A Baptism of Christ BFC 2020
Matthew 3:13-17
January 12, 2020
Returning to Oakland, California, the place where
she was raised, Gertrude Stein famously wrote that there was no longer any
“there there.” The things that had
rooted her in Oakland, the material sights and sounds and things and activities
that had characterized her childhood were no longer. How she defined Oakland and the meaning it
held for her were gone. In the same
manner, Native writer Tommy Orange riffs on Stein in his award-winning
historical fiction book to talk about how this is life for Native people
everywhere, but particularly for Urban Indians.
For centuries the material sights and sounds and things and activities
that might have given a place meaning and rootedness, have all been swept
away. There is no “there there.”[1]
Happening ever more rapidly, we are all
quickly losing through climate change the historical things that make a place a
place, carrying with it meaning and rootedness.
In the Scripture verse read for us
today, John the Baptist depends on Jewish people coming out through the
wilderness to the Jordan River with a memory of the there that is there. The wilderness was the place of preparation,
of fasting and prayer, to get the liberated people ready for life in the
promised land. The Jordan River was the
irrevocable crossing the Jewish people made that committed them to be an
alternative people, living an alternative creed, living in the promised land.[2] John wants the people to remember how the
material water, land, and wilderness shaped and formed them into the Beloved
Children of God. John the Baptist depended on the wilderness and the Jordan
River being a there there.
John did not want the people to know
themselves as Rome and its Caesar saw them.
Romans called the Jewish people “porcupines” and referenced them as
“atheists” and “non-believers” because the Romans could not comprehend an
invisible God with no visible caricature or idol to worship.[3] Julius Caesar . . . he was the Divine
One. He was the one to be worshipped,
along with his adopted son, Son of the Divine One, Octavian, later to be known
as Augustus Caesar. Sometimes people of
authentic faith are the atheists over and against imperial rulers who make
divine claims.
In Jesus’s baptism, the word “fulfill”
is used over and over again to suggest that what God had planned is being acted
out in John’s baptisms, and, in particular, in the baptism of Jesus. John lends authority and relevance to
Jesus. And, in turn, Jesus lends
authority and relevance to John’s ministry by allowing the meaning and message
of his baptisms to happen through him. In
an ongoing way, people are being liberated from the Roman point of view to see
themselves as God sees them.
Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, allusions are made
to Jesus as the second Moses. In this
account, the skies tear open, God breaking into one of the thin places in our
world and says, “This is my Son, the Chosen or the beloved.” In Hebrew Scripture, son of God was a title
given to angels, pious people, and kings.[4] But “son of God” is also in Hebrew Scripture
or the Old Testament as the whole community of Israel.[5]
As done with several stories in the
Gospel of Matthew then, what the author could intend is that we see Jesus both
as second Moses and the whole community of Israel. The past, present, and future are collapsing
in one moment in time to say that the Exodus happened in the past, is happening
now, and will continue to happen as God delivers the people from bondage and
oppression. John’s baptisms fulfill
their purpose to create rootedness and meaning, a there there, for the Jewish
people. See, the author is saying, the
wilderness and the River Jordan. See . .
. this leader whom I have alluded to as the second Moses as also wearing the mantle of the chosen, the
beloved, the community of Israel. Now
know that God the Deliverer is at work in our time to bring us out of bondage
and into a new identity that is not as slaves to Egypt or to Rome.
What John hoped was that the material
nature of place reminded the Jewish people who they were and who they are so
that they might take that with them in their living out of a faith not steeped
in some false image of God but in values strongly rooted in the material bases
of life. These material bases of life
were not dropped down on high by Rome like they did with bread at one of their
diversionary circuses. No, a benevolent Creator shared locusts, wild
honey, and water from the ground up, across the table. John wanted that story on repeat in Jewish heads
and hearts so that, when confronted by Rome’s violent story, they would
courageously live as the Beloved Children of God rooted in steadfast love,
justice, and righteousness.
In baptism, we are rehearsing the
radical story over and over again so that we might become radically free to
fulfill God’s purpose. We repeat it over
and over so we know our story and song, so that we own for ourselves God’s
intent for fulfillment=that all of us might live as the Beloved Children of
God, in a broad and spacious place.
There is a tribe in East Africa in which the art of true
intimacy is fostered even before birth.
In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of
its physical birth nor even the day of conception, as in other village
cultures. For this tribe the birth date
comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother’s mind. Aware of her intention to conceive a child
with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a
tree. There she sits and listens until
she can hear the song of the child she hopes to conceive. Once she has heard it, she returns to her
village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together as they
make love, inviting the child to join them.
After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old women and
midwives of the village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous
moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song. After the birth, all the villagers learn the
song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts
itself. It is sung in times of triumph,
or in rituals and initiations. This song
becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end
of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song
for the last time.[6]
This
is what we hope we have been doing with Naomi Marcella Moyer since she first
stepped foot in this church building. We
hope and pray that we have been rehearsing a song with her that she has learned
well enough herself to take out to her school and further out into her
community. We hope and pray that the imperial songs which
are forever blaring at her on the airwaves, she begins to discern as false
idols—songs which tell her that she will need to buy this product or learn this
beauty secret to be loved; songs which tell her she will be saved only by
violence against people who are not like her; songs which tell her she will need to hoard
and secure wealth and popularity so that she might know she is worthy; songs
which suggest that all people may be created equal but some, let’s face it, some
deserve to be a little more equal than others.
Day after day, these are the imperial songs which target the prophet,
Naomi Marcella Moyer, to unseat her confidence and to distract her from the
fulfillment of her purpose. These
imperial songs distract Naomi from her path, are empty of meaning, and provide a
dead-end direction. Imperial songs are solely about entertainment,
the buzz, and power over to create such vanilla and same and banal that color
and character are lost. They so desecrate
places that we end up with no there there.
As a community of faith, we respond in
turn to say to her, “Naomi, you are already a Beloved Child of God. You are enough. And you are strong and courageous and
beautiful in your own right and you are wonderfully and fearfully made by a God
who is good. We baptize you because we
know that the world is too long divided between Jew and Greek, slave and free,
male and female. And we want you to live
bravely into the beautiful diversity of God’s good earth. We want you to regularly preach God’s color
and character in the beautiful diversity of the world. Creator did not intend divisions, power over,
between race and ethnicity, economic and social status, gender or sexual
spectrum. We want to affirm there are
many authentic paths to the one God. We
want you to know, we want it to ring in your ear that ancient Exodus story so
you will never forget God’s will for all of us to live in community-in a broad
and spacious place.”
May we not only remember the story but
also teach her the right song which will accompany her, bolster her courage,
and remind her that she can step out courageously into the world because there
will always be a people in Billings, Montana, who know that song and promise. May we hold her by singing the words to her throughout
her life when the imperial narrative threatens to block out all else. May this place, Billings First Congregational
Church, be Naomi’s “there there,” the place which helps her keep the tune and
remember the words as one who is firmly rooted and full of meaning. So that when Naomi hears her song for the
last time, she will know she has been, is, and always will be, a Beloved Child
of God. May it be so. Amen.
[2]
Borrowing from language to describe what it meant for Julius Caesar to cross
the Rubicon.
[3]
“Julius Caesar and the Jews,” Jewish History Blog, January 10, 2011, https://www.jewishhistory.org/julius-caesar-and-the-jews/.
[4] Aherne,
Cornelius. "Son of God." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 12 Jan. 2020 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14142b.htm
[5]
Hosea 11:1-2
[6]
Jack Kornfield, from A Path with
Heart: A Guide through the Perils and
Promises of Spiritual Life (New York:
Bantam, 1996).
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