The Beloved
The Beloved
Matthew 3:13-17
This morning, I want to borrow from the title of a wonderful book written by Marcus J. Borg. The book was called, “Meeting Jesus Again, as if for the First Time.” That’s what we do every year at about this time: we prepare to meet Jesus once again—not the risen Christ but the earthly, Jesus. As we gaze at the horizon and see him making his way to the River Jordan, we should be asking ourselves, “Who is this man and what is he doing here?”
At the outset, what we should see is a man who is leaving life as he knew it behind. He woke up and realized that today was the day. Today was the day when his life as a carpenter came to an end. Did he run his hand along his workbench one last time? Did he plane that one spot on the table for just a moment more, hoping to smooth that one rough edge? Did he bend down and admire that joint on the table leg that had come together so well? One thing’s for sure, nothing would quite match the feeling of satisfaction as the joy that was there when an idea and some wood and a few good tools produced something useful and beautiful. From now on, though, he would be known locally as the carpenter who quit.
Earlier that day, as he lingered in the morning, he gazed over at his mother and his siblings as they slept. This might not be the last time that he would see them but he knew that after this day they would never look at him the same way again. There’s something to be said for wrestling with your brother, for teasing your sister, for adoring the food that your mother made with love. What he was about to do was going to cost him such comforts and joys. Was he destined to be a bad brother and a bad son?
As he walked through the town, he nodded to the folks whom he loved, who loved him right back. These were his neighbors who had kept an eye on him since he was a boy. They were the friends with whom he had grown up. This was a community of people who relied on one another to meet each other’s needs. Some of those needs had been his to meet. He wouldn’t be there to meet such needs anymore. Was his lot in life to be the bad example who tempted all the younger people in the village to leave on some whim, too?
Jesus has not preached a single sermon. He has not healed a leper or fed a hungry person or comforted a single mourner. He has not suffered yet. He has not uttered a single hard word to those in power. And yet, as we meet Jesus once again, we need to take a hard look at the price he has already paid. He has made real sacrifices. He is doing things which others will not understand. These things will diminish him in the eyes of many. Yet, he does what he knows he’s been called to do.
I don’t believe that Jesus came into this world to promote himself. I don’t think the point was for him to gather up as many followers as he could to win some popularity contest. I think he came to show us how to live. If we decide to try to live that way, there are some things that we should expect. What Jesus shows us from the outset is that we should expect to pay a price. We won’t get to do what others expect us to do. We won’t be able to measure our choices based on what will make us most popular. Some things we do based on our faith will not make any sense at all to our family and friends. And yet, we will do those things because they are the faithful things that we are called to do.
The most vivid example of this experience for me was in my decision to go to seminary. I grew up as a pastor’s son and was totally steeped in the church. The folks at church were truly my church family. That church family was a loving community. Life in a loving community was a powerfully shaping experience for me. In that community, from a pretty young age, I had people who would come up to me and say, “I bet you’ll be a pastor some day!” (This was not my parents’ position. They were very careful to allow me to discern my own path.) In the face of those moments with church members, I would think to myself, “No way!”
Still, I loved my church family. Then, I went to live with a Buddhist family in Japan. For months, I was steeped in my new Buddhist community, which turned out to be just as loving of a community as my Christian community back home. This was a wonderful experience. At the same time, this was a huge invitation to ask a really important question: “If both communities were loving communities then what made the Christian community my faith home?” Loving community mattered. However, what remained for me were questions about what I actually believed.
College was a giant invitation to ask those questions and to get as far away from the church as possible. I was searching for perspective so I spent time with the likes of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus. I had wonderful professors who pushed hard for us to grow. Eventually, I got so far away from the church that I wondered if I would ever get back again. Then, suddenly, I met Jesus again, as if for the first time.
I stepped into a church—a small congregational church that was a bit like this sacred space. I checked to make sure the plaster didn’t fall from the ceiling when I walked in. I sat in the very back row, so I could see whoever it was that I was sure would be coming my way. Reluctantly, I spoke to the pastor, who was very gracious about giving me plenty of breathing room. Slowly, I began to realize that the care and compassion which I had come to understand were the heart of any meaning that we were going to create or discover in this life were the very things to which Jesus was pointing us. I vividly remember the night when realizing that I had come full circle, I actually prayed in a heartfelt manner, “Okay, God…you be God and I’ll be Mark. I promise I will quit pretending I’m you. Just let me be a part of your compassion and care in this world.”
Now, this was a crazy moment. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a sense of what I believed and I had ownership that I believed these things for my own reasons, not by default based on what I was raised to believe. My faith was becoming clear. However, it was also immediately clear that this was going to cost me dearly. My college friends, who had only known me as the searching, questioning philosophy student were not going to understand: “What do you mean you’re going to seminary?” The people back home were going to hear my new direction and have no idea of the mighty struggle that finally led me there. It seemed to me that if I was going to do what I was being called to do, the cost would be feeling misunderstood and unsupported by some of the people who mattered most. I didn’t totally get it. How would they? Some people who really cared about me tried hard to talk me out of this nonsense—because they really cared about me.
It is a big deal when life shifts from, “What do I want to do?” to “What am I being called to do?” However, that shift is the precondition of a lived faith. God calls us to go places that we would have never thought to go and to do things that we would have never thought to do. God calls us to care for people whom we otherwise would have overlooked or avoided. God calls us to a life of being led, to a life of service, rather than being served, to a life in which our greatest hope might be to play a part in something larger and more wonderful than we ever would have conjured up on our own. We don’t get to be like everyone else. We also don’t get to please everyone else. Someone might as well stand next to us and whisper, “This is going to cost you! You are not going to find peace in other’s reactions to you. Still, you just might discover the peace that passes all understanding if life’s about faith, not approval.
The minute that Jesus leaves Nazareth and the life that he loved behind, being understood and pleasing everyone and being the person that everyone else wanted him to be is over. Jesus pays the price and shows up. He humbles himself. Essentially, he looks out and says, “I’m here. How can I help?”
This, to me, is the point of his baptism. Some folks get themselves all knotted up inside and start doing some serious theological gymnastics to talk about why Jesus had to be baptized. After all, John was baptizing people because they wanted to repent. They wanted to be made clean. They wanted their sins to be washed away. Certainly, there have been Christians, particularly when it comes to adult baptisms, who have looked and said that a believer’s baptism is that person’s shot at having their sins washed away and being made clean again. What had Jesus ever done wrong? Why did he need that spiritual “bath?”
The answer to me has always rested in the experience of baptism with an infant. That infant can’t answer a question or confess their sin of keeping their parents up all night. That infant is just there and beautiful and a sign of God’s grace and God’s love. God so loved those parents and so loved our community that God has blessed us with this child. The parents humbly bring that child forward and what we all see is that this child is God’s beloved child, entrusted for a while to these parents and to our church family. You’d have to be blind to look into the face of that baby and not see the face of a loving God!
Jesus shows us that faith will cost us in the eyes of others and cost us when it comes to being understood. Yet, he also shows us that if we show up and humble ourselves, what we will discover, each in our own way, is the God who loves us unconditionally, too: “This is my son. This is my daughter. You each are my beloved. With each of you, I am well-pleased.” In effect, Jesus says to us, “If you are willing to pay the price and daring enough to humble yourself, I’d love to have you follow me. Let me show you what it’s like to be loved unconditionally by God. It changes everything.”
We can’t have it all, though. We can’t go without leaving some things behind. We can’t grow without growing out of a few things. We can’t learn to follow without doing the hard work of letting go of the need to lead. That’s the challenge of meeting Jesus over again.