In the nineteen eighties film
Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall plays Mac, a down on his luck country
music singer/songwriter who has been fighting a long and not very successful
battle with the bottle. One day, a sympathetic young widow offers him room
and board in return for help at her shabby roadside motel. Over time,
somehow, some way, grace begins to intrude into Mac’s life to the point that
one bright day he along with the widow’s son, Sonny decide its high time
they were baptized. Driving back home from the river after the baptism,
Sonny says to him, “Well, we done it, Mac. We was baptized.” Pausing for a
moment to examine himself in the rearview mirror Sonny continues the
thought. “Everybody said I’d feel like a changed person. Do you feel like
a changed person, Mac?”
“No, not yet.” Mac replies.
To which Sonny responds, “Well, you don’t look
any different Mac. Do you think I look any different?”
“Not yet. Not yet” is all that Mac can say.
As he comes up out of the water after his own
baptism, Sonny’s observation about Mac might well apply to Jesus, at least
to the unenlightened eye. To the crowds of people from the “whole Judean
countryside” he probably looked the same as he did before, just another
nameless face in the crowd who’d come to see for himself what all the fuss
was about. A little bit wet behind the ears, but aside from that, no
difference at all!
But we have the benefit of an entirely
different perspective. We are afforded eyes and ears to behold what only
Jesus himself can. “And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he
saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
And a voice from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well
pleased.’” So, why are we privy to all the goings on at the River Jordan?
Still, even with all that we do know, does Jesus really any different? Not
yet. Not yet. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
In a way, hearing the story of Jesus’ baptism
in Mark is like being let in on a secret. We are privy to privileged
information, to an intimate exchange between a Father and his beloved Son.
Now, in some ways being let in on a secret can be a good thing. After all,
isn’t there something satisfying in knowing something that others don’t
know? Some friends tell us that they’re going to have a baby, but we can’t
say anything until after they make their big announcement to everyone else.
We’re invited to our brother in law’s surprise birthday party and told not
to let on that we know so he won’t suspect a thing. I remember the day when
one of my seminary classmates showed me the ring that he was going to
propose with later that week. But he told me, “Now Brian, you can’t let on
you know anything, okay.” It can feel good to know a secret, to have
someone let us in on something that most other people don’t know. It makes
us feel important, special, connected with another person in an almost
exclusive kind of way.
On the other hand it’s not always a good thing
to know a secret, because sometimes there are things we’d maybe just as soon
not know about. We hear that someone we’ve worked with for a long time is
about to be fired. We inadvertently stumble upon a neighbor’s infidelity.
A friend unfolds a horrific story of her abuse at the hands of someone she
trusted. To be perfectly honest, there are times knowing a secret can be a
heavy burden, one that we’d do anything not to have to carry it with us, to
somehow find a way to let it go. So, knowing what we do about Jesus’
baptism, is it a good thing or not? At this stage of the game, maybe it’s
hard to tell, at least not yet.
To be privy to the secret is to behold the
tearing, the rending, the ripping apart of the heavens, not the kind of
gentle “opening up” as if the sun were beginning to peek out after a gentle
spring show, but violent, earth shaking stuff. It’s the same kind of
heavenly tearing witnessed at the end of Jesus’ earthly life, as he breathes
his last and the curtain of the temple is torn in two. Of course we live in
unsettled and violent times where the daily headlines are filled with
stories of tearing, rending and ripping apart—more US soldiers killed by a
roadside bomb in Iraq, tens of thousands of people still struggling from the
catastrophic Gulf Coast hurricanes last year, the continuing cycle of murder
and mayhem on the streets of our cities and neighborhoods, lives torn apart
by alcohol and drugs, the destruction of families through domestic violence
and the tragedy of divorce. And if somehow we think we’ve managed to “hold
things” together do we not all struggle with feelings of guilt and regret
for the ways we’ve treated others, of things said and unsaid, of thing done
and left undone, feelings that finally leave us utterly “torn up” inside?
So, there is a sense of unease, even danger as
we witness the “tearing apart” of the heavens at Jesus’ baptism, a sense
that things may well be out of control. Indeed, the moment that Jesus rises
up from the water marks the beginning of something new, a change in the way
that God chooses to deal with the likes of us and with the world. Before
now, close encounters with God could prove costly, even deadly. A person
couldn’t behold the face of God and hope to live. So, God made sure to keep
a safe distance from us—in a burning bush, in a box, behind a curtain. But
now, as Jesus is baptized that protective layer has begun to fray around the
edges to the point that now God is on the loose. It’s just that here at the
Jordan no one knows but God, Jesus and us. The time will come though, when
Jesus will breathe his last from the cross, when the tear in the fabric will
be complete and all will be accomplished. Now there’s nothing to stop him,
to contain him or hold him back. And chances are, we’ll be surprised to see
where Jesus shows up.
Edwina Gately speaks to the reality of a “God
on the loose” in a parable. “Once upon a time, we captured God and we put
God in a box and we put a beautiful velvet curtain around the box. We
placed candles and flowers around the box and we said to the poor and
dispossessed, ‘Come! Come and see what we have! Come and
see God!’ And they knelt before the God in the box. One day, very long
ago, the Spirit in the box turned the key from inside and she pushed it
open. She looked around in the church and saw that there was nobody there!
They had all gone. Not a soul was in the place. She said to herself, ‘I’m
getting out!’ The Spirit shot out of the box. She escaped and has been
sighted a few times since. She was last seen with a bag lady in
McDonald’s.”
The news that “God is on the loose” can come
as awfully bad news to be sure, especially those who think that faith is
exclusively about having Jesus come into our hearts to be our own personal
savior, on our own terms, in a way that validates our views and assumptions
about the world and about God. A God who dares to break in and intrude into
our lives in ways that would cramp our style or call into question “the way
thing have always been” and the way we think things ought to be, a God who
would be so presumptuous as to call us to repent and turn away from our sins
is a God we’d just as soon not have to deal with.
But if indeed God is on the loose then
nothing, not even sinners like us can keep Jesus from completing the work he
was sent to accomplish and that is probably the best news that anyone could
ever hear. It’s safe to say that when Jesus stepped out of the water, he
didn’t look any different—no heavenly aura, no snow white halo, no chorus of
angels singing loud “hosannas”. And yet in that moment the world is changed
forever. And through our own baptism, our lives are changed forever too, as
the Father is connected to the Son, so are we connected to him. “Therefore
we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.” Its like the story of someone jumping in to a raging
river to save others, but in so doing gives up his own life. In baptism, we
meet the one who goes into the water for us, who gives up his life to save
ours from the torrent of sin and death.
Ready or not, the Lord, our Lord has
come and nothing can hold him back, nothing will separate us from his great
love for us, “neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation.”
There’s a hymn in the blue
With One Voice hymnal with a not so great tune, but with really great
words, words that reveal the fullness of God’s truth for all. “He came to
share temptation, our utmost woe and loss, for us and our salvation to die
upon the cross. So when the dove descended on him, the Son of Man, the
hidden years had ended, the age of grace began.” Now the secret is out, for
all to hear. Let us proclaim that the “age of grace has begun”. In us,
through us, may God’s grace abound. Amen.
