Reverend Ian Doescher

The First Sunday of Epiphany

Passing through the grocery store this past week, I saw People Magazine’s cover headline, probably intended as a way to shock us into the new year.  The headline said “Scandals! That Rocked America,” and it was accompanied by pictures of Britney Spears, O.J. Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Hugh Grant, and other famous people who, as the subtitle of the headline said, “made bad choices.”  These, evidently, are the scandals! that rocked America in the past twenty years.

It is something of a buzzword these days among modern Christians to refer to the scandal of the gospel, the scandal of Jesus Christ.  Mostly, the word scandal is used as a way to jar us out of thinking of Christianity as a safe movement, to keep us from associating Christ with Thomas Kinkade paintings and cute drawings of baby angels instead of a world-upturning revolution.  To recognize Christianity as a scandal is to realize that Jesus changes everything in this life.

I confess, though, that on a day-to-day basis I don’t think of Christianity as a scandal.  The Christian life does tend to feel pretty safe, and frankly I like it that way.  Give me People Magazine, baby angels and Thomas Kinkade, wrap it up with a bow, put a candle on it and I’m pretty satisfied.

“When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.  And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”  If you’ve read my Pastor Place note for today, you know that this is the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and the first three gospel readings in the season of Epiphany represent three times when Jesus is revealed.  The first reading, on the feast of Epiphany, January 6th, is the story of the magi coming to see Jesus, and of God revealing Jesus to them then.  The first Sunday of Epiphany, which is today, is traditionally known as “Baptism of the Lord” Sunday, the day when we remember Jesus’ visit to John the Baptist, and the voice from heaven that reveals Jesus as the Son of God.  And finally, next week we will hear the story of the wedding at Cana in John 2, when Jesus performs his first miracle and is revealed to the wedding guests as one with power from God.  So in these three readings—the magi, Jesus’ baptism, and the miracle at Cana—we have something like Jesus’ coming out party, Jesus’ introduction to the world.  This tidy schedule of readings repeats from year to year, and so even God’s revelation of Jesus has becoming something safe and predictable.

But something was different this year.  As I read Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism, my imagination starting running wild filling in the parts of the story that Luke leaves out.  In the beginning of chapter 2 of Luke, Jesus is born, and at the end of chapter 2 we find twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, teaching the rabbis and amazing everyone with his knowledge.  The last sentence of Luke 2 is “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”  Then chapter 3 starts, and we hear all about John the Baptist’s arrival, and then a few verses later, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus comes to John the Baptist.  Now, it is fairly traditional to put Jesus’ age when he began his ministry at thirty, and his death at age thirty-three.  (And let me add, as an aside, that for someone whose thirty-third birthday is approaching this year, comparing what I’ve done in my life so far to what Jesus did in his is a pretty sad endeavor.)  Right after today’s gospel passage, we hear that “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.”  So if we know Jesus was thirty when he was baptized, and the last thing we heard about him was when he was twelve, it raises the question—at least for me—of what happened in those eighteen years.  I’m the sort of person who has to fill in the plot holes, the sort of person who watches even the most ridiculous movie and wants to figure out a way to make it work out logically in my mind.  This gets particularly difficult with any movie that involves time travel.  So I look at the years between Jesus’ birth and Jesus at age twelve, and then the eighteen years between Jesus at age twelve and his baptism, and I wonder: what was happening all that time?  What was our savior up to that didn’t get recorded?  Of course, I’m not the only one to have thought about this.  One of my favorite examples of filling in the holes comes from an ancient document called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.  The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is one of the tellings of Jesus’ life that didn’t make it into our biblical canon, one of the works that was, in a manner of speaking, left on the cutting room floor.  But one of the stories from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas imagines the parts of Jesus’ life we don’t hear about in the canonical gospels, and it goes like this: “When the boy Jesus was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream.  And he gathered the disturbed water into pools and made them pure and excellent, commanding them by the character of his word alone and not by means of a deed.  Then, taking soft clay from the mud, he formed twelve sparrows… And a certain Jew, seeing the boy Jesus with the other children doing these things, went to his father Joseph and falsely accused the boy Jesus, saying that, on the Sabbath he made clay, which is not lawful, and fashioned twelve sparrows.  And Joseph came and rebuked him, saying, ‘Why are you doing these things on the Sabbath?’  But Jesus, clapping his hands, commanded the birds with a shout in front of everyone and said, ‘Go, take flight, and remember me, living ones.’  And the sparrows, taking flight, went away squawking…  And the son of Annas the scribe had come with Joseph.  And taking a willow twig, he destroyed the pools and drained out the water which Jesus had gathered together.  And he dried up their gatherings.  And Jesus, seeing what had happened, said to him, ‘Your fruit (shall be) without root and your shoot shall be dried up like a branch scorched by a strong wind.’
 And instantly that child withered.  While Jesus was going from there with his father Joseph, a child running tore into his shoulder.  And Jesus said to him, ‘You shall no longer go our way.’  And instantly the child died.”  Talk about scandalous.  This is nothing like the Jesus we expect—instead, this five-year-old version of Jesus seems pretty impressed with his own power and takes it out on whomever he likes—including his father and other children.  Forget about the fifth and sixth commandments, about honoring parents and not murdering.  Maybe it’s no wonder the Infancy Gospel of Thomas didn’t make the cut.  It’s definitely not the Jesus we expect, even if he is only five years old.

But my point here is that we are naturally curious about what happens in the parts of Jesus’ life we don’t hear about.  And when I read Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism, I was struck by the way the story is told: “The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ.”  And then, “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.”  What is going on for Jesus when he is baptized?  What goes through his mind?  If you read the gospel of John or even the gospel of Matthew, Jesus seems to have a much clearer sense of his own purpose than here in Luke, where Jesus seems like one of the crowd, one of the many people who have heard about John and want to see what’s happening.  Here is where I start filling in the story, and whenever I think about Jesus I imagine him with utterly human qualities—qualities we don’t necessarily associate with a Lord and Savior—so bear with me.

Jesus knows about his auspicious beginnings, he has heard the story of his miraculous birth, a story that has become so familiar in his family that it almost feels unreal, as though it’s about someone else.  He remembers being a boy in the temple, talking with the other teachers and being fascinated with the discussion.  Like any gifted child, he doesn’t realize how remarkable it is that he was teaching grown men, he is just naturally curious and enjoyed a good talk among new friends.  And now eighteen years have passed.  He has been told by his parents and by others that he will be a great person, but he doesn’t feel different, and so far his life—beyond the strange events of his birth and his twelve-year-old experience in the temple—his life doesn’t seem extraordinary.  Like many of his friends, he learned his father’s trade and took over the family business.  He has been a carpenter, happily producing the finest tables, cabinets and counters this side of Galilee.  And then one day, as he goes about his business, he hears a rumor.  He hears about a man who has been preaching the word of God in the wilderness, off in the countryside around the river Jordan.  And Jesus is curious.  Because for his whole adult life, at least since his experience in the temple at twelve, Jesus had thought he might end up being a preacher.  He heard the call, he had the intelligence.  But one thing led to another, and he took the safe route of learning carpentry and leading a fairly normal life.  Maybe we can even go a step farther and say that, like Jonah, he heard God’s call and has hidden from it, hidden from God’s call not by running away but by burying himself in what we might today call a comfortable middle class lifestyle.  But then Jesus hears these rumors, rumors of a person who is preaching about God, a person who may just be the Messiah, the Christ, the Holy One of Israel.  And there’s a twinge of sadness, or regret, or maybe even jealousy, because Jesus wonders, “Could that have been me?  Wasn’t I supposed to be the special one?”  So in his curiosity, Jesus drops everything one day and heads out to the wilderness to see this preacher.  And he hears John’s message: “You brood of vipers!” John rants, “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  Jesus hears these words and is stirred by the sure conviction that he is witnessing a prophet of God.  But then John says something Jesus doesn’t expect, something that moves Jesus even more: “I baptize you with water.  But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  Jesus knows he doesn’t have a winnowing fork in his hands, at least not at the moment, but his heart is inexplicably moved by these words.  As John’s words end, people are flocking to John to be baptized, and Jesus goes forward with them.

I’m going to pause in my imagining of this story and tell you about Faithquest.  During my youth, growing up in the Church of Christ, Faithquest was a gathering of youth at a place called Camp Yamhill, a weekend retreat in the summer when high schoolers went to praise God, be silly, and, if they were lucky, be moved by the Spirit.  The Yamhill River runs through Camp Yamhill, and every night of Faithquest, after the singing and the campfires, the invitation would go out: if you feel called to give your life to Jesus, come forward and be baptized right now.  Inevitably, a handful of us high schoolers would get up, filled with emotion that may or may not have been the Holy Spirit, and pledge to give ourselves to Christ.  This is not an uncommon experience for Christian youth.  Shane Claiborne, in his book The Irresistible Revolution, describes a similar scene from his youth: “In middle school,” Claiborne writes, “I had a sincere ‘conversion’ experience.  We took a trip to a large Christian festival with bands, speakers, and late-night pranks.  One night a short, bald preacherman named Duffy Robbins gave an invitation to ‘accept Jesus,’ and nearly our whole youth group went forward (a new concept for most of us), crying and snotting, hugging people we didn’t know.  I was born again.  The next year, we went to that same festival, and most of us went forward again (it was so good the first time) and got born again, again.  In fact, we looked forward to it every year.  I must have gotten born again six or eight times, and it was great every time.”

The reason I’m telling these stories of youthful zeal is that when I imagine Jesus going forward with the throng of Israelites, enchanted by John and drawn toward the baptism he offers, I can’t help but think that some people were moved in the moment—the youth conversion experience—but may not have retained that fire in their lives.  I don’t mean to imply that none of us who were baptized in the Yamhill River during Faithquest were sincere, but my impression is that for most it was more about the social experience than it was about committing to Christianity.  Undoubtedly, some of the people who went out to John were baptized in a frenzy of repentance and then woke up the next morning, back to their normal lives.  This is where Jesus’ story is different, though.  Jesus has heard about this preacher, and he walks forward to be baptized, and in the moment of baptism God not only claims Jesus but also commissions him for the work he will do and reveals Jesus’ purpose to the world: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”  And in that blessed moment, Jesus knows that everything he has wondered about, has suspected, has thought but has been too afraid to claim, has stayed up nights fretting over—in the moment of his baptism by John, Jesus realizes that it is all true.  He knows what he has come to do.  And unlike the other Israelites who are there, feeling a little more spiritual and a little wetter than they were when they arrived, Jesus’ life is completely changed.  This moment, this baptism, marks the beginning of his ministry, as the following verse tells us: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.”  All of it beforehand, his thirty years, his work as a carpenter, his youth, even the miraculous birth and the teaching in the temple, all of that is mere prelude to this moment, when Jesus himself claims the mission of his life, when he agrees to take on the responsibility God has in store for him.

So where is the scandal in this?  The scandal is that Jesus is baptized at all, that the savior of the world came to John to be washed.  This is the ancient middle eastern Watergate, Jesus being dunked in the river Jordan by a wild prophet of God.  It’s a scandal not only that Jesus himself came to John, but that we are asked to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, right into the murky depths of the Jordan.  Almost all of us here, if not all, have been baptized at some point in our lives.  When we were baptized, we were asked to state our belief not only that Jesus is the son of God, but also that we recognize Jesus’ lordship over our lives.  And if my imagined story is anything like the truth, if Jesus spent the eighteen years between the temple and the baptism in ordinary moments of bewilderment, confusion, hope, and expectation, then the baptism of Jesus changed his life, focused his mission.  The next action Jesus takes after his baptism is to go into the wilderness for forty days and nights, and as soon as he returns he begins preaching the word of God.  If that is what baptism meant for Jesus, and if we believe Jesus is the lord of our lives, what are we called to do?  Friends, we are God’s children, whom God loves.  With us is God well pleased.  So the scandalous questions are, what does our baptism mean to us?  Where has it taken us?  And where will it take us today?