We live in a world where
things can be holy. Such a concept may not
seem real to some, or terribly modern, but that doesn’t really matter. You can
go back a long time and observe that humans have always sensed that certain
things in this universe, things around them—tangible, visible things, things
that actually take up space and time—have been visited by some divine presence.
Such things are then holy, sacred, designated for use by God, who is the
embodiment of holy.
For some folks, it is a
stretch to even conceive of a God, a Creator, in the first place. You can see
that it is even harder for many to comprehend that the Creator of all that is, the
source of all life and energy, would descend to associate him or her or itself with
certain objects, places, and people, especially considering how filthy objects,
places, and people can be on this troubled planet. And yet, we have holy
things, sacred moments, hallowed ground, and they command special attention, a
turning aside.
That is, I as see it, one of
the main issues at play in the tragic shootings in France this week. In the
eyes of a violent few, the satirists of one publication routinely disregarded the
holy things of another people by depicting something they hold to be sacred in
image form, not to mention hurtful and insulting. Granted, the great majority
of us do not believe that violent retaliation is the appropriate response to
blasphemy, which is the term for doing something improper with things that are
holy. But the fact still remains that, regardless of what a government policy
is, and regardless of what the prevailing public opinion is about equality
among people or the truth of religion, some people among us maintain that
certain things have been set aside by God and are therefore holy, blessed, just
as many believe the right to blaspheme it is also, somehow, holy.
There are no easy answers to
this issue and other ones like it, which I fear are in our future, other than
condemning violence when we can, speaking up for the innocent and oppressed, and
comforting the grieving, but perhaps one way forward is to acknowledge and
respect the presence of holiness among us, even if these things are nothing you
personally would designate as holy, as something that God’s own self has
touched or associated himself with.
It is worth noting, then, that
when this man from Nazareth steps into the water in the Jordan River to be
baptized by John, a holy moment is occurring. The divine, in all its glory, in
all its total other-ness from creation, is associating itself with this
particular figure, Jesus. The Creator, with all that power and splendor, is
visiting those particular waters at that very ordinary moment. In fact, when
Jesus comes up out of the water, he notices that the heavens are torn apart, which
is a big cumulus clue that anything separating God from humans is being ripped
away. Just as at the beginning of creation when chaos started to give way to
order because God spoke right into the messy mix of it all, now God is
descending again to say, “Enough of this separation. My holy will mix with your
commonplace.”
We’ve probably all seen the
heavens open up at some point. It doesn’t happen all that often, because the
sky and the sun have to be just right, but occasionally the clouds part in such
a way that only a little bit of sun streams through. When that happens, the
beams of sunlight look a lot like a spotlight from God, or maybe even the
bright, outstretched arm of the Creator. This is what I imagine occurs right
over top of Jesus, right there in that river that separates the wilderness on
one side and the Promised Land on the other. This tearing apart of the heavens is
what happens right there as John the baptizer wades out into the muddy water, offering
people a new beginning, a chance to pause, turn around, and look aside because
God is moving in their midst. There are holy things to be revered.
The baptism of Jesus is one
of those moments—and for Mark, the gospel-writer, it is THE moment—when God
decides to get directly involved in creation, to sanctify the lives of
humankind, to boldly declare as “blessed” the relative obscurity of human life.
Who is this man? Where is he from? For as long as it has been around, the
gospel has maintained this crazy thought: that God himself ripped the boundary
between God’s heaven and God’s earth and entered human history in the life of a
specific person.
This is important because the
tendency is always to base an experience with God all on our ability to attain
some spiritual nirvana, to tap into some divine wireless access point of our
brain or tune into the right frequency. We acknowledge that crucial separation
between us and God, but then make it all about us reaching in that direction. This
is not the gospel. Ultimately, we learn that the truth is the other way around,
beginning with Jesus’ baptism: we know God and experience the holy only because
God first comes to us. Ultimately we only ever touch the divine because God
showed up on the banks of the Jordan River about 2000 years ago over the life
of this man from a backwater town about 40 miles to the north and effectively
pointed to him and said, “Him. He is holy.”
As we learn, this will be
Jesus’ mission: to make all humankind holy, each and every human life, especially
the most forlorn and obscure. It will be a powerful thing that he does, full of
vigor and might. He will address evil head-on. He will even be forceful at
times, dealing in a strong and direct way with the powers and principalities that
enslave and corrupt human beings, but he will never be violent. He will never
avenge or need to be avenged because that is not how God will work in him. The
Spirit descends on him like a dove, not a drone. He will demonstrate the
unstoppable influence of love and peace when one offers his life as a ransom
for many. Wherever he goes he will be like the heavens torn apart right there, with the holy otherness of
God shining through. In him we will see that God’s holy kingdom belongs here on
earth, too, not just in some realm we go to after we die. And through him, by
the power of that same Spirit, we will be included in moments of his peaceful,
powerful kingdom throughout our lives.
On their test last semester
on the Lord’s Prayer, the confirmands were asked to describe a time in their
life when they experienced God’s kingdom coming. Their responses were uplifting
to read. They spoke of feeding the hungry and working with at-risk and special
needs children. One said the kingdom of heaven was like the feeling she gets when
she knows she can call her mom to come pick her up from a party where people
are doing dangerous things. One confirmand answered, very perceptively, “Experiencing
God’s kingdom can happen whether you realize it or not,” and a couple of others
mentioned that they were not sure they ever had been a part of God’s kingdom. Quite
frankly, that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? That’s the miracle we see in Jesus’
baptism: that God’s holiness can pop up even in our murky lives, with our
unclear vision and slippery grips.
And so this inauspicious Jordan
River entrance is where God chooses to rip open the heavens and let his
holiness descend. This man from Nazareth is the person God is designating as
most holy, most blessed, most well-pleased. Sad to say, in our own messiness,
in our own muddiness, we eventually reject him and blaspheme him and hang him
out to die. Unable to handle holiness in such plain human attire, we reject it,
we execute it. Like some of those confirmands are bold enough to admit, I don’t
think we ever fully grasp that God’s holiness breaks in around us, and claims
us as a part of it. In our brokenness, we never fully grasp that in Christ, each
person bears the image of the divine. Each living being is a cartoon, if you
will, of God the Maker. And each person, because of Christ’s appearance among
us, can be an instance where the heavens open up and let the light of God shine
through. That’s the real wonder of God’s grace.
Carrie Underwood, God love
her, is on the radio with a new song. Over and over she sings “There must be
something in the water.” If you listen, you can tell it’s a song about baptism,
about the wonder of God’s grace, about the miracle of order being brought from
chaos. Our response to Ms. Underwood this festival of our Lord’s baptism is
that, yes, there is something in the
water, even this old ordinary water. The something is Jesus, Son of God and
holy Beloved, the Word, full of power and ready to change the world by even
dying for it.
There is something in the water, and in his baptism he gives creation a
fresh new beginning, free from its sin and chaos. In his death he claims you
and he claims me and he claims each and every kind of person on this planet. And
in our baptism, the public sign of that claiming, God bestows us with the same
promise that his Father bestows on him: “You are my child.”
“You—yes you—can consider yourself sacred because you may show forth ME. My
cross will be on your brow.”
Therefore, John the baptizer’s
call rings ever true: Stop. Turn around, and look aside. Treat each other with
love and respect. We live in a world where things—and people—can be holy.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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