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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From January 7, 2007 Certainty. If there was one thing the students in last semester's World Religions class insisted on, it was certainty. I would never have known this if I hadn't stepped in to teach for my colleague Jae Gottman, who fell ill mid-October. What were so many students certain about? Sin. Salvation. Scripture. They had Christianity all figured out and didn't hesitate to tell me so. Especially when I made statements or asked questions that challenged their fixed point of view. Funny thing, that certainty of theirs. My students couldn't agree on what they were certain about. For example when we talked about baptism, one insisted that once a person has been baptized, it becomes impossible to sin any more. Sure they might make mistakes, but baptism guarantees that nothing they do or say (or don't do or say) afterwards will ever qualify as a sin. Someone begged to differ. What baptism did, he said without hesitation, was provide a way for a person to make a complete and irrevocable commitment to God and God's people. Any sin carried into baptismal waters was permanently washed away. But, my student added quickly, that didn't mean you weren't going to falter later. When that happened (and it would, humans being what they are), when you failed to please God by erring, you needed only to recall your baptism. Your commitment to God that was met that day by God's commitment to you. Forgiveness was a given. A comfort in this life to be sure. But especially important, said my student, was a comfort when it came to anticipating the life yet to come. Not wanting to be any more the gadfly than I already was, I chose not to remind my students that fixed claims are often problematic. Take today for example. Set aside the conversation about the meaning of the sacrament of baptism to consider New Testament accounts of Jesus' baptism. Not even our gospel writers were in complete agreement about what took place the day Jesus waded into the Jordan to be baptized by John. Even if details vary, what the gospel writers want us to know is this: because the Spirit descended upon Jesus and revealed his identity as God's beloved son, Jesus came up out of the Jordan a different man than the one who entered in. A change that then enabled and empowered Jesus to launch his public ministry. Because of this, because of what happened that day Jesus climbed into the Jordan with John, the church has made two central claims about us. First, the church says that the same proclamation that attended Jesus' baptism as he came up out of the water occurs in our lives, whether we rise up from the wet mark of the cross on our foreheads or come dripping up out of a baptismal font. And just as God called Jesus by his true name at his baptism, so God calls us by our true names at ours. What does God call us? My Child, Beloved, The-One-Who-Pleases-Me. At baptism, we experience ourselves as named and claimed by God. This is one thing the church says with certainty about baptism. Another is that, as with Jesus, baptism marks the official beginning of our God-given ministries. The same Spirit who fell upon Jesus so long ago at his baptism comes upon us at ours. This is what empowers our servanthood and has us enter into a dynamic partnership with God that informs what we do and why. These two things the church says with certainty. But the church's certainty doesn't necessarily guarantee our own. When I was baptized at eighteen, I didn't hear any proclamations as the minister traced a watery cross on my forehead. No Spirit-voice echoing in the sanctuary's silence claiming me as God's own beloved daughter. All I heard was a self-conscious voice in my head. "Maybe I should have worn a dress instead of corduroy jeans." Minutes later when I returned to my place in the pews, my forehead still damp, I didn't feel any Spirit-tingle at work in my soul, no deep-down desire to leap up to serve. Headed out the door after the benediction, I was pretty much the same Karen I had always been, not someone who experienced herself as reborn and ready to minister on Christ's behalf. I wasn't gifted with anything closely resembling certainty that day. Except that I was certain a baptism had taken place; after church, the minister handed me a certificate that said so. We tend to crave certainty, we humans do. Uncertainty unsettles us; it messes with our minds; it distresses us enough to have us want to take matters into our own hands. Which is why I find the image of Jesus at the Jordan is so compelling. Because there on the riverbank Jesus does the very thing you and I typically avoid: he gives up certainty to embrace uncertainty. Think about it: rather than clinging to the safety of dry land, rather than holding fast to who he knows himself to be, rather than choosing to stay on the shore where he can easily pivot and return to the life he had, Jesus chooses the way of surrender. Which is also the way of mystery. Jesus makes a choice that you and I know will change him forever. He wades out into the Jordan, where the goo of the mud quickly pushes up through his toes, where floating bits of this and that graze against his skin. What was that, just now? Even grown men have imaginations that, mixed with river water, can confuse a twig for an adder. The further out Jesus takes himself the more vulnerable he becomes. Currents have a way of sweeping men away, after all. And so do wild passions and deep intuitions, which is how Jesus has come to find himself in this water that reminds him he's not entirely in charge. Something happened out there in the Jordan, I'm certain of it. Even if scripture is silent. Something happened. The man of dry land heard John and heard the river calling out to him. And because of this, Jesus stepped forward in faith even if he didn't know what to expect. Jesus surrendered his riverbank sure-footedness. And in doing so, he discovered something more secure: the embrace of God's pure love, a love that held him safe, just as the water of his mother's womb had. Out there in the Jordan, Jesus felt the familiar certainty of earth's gravity give way to the utter gravity of grace. Scripture doesn't say so but I have to think something happened there in the depths of the Jordan. Even before the heavens broke open. Even before the Spirit came down like a dove and nested in Jesus' heart. Something happened. Even before Jesus could hear God calling him by those beautiful names God had for him: My Son, My Beloved, My Pleasure. Before any of this happened, something swept over Jesus. Something washed through him. Something took hold of him. God's current did. Jesus heard a song that might have sounded something like this poem from Marge Piercy.
Come all the way in, love. Jesus did. And does. And always will. He's our current, even if you're not entirely certain about that. Come all the way in. He wants to teach you what the God in the Jordan taught him. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
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