Sermon - The Grace of Being Responsible (1/10/2021)
Baptism of the Lord (Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29: Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11)
Like many of you, I’ve had a lot of reactions to what took place in Washington on Wednesday. My first reaction, of course, was shock, although to be honest I wasn’t surprised; this kind of thing has been building up for a while. I felt sadness over the loss of life. I felt compassion for the many people, not just elected officials, but people who work in and around the Capitol who were directly affected and whose lives were put at risk. Like many of you, I’ve worked in government. These people are not abstractions. They are our friends and neighbors, and I am moved by what they have gone through.
And I felt a lot of anger. Anger about the disrespect to our democracy and therefore to all of us who are citizens, regardless of who we may have voted for in November. anger that people who ought to know better have whipped millions into a frenzy through lies and deliberate misinformation, for their own perceived benefit, regardless of the cost to the lives and the wellbeing of others.
And, especially in the days immediately after, anger at the way everyone seems to be focused on who’s to blame, who needs to do what to fix things, and it’s always somebody else’s fault and somebody else’s responsibility to make this right. And every time I see some official or some pundit go on TV and say, It’s all that person’s fault, and I call on this person to do something immediately, I … I just want to scream. Does anybody know how to say, I messed up? Is there anybody willing to say, This is what I’m doing to take responsibility for moving forward?
But, you know, I think a lot of this is our fault. As Christians, we’re supposed to know something about repenting. We are supposed to know something about loving our neighbors even when we disagree with them. We Lutherans, especially, are supposed to know that we’re justified by our faith and not by our works, that Jesus showed us we are worthy of love and communion with God not because we’ve earned it but because of who God is. So, we of all people, are not supposed to be threatened to wonder whether maybe some of the world’s problems might be our fault. Because God would still love and care for us even if was our fault. And so we are supposed to know how to be free to step up and take responsibility and to risk being vulnerable into order to reach out to and love our neighbors. And as the world around us seems to be collapsing into universal finger-pointing and accusation, I for one feel as much at a loss as anyone, as to what we’re supposed to do.
So where to we start? Well, we could always start at the beginning; that’s as good a place as any to start. And so, our Scripture today starts us at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, at his baptism in the Jordan River. And we read in today’s gospel that two things happened at once. Jesus submits to John’s baptism of repentance and confession of sins, and Jesus hears the word of the Father’s love for him and delight in him.
So Jesus submits to John’s baptism of repentance. John the Baptist was inviting people to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah by acknowledging their need for a Messiah, but admitting their need for God’s help. According to John, we don’t need to point fingers and accuse people and blame them for messing up the world. John didn’t say, We need a Messiah to come and save us from the Romans, or the corrupt temple priests, or your mother-in-law, or from QAnon. John urged people to own up to their own responsibility, to confess their own sin, to change their own lives. To take responsibility for me.
And Jesus comes from Nazareth to participate in this baptism. Even though, as the Son of God, he has not personally done anything he has to repent of. Jesus had every right to come into the world and say: You people have totally messed things up. You people need to get your act together if you expect God to care about you and give you anything. But that’s not what Jesus does.
Jesus so identified with broken humanity that he adopts the position of repentance too. Because repentance is not about the correct assigning of blame. Contrary to popular belief, God doesn’t have the slightest interest in whose fault the evil in the world is. “Mommy, tell Billy to stop hitting me.” “But Mom, Sally hit me first.” Does Mom actually care who hit whom first? Probably not. What Mom really cares about that she wants both Billy and Sally to say, “I’m sorry, I won’t hit you again.” Healing the brokenness of the world is a lot like that – it’s not about figuring out whose fault it is. And who has to repent more than anybody else. It’s everybody saying, “I’m going to step up and be part of the solution.”
And that’s what Jesus does in receiving baptism in the Jordan River from John. And when Jesus does this, at that very moment, he sees the heavens cracked open. He hears the creative Word of God speak as it did on the first day of creation, when it separated light from darkness. He sees once again, as on the first day of creation, the Spirit moving on the waters. And Jesus hears that Word pronounce him God’s beloved child, in whom the Father is well pleased.
Jesus goes forth from this so secure in his identity as God’s beloved child, Jesus has such confidence and faith that he is who the Word of God says he is, that he can move through his life and ministry without feeling any need to prove anything to anyone. He does not have to prove to anyone that none of this sin is his fault. He can freely choose to take responsibility – precisely because he already knows that he’s God’s beloved child, and always will be. And in that faith the Spirit of God is again moving in the world, bringing light, overcoming chaos and darkness, making things new.
And so the baptism of Jesus becomes something new. Something different from, and better than, the baptism of John, as John himself always said it would be. You know, John’s baptism was about repentance, but there’s only so much repentance that a human being can actually pull off without faith that we are God’s beloved children no matter what. If we assume we have to prove ourselves worthy of God’s love it’s going to be very hard for us to be truly honest with ourselves and with one another about the ways that we are caught up in the brokenness of this world.
But, in his baptism, Jesus is promised that he’s God’s beloved child no matter what. This is what sets him free to make the kingdom of God’s grace and truth fully present in our world. And in our baptism we get that same gift, the same promise that we are God’s beloved children. As the disciples Paul found Ephesus learned, in today’s second reading, when we’re baptized not just into the baptism of John but when we’re baptized in the name of Jesus – when we’re baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, when we’re claimed and signed and marked by the cross of Jesus, when we hear the word that we are God’s beloved children in whom God is well pleased – that’s when we are set free in the Spirit to really repent, to really be changed, to really take responsibility for the healing of the world.
That’s the gift that has been given to us who are baptized. The faith that God is and will always be who God has promised to be for us. That God has always promised to be with us, in the Spirit that allowed Jesus to live a life of love and grace that the powers of darkness and death could not overcome. That’s the gift that has been given to us. And I cannot think of a gift that this world needs right now. We’ve been given it.
So I invite us to thank God for this amazing gift of grace. And let’s put our freedom in the gospel to work, in a world that’s really looking for good news right now.