is so full of poetic references to other stories in the Bible.

¹⁵Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.

You may remember I mentioned earlier that Rachel is buried near Bethlehem, Genesis 35:19:

¹⁹So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), ²⁰and Jacob set up a pillar at her grave; it is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day.

If we back up even further in Genesis we read about Rachel. Rachel was Jacob’s second wife after he was tricked first into marrying her sister Leah. Leah had many children but Rachel had none. Rachel finally bore Jacob a son, whom he name Joseph, the one who ended up in Egypt. Rachel became pregnant again, but died in childbirth. Before her death she named her son Beneni, “Son of my sorrow.” Jacob renamed the son Ben-jamin, “Son of my right hand.”

Jeremiah is talking about Rachel in terms of the exile, the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of God’s people into captivity, one of the most horrible events in the history of the people of Israel.

Just look at all these connections. Our Joseph takes his family to Egypt, just as another Joseph was sent into Egypt and helped his people survive a famine. Jesus escaping a massacre of the innocents, Just as Moses escaped a massacre by of innocents being sent down the Nile in a little boat Jesus escaping into Egypt so that he be called out of Egypt to save God’s people, just as Moses was called out of Egypt to save God’s people. Over the top of this Rachel is weeping from her grave outside Bethlehem at this tragedy which echoes the tragedy of the exile which echoes her own sorrow.

Joseph, blood, escape, Egypt, Rachel, Joseph.

Which all raises the question, what happened to, “Joy to the World?” Christmas seemed so simple just a couple of days ago. This seems like such a shameful event to have in the Christmas story and it just gets more complicated the deeper we dig in.

It ties us into the history of God’s people, a history stained with blood and sorrow. A history in which God many times intervened to work through prophets like Moses and leaders like Joseph to save God’s people.

When we see Christmas in the framework of the history of God’s people, we see why Christmas is so cool! If the world was all sunshine and lollypops, what difference would it make if God came into it? That God came into a world like this, now that is impressive. That God chose to be born in a city where rulers fly into a paranoid rage and where priests get into fist-fights on Christmas Eve, now that it my kind of God.

On Christmas Eve, after being here all day, I went and wasn’t yet sleepy. I flipped on the television and caught the middle of one of many televised midnight masses. There in the pews of this huge church sat people in dresses in suits and ties and dresses, while an orchestra played and a choir sang and people yawned.

That helped me fall asleep that night but doesn’t well reflect the Christmas story that tells of Jesus being born in a city that was witness to a massacre, a city that to this day whose holy sites are guarded by blast-proof walls and men with automatic weapons.

This is the story that makes Christmas, Christmas. I mentioned on Christmas Eve how Christmas is about God coming into our dark and scary world. This shows, right from the beginning that God did not come into a world of light, but brought light into the world.

So if Christmas is about God coming into a scary world, what are you doing about it? If Christmas is about God’s entry into a bloodstained world what does that mean for us?

I want to end with two questions.

Are you letting God’s light shine into the darkest and scariest places of your life? I guess that some of us don’t let God into some of the places in our life where we most need God. These are the same places we don’t let our friends, family and spouses into. It is too easy to hold onto this picture of God who is all about polite conversation and moral behavior, but Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Are you letting God’s light shine into the darkest and scariest places of your life? I

Are you willing to go to dark and scary places to be the hands and feet of the savior? I think it is hauntingly and terribly poetic that the Church of Nativity in Manger Square, on the spot where many Christians believe Jesus was born, is riddled with bullet holes from a siege in 2002. Jesus is not the savior of winsome sanctuaries and polite services. Jesus is not eh sort of savior we leave behind when we leave church. Jesus is the sort of savior that causes us to risk our money, our popularity even our lives to bring the good news of his birth to our world. Are you willing to go to dark and scary places to be the hands and feet of the savior?

Your homework this week: An essay question. I know people like short answer, but here we go anyway. It is one question:

What are you going to do about Christmas? Knowing God came into our scary world, was born into the continuing history of God saving God’s people and was born into the midst of political intrigue and intense danger, what are you going to do in response? What are you going to do about Christmas?

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[1] “Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus” http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071227133441.5ue4z6fy&show_article=1