During the Christmas break we spent a few days skiing with my brother and his family at their cabin in BC. After supper one evening my brother and I started telling stories to our kids about the two summers we spent working on the farm as teenagers with my late grandfather Phil. We told of slaving in the hot dusty fields picking rocks and roots; sleeping in an old farmhouse abandoned in the 50’s; driving the back roads of Alberta and visiting many farmers who had purchased on of my grandfather’s backup electric generators. One of our projects was building a grain elevator. One day while sorting through a pile of lumber we found a nest of feral kittens who had mistaken a porcupine for their mother. We spent most of one day removing quills and trying to nurse those poor little kittens back to health. Grandpa Phil was a hard-working man and expected us to work hard too. He didn’t care much for those cats, but on that day he let us tend to our compassionate project of saving those kittens.
I am not exactly sure what our kids were thinking as they listened to our stories. Were they wide-eyed with wonder, or was that the glaze of boredom? Perhaps they were wondering why they had to hear version 26 of the old “when I was a teenager working on the farm” story instead of watching their DVD.
Stories play a big role in our lives. We choose the stories that define us. In many ways we are the products of the stories that define us. These stories are the starting point for the conversations we have with ourselves. One method in counseling, called “narrative therapy,” says that how we define ourselves emerges from the stories we select out of our life experience. We select these stories ourselves, and then we re-tell them to ourselves and then to others. The point is that our understanding of ourselves is highly selective. For a bunch of different reasons we select some stories and de-select others. These stories tell our selves about ourselves, and this becomes the “back story” of our lives. Whether we realize it or not we live out of the framework of those stories.
It is not a coincidence that our Gospel reading tells the story of the baptism of Jesus in the season of Epiphany. Last week we said that an epiphany is an event which breaks through all the things you think you “know” and the things you don’t know. It is a revelation. It is a blast of light that reveals the basic truth and meaning of our lives. Jesus’ baptism is an epiphany for him.
There are four accounts of Jesus’ life in the Bible and all four of them include the story of his baptism by crazy, hell-fire-preaching John. After 30 years of hanging around Nazareth and learning how to build things with wood, Jesus comes down to the river with the crowds to receive John’s baptism.
We know that it launched his public life of ministry. A question for many over the years has been: why did Jesus need baptism? In some accounts, John even questions the need for it. One answer is that if Jesus was to really enter fully into our experience, he needed to take his place in the waters of repentance with all the rest of us imperfect people. Not long after his public ministry begins, local religious leaders criticize Jesus for hanging around with people known for their boozy partying and feasting, with sinners and general riff-raff. I think we can safely say that Jesus’ baptism links him to ordinary people. People who have fears, pain, anxieties, jobs, children, and hopes for the future. People like us.
I don’t think that answer is wrong, but I think there is a much simpler answer to why Jesus needed baptism. Baptism is Jesus’ chance to be blessed. Baptism affirmed Jesus’ identity as God’s much-loved son. That is the epiphany for Jesus. He hears the voice of blessing in a way he had never heard it before: “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.” And he just doesn’t hear it. It fills him up with a fire. The Spirit of God is with him. He sees the big picture of his life for the first time. He is a beloved child of God.
Let me tell you a story. My dad had already been a pastor for a few years when he had an opportunity to attend seminary in the early 1960s. He moved his young family down to Kansas City, had a great part-time job, and everything seemed perfect. But things fell apart, mainly because his marriage failed. In those days it was the worst kind of moral failure a spiritual person could have, especially someone who believed God was calling them to spiritual leadership in the church. Many advised him to forget a vocation in pastoral ministry and find another career.
Having been awarded custody of my brother and me he headed back to Calgary and found a job with the provincial government so he could support us. The family of Chester and Bessie Flanders offered to let us board in their NW Calgary home which was great news. The bad news: there was only one room for the three of us to share, and the room was only large enough for a double bed and a crib. I was only 5 years old at the time, but there is something I remember very distinctly about those days. The first thing is that sleeping in a crib when you are 5 is a kind of humiliation that makes Conrad Black’s or Tiger Woods’ issues pale in comparison. My 4 year-old brother felt the same way about the crib. The compromise we agreed to was that we would alternate sleeping with my dad in the double one night and alone in the crib the next.
The other thing I remember is that on the nights when it was my turn to sleep with my dad, he always pulled me in close to him with his arm. He did the same with my brother—easy enough to observe looking out through the prison bars of the crib! I never have forgotten those few months, and especially that experience of being held close in the loving arms of my father.
For me, the “back story” of my life is that I am a beloved son. That is a story that I consciously choose to shape my identity, to define who I am. (If you are a parent, I want to remind you to make sure that the most significant story you can frame for your children is that they are beloved.) The secure embrace of a loving parent is my story, and that is my father’s story too. Out of life’s messiness and shame, out of the chaos of sin and betrayal he never did forget the still small voice of God: “You are my son, my beloved.” I have asked him several times over the years how he managed to get through some of those discouraging times. His answer was that even in some of the darkest moments he never felt completely alone because of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
For my father, it turns out that God’s story easily trumped and re-wrote the other story. The other story is still there. It’s not like it never happened to any of us. But it isn’t the one that defined his identity or his future. If you don’t know it, the rest of the story goes like this: soon my father remarried a wonderful person, we became a blended family, we had a new mom who loved us and cared for us, and my father continued to live out his vocation as a pastor for over 40 years.
Not all of us can easily relate to the story of God’s embrace as a parent. Because of our life’s experience not everyone can imagine a father who says, “you are my beloved, I am so pleased with you.” Exactly the opposite may be true. Some of our defining stories have shaped our lives in false or distorting ways. The approach of narrative therapy says that we can make some changes by selecting other stories within our experience or by balancing the stories of our pain with alternative interpretations of those stories. If you’ve felt abandoned your whole life due to one painful incident that has loomed larger than life in your own self-definition, could that story be balanced by other untold stories in your experience? If a relationship with a parent or a significant other has produced extraordinary pain for many years, is it possible there is another story that could reshape your personal story? Is there an “unstoried” story that you could use?
I have a story I’d like you to consider. It’s the story of your baptism. Have you ever been baptized? As a child or an adult? Even if you have never been baptized, I think the basic truth applies to you as well.
First, let’s get clear on this. Baptism isn’t a sign that someone is perfect or will soon be perfect. I love the story about an incident following an infant baptism. On the way home after church one Sunday, the brother of the baby who had been baptized cried from the back seat all the way home. Three times his dad asked him what he was crying about. Finally, he answered, "The pastor said he wanted us to be brought up in a Christian home, but I want to stay with you guys!"
Here is the deal about Jesus’ baptism and ours. I know that there are a lot of theological views on what exactly baptism means and why it is important. But what I think our baptism boils down to is that we receive God’s blessing. A blessing is a good word, when someone says something good about us. We all need that blessing. It is very important that we hear the voice that says to us:
You are my beloved daughter; my beloved son. I love you with an everlasting love. I have knitted you in your mother’s womb. I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. 2 When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
If you have been baptized, remember your baptism. It was God’s blessing on you and your life, and a reminder that you are a child of God. Remember your baptism because it is the story that overwrites all the rest of them. If you haven’t been baptized, you’re no less a child of God than I am. God’s story is still your story for the choosing.
In his book Craddock Stories, Fred Craddock tells of an evening when he and his wife were eating dinner in a little restaurant in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. A strange and elderly man came over to their table and introduced himself. "I am from around these parts," he said. "My mother was not married, and the shame the community directed toward her was also directed toward me. Whenever I went to town with my mother, I could see people staring at us, making guesses about who my daddy was. At school, I ate lunch alone. In my early teens, I began attending a little church but always left before church was over, because I was afraid somebody would ask me what a boy like me was doing in church. One day, before I could escape, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the minister. He looked closely at my face. I knew that he too was trying to guess who my father was. 'Well, boy, you are a child of. . .' and then he paused. When he spoke again he said, 'Boy, you are a child of God. I see a striking resemblance.' Then he swatted me on the bottom and said, 'Now, you go on and claim your inheritance.' I left church that day a different person," the now elderly man said. "In fact, that was the beginning of my life."
"What's your name?" Dr. Craddock asked. He answered, "Ben Hooper. My name is Ben Hooper." Dr. Craddock said he vaguely recalled from when he was a kid, his father talking about how the people of Tennessee had twice elected a fellow who had been born out of wedlock as the governor of their state. His name was Ben Hooper.
As God’s beloved children, we can experience his love through the presence and filling of the Holy Spirit. That is what I think happened to Jesus that day with John as he stepped into the Jordan for baptism. That love is what God wants us to experience. To feel his love is to know and believe it. The mystic St. John of the Cross (b. 1542) called the Holy Spirit “a living flame of love.” Jesus prayed to his Father “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). When Peter and John hear that there are believers in Samaria who have not yet experienced the flame of God’s love, they go there to lay hands on them and pray (Acts 8).
Do you realize how much God loves you? Did you know that you are beloved? Do you want to receive the Holy Spirit and bask in the embrace of God this morning? Do you need to be blessed by the Father’s affirmation? The table is ready. The love feast is prepared. All are welcome.
Thanks be to God!
The Father is the Spring, the Son is called the stream and we are said to drink the Spirit.
