This Is How It All Begins
This Is How it All Begins
Luke 3:21-22
Every now and then, I hear a song that I had totally forgotten…and I smile. Not long ago, it happened with a song from when I was a kid: “I was in the right place but it must have been wrong time. I’d have said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line.” Do you remember it? “Right Place, Wrong Time,” by…Dr. John. Haven’t we all been in the right place at the wrong time? Haven’t we all had something to say but we said it all wrong? That’s what makes the song memorable. We’ve all been there and done that, right?
It’s fun to run into things that connect to our own experiences. It’s even more fun to run into something that has connected to our experiences in different times in our life. That song was released in 1973. That means super-awkward 13 year old me would have been singing along to that song as it played on the radio in our woodworking class. I know that 19 year old me danced to that song in a hot, sweaty bar in ice-cold Minnesota. Most recently, I found myself grooving along to Dr. John in…Heinen’s.. as I worked my way through the produce aisle. (Isn’t it just profoundly sad that the safe music—the grocery store background music—is now the music we thought was so cool?)
Our text this morning, not unlike that song, is a story that has popped up again and again in our lives. In part, it pops up because most of us have been baptized. Some of us had water sprinkled on us as newborns. Some of us were baptized when we went through confirmation. I bet there are a few of us who were baptized as adults, maybe even dressed in a white robe and dunked backwards in some pastor’s arms. Maybe people talked about original sin. Maybe people talked about original grace and love. Whatever the details were, Jesus was baptized and people have been getting baptized ever since.
Of course, whether we are talking about a song or a spiritual practice or a Biblical text, the more familiar anything becomes, the more difficult is to really hear and see and feel what’s going on. In order to experience something new we have to really pay attention. The problem is that as soon as we recognize something as familiar, there’s some part of us that says, “Oh…I don’t really have to pay attention at all. I’ve already heard this.” Meanwhile, the truth is that we’ve changed and the world has changed since the last time we crossed paths with, in this case, that story. If I could just pay attention, I might be shocked at how something so old could say something so fresh and new.
Here’s the story. There was a lot of fanfare before and after Jesus was born. Even after a few months, wise men were showing up looking for him and people at the temple were acting like they’d been waiting to see him their whole lives. Then, the weirdest thing happened: all of that faded away. Jesus grew up, just like we grew up. Things seemed…entirely normal. At 12, Jesus did get lost for a while (what kid doesn’t get lost, right?) They found him at the temple talking to the religious authorities which was strange. (What kid does that?). But then, he was back to being a kid. From 12 to 30, Jesus by all appearances led a perfectly normal life in his “podunk” home town, Nazareth.
I have always paused at this point in Jesus’ life and thought of just how much Mary must have hoped that things might just stay the way they were. My assumption is that Joseph has died by now. He would have been the person who completely shared in the mysteries of Jesus’ earliest days. Did the two of them talk about those things that they’d been told over the years? They must have. They were human. Did they realize at some point that it really wasn’t their dream—selfishly—for Jesus to grow up and become “all that,” “the Prince of Peace,” “Emmanuel.” Was there a part of them that hoped that his title might instead be, “Our Wonderful Son?” After Joseph died, Mary must have relied on Jesus more than ever. Wouldn’t that be enough? That’s why I’ve aways imagined on the morning that Jesus left, when Mary realized he was gone, she must have thought, instinctually, “Oh no…” Her heart must have skipped a beat. She must have remembered that old man, Simeon, and his message that Jesus would one day break her heart. Jesus was gone.
Or…from a different point of view, Jesus showed up. We’ve all heard people say, “Oh…I think you missed your calling.” Usually, someone says it when we are caught doing something silly or ridiculous or trivial. It turns out you’re talented and gifted at something that doesn’t matter. Some people find what they are meant to do and it does matter. It turns out you’re really good and caring for people and you become a nurse. Everyone has always sought you out to sort through their issues and you and up becoming a counselor. You were always taking things apart and putting them back together and you end up becoming an engineer. One of the most satisfying things in life is to actually be in the right place at the right time, doing what you were created to do.
Jesus shows up but his calling doesn’t fit neatly into some professional category. He shows up on the banks of the Jordan and meets John the Baptist, who also has a calling that doesn’t fit into some box. John is doing things a rabbi would have done—preaching and teaching and performing rituals but he’s no rabbi. He’s in the wrong place, too—in the wilderness where nothing has been officially designated as holy in a world where only things that are designated as holy can be holy. He doesn’t care, he just keeps baptizing people into a new life, a new way of being in the world.
Jesus shows up to be baptized but he goes last. Remember, this is the man who would teach people to humble themselves, to serve others, to go last. Before he ever taught such things, he lived with that kind of humility. I’ve always wondered how so many “officially religious leaders” have forgotten this simple truth—that if you’re going to follow Jesus of Nazareth then you have to choose to live a humble life. No job is below us. No person is somehow of less value than us. We’re not here to judge but to help. A lot less people would be hurt by the church today if Christian leaders just remembered that…
If you look carefully, Luke doesn’t describe the moment when Jesus was baptized at all. He just tells us that it happened and then Jesus started praying. Jesus shows up and humbles himself. He is in the right place—at the river—with the right person—John—doing the right thing—being baptized. And as all of those things converge, he does the next right thing: he opens his heart to God in prayer.
Just pause there for a moment. You may have never been to the River Jordan to be baptized but you have “been there” and “done this.” You have had moments when everything came together, when you were exactly where you were supposed to be and doing what you were supposed to be doing. Sometimes life works. Sometimes we show up. When that happens, the only thing left to do is…to thank God! You may not have even thought of it as a prayer. You may have just paused what you were doing long enough to think to yourself, “Wow…this is amazing! This feels so good! I feel so whole.” This is such a gift. I’m a participant but what I’m participating in is so much larger than me. “Thank you…just thank you for this!”
For Luke, things are transformed not in the instant when Jesus is baptized but in the moment when Jesus closes the circle and completes what’s holy by making room for the presence of God through prayer. Into that space, the Holy Spirit comes breaking through. Now, pause a moment more. The Holy Spirit is often depicted as looking like a dove. Why do you think that is? One obvious association would be to think of the dove as a symbol of peace. There is a peace that permeates the moments in life when we feel the great “something more” of God’s presence. I think, though, that our ancestors would have thought of something more specific than that.
Do you remember the (somewhat horrific) story of Noah’s Ark? In the story, God has had it with human beings and pretty much everything else. In my view, God has a ttantrumantrum and decides to nearly destroy the world. God instructs Noah to build the ark so that he and his family and a collection of other creatures can survive. Then, it rains and rains, for 40 days and 40 nights. Finally, the rain stops. Noah knows that the flood waters are receding and he’s near dry land when a dove that he has released comes back with a small branch. The dove is a sign that God is done being mad at the world.
I think people steeped in the Noah story would see the dove like appearance of the Holy Spirit and hear that same message. In the people’s experience, God had been angry at them for centuries. They had failed to keep the covenant. The prophets had warned them about this again and again. Finally, God allowed them to be dragged off into exile. God was frustrated and disappointed and angry with his faithless people. God was angry until the dove appeared again and signaled that those days were now over. The relationship between God and the world is being restored.
Here is a final point to mull over. In the classic Revised Standard Version translation, a voice is heard saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” As I love to point out, all Jesus has done so far is show up, be baptized, and prayed, and yet, he is already the Beloved. If the no longer angry God loves like that then maybe there really is hope for the rest of us.
The point to remember, though, is that those words are one possible translation. Here’s another possible translation: “You are my Son. Today, I have begotten you.” That’s kind of awkward, right? It’s certainly not familiar. What would we hear, though, that we might miss if we just translate this once? The force of “Today, I have begotten you” is this: “Today, I have brought you here; Today, I have called you here.” Right now, you are right where I called you to be. Thanks for coming. Thanks for showing up.
We’ve all had that feeling—that super-fulfilling feeling—that we were in the right place and the right time just doing what we were put on this earth to do. We didn’t have to be there but we chose to be there because something—deep down—was gnawing at us and prodding us and whispering to us: “Come on…get here!” Some of us even take the next step from “I have to go,” to “Thank God, I’m here.” What most of us never come close to is the experience Jesus has in this moment, the ultimate validation of our calling, the voice of God whispering to us, “You know that gnawing, that prodding, that whispering? That was me!”
One of the great challenges of following Jesus is showing up in the right place at the right time. Maybe God is just waiting for us, just waiting to whisper to us, “I’m so glad you came!”