Why Not Stay Put?

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

In the days and weeks following Epiphany, we go back to the beginning and hear about how Jesus got his start in public ministry. On Sunday, it began with the baptism, and, in today's gospel lesson in the Two-Year Eucharistic Lectionary (Mark 1:29-39), we read about some of Jesus' early healings. The only miracle before this passage was the healing of a man with an unclean spirit, which, to the horror of the religious authorities, Jesus performed on the sabbath. As soon as they left the synagogue, Jesus and his disciples came to Simon's house, where Jesus performed his second miracle by raising Simon's mother-in-law from illness so that she could serve the guests in her house. Today, however, I want to focus on what happened next.

That evening, at sunset, when the sabbath was over, a great crowd gathered at the door of Simon's house in search of Jesus. "The whole city," Mark tells us, came with their sick and demon-possessed, looking for healing and exorcism. Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they recognized who he really was.

Jesus, it seems, was a family practice doctor with some psychiatric training as well. Imagine being able to go to one physician for all of your needs. Can you imagine having an internist, dermatologist, gastroenterologist, orthopedist, obstetrician, gynecologist, urologist, ophthalmologist, otolaryngologist, psychologist, and psychiatrist all rolled into one? It today's medical culture, we bounce from one to another to another, getting each little part of us examined and treated. Perhaps in rural areas, there are still generalists who do a little bit of everything, but, even in the remotest parts of our country, individuals are sent driving to see a specialist when something serious crops up. Not with Jesus. Mark tells us that Jesus "cured many who were sick with various diseases" as well as "cast out many demons."

Naturally, the practice of medicine was quite different in first-century Palestine. There were no otolaryngologists to speak of, but there were a variety of healers. Some were better than others, and some were known for particular things. If you had bad eyesight, you might go to this miracle worker. If you had bad gout, you might go to another. Jesus, however, wasn't practicing a pseudo-scientific art that he had learned as an apprentice. Jesus was and is the Great Physician. He heals us as only God can heal us--by making us whole.

Still, a part of me is surprised that Jesus didn't just stay put. With gifts like his--the ability to address any physical or mental or spiritual malady--why wouldn't you set up shop in one place and let the crowd come to you? This is just the beginning of his ministry, and already the entire city of Capernaum had heard about his talents. They flocked to his door. If you build it, they will come. Let the people come to him. Why pack up and move an operation like that from one town to another, where, again and again, he would need to establish himself as a master of the healing arts?

Early the next morning, when the disciples found Jesus alone and in a quiet place, they asked him why he had snuck off. "Everyone is searching for you," they said to him. "Your work is not finished. There are more sick people who need healing. Things are going so well. You can't stop now." But Jesus looked at them and said, "Pack it up. We're moving on. Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And Jesus went from one place to another throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons.

Why not stay put? Because Jesus did not come only to heal the sick whom he met. He came to heal all sickness. Why not set up shop and let the people come to him? Because God's work in Jesus is to meet us where we are--not to wait for us to come and find him. Jesus could have stayed in one place and healed everyone who came to him each day, every day, for his whole life. As word spread of this amazing healer, people would have come from all over to find him. His work would never have been finished. There would always be more people in line hoping for his miraculous touch. But, likewise, that work would never have been complete.

Jesus is the Great Physician. He is our healer. But the healing that he gives us is not merely a cure to an earthly ailment. Yes, sometimes Jesus does give us a miraculous healing from cancer or some other disease. Today's gospel lesson of healing is not merely a means to an end. Jesus confronts physical illness as well as the spiritual disease of sin. Jesus addresses our very mortality. Jesus attacks evil itself. In Jesus, God comes down to earth to bring true and lasting healing to creation. He makes all things whole. And he does that by seeking out the broken, the lost, and the marginalized. He accomplishes his work by searching for the sick, the friendless, and the needy. He brings healing by confronting the institutions of sin like greed, centralization of power, and preference for the privileged that have imprisoned God's people for all of human history. He does not wait for us in our sickness to find him. He comes and finds us. He brings us healing.

Looking Through the Lens of Baptism

Forgive the repetition, but the gospel lesson for this Sunday (John 1:29-42) is a lot like last Sunday's gospel lesson (Matthew 3:13-17). All three synoptic gospel accounts portray the inauguration of Jesus' public ministry with his baptism by John in the Jordan River. As I mentioned in the pulpit, even John's gospel account, which doesn't follow the others very closely, begins, in a way, with the baptism. This week, we read not the narrative of the event itself but John the gospel-writer's interpretation of the event through the words of John the baptizer.

When John saw Jesus approaching, he declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" That's quite an identification--one that surely shocked his hearers. The next day, when John makes the same bold statement, two of his disciples understand that as an invitation to break their allegiance with the baptizer and follow Jesus. Who can blame them? Why would someone follow the forerunner when the real thing is at hand? Except perhaps at a tapas bar, why would someone go to a fancy restaurant and order a meal but never get past the first course?

The remarkable thing about this passage and John's identification of Jesus as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" is that it is grounded in that baptism. To justify this connection, John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."

That verb "testify" is telling. In the Greek, that word is "ἐμαρτύρησεν," which is a form of "μαρτυρέω," which means "bear witness" and from which we get the word "martyr." This is John's witness. This is his proclamation. He saw the Spirit descend. God's voice told him that the one to receive the Spirit in this manner is the one who will baptize with that same Spirit. John made the connection and proclaimed boldly, "this is the Son of God."

What do we see in baptism? Last week, I wrote a lot about recognizing God's work of righteousness in the person of Jesus because of that baptismal moment when the voice declared, "This is my Son, the Beloved." This week, I feel drawn to that baptismal lens again, but this time John the Evangelist through John the Baptist helps us go a step further. Instead of standing at the water's edge and hearing God declare that this Jesus is going to carry out God's work, we hear John declare that this Jesus is going to carry out God's work of taking away the sins of the world. That's quite a stretch, but it starts, again, in Jesus' baptism.

How might a preacher engage the theology of the remission of sins through the waters of baptism in a sermon on John 1:29-42? How might we recognize through Jesus' baptism, through John's interpretation of that baptism, and through our own baptism that Jesus is the one who washes us clean? That sounds like a heavy, rich, difficult, powerful sermon in the making. This week, it's not mine to make, but I look forward to what the Spirit says to us on Sunday.

Five-Part Faith

In my former parish, the youth group leads a Feast of Lights service of light on the Sunday evening closest to the Epiphany. Celebrated in many parishes, this service marks how the light of Christ entered the world and spread to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the magi, John the Baptist, the twelve disciples, and so on. What makes the service particularly interesting to me is the transition from the biblical text to the Church's story as the light of the gospel spreads to the saints and martyrs of Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Candles are lit for Robert Hunt, the chaplain who came over with the first successful English colony at Jamestown, and David Pendleton Oakerhater, the Cheyenne artist who was ordained a deacon and served as a missionary in Oklahoma. Eventually, the congregation's candles are lit, and we process out into the street to proclaim our commitment to the gospel's continuing propagation.

In a way, the spirit of that service is captured in the collect for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany. It is not only the prayer we will pray this week. It is also an image of the faith we proclaim. Like most collects, it has five parts, and each of them is a reflection of how the gospel transforms us and the world.

"Almighty God..." - The address identifies the one to whom we make our prayer, and, in this case, it is simply God the Almighty. Notice that we aren't praying to the "Father," even though the next phrase will acknowledge explicitly the Son. God is the source of light--not only God the Father but the triune God.

"...whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world..." - The acknowledgment is my favorite part of a collect as it provides the theological warrant for the prayer. This is the thing that we believe about God (or us or the world) that becomes the foundation for our request. This is a statement of why we are directing this prayer to God in the first place, and, in this case, we are praying to God because God's Son is the light of the world. We believe that in the Incarnation God brings God's light to creation most fully. Jesus is how we see God's light. He is the basis for our relationship with God.

"...Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory..." The pleading is the actual request itself. This is what we are asking of God, and, in this case, we are asking that God's people (that's us), having had God's light shine on us through Word and Sacraments (more on that in a minute), may shine that light ourselves. I think it's interesting that we don't identify the recipients of this request as "we" but as "God's people." Of course that's us, but it's more than us. It's bigger than our parish, our tradition, our denomination. It's all of God's people. And this prayer assumes that those people have been illumined by the Word and Sacraments that we share and celebrate. This is study, reading, preaching, and proclamation. This is Baptism and the Lord's Supper. This prayer identifies the usual means by which God's people receive the light of the Incarnation through Word and Sacraments--the most basic two-fold piety of the Christian life. And the focus of our request is that we ourselves might therefore shine with the same brilliance as Christ himself. May God enable God's people, when fed by the Word and Sacraments, to reflect that light.

"...that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth..." My second favorite part of a collect is the aspiration--the "what are we asking this for?" part of the prayer. This is the "so that" part, which isn't found in all collects but, when it is, helps ground our prayer on an even larger foundation that the need we express. We're asking God to enable us to shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, but for what reason? So that that light might shine through us to the rest of the world until Christ is "known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth." This is evangelism. This is the sharing of the light of Christ. And, in this collect, it comes not from those who go to seminary and work as preachers. Nor does it come from those who dedicate their lives to serve as missionaries in far away places. That light is spread by the people of God who are immersed in God's Word and nourished by the Sacraments. This is the aspiration of the Christian life: to share the light of Christ with others.

"...through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever." The pleading wraps it up, but it is always worth remembering that we are not asking this prayer on our own but are pleading with God through God himself. God enables our prayers. We ask this through Christ. Our prayer is made to God through the channel/door/vehicle/relationship that we have in Christ. The image of the subject pleading before the powerful king is apt but only to a point. Because of Christ, our prayers are never brushed aside. They never fall on deaf ears. Through our baptism, we have been united with God through Christ, and our prayers are made to one who knows us and loves us as God's own.

This week, the lessons feel like a reflection of yesterday's lessons. We're back to another Servant Song in Isaiah. Jesus and John the Baptist are still talking about the baptism in the River Jordan. But this collect helps me remember that the light, which came to the world in the Incarnation, has come to us, and we are called to share it with the world. It does not shine only in the Incarnate One. We see it not only as Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism. It has come to us, and we must let our light shine so that others may see and know Christ as Lord.

God's Work of Making All Things Right

January 8, 2017 – The 1^st Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord

Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

© 2017 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

 

This week, as I read today’s gospel lesson, I encountered a peculiar phrase that didn’t quite make sense to me. Jesus came to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, but John objected, saying, “I need to be baptized by you—not the other way around.” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” What does that mean—fulfill all righteousness? The funny thing is that I know what each of the words mean—“righteousness” means “the condition of being right in God’s eyes” and “fulfill” means “complete” or “finish”—but, when you put the words together in this particular context, I lose track of what they mean. Fulfill all righteousness. In what way does Jesus’ baptism fulfill all righteousness?

If you read my blog at all this week, you know that I found an answer to that question in an unlikely place. I hardly ever use The Message version of the Bible. Unlike most translations, including the NRSV, which we use in church on Sunday mornings, The Message is a paraphrase, which means that it often leaves behind the actual words and phrases of the biblical text, substituting idioms that, in the opinion of the author, are easier to understand in contemporary English. Because of that, the text that it gives us is highly readable but inevitably reflects the interpretive biases of the author to a greater extent than a word-for-word or thought-for-thought translation. But I was desperate to make sense of this phrase, and none of the standard translations gave me any help. But The Message broke it open in a way that felt like a light being switched on in a dark room.

In The Message, Matthew 3:15 reads, “But Jesus insisted. ‘Do it. God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.’ So John did it.” Instead of “it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” it reads, “God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.” If that isn’t clear and right, I don’t know what is.

For thousands of years, God had been in the business of making things right. He called Abraham and promised to make of him a great nation, through which the light of salvation would spread to all peoples. Through Moses, God set his people free from captivity in Egypt, gave them the Law, and brought them to the Promised Land. Over and over, God sent the prophets to remind God’s people to be faithful and to call them to repent when they weren’t and to bring them hope when they were surrounded by darkness. And, finally, God sent his Son into the world to bring all of that making-things-right together, and right there, on the banks of the Jordan River, in this moment of Jesus’ baptism, God was at long last making that righteousness a reality. It makes me wish that I had been there to see it and hear it. Then again, perhaps in a way I was, and so were you.

When Jesus came up from the water, he looked up into the sky and saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then, a voice from heaven proclaimed, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And so began the public life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth—son of Joseph the carpenter, rabbi, prophet, healer, rebel. Of course, there were other rabbis and prophets and healers and rebels back then. But this baptism showed the world that Jesus was different. As God’s beloved Son, Jesus didn’t just do godly work; he did God’s work. Welcoming outcasts, eating with sinners, touching lepers, proclaiming forgiveness of sins—this was all the fulfillment of God’s plan. But there’s more to it than that. Betrayed by one of his own disciples, arrested by the religious authorities, tried and convicted, tortured and executed—this was the means by which God’s work of making all things right would be accomplished. In that way, Jesus not only showed us the way the world is supposed to be. He made it the way that it’s supposed to be. By living and dying and rising again, Jesus established God’s all-things-right-ness, God’s righteousness. And it all got its start right here in the waters of baptism.

In all three synoptic gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus’ ministry is inaugurated by baptism in the River Jordan. Even John’s account, which doesn’t follow the others very closely, goes out of its way to mention Jesus’ baptism in the first chapter, right as his ministry is getting started. This moment, when Jesus comes out of the water and the Spirit comes down and the voice declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” this is the moment when God says to the world, “In my Son Jesus, I am finally making all things right. He is the one to show you the way that the world is supposed to be. He is the one to make it happen.” And, when we come up out of the waters of our own baptism, we, too, hear God say to us, “You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter. You are now a part of my making all things right.”

Baptism is how each of us gets our own new start. It’s how God begins his ministry within each of us. Through Baptism, we are united with Jesus in his death and raised with him to new life. By uniting us with his Son, God makes all things right within us. The dog-eat-dog, to-each-his-own, I’ll-get-mine-you-get-yours mentality that is so strong within us and within the world washes away, and we discover instead our place in God’s economy of the-first-shall-be-last, the-weak-are-made-strong, the-poor-become-rich, the-dead-are-raised-to-new-life. Our biology is too strong for us to discover that other-worldly truth on our own. We need God’s help. We need him to enable us to start over on his terms. We need Jesus to make us new. We need Baptism.

But Baptism isn’t only about us. It’s about us and something bigger. It’s about accepting the call to take our place as a part of God’s work of making all things right. God’s righteousness may have been fulfilled in Jesus, but, when we look around, we see that that righteousness still needs to grow and spread because the world isn’t the way it is supposed to be. The world does not know the fullness of God’s making-all-thing-right love in Jesus Christ. And I’m not talking about taking the gospel to the deepest, darkest jungles on the planet. I mean establishing God’s justice right here in our own community where it still has not taken hold fully.

Jesus broke bread with sinners. Jesus brought good news to the poor. Jesus proclaimed release to the captives and freedom for the oppressed. When we look to Jesus, we see God’s vision for the way things are supposed to be. It is too small a thing for that justice to be reserved for those who have the inside track on religion. In Jesus’ baptism, God’s righteousness wasn’t being fulfilled for a select few. It was being fulfilled for all people. And, when you were baptized, you were made a part of that fulfillment. Because of Jesus, God has established his righteousness within you. It started with your Baptism, but it continues today. As a baptized child of God, God is calling you to work for his kingdom until that righteousness is made a reality across the globe, starting right here in our own hometown. Will you accept that call? Will you say yes to God’s righteousness?

There is no more appropriate day to be baptized than today. We don’t often do “altar calls” in the Episcopal Church, but today we’re going to do a “font call.” If you have never been baptized before and you feel God calling you to be a part of his centuries-old work of making all things right, which God brought to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, now is the perfect moment for you to be baptized into this faith. Would anyone like to be baptized today? Nothing would give this congregation more joy than to stop right now and celebrate that new beginning with you.

Most of us have already been baptized, but that does not mean that we do not have a call to answer. In just a moment, all of us will have the opportunity to answer again God’s call to be a part of his work of righteousness by renewing the promises made at our baptism. Listen to the questions that are asked of you. Hear how they ask whether you are willing to be a part of what God is doing in the world through his son Jesus Christ. And if you are willing—if your answer is yes—then say it with your whole heart: “I will with God’s help.”

What Sort of Servant?

In the collect for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we pray to our "Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit." As I wrote about on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, that proclamation--that identification of Jesus as God's beloved Son--is the key to understanding Jesus' baptism. Why was Jesus baptized? To show us that in him God was bringing his centuries-old work of righteousness to its fulfillment. If we listen for it, we can hear more echoes of that identification in the other readings for this Sunday.

Isaiah 42:1-9 sticks out to us because we typically think of it as a Lenten reading. Appointed both for Epiphany 1A and for Monday in Holy Week, these words tell us of God's servant "in whom [God's] soul delights." This is the servant who "will bring forth justice to the nations" but will do so without using his voice to cry out in the streets as a typical prophet would. So gentle is this bringer of justice that he would not even quench a flickering, dimly burning candle. Remember that "justice" and "righteousness" are synonymous.

For thousands of years, God's people have asked who the servant depicted in these servant poems is. Is it Cyrus, the Persian leader who set God's people free from the Babylonian exile? Is it Cyrus' prophetic successor, who picked up the mantle when Cyrus' leadership disappointed God's people? Is it Israel? Is it Jesus? For me, when I hear the words of Deutero-Isaiah, I sense a historical particularity of which I am unaware--likely Cyrus and his successors--but I also sense a generic foreshadowing that resonates with the story of Jesus. In other words, these servant poems are not specifically about Jesus, but they point to a type of righteousness-fulfilling servant that Jesus enshrines.

Read the words of Isaiah 42 and think of Jesus' ministry. Jesus set God's people free. He brought light to the nations. He opened the eyes of the blind--literally and metaphorically. He brought the captives out of the prison of darkness. He brought the glory of the Lord to the earth. In all these ways, he established God's righteousness through his ministry, death, and resurrection. And it all starts with his baptism.

In all the synoptic accounts, baptism by John in the River Jordan is the first public act of Jesus' ministry. This is how everything gets started. And it starts this way because it is at the river that we hear God declare Jesus as his beloved Son, his beloved servant. This identification is more than a mantle of authority. It is a reflection of centuries of prophecy. Jesus is the righteousness-establishing servant whom God has sent to the world. As he emerges from the waters of baptism, we hear and see that identity, enabling us to recognize it throughout his ministry in his words, his miracles, and in the peculiar company that he keeps. The question in my mind isn't whether we can see who this Jesus is. God's voice makes that pretty clear. My question is whether we can see that the work of Jesus and, thus, that of his followers is to establish that justice.

Sign of Something

In yesterday's post, I stumbled upon The Message's rendering of Matthew 3:15: "But Jesus insisted. 'Do it. God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.' So John did it." It's a beautifully contemporary and theologically significant way of stating what most translations render as "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." I was looking for a clearer way of understanding what it means to fulfill all righteousness, and I found it. It's God's work of putting everything right, which God has been doing for all these centuries. But that left me with another, bigger challenge: how is Jesus' baptism the "coming together" of that work?

I haven't had reason to explore it much since I've been in parish ministry, but I remember Jesus' baptism being a theological problem back in seminary. Why was Jesus baptized? John's baptism was one of repentance. But Jesus didn't need to repent. Part of what we symbolize in the waters of baptism is the undoing of Adam's sin, but Jesus did not need the otherwise indelible stain original sin to be blotted off his soul. Jesus didn't have that stain. So why was he baptized? Jesus didn't need to receive the Holy Spirit. He was (and is) God Incarnate. Before he went below the waters of the River Jordan, he was already fully endued with God's Spirit. So why was he baptized?

Some suggest that Jesus' baptism was to create a pattern for the rest of us. If Jesus was baptized, so should we be baptized. I don't know that there's anything wrong with that except that it seems an awfully empty reading of that moment. Something happened at the River Jordan. The skies were opened, and, depending on which gospel account we read (this year it's Matthew's), Jesus and possibly the crowd, too, saw the Holy Spirit come down and alight on him. A voice proclaimed Jesus as God's beloved son. That seems more than an example worth following.

Some heretics theorize that this was the moment when he fully became God's Son. But that's adoptionism. It denies the fullness of the Incarnation. It unravels the prophecy given to Mary by Gabriel that the child to grow in her womb would be a holy child conceived by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was God's Son from before the beginning. But that doesn't mean that nothing happened when Jesus was baptized. So what was it?

All three synoptic accounts portray this moment. John's gospel refers to it. It was an important part of the tradition. Those scholars who read the New Testament from a historical-critical perspective suggest that Jesus was baptized because his ministry was an outgrowth of John's ministry, and they think that the narrative associated with the baptism was invented by the early church to explain why the sinless Son of God would have gone to John for a baptism of repentance. How thoroughly uninspired! Although I don't buy the historical-critical approach to the gospel, I think there is another way to describe Jesus' baptism that has the potential to bridge traditional and scholastic readings.

Even if nothing changed for Jesus in the waters of baptism, something changed for us--for those who look upon Jesus of Nazareth and see the Son of God. There have been many prophets, teachers, leaders, and healers in the history of God's people, but there has only been one Incarnate Son of God. Several historical figures have been labeled "messiah," but only one was God-Among-Us. Could we see a difference? If we had met Jesus and heard him preach and saw him work miracles, could we tell that he was more than a powerful prophet? Would we know that he was God's own Son? When Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit comes upon him--not in a way that changes who he is but in a way that signifies to us that God is doing something different. When the voice from heaven proclaims, "This is my beloved Son," the whole world recognizes that in Jesus of Nazareth God's work is being fulfilled.

Part of me thinks it's a little disappointing to see that dramatic moment reduced to a divine telegram, suggesting that the moment doesn't really make a difference, but the power of the moment is bound up in what God is communicating to the world through Jesus' baptism. Without this sign, would we see that the one who fraternizes with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners was doing so as a way to establish God's righteousness? Without the voice from heaven, would we see that the one who touches lepers and women with menstrual discharges transmits God's purity rather than contracting ritual defilement? Without this theophany, would we see that the Crucified One is not only subjected to a tragic death but through that death is accomplishing God's plan?

Jesus is baptized for the rest of us. What happens at the River Jordan doesn't change Jesus; it changes us. In this moment, we see that God's work of making all things right comes to fruition in the person of Jesus. Whether it's Jesus' or ours, baptism opens us up to be a part of that work. It sets us on the plane of righteousness that God has unfolded in the Incarnation. I suspect that Sunday's sermon will be a bridge between Jesus' baptism and our own, but it starts with what happened at the River Jordan all those years ago. This is how we see and recognize and realize what God is doing in Jesus. May that work take hold in us completely.

Fulfill All Righteousness?

My family and I went out of town for a few days around the new year, and I didn't look at any of my friends' and colleagues' blogs yesterday, but I hope that sometime between now and Sunday someone will tackle "fulfill all righteousness" because in Sunday's gospel lesson (Matthew 3:13-17) it sticks out like a sore thumb.

It's the First Sunday after the Epiphany, which means we're celebrating Jesus' baptism. Since it's Year A in the lectionary cycle, we get to hear Matthew's version of this encounter between cousins. Jesus comes to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, and John says to him, "I need to be baptized by you--not the other way around." And Jesus responds, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." When John hears those words, he nods and says something like, "Whatever you say, Boss." But the rest of us hear it and say, "Excuse me? What did you say?"

It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus being baptized by John was a necessary part of fulfilling all righteousness. In those three words, the whole significance of this encounter seems to be held, and it's worth the preacher spending a little time unpacking those words before climbing into the pulpit on Sunday.

Righteousness, of course, is a noun that means "rightstandingness." Righteous people are those who are OK in God's eyes--just fine, copacetic, balanced. Righteousness is that state of right-standing. In that way, the Greek word "δικαιοσύνη" also means "justice" or "justness." This is the "everything-is-just-the-way-it-is-supposed-to-be" state that God would have us inhabit. There are lots of other passages about that righteousness and Jesus' role in establishing it on earth, and they should come to mind here (e.g. "the poor have good news preached to them"), but that still leaves us with the question of why Jesus' baptism has anything to do with it.

A comparison of other translations helps us make common, contemporary sense of that phrase "fulfill all righteousness," but most translations fail to help us understand its theological significance in words that make sense to us. The NRSV, ESV, NIV, and CEB all use "fulfill all righteousness." The CEV aims for readability at the loss of theological significance: "For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do." Yes, we understand that this is what God wants us to do, but how and why is the baptism related? At least "fulfills all righteousness" helps us understand that the act of baptism is somehow the culmination of that righteousness-brining work.

And then there's The Message. Because it is not a translation but a paraphrase, I only use The Message when I'm stuck or when I want to ruffle some feathers. This time, however, the authors of The Message get it right: "But Jesus insisted. 'Do it. God's work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.' So John did it."

That's perfect! Righteousness is God's work--divine action--of setting everything right. God's work is to lift up the downtrodden, rescue the oppressed, set the prisoner free, and bring good news to the poor. God's work is to set the world back the way God created it to be. And The Message helps us see that AND see that Jesus' baptism is the "coming together" of all that work.

Now, the preacher needs to ask how. How is Jesus' baptism the "coming together" of God's work of righteousness? That's a post for tomorrow and a sermon for Sunday.