Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 9, 2005
Matthew 3: 13-17
Whenever I encounter this familiar text of the baptism of Jesus, I am reminded of my favorite scene from the film, Tender Mercies. In the film, Robert Duvall plays Mac, a down-on-his-luck country songwriter fighting a mostly losing battle with the bottle. He fights back with the help of a young widow who offers him room and board at her roadside Texas motel in exchange for handyman help. Along the way, grace and hope establish a beachhead in Mac’s troubled heart and eventually he and Sonny, the widow’s young boy, decide to be baptized. After the big event, driving home in Mac’s truck, Sonny says to him, “Well, we done it, Mac, we was baptized.” Peering into the truck’s rearview mirror, Sonny studies himself for a moment, then says, “You don’t look any different, Mac. Do you think I look any different?” “Not yet,” answers Mac. Sonny continues, “Everyone said I’d feel like a changed person. Do you feel like a changed person?” Again Mac answers, “Not yet…not yet.”
I can identify with Sonny and Mac, with that feeling of “not yet.” I want to feel changed, I want to live each day feeling God’s spirit and blessing in my heart, I want to live without guilt, fear or anxiety, replacing them with feelings of faith and trust. I want to feel all of that. And yet, more often than not, what I really feel is, “not yet...not yet.” It may come, but not yet.
The story is told of a tall, grim-looking man who stood on a street corner in the Chicago Loop, glaring at the passing throng. Every once in a while he would raise his right arm, point to someone in the crowd and say one word, “Guilty!” Then he’d lower his arm and stand there until he singled out someone else, and would again raise his arm again and say, “Guilty!” One man, who had been singled out for this word of judgment, turned to his companion and said, “How did he know?”
We want the word of grace, of acceptance and love. But more often than not, I fear, what we get in this broken world of ours is the word, “Guilty!” – a word of judgment, of failure, of inadequacy, incompetence, lack of acceptance. And it takes its toll. Henri Nouwen, that great saint of the church, wrote, “Somewhere in us an enormous temptation is lurking, maybe the greatest temptation in life – that of self-rejection. It is one of the most painful sufferings: ‘I’m no good…I’m not wanted…I’m really not desired.’ I wonder if anyone lives his or her life without that feeling coming up somewhere. ‘I’m not chosen…I’m not seen…I’m not unique or precious in somebody’s eyes…I’m just one of many.’ A lot of anger, violence and war come out of that place where we do not believe we are chosen. We don’t believe we’re seen in our uniqueness, in our preciousness.”
Two buffalo were grazing out on the range. A cowboy rode up to one of them, got off his horse and said, “You are the ugliest, dirtiest, smelliest animal I have ever seen.” Then he got on his horse and rode away. The buffalo watched him go, turned to its companion and said, “I thought out here we were never suppose to hear a discouraging word.” But Nouwen’s point is that as we move through life, we do in fact hear a lot of discouraging words – words that wound, that wring us out, that exclude and reject, that call into question our worth as human beings; words that can make us forget who we are, words that can make us forget that God continues to dwell in and among us, words that can lead us into a kind of spiritual amnesia. I once saw a report from Oakland of a young black woman, trapped in the welfare bureaucracy, who stood up in an interview room and cried out, “I am not a statistic. I am not a nothing. I am a person.” Ever felt like screaming that in a world where so often we are nothing more than an account number? Where you go through a telephone menu and never find a human voice? Spiritual amnesia. It is so easy to forget who we are and whose we are. What can help us remember?
“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Could it be that the same words spoken by God to Jesus are spoken to each of us? Could it be that we, too, are God’s beloved? And if so, would that, could that, make a difference? It would seem it did for Jesus. I once heard it said that Jesus went into the waters of the Jordan a carpenter and came out a Messiah. Now one could argue the theology of that – just when did Jesus become the Messiah – but there is no doubt that at baptism his life takes a turn in a new direction. His ministry begins and he never looks back. And what sustains him along the way? Henri Nouwen: “When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan a voice from heaven said, ‘You are my beloved’…Jesus walked through life loved by people, admired by people, but also hated, rejected, crucified, tortured, but he lived it all as the beloved. What we see in Jesus’ life is a holding on to that vision, that knowledge, to that truth. And what we need to cling to is that we are as beloved as Jesus.”
Who are you? Where does your worth as a person come from? Do you derive your worth from what others think about you, what they say about you, what you own, what you accomplish, where you live? I’ll tell you – the world out there, the market economy, the principalities and powers, sure hope your answer is yes. Because then they have you. They can pretty well define for you and your children what makes you worthy, valuable, important. Think about it. Commercial messages will attempt to convince us that we are owned by a great economic machine whose purpose is to make us into voracious consumers. Government will attempt in myriad ways to establish its ultimate claim on us and our allegiance. How easily, how meekly we yield ourselves and our young men and women to Caesar and to whatever imperial adventures or misadventures Caesar contrives. Other voices will attempt to convince us that we actually belong to no one but ourselves, that radical individualism is the supreme god. But is that all we are? What they say us we are?
“You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” What if we listen to that voice? Says Nouwen: “When you can hear God’s voice and hear that you are the beloved and act out of that truth, a whole new world opens up for you; a spiritual world where there is freedom to walk and live the life Jesus calls us to live; an anxiety free world where we don’t have to worry what will I say or what will I do. We can rest in the fact that we are the beloved…Listen as God says to you: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have called you before you were born. I have knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have written your name in the palm of my hand. You belong to me as I belong to you, and I will never leave you …I will continue to love you even after you have finished your life on earth.”
Ah, to be able to accept that precious identity. Do you feel the freedom here, the possibility? We are the beloved. We don’t have to be so fearful about measuring up to some worldly standard. In God’s eyes we already measure up. We don’t have to be so fearful about earning or deserving love. We are already loved. We are free. We are free to forgive, we are free to reach out to others, we are free to take great risks for justice and peace, free to be as inclusive as our UCC ads say we are, we are free to be joyful even when the world doesn’t seem a very joyful place. We are the beloved. That is our true identity. Finally, the principalities and powers have no power over us. Oh, they think they do, but they don’t because God’s creative and loving force is continually birthing us, claiming us, renewing us.
We’re back to where we began. “Do you feel like a changed person?” “Not yet.” And as I told you, I often feel that “not yet,” and I am fearful and uncertain and doubt my worth. But there are times when I look into that rearview mirror and see a watermark, almost a permanent tattoo, reminding me of my baptism. Reminding me of the One who calls me to be the beloved son with whom God is well-pleased.