Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9 Acts 10:34-43 (Series A, Baptism of Our Lord) Ps. 29 Matthew 3:13-17
Most gracious God, bless the thoughts of our hearts and the words of my lips.
Help us to grow in faith and in love that we may be pleasing to you and a blessing to others –
we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There were hundreds of varieties of super heroes in the toy stores, on movie screens, videos and books during this last Christmas season. All of them had one thing in common. They overcame "Evil" through violent destruction of the evil ones.
Walter Wink calls it the belief in "redemptive violence." Evil must be overcome with violence.
Our reading from the Prophet Isaiah this morning looks forward to the coming of the Messiah, and it proclaims a different kind of approach, especially in verses two and three. There it says of the promised one He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.
What I find most interesting in today's reading is the role the Messiah will have in bringing about justice. Three times, in this short reading, his task is described as, "bringing forth justice.”
Justice is a big word in this reading, indeed it is a big word in the whole Bible. The prophets were the mouthpieces for God's justice, agents for God, they were preoccupied with calling God's people to doing justice to equitable behaviour. They preached God's will is a society in which all people are to be treated fairly.
God, according to the Hebrew prophets, is especially concerned for those overlooked in the normal routines of the world: the poor and the weak, those not important enough to be heard or seen in the council rooms of the powerful; those who can not afford "a million dollar defence team" to represent them in the courts.
Justice is so central a characteristic to the kind of society God wants, that anything less would mean the people were not God's people. The prophets tell us that despite all their prayers and religious ritual, without justice, God would turn a deaf ear to his people's prayer.
All in society, particularly the poor, were to be given their most basic rights for food, clothing and due process. The prophets not only confronted the unjust in society, they also stirred up among the forgotten the longing for a day when all would be made new, when justice would light their dark world.
Isaiah says that the promised one will establish justice, especially for those in most need, "...to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon, those who live in darkness." He also says that the promised one will be made a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, for those who before were not God's people.
The gospel reading today tells us that on the day Jesus appeared at the Jordan he found John baptizing those who confessed their sin and expressed a need for God's deliverance from their various forms of captivity.
Sin is a form of blindness, a kind of slavery and an absence of light.
The gospel reading today tells us the one promised by Isaiah appears to be part of this repenting and enslaved community. Of course he had no need for the washing, he could have kept his distance. Instead he chooses to be intimately united with them and so enters John's cleansing waters.
Jesus may be without sin, but he too is part of a people enslaved by the Roman occupation, a people living in the dungeon and darkness of a foreign power.
In Matthew's account of the baptism, the voice from heaven speaks words over Jesus very similar to the ones we heard in the Isaiah passage. While John recognizes that Jesus has no need for repentance, Jesus says it must be done, "to fulfill all righteousness" and to affirm who I am
.What does that mean?
First of all, Jesus' presence to John's baptism puts the stamp of approval on what John is doing. God wants this baptism for Jesus, for it will be the occasion for God to announce that the promised one has come who will set things right. Justice will be established through him, and people will be invited by him to live in right relationships with each other and with God. Jesus receives his commission, the baptism of Christ Jesus is a lesser point for Matthew, the epiphany that follows is the key point, that epiphany or revelation that comes when the voice from heaven says, in word's much like the word's in today's reading from the prophet Isaiah: "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" The voice is speaking not to Jesus. Rather it is speaking to us.
Do we hear it?
Are we ready to live the just life through our own baptism?
Well, how far would God be willing to go, to be with us?
The human response to resolve (obstinacy) would have been to throw up hands in disgust and proclaim, "Enough already!" and strike us all dead. To send in the super heroes to blow up the homes of the wicked and kill all those who have worked evil.
But our God is not some kind of humanly invented hero. Our God is completely different from us and our God surprises us.
I am sure there must have been better people praying in the Temple that day who would have been more "worthy" of a divine visitation than those at the River Jordan. But instead of going to them, Jesus is immersed himself in the same water that has washed over sinners.
How did Jesus set things right? His baptism shows us he would not use brute force to get us to be a just people - forgiven and right before God and just with one another. Rather the Bible tells us that He chose to move among us, winning us over to him by his reaching out to the fringe to the outcasts, the sick, those who are sinners, the poor and imprisoned.
He would do this gently in the words of Isaiah once again – Jesus would not break "a bruised reed...and a smouldering wick he shall not quench...." How is this accomplished? By joining people in the waters of their own predicaments. God had taken the first steps in acknowledging their importance in the plan God has to set things right; to bring justice and right relations to all people.
Jesus has come for people who are broken or like a "smouldering wick," feel depleted, life about to go out. He enters the waters, not where the movers and sharers of society meet to make deals that affect so many others, but where those who know their needs and have turned to God have gone.
They have gone out to John because they can not make it on their own. They need to hear and experience that God has heard their distress and has come to breath a new Spirit, new life into them. This Spirit descends upon Jesus, but soon it will descend on all who decide follow him into his baptismal waters.
At the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus promised to be with us till the end of time.
He is still Emmanuel, God with us. He gives us his Spirit through our baptism so that we are not left alone throughout our lives to stumble along and get tripped up by sin and the unjust ways of our world.
Today's readings do not call us to do anything in particular. Rather they call us to understand and to know what it is God has done and will do. God has called and ordained us to be Ambassadors for peace and ministers of justice. (Believers are ministers by baptism). I conclude with this thought from the prophet Micah: “God has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
They are a true testimony from God to us about Christ Jesus, and a reminder that God has come to be with us in him, and that he has come to help us be with God - and to live in the way that God wants all people to live.
Act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Praise be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - now and forevermore.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
January 13, 2008