January 14, 2007
Luke 3:15-22
“To Be Loved Is To Be Chosen Is To Be Broken”

Would all who are willing take out your photo identification card, if you have one.  Look at who it says you are.  Looking at mine, I realize that what our identity is depends upon what perspective you are coming from:

* My identity from law enforcement perspective…
Headquarters, this is Adam – 1, I’ve got a 10-69 here. I’ve pulled over a 43-year-old Caucasian male, 6 foot 2 inches, 195 pounds, brown thinning hair, glasses, beard. Seemingly harmless, but will follow for a while. 10-4.

* My identity from inside my head…
Headquarters, I’ve got a 5150. Rapidly aging, out-of-shape, boring, balding neurotic white guy. Can’t seem to get his act together. I’m going to 10-18 and move out of here quickly. Roger?

*My identity, perhaps from God’s vantage point…
Headquarters, I’ve got a Beautiful and beloved Child of God here, full of potential, even if unnecessarily anxious at times. He has no record, no warrants. We should stick with him, but he’ll do okay. Over and out!

Epiphany is about a manifestation, a revelation, an awakening, a showing. God, in Jesus Christ, is God’s foremost manifestation of the divine, and it is critical that Jesus is identified as being One with God. Therefore epiphany, manifestation, is really about identity. Who is this Jesus, what’s he about, and what’s he got to do with God?

Baptism was God’s way of naming and claiming Jesus as one of God’s own. Sorta like giving him his ID Card for the very first time. It didn’t change who he was, but it confirmed a whole lotta stuff. It’s the same way with baptism for us. We’ve gotten it into our heads that baptism is either some magic shield that protects us from all harm, or a secret potion that prevents us from screwing up life too much. Or we make it out to be so holy and lofty, that we think we could never live into it. It’s none of these things, but it’s so much more!

Baptism is an act, by an individual living in community, that both recognizes God’s blessings already given to all of God’s children AND calls us to live into that identity in new and ever more faithful ways. Like an ID card, baptism doesn’t change who you are, but it empowers you to be and to do more than you could do before.

But more than just recognizing who you are, baptism confers a lifetime vocation. Once you are baptized, you are and forever will be A Christian. Unlike a driver’s license, if you cut up your baptismal certificate, it doesn’t mean you have to or can stop being a Christian. Once you’ve acknowledged that you are that person who God sees you to be, you are stuck with it. Beloved Child Of God – for life! It may need renewal, but it will never expire!

So, if we’ve got it and we can’t get rid of it, then what does “A Baptized Life” look like?

Looking at the scriptures, I see at least three helpful aspects of what “A Baptized Life” involves: It is simple but not simplistic. It leads to prayer. It is risky. This is another way of hearing the voice of God saying, To be baptized is To Be Loved, To Be Chosen, and To Be Broken.

-- It is simple but it isn’t simplistic. To be baptized is to be loved.
Baptism uses a fundamental element of life, water, to confirm a complex and mysterious reality, Christian identity: we are God’s Beloved. I don’t believe we have to make our faith something gut-wrenching and mind-boggling, but I do think as we come out of the baptismal waters, we hear God’s voice within saying, as the Divine Parent said to Jesus, “This is my Beloved!” But in that love God expects us to continue to grow and learn and become more fully the person we can be. Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean you check your brain at the door and let “God do the driving.” No! Baptism is a starting place for a wonderful journey that will challenge our minds, our bodies, and our souls if we let it. God loves us: simple, yes, but never simplistic.

The second aspect of A Baptized Life is that:
--It leads quickly to prayer: To be baptized is to be chosen.

Mark’s account of the baptism of Jesus is the shortest and most direct. Baptism… Voice of God… “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” 1. 2. 3. Done. Luke’s account is just about as quick, but he adds an interesting little detail. He writes,“… and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying…” and then the Holy Spirit descended, as in the form of a dove.

Baptism is Jesus’ call to ministry. That is clear. But so is the fact that prayer is the first stop on the way to fulfill his calling. And this will be a common theme in Jesus life. He’ll pray before big events and after them. He’ll go up to the mountain to pray, he’ll pray on the open plains, and he’ll hide away to pray. He’ll pray in public, he’ll pray silently. If there is anything clear about the Baptized Life, it is that it is steeped in prayer and it invites God’s Holy Spirit.

Too often, we think that only minister’s are “called” to ministry. But this isn’t biblical at all. Baptism confers calling, and all baptized followers of Jesus are called, and therefore are ministers! And prayer as the first stop to our calling wasn’t just for Jesus, but for the believers in the early church, as well. In Acts the disciples were together in Jerusalem and were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” And like with Jesus, shortly after that prayer time the Holy Spirit come upon them. Luke wants us to see the connections. Barbara Lundblad says it well, “If Jesus prayed and the early believers prayed – well, I don’t know about you – but maybe I should spend more time praying rather than waiting for God to come like a bolt out of the blue.” (1)

Thirdly, A Baptized Life:
-- is risky, which is to say, we will be broken. We get just a taste of it here in today’s scripture, when we learn, almost as an aside, that John was shut up in prison by an enraged Herod. But we know the whole story, and we know that John would eventually be beheaded.

As I said before, Luke’s gospel isolates Jesus’ baptism just a wee bit from the context in which it takes place in Mark’s version. In Mark the wording that gives us a better sense of the risky nature of Baptism: “the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness.” It is there that the devil will tempt him. And, of course, we know the story well enough to know that this isn’t the most risky thing Jesus will do. He will confront the powers and principalities of his world, and ours, too, and receive the ultimate punishment for those who declare that “the emperor has no clothes:” death.

Baptism not only declares the simple but profound truth that we are God’s beloved, but it commissions us to a vocation, a calling, that will, in the words of Sarah Dylan Breuer, place us “in conflict with spiritual adversaries, the powers that seek to enslave us, dividing us from one another and from God, and with very human adversaries, rulers and others who benefit from that oppressive order and fragmentation.” (2)

To be baptized is to be broken. But this should not bring despair, but gratitude, for in Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians:

“We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (4:7-10)

Baptism means something: it means we have to take on a God-blessed vocation, a new identity… as a beloved, called, and risk-taking child of God. Taking on a new identity is never easy, but if done faithfully, it can have its rewards. For example, I heard on a National Public Radio segment on Thursday, January 11, 2007 a story by Dr. Steven Wartman.

His mother, following her husband’s death, was beginning to see more and more doctors, many of them specialists. She certainly had medical problems, but was not in need by any means of such massive amounts of medical attention. One day, while accompanying his mother to a visit with a doctor after a fall, Dr. Wartman realized that something else was going on. She was using doctors to fill the hole in her life from the death of her husband, and other family members.

Being a doctor himself, he realized that she could be a “professional patient,” called a “standardized patient” who helps medical school students in their work with patients. She interviewed, and was hired. Now, in a whole new chapter of her life an “actress patient” and has a new lease on life. (3)

What could have been an identity of heartache and loneliness, because of love, a sense of calling, and a little risk-taking, became an identity for new life. And here is the grace-filled mystery of a Baptized Life… it’s never linear, but comes full circle. To be loved is to be chosen, to be chosen is to be broken, to be broken is to be loved. If we allow God to be our guide and companion on this journey, if we see love as something simple and yet not simplistic, if our calling is guided by prayer, and if we risk being broken a little bit, we’ll again find we are loved.
 

“And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” (4)
 

Beloved, live fully into your baptized life for you have been chosen to risk living a broken life so that God’s love made be made real – to you, to me, to the world. Amen.

(1). The Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad, “The Baptism-Shaped Life” on Day 1 found at http://www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=596
(2) SarahLaughed.net lectionary blog, at http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2007/01/first_sunday_af.html
(3) Heard on Morning Edition at National Public Radio on Thursday, Januay 11, 2007. Find it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6806023 
(4) LITTLE GIDDING (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets') by T.S. Eliot





Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096