Well,
it’s “Go Time.” For eight pro football teams that either faced or are facing
play off games on this Wild Card weekend, it is what they call “Go Time.” Sadly
for the Raiders and the Lions Go Time has become “Gone Time,” for they lost
their games yesterday, but any other team that still finds itself in this
do-or-die postseason, knows it is now “Go Time.” What “Go Time” usually means
is that things have started for real. Anything that came before this point
doesn’t really count for much. It was all important, on some level, but from
here on out things really matter and there is no room for messing up, no chance
for starting over. Each team, each player, each coach, will need to step up to
the line and show everyone what they’re really made of. They’ll need to keep
their eyes on what’s ahead, because the stakes are higher.
In
addition to all that, when people typically say it’s “Go Time,” they mean that
time for talking and deliberating is over. That is, it’s time for action. It’s
time to go through with the plan and see how it turns out.
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| "Theophany" (St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church, Emmaus, PA) |
The
baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan is “Go Time,” in every sense of that term.
Anything that happened before this point may be important, but none of it is as
important and consequential as what happens from this point and beyond. It’s
interesting: two of the four gospel writers, Mark and John, don’t even tell us
anything about Jesus before his baptism. They don’t mention his birth or the
prophecies leading up to it. For them, the baptism begins it all. And the two
gospel writers that do mention Jesus’ earliest years—Matthew and Luke—don’t
really include much about his infancy or youth. It’s as if all of that part of
Jesus’ life was like the NFL regular season, or, better yet, pre-season. Those
early years are, at best, just points on the road that lead up to this
sky-shattering moment when Jesus steps into the particular river that formed
the historic boundary between the wilderness and the Promised Land and is
publicly identified as God’s Son, the Beloved. And now that he is baptized, now
that he bears this awesome title, creation really must sit up and pay attention
because things are going to start to matter like never before. The things he
does after this point—the things he says, the things that happen to him and how
he reacts—are going to bear a new kind of weight. We’re going to hear a lot
more of what his life is like because it is “Go Time.”
There’s
a line in a beloved Christmas carol which is actually sung to Bethlehem, the
place of Jesus’ birth, that goes:
Yet in thy
dark streets shineth the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
Truth
be told, the same words could be sung
about the water in that Jordan River. The hopes and fears of all the years of
human existence—the long wait for an anointed king and savior, the anxiety people have about their
distance from God, the dangers of
their own sins—are finally being dealt with—are finally being met—in this man
in a muddy little string of water in Israel.
That’s
what all of this dramatic heavenly fanfare is all about. In order to emphasize
just how significant this moment is in Jesus’ life and ministry, the heavens
tear apart the Spirit of God descends like dove upon Jesus and there is a
booming voice from overhead. These mysterious, almost difficult-to-describe
events converge upon each other as if to say, “This is The One.”
Several
weeks ago the children of the congregation received the chrismon that had been
made for them by our chrismon ministry team. This year’s chrismon was a
descending dove delicately fashioned from pearl beads and gold wire. During the
point of the children’s sermon when the adult leader was explaining how the
descending dove appeared at Jesus’ baptism, one child interrupted and asked if
he could hold the dove for a moment. The woman giving the children sermon was a
little caught off guard by the request and graciously agreed to let him hold
it. He immediately took it and, pretending it was a dive-bombing airplane, he
shoved it into the carpet making the sound of a dive-bombing plane and crash explosion.
It
was the kind of unscripted moment that children’s sermons can live (and die)
on. I’m not sure how many people actually saw what happened, but it occurred to
me at the time that we often want a huge, spectacular sign that God is present
and active. The dove at the baptism might seem light and airy, but Jesus’ life
is going to be an unmistakable crash of love and forgiveness, God’s love
descending to us in spectacular but tragic form.
And
that’s really the point of this short conversation we hear between John the
Baptist and Jesus this morning. John has some clue as to who Jesus is, that
Jesus is the superior one, but is surprised to see how Jesus is going to handle
that superiority. At the time, John is baptizing people for the forgiveness of
sins, giving people a chance to start over. Jesus doesn’t really need to have
any sins forgiven, but he does want to demonstrate as clearly as possible,
right at the beginning, that he has come to crash his life right into the mess
of humankind. Rather than staying aloof from what humans experience in a broken
creation, Jesus is going to jump right in.
Jesus
has authority, as John notices, but Jesus’ authority over us is going to be
grounded in uniting himself with the human experience, not remaining removed
from it. He will submit to John’s baptism to fulfill all righteousness, and he
will eventually submit to Pontius Pilate, and the chief priests and scribes,
and the people who mock him and nail him to the cross. At the Jordan River it
is “Go Time,” and in Jesus God is going to dare to go right where we’d never
imagine a holy God to go in order to love us completely. Jesus is going to head
right where we’d never imagine a God to go in order to accomplish his plan.
I
imagine that is the understanding of Jesus’ authority that is inspiring the
ministry of the Reverend Eric Manning, the new pastor of Mother Emanuel Church
in Charleston, South Carolina, as he sits with members of his congregation through
the trial of Dylan Roof this week. In the courtroom he clutches nothing but his
Bible, calmly listening to every word that each of his parishioners’ families
has to hear. Appointed to lead the grieving church back in June, Pastor Manning
has begun his ministry by intentionally reminding them that he is with them
through it all, because they follow a God who has submitted to every bit of
pain and sorrow they’re going through. In an interview this week, he speaks
about the steady stream of visitors that now come to the church, some to
worship, some out of a “macabre sense of curiosity” regarding the shooting
there in 2015 that took the lives of nine Bible study participants.[1]
Whichever reason brings them there, those visitors find a loving community that
is living face to face with some of the darkest ills of human existence and, by
God’s grace, moving forward. They know that Jesus leads through this because he
has submitted to what evil can do and come out a conqueror.
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| Mother Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC (Google Street View) |
This
understanding of Jesus’ authority as coming from his desire to submit to human
suffering in order that God may make things right with the universe is what
should ground every congregation’s ministry, every Christians’ witness. Therefore
our purpose has less to with sitting back and letting people to come to us, than
it does with going out and engaging them where they are. Our witness is built
less on expecting people to listen to us and our stories and more on being willing
to listen to the stories and concerns of others. People will experience our
love and our ministries as legitimate the more we model the spirit of Jesus’s
baptism in our ministries—that is, the more we realize God helps us shed our
pretentions to serve and care for the world God made in all its brokenness. This
will be especially critical for those who feel like a bruised reed or a dimly-burning
wick at this point, those who feel the world is about to snuff them out, for
whatever reason.
We
will be able to see ourselves in this type of ministry because we will have
faith that our own baptisms have united us to this person who has conquered
even death. Our own baptisms have washed away our complacent, egocentric selves
and joined them to the man who knows that the hopes and fears of all the years have
crashed upon him there in the waters of Jordan and again in the cross of
Calvary. He has the authority because he comes to serve. We will be inspired
together by the fact that in this very baptismal water (or a font like it) our
lives have been joined forever and ever to the man who always knows what time
it is. It’s Go Time for God.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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