Who are you?

Text: John 1:6-8,19-28
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Who are you? That is an identity question. And it is interesting to me that a world that is constantly giving you something to “build your brand” around or upon there is little talk or understanding of identity.

Colin Cowherd – ESPN Radio announcer – is one of the most bracing and upfront announcers I’ve heard. Especially in sports where most coverage is “rah, rah” type. He’d hate this, or not have the vocabulary to understanding it, but he’s one of the best moralists on the air. But back to the point. Tebow keeps winning – and keeps making Colin’s almost daily rant look dumb. For the first four weeks of the Tebow run, Colin was all about how this can’t work and all the reasons it can’t. For an announcer who is usually so left brained logical it hurts, you could here the emotion. His accumulated logic and wisdom wasn’t working and he didn’t like it. If he could be wrong about this, what else could he be wrong about. But then he stumbled across a new line – “Tebow knows who he is; you can do a lot, even if you are limited, by knowing who you are.” He’s talking about identity.

The world pummels us with appeals to base our identity in titles and positions. Or it entices us and bullies us to forming an identity around cool, or traditions or the right way. What Colin stumbled across, what Tebow and his coach should be recognized for, is that they didn’t listen to the siren calls – “you’ve got to have this type of quarterback/team”. The two groups that came to the Baptist are asking those identity questions. And John confesses. He holds on two the only thing he has – the Word of God – I am the voice calling in the wilderness. He revealed the hidden Word, the hidden savior. He witnessed to the light.

We as Christians know our identities. We are children of God. We are the redeemed of Israel. And like the Baptist we have been sent into the world to reveal the hidden Lord. And all we’ve got is the Word – a simple confession.

[FYI, I wish I had a picture of this, but the hymn captured is our Children’s Choir. If you hear a voice getting a little louder at certain time, one of the Choristers was right behind the Advent wreath. He decided it would be interesting to see if he could blow the candle out while singing. One of those please stop, because if you succeed I will bust a gut laughing and I know I’m supposed to discipline at that moment.]

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This Well is Deep…

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We had a double baptism this week. Yes, it breaks a liturgical rule about lent, but the text was perfect – living water, John 4:5-26. The entire segment of John from Nicodemus through the Samaritan Woman and the well with a picture of actual baptisms(!) in between is full of baptismal images and recognition stories.

Many of my metaphors or ways of thinking come out of the business world. One of the clearest to me is a business/tax term called a safe harbor. Many tax laws create safe harbors where if you do your accounting in this way – you are safe. Lets just say those safe harbors are usually the common sense way you would recognize revenue or cost. Many businesses operate outside of those safe harbors. They are not necessarily breaking the law, but if the IRS pursues them and wins in tax court, the business will owe taxes and penalties. They were not operating in a safe harbor. Businesses do this because: a) they might not get caught, b) their accountants and lawyers say it is within the law as written, c) it allows them to keep and report more income usually and sometimes more cash flow when they don’t have to send money to uncle same, d) it might make sense for their industry and laws move slower than business.

The sacraments are how God wants to deal with us. They are the only sure way that God has given for his grace. Baptism is objectively when the Father puts his Spirit in us and claims us as His children. But we all have our subjective stories to tell. We might practice faith outside of those safe harbors – however risky that might be. Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman are paired stories about recognition of God and how he works. Nick comes in the dark, and leaves in the dark. He doesn’t recognize the birth of water and the spirit. The Samaritan woman comes at noon. At the start she is as far apart from Jesus as, well, as a Jew and a Samaritan. By the end she has embraced the jewish term messiah and hesitatingly applied it to Jesus. She has started to see her subjective story in the light of God’s objective story revealed by Jesus.

This sermon ponders the multitude of layers between our subjective experience of God and how God has revealed himself. The text itself, playfully, in a Romantic Comedy banter, deals with the Bridegroom meeting the Bride at the well. That is a stock OT image. That is what is going on at that Samaritan well. That is what is going on in baptism. If we have been given eyes to see.

Two things you might not associate…

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This Sunday there were two things going on. In our community, we had a baptism. In the larger world – the disaster in Haiti. We might not link such things, but the biblical answer is actually very close. The Bible talks about Baptism as being a dying and a rising. In Baptism we are burried with Christ so that we will also rise with Him.

There are some common refrains when looking at disasters – what did they do (a la Pat Robertson), why would god allow this (the agony of theodicy), or just how do I avoid them. Jesus is pretty clear in Luke 13:1-5. Sorry Pat Robertson, but disasters are not special judgement. That does not mean we don’t deserve them. Jesus’ answer is that it is only grace theat the whole world doesn’t get them. The entire world is that sinful. That response really answers the second – why would God allow if he was good? The answer is that a non-loving and graceful God would have destroyed everything long ago. Both of those answers are heavy on the law. They are good and true, but hard words for sinners.

The gospel is the answer to the last question – how to I avoid disaster? In this world, you really can’t. It is a fallen world that is groaning under that curse. But God came to share it with us and to redeem it. We pass through the disaster. In baptism, God pulls us through the disaster.
Putting on eternal eyes, this world is one big Haiti to God. It is one big disaster operation. And Baptism is the rescue operation. The hopeless, poor and defeated of this world, find the cure in the waters of Baptism. We die to this world, but we rise to the next through the promises of Baptism.

Sanctifying the Waters – Lk 3:15-22

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The text was Luke 3:15-22 which is Luke account of Jesus’ Baptism. I had three questions in this sermon. Why the silence? Why does Luke (or the other gospels for that matter) go from a 12 year old in the temple to this adult standing in the Jordan. This account is one of three things in all four gospels, yet they all “look away” and report this event very matter of factly. Think about that, there is a voice from Heaven, John the Baptist, the start of Jesus’ ministry, and a bunch of weighty theological stuff. And books dedication to a theological view, all look away, why? The last question that springs to mind is: where is the fire? John the Baptist promised a baptism of fire, what happened?

The answers are all tied up in the baptism Jesus got, which enables the one we get. His sanctified the waters for ours.

Sermon – The Baptism of Jesus

Liz made a comment on the way out that as a teacher an object lesson – i.e. a real baptism – would have been nice. I had to say a whole hearted yes.

Just a couple of stray thoughts. For many of us, remembering our baptism does two things – 1) it draws us toward our family and the community of God and 2) it points us in the right direction for living. For many of us were baptized as infants. Not being baptist, a rememberance of baptism immediately directs us to parents or grandparents or elders in the church. We are reliant upon them to tell us, yes you are baptized. We are reliant upon the church to be the people of God and remember who has been brought into the family. That is not a bad thing to remember that there is a corporate entity – the church – that has a role to play in our lives. It is not just us alone or me and my personal Jesus. Remembering baptism also points us in the right direction in that while the sacrament is a once for all act, the life it enables is an ongoing thing. Luther’s small catechism would say, “it indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned…” When we live the Christian life we are baptized each day or each hour when we recognize our shortcomings, but most importantly when we see the way through the water that Jesus sanctified.