Baptisms
The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’
---John 1:29-34
In John's gospel, we do not get to see the actual moment when the Baptist dips Jesus beneath the Jordan's flow, but only hear what John saw as he did so.
That's where the action is--in what John saw. And what was that? God with Jesus as God was with no one else John ever met.
Jesus, in John the Evangelist's theology, is the embodiment of God's Word. Throughout the gospel and the letters he wrote, that Word inescapably becomes love--the love that redeemed the world through its complete manifestation as other-centered, self-emptying love. In the gospel, we find Jesus meeting others in that love--Nicodemus, a woman at the well, at a wedding feast, feeding the crowds, saving a woman from stoning, a blind man, and so on. In each encounter, Jesus listens, then offers the grace necessary for their release from whatever it is that separates them from God and their community. His death then ironically becomes his exaltation--the ultimate act of love that overwhelms even the most absolute human darkness imaginable--the murder of God's Son. Jesus accepts death, ending death for everyone else. In this fulfillment of love, Jesus meets the standard of the love that is God. God is with him as with no one else.
Now note some surprises as Jesus lives into his baptism.
As John tells the story, one of the first things Jesus does is to cleanse the Temple.
Oh, oh...here is our first warning. In the life of the church, we lose our way. We can easily and readily become enamored with the church instead of the God who is worshipped. At lunch with a colleague recently, we were talking about worship, and the inevitable wondering over the contemporary versus traditional model came up. At his church, he chose to work with a blended service--there is some praise music, but coupled with a few good, old 19th Century "bumpty-bumps" (think, "Shall We Gather at the River"), and then concluded with a Bach chorale. He decided to blend the approach to end the chorus from one group or another saying they couldn't find what they liked in worship, but now with the result that nobody's happy! He smiled, "But it isn't about us, is it?"
Nope, it isn't about us--worship is the encounter with God. We need our vision cleared, our hearts cleansed, and our minds cleaned to perceive God with us. The Baptist states repeatedly in his baptismal report that he did not know Jesus. Why? Luke said they were cousins; how could he not know him? Maybe even the Baptist needed his inner temple cleansed! We have to empty ourselves of all of our presumptions, assumptions, and preconditions to meet God as God.
Many of us followed the recent events at Wheaton College wherein a professor was fired for declaring that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God. I saw a Facebook debate erupt within a friend's (a religion professor) post that it all seemed a battle of semantics. What occurred to me as I followed the back and forth was one of my personal dictums--all theology is speculative. Every religion is a human construct, a human attempt to somehow understand and respond to God--the unsearchable, unknowable Lord of Lords from whom all else came. The truth, to me, is that we do indeed all worship the same God, but through our own voice, vision, and view depending on where we come from and what makes sense within that context. God is so vast as to encompass all we are, but also so vast as to remain unknown except as God chooses to be known.
In sum, like the Baptist, our confession needs to be, "I did not know him."
As Jesus cleared the decks, he did so in grace. He wanted us able to see the Father who moved him, a Father with love for every human child, a Father who sees every life as a unique act of his creative will.
That struck me as I read the the reports of the Muslim woman removed from a Trump rally for saying nothing, but simply being there in her hijab and wearing a t-shirt reading PEACE in Arabic. To remove her simply proves that the people doing so have no idea who God is. I imagined the implied rocks in their hands. I imagined Jesus drawing in the dust on the floor. I imagine his soft words to her, words of acceptance, affirmation, and assurance.
We are left to say we do not know him or his love, but we can know him and we can love as he teaches.
Or, to use another analogy, we can be baptized into Christ. We can change who we are and what we are. We can become witnesses to his love, just as the Baptist did. We can transcend our own being to enter the Word.
---John 1:29-34
In John's gospel, we do not get to see the actual moment when the Baptist dips Jesus beneath the Jordan's flow, but only hear what John saw as he did so.
That's where the action is--in what John saw. And what was that? God with Jesus as God was with no one else John ever met.
Jesus, in John the Evangelist's theology, is the embodiment of God's Word. Throughout the gospel and the letters he wrote, that Word inescapably becomes love--the love that redeemed the world through its complete manifestation as other-centered, self-emptying love. In the gospel, we find Jesus meeting others in that love--Nicodemus, a woman at the well, at a wedding feast, feeding the crowds, saving a woman from stoning, a blind man, and so on. In each encounter, Jesus listens, then offers the grace necessary for their release from whatever it is that separates them from God and their community. His death then ironically becomes his exaltation--the ultimate act of love that overwhelms even the most absolute human darkness imaginable--the murder of God's Son. Jesus accepts death, ending death for everyone else. In this fulfillment of love, Jesus meets the standard of the love that is God. God is with him as with no one else.
Now note some surprises as Jesus lives into his baptism.
As John tells the story, one of the first things Jesus does is to cleanse the Temple.
Oh, oh...here is our first warning. In the life of the church, we lose our way. We can easily and readily become enamored with the church instead of the God who is worshipped. At lunch with a colleague recently, we were talking about worship, and the inevitable wondering over the contemporary versus traditional model came up. At his church, he chose to work with a blended service--there is some praise music, but coupled with a few good, old 19th Century "bumpty-bumps" (think, "Shall We Gather at the River"), and then concluded with a Bach chorale. He decided to blend the approach to end the chorus from one group or another saying they couldn't find what they liked in worship, but now with the result that nobody's happy! He smiled, "But it isn't about us, is it?"
Nope, it isn't about us--worship is the encounter with God. We need our vision cleared, our hearts cleansed, and our minds cleaned to perceive God with us. The Baptist states repeatedly in his baptismal report that he did not know Jesus. Why? Luke said they were cousins; how could he not know him? Maybe even the Baptist needed his inner temple cleansed! We have to empty ourselves of all of our presumptions, assumptions, and preconditions to meet God as God.
Many of us followed the recent events at Wheaton College wherein a professor was fired for declaring that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God. I saw a Facebook debate erupt within a friend's (a religion professor) post that it all seemed a battle of semantics. What occurred to me as I followed the back and forth was one of my personal dictums--all theology is speculative. Every religion is a human construct, a human attempt to somehow understand and respond to God--the unsearchable, unknowable Lord of Lords from whom all else came. The truth, to me, is that we do indeed all worship the same God, but through our own voice, vision, and view depending on where we come from and what makes sense within that context. God is so vast as to encompass all we are, but also so vast as to remain unknown except as God chooses to be known.
In sum, like the Baptist, our confession needs to be, "I did not know him."
As Jesus cleared the decks, he did so in grace. He wanted us able to see the Father who moved him, a Father with love for every human child, a Father who sees every life as a unique act of his creative will.
That struck me as I read the the reports of the Muslim woman removed from a Trump rally for saying nothing, but simply being there in her hijab and wearing a t-shirt reading PEACE in Arabic. To remove her simply proves that the people doing so have no idea who God is. I imagined the implied rocks in their hands. I imagined Jesus drawing in the dust on the floor. I imagine his soft words to her, words of acceptance, affirmation, and assurance.
We are left to say we do not know him or his love, but we can know him and we can love as he teaches.
Or, to use another analogy, we can be baptized into Christ. We can change who we are and what we are. We can become witnesses to his love, just as the Baptist did. We can transcend our own being to enter the Word.
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