Baptism of Jesus

Getting the Word

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Mark 1:4-11

We live in a world awash in words. Always in the background, there is talk radio, 80 gazillion channels on TV, magazines, electronic bill boards, email, text messages, cell phones – a never-ending barrage of words. With words so common and present, is easy to forget how powerful they really are. We say “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” and forget that words can wound and wound deeply, and that they can also bring healing and joy.

If you doubt the power of words, think about what happens as a result of words like these:

“I love you. Will you marry me?”

“The biopsy was positive. You have cancer.”

“I’m sorry. Your job is being eliminated.”

“Oh look, you’re having twins.”

Just words, but getting words like these has the power to change everything.

Another danger of the overload of words in our world is that we often tune out; we may be hearing but we stop listening, we stop paying attention. And in the midst of all our daily noise, the word we most need to hear is in danger of being drowned out, or we are not in the right place to be able to hear it. As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote in a much quieter time: “Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.” (Ash Wednesday) You know the old question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? A parallel question for us might be: If God speaks in the world and no one pays attention, does it make any difference?

Well, the Bible has a very clear answer to that, and the answer is yes. Yes, words are powerful; yes, words make a difference, whether we are paying attention or not. The Hebrew term for “word” – dabar -- is also translated as action, thing, or deed. To speak is to act. And that is especially true for God’s Word (the one with a capital W).

Consider this: In the beginning, the world was created not with a gesture or a planning document or a coincidence. The world was created with words. In the first chapter of Genesis, there are 14 times when God speaks. As we read this morning: God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God spoke into being and named day and night; the sky; the waters; the dry land; plants; stars, moon, and sun; living creatures of every kind; and finally human beings, us.

Out of the chaos of nothing, when there was only a formless void, wild and waste, God’s Word brought order and life. The Word changed everything.

And that has been the pattern throughout all of holy history. When God’s Word comes to the people, things will be changed. The Word disrupts the status quo. Where there is chaos, the Word brings order. And the reverse is equally true: Where there is complacency, the Word stirs things up. As the psalmist said: “ The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, shakes the wilderness, causes the oaks to whirl, strips the forest bare.” (from Psalm 29) We may have a nice little spiritual routine but then the voice of God thunders in our lives and what was routine is seen as the rut it has become, and our comfort and boredom are stripped away.

I suspect that when we seek a word from God, though, it is not that kind of word! We long for the easy way. It is hard to pray as medieval preacher John Donne once did:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you

As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

But here is the truth: Unless God breaks, blows, and burns within us, we are just the same old stuff. The act of making new, the act of creation -- in the world, in the church, in our hearts – means a break from the old, a powerful blowing of the wind of the Spirit, and flames of fire that destroy all that gets in the way of our holiness. It means change.

And that is what happens in baptism. Baptism is not just about sweet babies, antique christening gowns, and family gatherings. Baptism is not just a nice little ritual of dabbing some water on someone’s head. Baptism is the powerful act of God’s Word, changing everything.

When Jesus came to be baptized, the heavens themselves were torn apart. It was an answer to an ancient prayer from the prophet Isaiah on behalf of the people: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwood
 and the fire causes water to boil!” 
 (Isaiah 64:1-2)

In Jesus’ baptism, the barrier between earth and heaven has been torn open. God has spoken. And God’s creating, powerful voice has named a new reality. God has said to and of Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” There is an echo here from “in the beginning,” when God spoke and all was changed, and God saw that it was good.

And we are baptized, that voice descends on us, too. We are created as God’s own children and God is well-pleased; God sees that we are good. Everything is changed. The power of sin is broken. The old life is gone, destroyed, stripped away.

We get God’s word, and it is a word, the word, that became flesh. And getting the Word in baptism means we become part of the Body of Christ; we, too, become the Word. And we may be the only Word of God that some people every get.

The world will not always pay attention to the Word that we speak, to the Word that we are. But that does not lessen our power. It does not diminish our calling to create something new.

God speaks and everything, including us, is changed. God speaks and something new comes into being – in the world, in our church, in our hearts. And God sees that it is good, and God is well-pleased. And in God’s house all say “Glory!”

© Martha C. Highsmith

Trinity Sunday

The First -- and Last -- Word

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4
Psalm 8
Matthew 28:16-20

In the beginning when God began to create the world, God did that work by speaking the world into being. Have you ever noticed this?

“God said, let there be light” and there was light. “God said, let the dry land appear” and it did. “God said, let us make human kind in our own image” and man and woman came into being.

Where there was absolutely nothing, or so it seemed, there was this word from God calling forth everything, the heavens and the earth, all living beings -- you and me. What power was contained in those words!

But that was then and this is now, and whenever the beginning happened, and who really knows, it was a long time ago. And if we are honest about it, God’s ability to speak a new creation into being seems to us like a fairytale, a myth, something that might have happened once upon a time in a faraway place but just seems impossible now.
It is hard to see how God’s word still brings a new world into being. After all, the old world seems pretty entrenched. And we are awash in words, even if they aren’t from God. Billboards fly past us on the highway full of words, the radio is on, the television is on pouring words into the air around us. Our computers have made words ever present, instantaneously transmissible, plentiful and cheap.

It might be that we have minimized the impact of words by their proliferation, but I wonder. I think there is still great power in the words we speak - life-changing, life-creating power. Just consider the impact of these words:

I love you.
Congratulations, you have been admitted.
Will you marry me?
You have cancer.
You’re having twins.

In the instant those words are spoken, someone’s life is changed forever, recreated on the spot. And if there is such power in our words -- we who are human, only human -- then how much more so is there power in God’s words.

You know, we think of the Bible as the word of God and so it is. But is the Bible the record of all God has ever had to say to the world? Is this it from beginning to end, all done, so to speak? Has God fallen silent? Is the bible the last word that God spoke? I don’t think so. I think God is still speaking a powerful creative word in our world. But I think it is harder for the world to hear that word now than it was in the beginning when there was nothing. We are surrounded by distractions and noise, by conflict and war, by death and destruction, and all that makes it hard for us to hear the eternal word that still dwells among us.

The poet, T.S. Elliot, understood this dilemma:

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise
and deny the voice

(T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” The Waste Land and Other Poems.
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich: New York, 1962, p 64)

Well, we will never have enough silence, will we, and no question about it, we walk among noise. Do we also avoid the face, as Eliot says? Do we allow our rejoicing to be drowned out by the world’s noise? Do we deny the voice?

It does not have to be this way. Let me suggest one approach to hearing the word of God’s creative voice. In the Hebrew, “word” is dabar. And while dabar is usually translated as word, it also has the meaning of an action or a thing. I think that is how we can hear God in our world, through actions and things.

When someone shows us an unexpected kindness; when people reach across racial and cultural lines to offer aid and assistance; when the pain of another’s loss becomes our pain; when we pray and give and work and act on behalf of the world, all of that is the word of God. And when we take the things of the earth – bread and wine, water and oil -- and celebrate God’s presence through them, that also is God’s word.

We are surrounded by the power and presence of God’s word, but these days, that word may not be so likely to come as a clear and unmistakable voice in our ear. Instead, listen for the word in the actions of the faithful. Listen for it in sacramental love. Expect God to speak in unexpected ways, like out of the mouths of little ones. The psalmist says that it is out of the mouths of babes and infants that God builds a fortress against all that would attack our faith, our belief, our sense of the presence of God.

Think about that for a minute. When we baptize these twin boys this morning, these little babies are speaking God’s word to us. Here they are, created out of nothing, nothing except love, and it is through them that God can speak to us of love. It is their gurgling and cooing and crying and babbling that somehow can keep the enemies of God at bay. They are, after all made in the image of God -- and so are we all.

You are made in the image of God. You are God’s reflection in the world. And you are a word spoken by God. You have in you the potential to be life changing, life creating. You have the potential to bring into being the goodness that God intends for our world. You have the power to speak God’s word in the word. Claim that power and act God does: loving, creating, transforming, bringing light and life to the dark and dead places.

And here is the last word from God, or perhaps I should say the lasting word. It comes to us from Jesus, the one who is also called the Word, the eternal Logos. His last word to his disciples -- then and now -- is this: “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Dear friends, this is the good news of the gospel. Believe it, trust it, and let your life speak it.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Rapture

I had to do some laundry in preparation for my trip. I took off the pair of brown socks that I was wearing, put them in the laundry basket, took it directly to the basement, and put the contents into the washing machine. After the wash was finished, I put everything right in the dryer. And when the clothes were dry -- back into the laundry basket and upstairs to pack. But..... there was only one brown sock to be found. I looked in the washer, in the dryer, in the sleeves of the clothes that were in the clean laundry. Then I looked in the bedroom, in the laundry basket, in the washer again, in the dryer again -- twice. No brown sock. How could it have disappeared?
And all I could think about was Matthew 24: "Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left." Two socks will be in the wash; one will be taken and one will be left.
I finally found the sock. Somehow it had fallen behind one of the suitcases and stuck there with static electricity. I found it, but I did a lot of looking. And maybe that will be the way it is at the end for those of us who seem to be lost -- the One who has washed us clean in the first place will just keep looking until no one is left behind.

Baptism

He watched with great intensity as I poured the water from a pitcher that his great-great-aunt had bought. It splashed and danced in his grandmother’s bowl, wetting the embroidered cloth that had belonged to his great-grandmother. I talked to him about the preciousness of water in a desert place and poured it for him to see from his grandmother’s pewter cups that would now belong to his mother. He listened and put his hands in the water. I prayed and so did he, and we watched each other as the words were spoken. His parents promised to raise him to be a loving and faithful person, one who would seek peace and justice, and his aunt and uncle, now godparents, promised to support his parents in this labor of a lifetime. And none of us needed to promise to love him because we already did.

And then I took him in my arms and put the water on his head and said the ancient words of Jesus. And the water dripped on his curls, and he was baptized. And we prayed again, and I held him close and I, too, was held close in that most holy moment. Then I took the oil and anointed him as a precious child of God. And he put his fingers in the tiny bowl and he anointed me. And we went around the room, and he anointed every person there. This little one, who is such a blessing, offered a blessing to all of us. And then we were all baptized -- with our own tears. And it was joy and grace and love, and You were there.