CONNECTING WITH THE LIVING GOD Baptism of Jesus B

8th January 2006 : Baptism of our Lord : B

When I was searching for pictures suitable for this Sunday, on which we celebrate the baptism of our Lord Jesus, I came across something unexpected – a cross whose filename suggested that the illustrations printed on it depicted the story of Jesus’ nativity.

At the top is the Annunciation; on the left arm (facing the cross) we find the journey to Bethlehem, pregnant Mary sitting on a donkey; on the right arm of the cross we see the Magoi and their gifts; and right in the centre, most fittingly, the cross shows us the actual nativity scene, complete with bright star, laconically-inquisitive farm animals, Mary flaked out post-delivery next to Jesus in his manger and a bunch of shepherd-types.

But in the panel below the nativity scene is the bit I hadn’t expected: the baptism of Jesus by cousin John, with the holy family, Moses and possibly the saints all celestially witnessing this event we reflect on and wrestle with today.

I realised as I did my own wrestling and reflection that of course this is most appropriate. The baptism of Jesus effects the "closure" of this all-important, indispensable chapter that begins the story of Jesus. Rather than a separator or stand-alone beginning of the next part of the story, the baptism of Jesus stands dovetailing his birth and the coming preparation for and propulsion into earthly ministry.

While we may commonly assume that Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of that ministry, at the same time it draws together the threads of his birth and perhaps begins a beta-version answer to questions like, Why was Jesus born?

Mark doesn’t have to ask or answer the question because he does not mention Jesus’ birth. For Mark it seems that the baptism of Jesus is the earth-bound beginning, a shattering, planet-changing event that signals the in-rushing presence of God-on-earth.

I’m struck by the drama and energy of Mark’s depiction. It’s somewhat lost in English translations but the Greek happily provides us with a powerful complementary meeting between the divine and the earthly response in Jesus’ baptism.

Mark tells us that "as [Jesus] was coming up, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him." As I read these words I had a picture of the scene in the film The hunt for Red October in which the American submarine hastily and dramatically surfaces, so dramatically in fact that one of the Russian sailors quips, "The Captain has scared him out of the water!" In that scene the camera shows us the nose of the submarine, angled sharply, breaking the ocean’s surface and soaring upward momentarily before crashing in a great froth of water and spray. (We can get the same effect in the bath with a rubber ducky but it’s not quite as dramatic …)

In English we tend not to see the connection between "coming up" and "descending" but in Greek the words have a relationship: they are the same word, defined and redefined by differing prefixes so while Jesus comes up (anabainw) the Spirit comes down (katabainw) and ultimately we have one of those few but happy conjunctions in the Christian scriptures in which we find Father, Son and Holy Spirit present together when God speaks the words of approval and affirmation, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased.

But Mark adds another touch – one diluted when Matthew and Luke write their versions. For the latter, the heavens are simply "opened". In Mark they are "torn apart" – like the Temple curtain after Jesus’ death on the cross.

This is high drama and a powerful reminder that the baptism of Jesus is no mere act of obedience, the somewhat wishy-washy answer theology gives us in response to the question that excited Matthew, Luke and the early Church: Why did the sinless Jesus need to undergo John’s "baptism of repentance"?

Good question. Shame we have no good answers.

However, we do know that for Mark this was no mere formality or some event taken with ease when Jesus felt like it. This baptism is a moment in which heaven and earth collide. This is a moment of enormous energy and impulsion. This is a moment of awesome divine power merging with wholehearted, committed human response and connection.

This is a moment like the one I saw when my son was in primary school. Another student was rushing across the oval to meet his mother who told him that tonight they were going to have a special treat of some sort. This clearly pleased the boy, who promptly flung down his school bag, fell on his knees, clenched both fists together and explosively cried out, YES!

In coming to John for baptism Jesus allows God to enter this world through the Holy Spirit in such a way that the divine and the human are fully connected - as they have never been before or since. Here is not just intimate identification between human and divine but actual oneness. And God is skidding on the metaphorical divine knees, crying out, YES!

This is not to say that Spirit was unfamiliar with this planet or that human beings failed to welcome the Spirit in their lives. Genesis reminds us of the seminal activity of the Ruach in the creation of this world. The Living God speaks and in these words the Ruach, the breath, the Spirit works creation. John the evangelist will later deliberately echo all this as he reflects on Jesus as the Living Word creating a new understanding of God and God’s love for creation. Not a different understanding but a new one.

Paul reflects on the connection between baptism and the Spirit coming into the lives of the faithful, reminding us that John’s baptism of repentance did not confer the Spirit and suggesting, as we reflect on these readings, that what Jesus experienced with John the baptiser was not at all about his unnecessary repentance but about this moment of connection and oneness. As such, Jesus’ baptism is a revelation of the triune nature of the Living God, not the conundrum that Matthew and Luke needed to explain away by adding an apologetic conversation between John and Jesus.

For us it is a reminder that our own baptism leads us into a journey of finding that same oneness and connection ourselves. We find this somewhat more difficult than Jesus for obvious reasons! But difficulty is never an excuse for failing to make the attempt.

How, then, are we who are baptised in this Parish of the Holy Spirit, expressing our connection with the Living God? In what ways are we showing Westfield and the places beyond what God thinks of the world? and how are we demonstrating the love and compassion of this God of ours to those who most need to know this good news?

We know what Jesus did. What are WE doing?

BEING LIGHT FOR THOSE WHO DWELL IN DARKNESS - EPPHANY B06

1st January 2006 : EPIPHANY : Year B

TODAY we celebrate the Feast officially known as The Epiphany of our Lord, the true importance is arguably best described by its traditional title, The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Yes, we are a good five days early for the celebration, whose actual day is 6th January, this Friday.

But we are Gentiles in a Gentile Church and it is fitting that we remember that within two years – possibly within twelve days - of the birth of Jesus people outside his own faith system were recognising his significance. They came, Gentiles from east of Judaea, to worship this baby, as if he were an earthly monarch, bringing expensive gifts of symbolic importance.

In doing so they brought to life words written by prophets like Isaiah but as we should expect by now the incarnation of prophecy came, as it always will and must, at the cost of human expectation, wishfulness and demand.

The entry of the Gentiles into the world of Jewish spirituality was not about Judaising the planet but about completing the picture, adding the final pieces to the divine jigsaw. Salvation – however we might define that ambiguous term – was for the entire population of the earth, not a select few, even though those select few had the sacred role and duty of becoming and being a blessing to every nation.

The advent of the Magi and their retinue is a powerful and symbolic testimony to the self-denying willingness of the Gentile world to accept Jesus at least as a king.

But that isn’t why Epiphany should excite us and why we should at least pay attention to it. As ever, we can bog ourselves in the morass of details and interesting but irrelevant questions like, Did it happen like what Matthew wrote? Were the Magi kings? Were they three in number and did they have dorky, er romantic, names like Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar? And insurance companies throughout the planet want to know whether they had a valuables policy to safeguard all that loot? and if not we’d be very happy to give you guys a complimentary quote!

No. This is about the effect of light. The light of the Jewish kid spreading – as light does – into every corner of darkness. The light of hope. The same light that shines on and within us. The same light that the Living God invites us to carry at all times, in all places so that those who cower hopeless and terrified in the darkness of pain and suffering will understand what God really thinks of us humans – that we are worthy, that we are lovable, that we matter – that we are OK!

This is part of the importance of incarnation in all its forms, whether it be the birth of Jesus or the arrival of very important people who bothered to get out of bed one day, pack their camels and keep their binoculars trained on the comet shooting westward. Or every act of kindness we display to the lost, helpless and suffering.

As for the Magi, their arrival on the holy family’s doorstep confirms that the light has reached possibly unexpected quarters. Matthew doesn’t say whether Joseph and Mary thought it strange that these guys suddenly rocked up unannounced, though Matt’s compadre, Luke, has at least Mary doing some serious reflecting more than once.

But again, that sort of issue matters less than the revelation that God’s light of hope reaches everywhere – that no place needs to remain benighted, that the Living God has compassion for every darkened human soul – and that WE are an essential part of the bringing of God’s light to Westfield and beyond.

It’s a daunting and dangerous task. But what’s new in that? The real question is, What shall we do to carry this light of hope to the darkness of our community? How are we bringing and BEING light for those who dwell in Westfield darkness? What are we doing – daily – to ensure that we remain within the story of light and so illumine the lives of the hopeless, the suffering and the needy?

GOD-BEARERS - ChristMass 06

24th December 2005 : MIDNIGHT MASS : Year B

Up where we live in Beeliar the developers have opened a new estate called Mevé. In one part of the new area we have a series of streets whose names sound delightfully like a Rowan Atkinson sketch:

GECKO
BANDICOOT
BETTONG
GANNET
BEE EATER

No doubt the Royal Street-Namer imagined he or she was naming these nouveau-suburban thoroughfares after Australian birds and marsupials. Certainly a change from the prosaic Famous Faces or "let’s throw a dart at the atlas" approach.

And although sed Royal Street-Namer probably had no idea that she or he was creating the potential skeleton for one of Mr Atkinson’s pieces it just goes to show how even innocent and harmless entities like street names can become something other than their creator’s original intention.

Sometimes this can be a Good Thing, revealing the hidden, stimulating the imagination, throwing wide the doors of possibility and exposing breathtaking vistas of joy.

At other times the original creation is misunderstood and becomes perverted, or it’s twisted deliberately and becomes perverted. And sometimes it simply evolves into a form that is hardly recognisable as its descendant.

We find these sorts of things happening with the birth of Jesus, the Christ Mass, aka Christmas. Mostly we’re talking some form of misunderstanding but occasionally we get wilful twisting. Evolution appears not to enter the picture because the birth of Jesus, by definition, is a unique event. Nevertheless, Christmass keeps evolution within travelling-distance, albeit on the outskirts, because we all necessarily need to grow and change in our understanding of Jesus’ birth and its implications.

And those moments of what we rightly and properly call enlightenment are the times we see into the text and past the plastic, when we have clarity of sight instead of the blinding glare, wink and flash of millions of aimless light-bulbs. (Without question those bulbs help many experience the wonder, awe and delight which surely accompany our knowledge of Jesus’ birth but when our conversation turns to How many? and How much? and What about the electricity bill? and Is that the best one? then we have to wonder whether we’ve missed the point.)

And of course we don’t have to number ourselves among either the audience or the practitioners of these summer wonderland displays, or add ourselves to the grog-shop packs, or join the whirligig of car-parkers desperately searching the multi-storeys for parking spots that the divine has earmarked only for true believers.

The Church has long excelled at sucking the breath out of an event that ought to remind us of life and hope and yet seems to fall with terrifying ease into the hands of evil geniuses who hose down Jesus-God-with-us and cover him with layers of molten plastic that cools to a white Anglo-Saxon crust.

Surely Jesus is much more than this! Surely his birth speaks of proclamation-yet-to-come, a proclamation to which we are both heirs and honoured bearers.

But many years ago now John Bell and Graham Maule of the Iona Community had to ask a question still relevant tonight:

Lord, where have we left you,
somewhere far away?
alone and in a manger,
a stranger left in hay?

Lord, where have we left you —
somewhere all can view,
well polished and presented,
undented and untrue?

This Jesus was not born simply to delight and entertain our inner children! The shepherds who stared a-goggle and rattled off abuzz with awe were no bunch of Hollywood sentimentalists. They knew then what many have forgotten now: that Jesus was born for a reason and they who witnessed his vulnerability knew they were part of a story that had suddenly become his and theirs.

They saw Jesus and understood that their lives were changed. They saw Jesus and realised that the Living God had acted decisively. They saw Jesus and looked upon God.

As for us, what do we see when the world gives us a model manger and a plastic doll to put in it? Do we understand that the Living God invited the Jewish girl to become God-bearer? Or do we think, Mary had a baby boy …?

If Mary had a baby boy then we have little to offer the world around us. Even those for whom Chrissy is just another holiday know that much.

But, many will argue, these things are symbols, the words we use are metaphors that speak both about things eternal and hope present and future. These are mighty things, grand themes making robust demands.

And more than that – they are the background to God’s reasons for sending Jesus.

But when we behold the symbols and employ the metaphors, who or what has the power? Can we really stand firm in front of the plastic doll and search its production-line physiognomy without hurrying off to do some shopping or see to the roast, all with a warm-fuzzy feeling inside?

Not that we should decry warm-fuzzies – as long as we understand them as affirmations, expressions of care and respect.

But the birth of Jesus is not about such things. When we regard our symbols and utter our metaphors we need to do so with the willingness to stand long, until we flinch with the knowledge that this particular birth involves US, draws us into its life, offers up a purpose and a mission, commands us to live the lives about which these symbols and metaphors speak.

So let us by all means stand by our plastic Jesuses; but let us do so in the knowledge that Miriam was first God-bearer and not just another special young mum with a special bambino; that we are intimates, not spectators; that we are part of the story, not just listeners.

And that OURS is the part where we look at all the world’s pain and our own human, human hearts break and in the name of this Jesus whom we saw and recognised in the guise of a plastic doll, we say, This is not right and armed with the hope that is God’s own love and compassion, we move forward to be God-bearers in our own right, bringing hope and offering love.