SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU
and at St ALBAN’S, KUROW
BAPTISM OF OUR LORD (January 9th)
2022
READINGS:
Isaiah 43: 1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
When Luke told the Jesus story he set about
anchoring the events of Jesus’ life within the framework of known history. Or
so we were often told. He is writing, he said, to Theophilus, though we may
well question if there ever was a Theophilus. Luke may have been deliberately
obfuscating, playing a Dr Who-esque game with lines of time and space in order
to demonstrate truths far greater than mere timelines and geographical particularities.
Like many great writers in the story of
literature Luke sets up expectations, then dismantles and, we might even say,
“remantles” them. For those of you who are lovers of literature or film or
visual arts there will be some resonances here:
some of the greatest creators of human artistic depth have done that.
Such creators – and let’s not forget that’s a title that echoes the heart of
God – do so not to be clever, but to expand our horizons, expand our
understanding of the world around us. For Luke this is not an academic exercise
but an inspired means to take us, his audience (though we are not the audience
he intended) deep into the heart of God’s truth, light, hope.
Theophilus, therefore, may never have existed
despite having been addressed at Luke 1:3 (he will be again in Acts 1:1). We
may be Theophilus – you and me – and we are being asked to see something beyond
words here in Luke’s story. We are being asked to see Truth. John uses a
similar technique, referencing what we might call the Truthness of Jesus, the
Truthness of Good News, over and again. Theophilus is told that the Jesus story
contains – we might say “is” – Truth. It is truth deeper than mere facts
and figures of history.
So Luke, having created word-pictures around
the birth and early life of Jesus – later we will return to his preparation for
public ministry as he wrestles with Satans in the wilderness – introduces us to
a listless, directionless people. They are a people filled with expectation,
but expectation of what?
They live in a corrupt and already crumbling
Roman Empire. They live in a time when soothsayers and idiot fringe charlatans
are eagerly leading them this way and that. John the Baptist is no charlatan,
but for many people he is just one more entertaining distraction from a
decadent, disintegrating society. So they flock to the desert, and rather than
stroke their egos he rebukes them.
Yet they encounter in him not some latest fad,
not an empty-headed, self-aggrandizing false prophet feathering his own ego
with meaningless titles and his pocket with their hard-earned cash. They do not
find a self-proclaimed “bishop” climbing down from a fleet of expensive cars
and motorbikes long enough to seduce more dollars from their pockets. They do
not find a rock star peddling his own importance and destructive lies, (believing,
as one prophet critiqued it, that his nose has led him straight to God[1]).
They do not find an over-inflated, over-paid tennis player believing that he or
she has the right to spread disease in the name of personal freedoms (and a pay
cheque).
They find John the Baptist in the desert, and
while some choose to follow him he makes it quite clear that there is a
different path to follow: “one more powerful than I is coming.” later of course
the same people will murder both the prophet and the messiah. But for now we
have a humble, God-saturated man pointing to another humble God-saturatec man,
directing lost, directionless human hearts to the demanding way of Jesus: “he
will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
For Luke the message is both timeless and
urgent. For too many of Christianity’s centuries we have turned the prophets of
God into rather dull figures propping up self-indulgent societies. Every now
and again, though, times of complacency become times of urgency. We live in one
such – Covid is only one particularly noisy ingredient of a crumbling security.
Charlatans, predators, will inevitably arise in such times, but so too do
genuine servants of God. In recent days
of course we have seen one such servant, Desmond Tutu, pass from human sight.
Not all are as spectacular as Tutu. But we live again in apocalyptic times, and
Luke, John and above all Jesus dare us to look in right places for the
footprints of God. We are dared to look not to those who write their own names
in neon lights, but to those who proclaim justice, hope and love.
As the story goes on (as our year goes on), we
will find that Luke challenges us to look to Jesus amongst the lines of
prophets not just as a pointer, but as the heart of God, as all that we need to
know of God. The words of the Spirit will reverberate through the year, “You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” These reverberating words
of course mean far more than a surface level reading will disclose. Interestingly,
as sermon-blogger Mike Marsh puts it, they are spoken to Jesus before he has …
… done a darn
thing. He hasn’t preached or taught. He hasn’t healed anyone. He hasn’t walked
on water, turned water into wine, or fed 5000 with a few fish and loaves of
bread. He hasn’t raised anyone from the dead. He hasn’t died on the cross, been
resurrected, or ascended to heaven. He hasn’t performed or proved himself
worthy or deserving. He doesn’t even say, “Thank you. I’ll work hard to be a
good son. I’ll prove myself to be worthy of what you have said.” He simply
receives the gift. He lets the words wash over and drench him.[2]
We’ll leave that thought there. Except insofar
as it reminds us that Luke is challenging us to enter a journey that is not
about us or our ego, but a journey of surrender, a journey of trust in times of
difficulty, uncertainty, bewilderment, even exhaustion. The voice from heaven
authenticates the person and the task of Jesus. The voice invites us to enter,
too, into that authentic existence, that place of faith against all doubt, hope
against all despair, light against all darkness. You are, says the voice of God,
my beloved child: enter and re-enter the journey of Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment