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Jan. 10, 2010
Isaiah 43: 1-7; and Luke 3: 15-22

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

The night when I thought I would be writing this sermon, I wound up watching the national championship football game between Texas and Alabama. With the story line of a freshman quarterback for Texas coming into the game after the star quarterback was injured and almost leading his team to an improbable victory, it was a pretty good game. And it actually turned out be a pretty good set up for some of the things I wanted to talk about today.

The goal of the national championship game is pretty simple. Win the game and win the title as the number one college football team in the nation. You get major bragging rights. You can claim to be better than anybody else. There’s nothing ambiguous about that.

Our readings today carry a subtext of people feeling they were number one. But it’s not a message without a fair amount of ambiguity. You might say it’s sort of complicated.

Those of you who notice the title of this sermon – “It’s Complicated” – might have thought it has something to do with the current hit movie starring Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep and Steve Martin.  It’s a fine movie – funny, poignant.  But the focus today is not on a divorced couple connecting for a reunion fling, but on how we as people see ourselves in relation to God. Yes, sometimes we feel separated from God and we can get all flustered by the uncertain restoration of that relationship, but it’s not the same.

The Jewish people of ancient Judea knew about that on-again, off-again relationship with God. The Jewish people who were in exile in Babylon about 6 centuries before Jesus was born. They had been taken out of Jerusalem as their temple was being destroyed and their faith in their God was being shaken.

Yet even though they lived in exile, they managed to maintain their Jewish identity. They clung to the notion that they were God’s chosen people and that God would make things right again.

Today’s reading from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible was written as the prospects of returning from exile were looking better.   The Jewish people were feeling their faith might be vindicated.

They did what many groups do when they are in a very tough situation. They found ways to bind themselves together in the midst of hostile forces. They created a vision that put them in a good spot even as their adversaries were left in the dust.

So in this passage, we heard the writer having God say that God was trading the peoples of other nations as a ransom for the Israelites – that’s how much God loved them.

Of course, the people of those other nations may not have thought that was such a great example of God’s love.  It would have made it mighty hard for them to warm up to this God of the Israelites.  

“Because you are precious in my sight, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for you life,” is the way the writer has God speaking in this passage.  That might have been reassuring to the exiles.  We, too, like hearing that we are precious in God’s sight. But this passage diminishes those who don’t fit into that category of the chosen people.

That, it seems to me, is a problem.  It’s complicated, you see.

Knowing that we are special to God is really critical to our sense of well-being. Thinking we are the only ones special to God is really antithetical to moving towards the world of justice and peace that I believe is God’s vision.

Check out the wars the Israelites engaged in time after time, even in our own time. Check out the Crusades the Christians launched century after century. Look at the distortions of Islam that now wreaks havoc in so many corners of the world.  

When we start feeling we are the ones who have it made, we are grasping the kind of self-aggrandizing pride that divides people and creates enemies.

This is not just an issue between religious traditions. It is an issue within Christianity as well.  Throughout the centuries, Christians have split apart violently again and again because groups feel they are the only ones who really get it right, that they are really God’s chosen ones.

So let’s take a look at the one who really was God’s chosen one.  Look at how he began to get a sense of his identity.

The Gospel reading today tells a different version of the story of Jesus’ baptism than the one we normally picture in our minds.  

What’s the normal one? Jesus comes down to the Jordan River, where his cousin John is baptizing people. There was a long history of ritual washings in Judaism to restore a sense of purity after violating some religious code.  But John’s baptism was in the tradition of a later idea – that one signifies the rejection of an old way of living and starting anew by entering the life-giving waters of the Jordan.

So one day, Jesus shows up, John protests that he is not worthy to baptize Jesus, but Jesus tells him to go ahead anyway. Then the skies open and a voice proclaims that Jesus is God’s son.

This is the way the Gospels of Mark and Matthew tell the story.  It’s the one that shows up in classic pieces of art. But Luke – the gospel we heard today -- makes a few significant changes.

First we hear John tell the crowd that someone is coming after him whose baptism will be not just with water, but also with fire. It’s a link back to the references in Isaiah to passing through the waters and walking through the fire. It’s a foreshadowing of Pentecost, when the followers of Jesus will feel the Spirit’s presence in their midst in the forms of tongues of fire. It’s the way Luke lets his readers know that their focus needs to be on Jesus, not John.

Then we hear that Herod has arrested John and put him in prison. He is off the stage. Luke does not even have him at the scene when Jesus joins the crowd in baptism.

And look at the scene. It’s not Jesus coming out of the crowd and standing alone with John. It’s Jesus standing in line with the crowd, being part of them. It’s only after he is baptized, only after he goes off by himself to pray, that he hears this voice from the heavens reassuring him, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Kelly Jetzer introduced me to a song about baptism this week by her friend David Stoddard that has some wonderful images about walking into the flowing waters of the river.

It’s a river of love, where the water always moves but where your feet are planted firm.

It’s a river of hope, running through us all that keeps us climbing when we fall.

It’s a river of life, where to live means more than just to be, because there ‘s a reason why you’re here.

Jesus gained strength from the assurance of God’s love. His feet were planted firm.

The next thing he will do is to go off to the wilderness alone, where he will wrestle with all the demons in his life, all the temptations to be the powerful one, the one everyone admires – the chosen one. He is carried along by the river of hope. He is confident enough in God’s love for him that he can resist those temptations to power and glory and go about the work of preaching the good news to the poor and reconnecting humanity to God.

Nourished by the waters of his baptism, he lived in way that was far beyond just being. There was a reason why he was here.

OK, so the Israelites got too caught up in their notion of being God’s chosen people and Jesus managed to keep his role in perspective. What might that mean for us?

First, there’s the warning.  Being God’s chosen ones does not guarantee wealth, power, success – any of those kinds of things that folks often put their hopes in.  If the Israelites took comfort in being God’s chosen people, they have had plenty of experiences across the centuries that just because God may like you does not exempt you from very rough times in life.

But still, people seem to think that if they are God’s chosen ones, then they are on the fast track to earthly success and others who they deem as not so chosen out to get out of their way.  

There are strains within Christianity known as the prosperity Gospel – put your trust in God and you’ll get rich. There are strains within Christianity that act as if we have it all figured out and the rest will all be left behind.

The winner of the national championship football game gives fans bragging rights. Being one of God’s chosen ones does not.

It seems to me that if Jesus could just mingle with the crowd, wade into the water with everyone else and only get a sense of being God’s beloved when he was taking time out for prayer, maybe that offers a more modest approach to reveling in God’s love.

Having said that, I think it is important for us to be able to revel in God’s love, not because it is exclusive for us gathered in this place this morning, but because God holds all of creation as precious in God’s sight, and that is good news indeed.

That does not diminish God’s love and care for each of us. There are no limits on God’s love.  We can be riding on its wings when we are doing well and we can take refuge in its caresses when things are going wrong.

In that mixed message from Isaiah, a message that has some exclusive overtones, it still ends on very wide note – God’s love is there for “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

And the promise of God’s love is so vivid in this reading:

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters – no matter now deep the ocean, how raging the river – I am with you.  

When you walk through the fire – the pain of rejection, the gut-wrenching moments that threaten to destroy our self-confidence – you shall not be burned.

From the east and the west, from the north and the south, men and women, elders and offspring – we are all God’s people, made in God’s image, sustained by God’s love.

It’s not a guarantee that everything will go right. It’s a promise that we will not be alone.

And so as you ponder the words of Isaiah, as you reflect on that image of Jesus in prayer, I’d invite you to listen to this song by David Haas called “You Are Mine.” It is based on this passage from Isaiah.

Here's a link to a version of the song on You Tube.