“Jumping into the Wet Web”   

Date:  January 10, 2010

Script:  Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Revd William F. Meier    ~   First United Methodist Church, Saint Cloud, Minnesota

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Minnesota author Louise Erdich has a fantastic story set in Northwest Minnesota at the turn of the last century called Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.  The main character is a young woman who was sent as a teen to live as a nun in a monastery near Moorhead.  She gets kicked out of there for being a little too lively, especially with her music.  She then winds up living with a farmer outside of town for a while, experiencing the judgment of her priest and congregation for that arrangement, even though she was their organist, and there were few other options for her surviving. 

A massive flood hits the Red River, destroys her farm, the farmer, and while looking for her piano that floated out of the house down by the riverbank, she finds the body of a priest who was traveling to become the new priest at an Indian Reservation near the Canadian border.  She buried the priest, took his clothes, books, papers and orders, cuts her hair and starts a new life. 

Due to the remoteness of the Reservation and the fact that no one in the diocese had ever met the new missionary priest, she got away with living as a priest for decades, faithfully serving these natives peoples with a respect and love that they would not have found with the priest who was supposed to go there.

While this is just fiction, it is still interesting to ponder her actions in this book.  Was what she did wrong?  We’d have to say yes— she was deceitful… impersonating not only a man, but a priest.  Was the good she did among those isolated marginalized people voided by her sin of deceit? 

One of the core beliefs we have about Jesus is that he was sinless.  Jesus’ followers perceived his life, death, and resurrection to point to his divinity.  This belief is expressed in the incarnation stories of Jesus’ birth— he was born a helpless human infant, yet more than just human…divine somehow too, and therefore far from sin.

So all four Gospel writers had to scramble and do some theological gymnastics when they had to wrap their heads around including the story of Jesus’ baptism.  John’s baptism was clearly a response to sin— it was a posture and act of repentance.  So what did Jesus have to repent of if he was sinless?  Each of the Gospels puts their own flavor on an answer.  So what might be Luke’s?

Immediately following this baptism passage, we find the genealogy...you know, all the “begats.”  Want me to read it?  Good stuff there. 

“Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.  He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, ²⁴son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai…”  

That long and for the most part boring section ends with, “…son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.”  Remember Seth?  He was the son who was born as a replacement for Abel after Cain killed him.  Jealousy, rage, murder— right there in Jesus’ family tree (Matthew’s genealogy has even more scandals).  There’s clue number one.  Imbedded in the family tree are great yet flawed people, courageous and yet filled with mixed motives and dark drives.

Right after the genealogy we find clue number two in Luke’s Gospel.  There we find the story of the temptation in the wilderness.  Big deal—you might say—that only shows Jesus once again above sin and temptation.  Yet Carol Lakey Hess describes the temptations as a stylized controlled experiment outside of history in which the devil manipulates one factor and Jesus is forced to choose the good verses sinful path.  She says that what the temptations tell us is that when one variable is tested (albeit some massive variables), Jesus is able to make the sinless choice.

When was the last time you had to make a difficult moral choice that only had one variable?  Most if not all of our choices have multiple variables and known outcomes for good and ill, to say nothing of the unknown consequences we can’t anticipate.  Carol Hess suggests that Jesus shared in the swirling mix of choices and consequences we know so well…the “larger nexus of tragedy and sin.”[1]

[Jesus] “lived in a bent system.  We cannot claim that Jesus made choices in a moral vacuum; the most that even the highest Christologies can affirm is that Jesus made the best choices possible within the systemic injustice that surrounded him.”[2]

We all know intimately this “systemic injustice” that surrounds us.  It is a web of sin and brokenness that presents us with choices where it is not a matter of doing good or evil, but weighing values…sometimes choosing the lesser of two evils is the best we can hope for.  We cannot live without our small choices affecting others in profound ways.  From the coffee we purchase…to choosing between nuclear and coal to provide electricity, we are caught in webs of conflicting currents, movements, agendas, interests, realities.  We cannot live and act in this world without causing some destruction— some sin.  No wonder Scripture says, “All have fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

By putting the story of Jesus’ baptism alongside the genealogy and the temptation story, Luke is telling us that Jesus’ will is aligned with God’s clearly, and that he cannot escape the tragic structure of this world.  Jesus is baptized in solidarity and recognition of this reality.  He gets in line near the river, because he is alive and related to others.

Luke tells us that Jesus got in line with “all the people.”  “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…” (Italics mine).  To be baptized was an expression of identifying with, showing solidarity with, not setting himself above the people.  The Christian tradition has made a Saint out of John the Baptist, baptizing him perhaps without recognizing how divergent his theology was from Jesus.  The Baptist was a rule keeper, purity purist, a judgment-wheat-&-chaff kind of guy who saw the world in a dualistic fashion of clear choices of good and evil.  By being baptized Jesus is refuting that dualism— eventually being accused of glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Luke 7:31).

For me, the Good News is that Jesus shares with us the experience of operating within that systemic injustice, brokenness and sin— the web of life that flows with positive energy and dark destruction.  The Good News is also that Jesus shows the way forward:

1.  Jesus is baptized: Humility and self-awareness is shown in this act.  Our pathway forward is in this same humility and self-awareness.  When we have a clear sense of our true self we are less likely to judge others.  I recall a conversation in our family growing up where we were trashing some other people with righteous indignation.  My father listened quietly and then said, “Well, it is a good thing our family is perfect.” 

2.  The second step forward is indicated in Jesus’ practice and posture of prayer.  After his baptism Jesus is in prayer when he hears God’s loving voice.  Continually Jesus relies upon the Spirit of God to guide and empower his actions and choices.  Likewise, prayer—meditation, give us the strength to discern and sustain our lives amid the moral mine-field.

3.  Finally, Jesus hears those tender words of God: “You are my beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  All persons…all persons need to hear such affirming words and live out of that deep identity.   If we do that, lives are changed.

I once heard Henri Nouwen speak about our identity as God’s beloved.  In his squeaky, Jacques Cousteau voice he said (and I invite you to hear these words as being personally directed at you from God):

Listen to what God is saying to us:

You are my child.

You are written in the palms of my hand.

You are hidden in the shadow of my hand.

I have molded you in the secret of the earth.

I have knitted you together in your mother’s womb.

You belong to me.

I am yours.  You are mine.

I have called you from eternity and you are the one who is held safe and embraced in love from eternity to eternity.

You belong to me.  And I am holding you safe and I want you to know that what­ever happens to you, I am always there. 

I was always there; I am always there;

I always will be there and hold you in my embrace.

You are mine.  You are my child.  You belong to my home.  You belong to my intimate life and I will never let you go.  I will be faithful to you.

The spiritual life starts at the place where you can hear God’s voice.  Where somehow you can claim that long before your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your school, your church touched you, loved you, and wounded youC long before that, you were held safe in an eternal embrace.  You were seen with eyes of perfect love long before you entered into the dark valley of life...

The spiritual life starts at the moment that you can go beyond all of the wounds and claim that there was a love that was perfect and unlimited, long before that perfect love became reflected in the imperfect and limited, conditional love of people.  The spiritual life starts where you dare to claim the first love.[3]

Let us follow Jesus on the way forward, discovering our own sinfulness in the web of life and confessing it, holding the posture and practice of prayer to guide and sustain our choices and actions, and let us listen to the voice of God proclaiming us, and all people, as Beloved.  Let us live out of that identity in hope, peace, and courage.  So be it.  Amen.