And Your People Will Be My People – Thoughts on Jesus’ Baptism

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

9 January 2005

First Sunday of Epiphany

Matthew 3.13-17

 

 

In our reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning the wild-man of the New Testament is at work.  John the Baptist is out in the wilderness of Galilee wearing his camel hair shirt and eating locusts and honey.  Crowds of people are coming out to see him, to hear his message of repentance, and to be baptized by him in the River Jordan.

 

One day, along with people of all walks of life, Jesus comes out to John, takes his place in line, and waits to be baptized.  Somehow John recognizes Jesus, knows who he is, knows that he’s the one sent by God to save the people.  John’s message has always included the reminder that he isn’t the one the people are waiting for, that someone greater than he will be coming, will bring the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

And now the promised one has come, but he isn’t doing what John expects.  He isn’t marching into the region followed by an army.  He isn’t sorting the righteous from the unrighteous with fire and brimstone.  Instead the messenger of God, the one the people have been hoping for, is waiting to be baptized.  Not surprisingly, John is a bit taken aback.  He doesn’t want to baptize Jesus.  John insists that it’s Jesus who should baptize him, not the other way around.  Calmly Jesus reassures him and says that for now it needs to be this way.

 

John, probably not really understanding what Jesus means, goes ahead and wades into the river with Jesus.  John baptizes Jesus and then, as Jesus is rising up out of the water the heavens open up.  The Spirit of God comes down, in the form of a dove, and a voice says, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  With that, Jesus goes off into the wilderness to fast and pray and then begins his public ministry, teaching, preaching, healing and bringing God’s message of love and grace wherever he goes.

 

In thinking about this scripture I must confess I was a bit confused.  I had trouble figuring out why Jesus needed to be baptized.  The scriptures seem to say the he “needed” to be baptized.  He pushes a reluctant John into going through the ritual, demanding that it has to take place.  I thought about what baptism means.  For us, baptism is the way we become part of the Christian community.  Whether we are baptized as infants, or children or adults, the waters of baptism welcome us into the church, into the fellowship of other people who try to live their lives the way Jesus taught.

 

But I realized baptism couldn’t have meant that for Jesus.  He hadn’t called any disciples.  He didn’t have any followers.  There wasn’t an organized community of people for Jesus to “join”.  So I thought about it some more and then I called my friend Sharon in California to talk it over.  We talked and talked and talked some more about what Jesus was doing when he went to be baptized by John, trying to figure out how to help our congregations make sense of this scripture.

 

And then I had a revelation.  I remembered a few months ago before the last gathering of the First Parish Project in North Carolina.  The participants had a series of e-mail exchanges planning an advent party.  Round and round the ideas went about what we should do, what we should eat, how we exchange gifts and all those sorts of things that go into party planning.  At one point it was suggested that we should all bring “the food of our people” to share.  That way we would get a variety of different things as people would bring foods that symbolized their traditions.  My very first thought during that conversation was that neither Jell-o nor hot dish traveled very well.

 

A few days later my uncle called to remind me that it was St. Andrew’s day, the patron saint of Scotland, and to see how things were going.  I was telling him this story and he said, “but Moira, those aren’t the foods of your people.  Your people eat grits and greens and biscuits.”  Those are, of course, the foods that my family in the south eats.  He went on to say that even if those weren’t my foods then I should certainly have thought of tortillas and green chilé since those are the foods from New Mexico.

 

I told him that those foods had never even occurred to me.  When the other people in the project suggested “the foods of our people” I immediately thought of the things that we eat here, in northeast Wisconsin.  My uncle said that was a good sign, that I was becoming a part of the community here, that I was taking the example of Ruth in the scriptures when she says to her mother-in-law Naomi, “where you go I will go, and your people will be my people.”

 

I think that’s at least part of what’s going on in the gospel this morning.  Jesus wants to reach the people, he wants them to listen to him.  He doesn’t want his words to fall on deaf ears, to turn people away because they think he doesn’t understand their lives.  The religious leaders of the day – the Pharisees, Sadducees and high priests – lived pretty isolated lives.

 

They were wealthy while the people they served were mostly very poor.  They lived in ornately decorated houses with servants while their people lived in simple clay homes and did all their work themselves.  When they spoke, when they taught the people about the laws and how they should live, the people couldn’t relate to them.  They didn’t have anything in common with the people who looked to them for spiritual guidance.

 

Jesus, on the other hand, wanted the people to be able to relate to him.  He needed to fit in, to experience the same things they people he was ministering to experienced.  They were all going out to John to be baptized in the Jordan and so Jesus goes out as well and wades into the river to go under the water and rise to begin his ministry.  In order to speak to their hearts, in order to change their souls, Jesus has to be where they are, eat what they eat and see what they see.  He has to take Ruth’s words to heart and say to these people he ministers to, “where you go I will go, and your people will be my people.”

 

So what does that mean for us, for living out our faith in our daily lives?  For me, as your pastor, it means that the things that are important to you are important to me.  The foods you eat become the foods I eat.  The football team you root for becomes the team I root for.  I don’t give up the traditions of my family, but I take on the traditions that nurture life here.  They become mine as we grow and minister together.

 

For you all I think this has everything to do with how we go about that sometimes feared part of our faith called evangelism.  It’s a scary word.  For most people in traditions like the UCC, evangelism brings up images of door knocking, handing out pamphlets and altar calls.  But evangelism doesn’t have to be done that way.  Evangelism really just means talking about our faith, knowing what we believe and why we believe it, sharing with other people that church is an important part of our lives, that we gain strength and courage from being a part of a Christian community.

 

Evangelism is, I believe, best done in the way Jesus went about his ministry.  First we have to do our homework.  We have to think about what we believe – about God, about Jesus, and about the Holy Spirit, about the purpose of the church, about ministry and mission, stewardship, and sacraments, about worship, prayer, scripture, doubt, healing and forgiveness.  We each have to take the time and figure out what we believe, what we think about the tradition we have received, and how our life experience connects with or contradicts that tradition.

 

Then, when we have thought about it, when we know, at least for the moment, what we believe, then we have to be in relationship with people.  We have to live with them, get to know them.  We have to become involved with other people, sharing their joys and heartbreak, their celebrations and tragedies.  We have to know them, to know what is important to them, what they’re passionate about, what they’d give their lives for.  Then, only then can we really share our faith, share the joy we have in knowing Jesus, in being a part of Christ’s church, in feeling the power of the Spirit working in our lives.

 

My challenge for you in this new year is to embrace evangelism.  Take some time, whatever time you need, to figure out what you believe about God, and why.  You’ll need to talk to one another, to reflect together about your beliefs.  You might find it useful to come to Bible study.  You might just need to call up your pastor and invite her over for a cup of coffee so you can ask those questions about God you’ve always wanted to ask.  You’ll certainly need to pray every day, asking God for the guidance you need to understand what you believe.

 

As you do that, as you come to claim your faith, look around your life at the people you see everyday.  Who could you invest time and energy with to form a lasting relationship?  Who could you get to know, share your life with?  Find at least one person who you commit to getting to know, really know, this year.  Share with them the joys and sorrows and the mundane day-to-day.  And when the time is right you will be prepared to share with them your faith.

 

When we do these things we will be doing what Jesus was doing when he went to John to be baptized.  We will become part of a community, part of something greater than ourselves.  We will change lives, ours and others, one at a time.  Amen.