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Our author begins this part of the story by telling us who is in charge of both the global, the local, and the religious communities. They may be names you won’t remember, but these were the power brokers, the ones who make the demands and put the laws in place that must be followed. They are the ones that pull that society at each individual to fall in line to get out of the way and by get out of the way generally means a violent end.
Here’s what I’ve gathered about John: He grew up in a very religious household, with a priest and a mother who did not think Mary’s song about the overthrowing of the wealthy and the powerful was controversial. John might have come of age without his old parents, he might have joined a religious community that was countering the Roman occupation. He saw that those in power, political and temple, were compromising the covenant with God, were acting in the world but their actions weren’t producing goodness. They weren’t living into the covenant, they trusted that just having the covenant was enough, being named in the covenant, not living the covenant. So their actions, the results of their actions, their fruit was rotten, was cruel to the poor, the widow, the orphan. And so, John, in the tradition of the prophets, sought to call the people back into love of God and their neighbor, back into living into the covenant from God.
John invited them to enter the water of the river and into baptism.
Now, for John and for Jesus baptism wasn’t just a saving of one’s soul so they can go to heaven but never have to do anything again. It was not a never having to be accountable for their actions. For John and for Jesus it seems that baptism was an initiation. It was a declaration.
It was saying that I am not going to be part of the whole world that is pulling me into actions that lead to oppression and violence that feed in the systems that crease the struggle for the poor that dehumanize people that produce his fruit of rage and anger and hatred and oppression and violence, and instead through water and life to die to that way of living and live in the life of the covenant that is wholeness us abundance and peace that is marked by its fruits of liberation and peace and love
Why did Jesus get baptized? It was his statement of leaving one way of living in the world and choosing another way that might be more difficult because it is fighting against everything we are told about what it means to live in this world to be human in this world to accumulate
And that she says is choosing to live another way to live by the law of love to live the way of God to live the way of shallow. Instead of falling into the pole of the world to fall to choose to live in the pull of God
What does that look like? Maybe it means Christmas next year looks a little different and there’s less stuff, or less stuff that might be made by folks not paid a living wage. Maybe it’s making a choice to buy fewer fair trade or handmade items instead of more that are not. Or not being as fashionable by not buying into fast fashion. Maybe it’s valuing rest, Sabbath, instead of working to exhaustion. Maybe it’s taking a set amount of time to be without technology, or the news and to not be so inundated with information, advertising, and anger.
It’s bringing down the noise, it’s choosing love, and doing our best so that our fruits are love. And we will probably never be perfect at it, but, we keep trying and learning and heeding the call of God.
The text goes on to say that well Jesus was praying and maybe it was way after Jesus was baptized that he had gone off to pray he hears. God say you are my beloved and you bring me happiness.
And Jesus hadn’t done anything yet to make God proud except choose this life and I wonder if it’s like some of these other things like maybe God was in the burning bush and it was burning for a long time. It’s just Moses was the first to notice it. What if God was always calling Jesus and is always calling us beloved and he had to get out of these noises of the world as they told him the path he needed to be on, one that thrives on violence, on injustice, on accumulation, on pitting people against each other. Instead, Jesus stepped away from that world, from that way of living, and could hear God call him beloved.
Your baptism, whether you were days old or 90 or anyplace in between, is that promise of ours, or on our behalf, to live the path of God’s, to bear fruit of love and justice and compassion, to live counter to the power of this world. Your baptism is a chance to hear what God has already been saying about you, you are God’s beloved.
Begin here:
Beloved.
Is there any other word
needs saying,
any other blessing
could compare
with this name,
this knowing?
Beloved.
Comes like a mercy
to the ear that has never
heard it.
Comes like a river
to the body that has never
seen such grace.
Beloved.
Comes holy
to the heart
aching to be new.
Comes healing
to the soul
wanting to begin
again.
Beloved.
Keep saying it
and though it may
sound strange at first,
watch how it becomes
part of you,
how it becomes you,
as if you never
could have known yourself
anything else,
as if you could ever
have been other
than this:
Beloved.
–Jan Richardson
God of grace and glory,
you call us with your voice of flame
to be your people, faithful and courageous.
As your beloved Son embraced his mission
in the waters of baptism,
inspire us with the fire of your Spirit
to join in his transforming work.
We ask this in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.