“Simply Delighted”
Isaiah 42: 1-9; Matthew 3: 13-17
January 9, 2005 “Baptism of Our Lord”

(Touch the waters in the font) ….Long before the time of John the Baptist, baptism was practiced in Judaism. Within the Jewish tradition, baptism was a ritual cleansing required of Gentiles who wished to become Jewish. John, himself a Jew, went far beyond that meaning. For him, it’s not just a matter of cleaning up your act. It was not just for those who had not yet “joined the right religious club”. For John, baptism was personal, not about being in or out of any club.

To each one who came to be baptized in the water…Jews and Gentiles, John assertively gave the command (and the holy permission) to turn their life around….not to become a clean, blank slate….but to write something important there for yourself to strive towards in your daily living. Turn your life around! Repent! It was about righteousness.

Now this was not some sweet, religious concept John was trying to put out there amongst the people. This was a social political act of hopeful living fortified by faith. John provided the new socio-political religious act of hope…Jesus was about to provide the faith/God connection which brings courage and energy and support to empower personal change.

John baptized people in hope….they could actually stand up against the oppression of their day…our day. Baptism as an act of defiance.

How defiant? Well, if we stand up for integrity one baptism, one person at a time, soon we’re all standing and if we’re standing together, we’re going to have the courage to go places together….not because we’re ordered to or “should”….but because we’re called! We’re called! We hear the words: “You are my beloved in whom I am delighted!”

How defiant? John was beheaded by the authorities. He was a threat to the religious and political status quo. Haven’t you ever had your head handed to you on a platter when you dared to defy the powers that be in your home or work or community or church? But having your head handed to you doesn’t stop you from doing what you need to do…if….you’re doing it within the spirit of grace and love. There is amazing power if you act from a center of grace and love….love of yourself…first…and for others, second.

John lost his head….but that didn’t stop the new order…because Jesus followed him to show the way. John could only baptize in water….Jesus baptizes into the spirit…and the spirit can not be stopped….emptied, broken, exhausted at times, yes…but never stopped. Just when your spirit feels like a bruised reed, your voice is about to cry out, your dimly burning wick is about to go out, you are invited to remember your baptism and the heavens open to you…there is clarity and opportunity to move your life forward. And you feel it: God simply delights in you! God’s soul delights in you.

The righteousness that is of God does not force itself into your life or into the world. Force is not the answer to what is wrong or unjust with your life or in this world. We cannot forcibly pave over what is wrong with good intentions, even if the intention is justice/righteousness.

Baptism’s fruits happen simply and justly and one person at a time….but together, one person at a time, we change everything! This is the notion of contemplative justice….it begins by creating some justice in your own life…some God connection in your own life, really feeling your own baptism again….and worshipfully living from that place within you.

As Presbyterians, we don’t take new names at our baptisms because we are baptized each time we emerge ourselves into the spirit….each time we find our own spirit, we get re-named again…the heavens open to us again! We are enabled to turn our lives around. Oh my! What are we getting ourselves into here?!

Listen to this: Centuries ago people looked to magic in order to protect themselves and affect their worlds for a change. Amulets and incantations, special potions and rituals as protection against the perceived powers of darkness. Before the Reformation, the alters in the Catholic Church (from whence we come) were turned around away from the people, the Mass was often understood to have its own sense of magic power….as if Christ was about magic and not the power of love.

A remnant of the language of the Mass of that time still resides in our language today…as if we still believe in the power of magic over the power of love. Each time a magician waves her wand and declares “hocus-pocus”, she is intoning an ancient sacred phrase derived from the Latin words the priest chanted as he raised the bread and wine into the incensed air. The priest declared, “Hoc est corpus meum”. (This is my body) But as the masses in the large cathedrals repeated this phrase, it sounded more like “hocus-pocus”. They may really have believed there was a magic a foot that came through the priest and changed things….protected them….and so they called upon the phrase to protect them and change their reality in life situations…missing the point of faith completely….there is no magic power out there to protect anyone. The power is in here, in each of us….power enough to change everything…no magic needed.

They had it part right. It is right to recognize the power of the Holy Spirit to change things…it is the greatest protective power we can call upon. But it is not magic and is not evoked by a pastor. It is evoked by each one of us…YOU!...when you live “into” a new spirit…find your own right spirit. YOU are empowered by the grace and love of a God that calls you beloved and delights in you. No magic! YOU can actually do something new with your life…standing up to the culture and politics and church of our time!

Hey! This is really radical stuff! It is a radical change for each of us to think of ourselves as beloved, as delightful, as able……as baptized.

We are God’s people, radically traditional…baptized “into” the Spirit to:

Think more clearly, Feel more deeply,

Speak more truthfully, Love more extravagantly,

Serve more creatively, Give more lavishly, Live more fully,….and….

Stand up for righteousness/justice with grace and compassion….

This is not some Holy Hocus Pocus! Baptism is the really real!