Baptism of Jesus by Leonardo da Vinci
“You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” These are powerful, life-changing, live-saving words.
In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus comes to baptized by John when he is around 30 years old. In Mark’s Gospel this is the first we see of him. From the other Gospels we know that he was born in Bethlehem, immediately fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s slaughter of the first born sons of Israel, and that, according to Jewish custom, when we was twelve years old he was presented at the Temple in Jerusalem, where he stayed late to school priests on the fine points of theology. That’s all we know about the first 30 years of Jesus’ life.
So, when Jesus comes to the Jordan, he is an unknown. He hasn’t done any teaching, healing, nothing else the Gospel writers thought it was necessarily to chronicle. This is his first public event and the inauguration of his public ministry.
Jesus wades into the water, is plunged down by John. When he emerges from the water, the heavens break open, the Holy Spirit descends and rests on him, and a voice, that voice, comes down from the sky,
“You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
This one sentence, these twelve words are a big deal. God, Jesus’ Father, claims him – “this is my child,” in front of everyone declares his love for him – “my beloved,” and says how proud he is of Jesus, “with whom I am well pleased.”
God says, “Everyone, this is my child, whom I love more than anything in the world. I am so proud of him.”
How To Save A Life
These are powerful words. And you know that if you ever had someone say them to you. When you hear words like this, you know you are safe, loved, secure, that you belong. It is a foundation from which to dream dreams and pursue them. There are many of you who never heard those words from a parent – and you too know how powerful these words are (perhaps even more so) – because they are words you have longed to hear, but haven’t. You know how much it would mean to hear these words – and I hope you have heard them from an aunt or uncle, spouse or partner, sister or brother, friend. (And, if from no one else, hear them from God this morning. “You are my child. My beloved.”)
We know from our own experience, our own longing that these twelve words can have a life changing effect on someone’s life – and, we can imagine, they do on Jesus too.
Even if Jesus already knew he was the Son of God, to be claimed in such a way still must have been incredibly powerful – and to have it said in front of all those people too. Because, while Jesus may have known and thought it, no one else would have. This affirmed who he knew he already was inside. To be called Beloved is powerful for anyone. And this happens before Jesus accomplishes anything at all. Before Jesus does anything, God says, “I am well pleased with you. I am proud of you.” Not for what he has done, but for who he is, for the person he has become.
These are life changing words. Among the most powerful and precious anyone can speak to another person. These are words that can save a life.
These are words that are spoken to Jesus at his baptism. They are the same words spoken to us at our baptism, the beginning of our Christian life. There, at the font, in the swirling of the water and the Word, God claims us forever as children. We are adopted and will never be returned. God promises to be our God forever and always, no matter what. No matter what we do, no matter how we stray. God says, “Through thick and thin, I will be your God.” Why? Because I love you and I want the world to know it. I love you just as you are. And I am proud of you. Not for what you have done, but for who you are.
At baptism God promises:
- To be our God. Always. To give us eternal life, forgiveness in that moment and for all the times we are going to screw up in our lives, which are many
- To give us the Holy Spirit, who inspires our faith, who is the source of our giftedness, who moves us to serve
- To make us part of God’s mission to bring love and grace to the world
- God plops us down within a community of faithful and flawed people
- And we get a really spiffy baptismal candle
It’s a remarkable list. And these promises will never be broken. Because for all the promises that are made at baptism by parents, godparents, and congregation, the most important promises are God’s. And they endure for eternity. We do nothing to earn them.
Nothing to Lose
And so, we begin our baptismal life, our Christian life, with “nothing to lose.” It seems to me that if we had to characterize the nature of the baptismal life, our Christian life, at least from a Lutherans perspective, is that it is a life in which we have “nothing to lose.”
We have these promises. They cannot be rescinded. We have already been given the most life-changing, life-saving promises and they can never go away.
And yet…we are pretty focused on how much we have to lose. Aren’t we? And our experiences of the last few years, the economy, layoffs, foreclosures, income disparity, debt, global markets would certainly do that, wouldn’t they? People have lost so much, and in many ways. People who haven’t been as affected still feel vulnerable. The other morning around I was out for a run, and I ran over the Mishuawam Road bridge here in Woburn, which passes over 128. It was around 7:00 and there were already a bunch of cars on the road. I just thought – how much heading off to work had changed from gaining more to just holding onto what you’ve got. People are worried, people are anxious, wanting to hold on to what they’ve got, afraid of falling behind, afraid of losing it.
In our economy, it feels like we have “everything to lose.” But in God’s economy, in the kingdom of God, there is “nothing to lose.”
And if we have nothing to lose, how might we live?
We can live with great freedom…for others…to the point of laying down our lives.
For Lutherans, the Christian life is one marked by great freedom. We already be given everything. We don’t have to earn it or worry about holding on to it. We are free to focus, not just on God, not only on ourselves, but on others. To the point of laying down our lives for them, giving ourselves in humble service. In this kind of giving, there is always enough and there is always more. More love and grace to go around. And just because we give it away in no way means that we have less. Because everybody gets more.
In short, our lives will look a lot like Jesus. Not because we are working our way to perfection, but because we heard those same words at our baptism, because we share in the same freedom in God’s promises.
From his baptism, Jesus launched a life that changed the world, as he spoke those same words to others: “I see you. I love you. You are mine. I am well pleased in you.” To the beggar, the widow, the leper, to the dying, to children. And this led him all the way to the cross, where, secure in God’s love and God’s mission, he would lay absolutely everything down – and yet still not lose it at all. Even in his death, he did not lose the promises of God. For, it was then that he received them in their full power – in his resurrection.
In the shadow of the cross, that symbol of this backward world of God’s economy, that Scripture, “Those who love their lives will lose them and those who hate their lives will keep them to eternal life,” begins to make sense
As a congregation, a community of the baptized, we can fall into the same worries. This is a time of year of preparing budgets, compiling statistics. It seems there is never enough and we worry about what can be lost. We lose sight of the steadfast promises of God – and the things that can never be lost, those things at the heart of our life together, the things that make us the Body of Christ. In this place, in this time: the promises of God.
When I was a kid, I once asked my mother, “Mom, are we rich?” and she paused for a moment and answered, “We are rich in love.” And she was right. For, finally, that is the only kind of riches that matter.
It is the richness of having nothing to lose. And so so much to gain.
Amen.
