A Different Kind of Happiness

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Matthew 5:1-12

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  According to Matthew, this is the very first thing Jesus said to his disciples in the way of teaching.  And guess what?  Though this Beatitude may seem straight forward, it is wrought with ambiguity.  Seriously, just try sorting out what being “poor in Spirit” means.  In the Gospel of Luke, Luke has Jesus just saying, “Blessed are the poor.”  Though we might not readily understand or accept that there’s a blessing in being poor, Luke is pretty straightforward in that it is the poor, poor people, who are blessed.  But Matthew has Jesus qualify “the poor” as being those who are poor “in spirit”.  And of course, there are several ways “poor in spirit” can be understood.  For example, if we capitalize the “S” in Spirit, it changes everything.  We’re no longer talking about the human spirit but rather the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Presence of God with us.   

This ambiguity in meaning makes working with the Beatitudes a bit of a challenge, a challenge that needs more than its fair share of attention.  We have to spend some time sorting out this first Beatitude in particular because it is the first thing Jesus taught his disciples and just like the “last words” of a teacher are important to summing up the heart of their teaching so also are a teacher’s “first words”.  I believe Jesus has made his first teaching to be multifaceted in order to make us ponder what life in him is all about from different angles rather than in just one particular way.  If I am poor in spirit (little s), I lack the umph, the capacity, to act in a way to change my life.  I need God’s help.  If I am poor in Spirit (capital S), then I have a poverty of God’s Presence in my life.  I need God to be with me as much as if not more than just God’s help.  The blessing in both those cases is God comes to us in our poverty of S(s)pirit to be present to us for our help.  I tend towards capitalizing the “S” because we all experience a perceived poverty of the Presence of God in our lives without which we would never desire or want God in our lives.

This verse is the foundation upon which Jesus builds the rest of the Beatitudes.  There’s a logical sequence to follow.  Those who realize they are poor in Spirit will begin to mourn and our poverty in Spirit is also something we discover when we mourn.  As poor in Spirit wrestle with their poverty in Spirit, they become meek and begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  They start to become merciful leading to a purity in heart.  They start to become peacemakers and find they suffer persecution simply for righteousness sake.  God has changed their character and the world around them does not like that.  So, being poor in Spirit and wrestling with that lays the foundation for the development of the character and conduct Jesus claims to be characteristic of the happy or blessed life.  The blessing isn’t being wealthy, healthy, and happy all the time.  It is life filled with the Presence of God and marked by God’s working in us.  John in his Gospel would call the blessing “Eternal life”.

Moving on, in Hebrew thought sometimes the last thing said in a particular set of teachings is often just another way or repeating the first thing said.  In the last Beatitude Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  That’s basically the same thing he said about being poor in Spirit.  So, this should lead us to think that defining righteousness is the key to unlocking the meaning of what it is to be poor in Spirit.  

  Well, looking at the bigger picture of the Sermon on the Mount for which the Beatitudes are the preface, Jesus comments on righteousness later in it saying, “I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20).”  If we look at the verses that immediately follow that verse, we find Jesus’ teaches that righteousness cannot be obtained simply by outward obedience.  It is a matter of one’s inner will and attitude as they are made visible in our character and actions.  You know, with a degree of self-control and usually a lot of downright being afraid of God it is possible to live a life of outward obedience.  But, Jesus teaches that controlling our conduct does not make us righteous but rather it is in dealing with our inner person which needs of a fundamental transformation that righteousness begins to form.  The part of us we hide; the part of us that gives birth to our motives, our inner person is where we need God’s Presence and help the most.  Righteousness is an inward matter for which we need God’s Presence and God’s working in us cleansing and healing our sin-corrupted hearts is where we look for what it is to be poor in Spirit.  It is our hearts that need to be changed.  

To be poor in Spirit is the remorseful realization not just that we have messed up and hurt others and ourselves, but it comes with the added realization that “I need a do-over deep within us that only God can do”.  I am powerless to be that better person that I know I ought to be.  I need the help and presence of the one who made me.  This remorsefulness is the result of the Holy Spirit giving us a taste of God’s Presence that opens our eyes to see that the best we can possibly be is naked and ashamed before the God who has proved his faithfulness and steadfast love to us time and again.  The Holy Spirit points us towards Jesus not the self-help spirituality section of Chapters/Indigo.  In Jesus we see who God is and who we are supposed to be.  Jesus’ teachings here in the Sermon on Mount, indeed, the whole of the Bible, cuts us open like we are lab frogs in Tenth Grade Science Class and shows us our innards, our spiritual innards.  The Holy Spirit makes us able to say Jesus is the Truth and looking at him I see the Truth with respect to me and I don’t measure up. 

To be poor in Spirit is to be made poor by the Holy Spirit in that we realize we cannot be the righteous people we know we ought to be.  We are powerless to do so.  Just as those who are poor materially speaking, have no power but to obey the powers that dictate the terms of their lives, so also, we are powerless before our own sinful selves.  We do not have the means within ourselves to cleanse our own hearts.  

We realize our poverty, our powerlessness, and our hopelessness when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to realize that God considers us his beloved children and acts accordingly towards us even though we do not deserve it. To be poor in Spirit is to be aware of one’s own sinfulness and need for God’s Presence and help.  When the Holy Spirit opens us up to know just how much God loves us and the undeserved nature of that love, we see ourselves as nothing before God and yet also the apple of his eye.  Mysteriously God takes us who are nothing and makes us into beautiful creatures who are meek, merciful, pure in heart and who strive to make peace in our relationships and are willing to and do suffer persecution for righteousness sake in this world.  

To be poor in Spirit truly is to possess the kingdom of God.  We should ask how a person who is so unhappy with their self having been made aware of their own sinfulness by the Holy Spirit opening their eyes to Jesus Christ, how could this person possibly be happy or called blessed.  Well, it takes time but eventually we learn to rest in the certainty that in Christ we are beloved children of God.  We grow into our happiness, our blessedness.  Remember the feeding of the 5,000, how Jesus took the five loaves the disciples had, gave thanks, broke them, and gave them back to his disciples to distribute.  It happens the same way for us.  We offer our lives to Jesus and he breaks us of the prideful delusions we have of ourselves and then he entrusts us with his ministry of healing reconciliation in our relationships.  He makes this possible because he has come to live in us by the indwelling of his Spirit.  Happiness, the blessed life, comes in knowing that we are being and we are doing what God wants us to be and do.  We are his beloved children striving to make peace in our relationships as an actual foretaste of the coming Kingdom of Heaven.

We must be poor in Spirit to have the Kingdom of heaven.  This way of being does not mean we are to run around constantly down on ourselves because we fall short, which we do.  Being poor in Spirit is a constant prayer for the Holy Spirit to fill our lives with the awareness of God’s presence with us and knowing God and his love for us, that we are God’s beloved.  It is to know that even though we fall short of living lives that bring praise and glory to God, we are still immeasurably and unconditionally loved by God as his beloved child, the apple of his eye, and in some great mysterious way God is making us to be the persons God would have us to be.  Amen.

Where the Light Dawns

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Matthew 4:12-23

When I was in seminary, I was given the remarkable opportunity of visiting the lands of the Bible.  Since it’s Epiphany and we talk about light, one of the most enlightening experiences we had occurred when we were down on the Sinai Peninsula 9,000 or so feet above sea level atop what is believed to be Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments watching the sunrise.  The mountains there are mostly solid granite.  As the sun came up the light reflecting on the rocks noticeably went through every colour you could image.  In the midst of this breathtaking light display a Korean church group began singing How Great Though Art in Korean while others began to join in their own languages.  It was beautiful.  It was the kind of mountaintop spiritual experience you would expect on such a trip – light shining into darkness, peoples of many nations gathered in worship, God’s Presence abiding.

Another enlightening moment I had while there was about a week later when we went to the wee little town of Capernaum on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, the town where Jesus lived as well as Peter, Andrew, James and John.  There’s really nothing more than ruins there today and a UFO-looking Catholic church built on top of a 5th century church built on top of the house where the Apostle Peter is believed to have lived.  It was there in Capernaum, while standing in the ruins of a 4th century synagogue that was built on top of the synagogue where Jesus worshipped and taught that something came over me, a sense of awe at just how real, historically real he was.  This was Capernaum.  These ruins were the place where Jesus lived, walked, taught, preached, and healed.  Just to the south of there on a hillside along the shore of the Sea is where he delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  And, just a little further south on the shore is the wilderness place now called Tabgha where Jesus fed the 5,000 (more than 15,000 if you count women and children too).   What struck me was that the Christian faith isn’t just a bunch of religious superstition and philosophical, metaphysical, and ethical teachings.  It is the outgrowth of a very real God’s very real historical involvement among a very real people in very real places.  God isn’t just beliefs.  God acts.

Now here’s something that’s going to wow you.  Capernaum is located in the ancient tribal land of Naphtali, a name we heard in our reading.  Jesus’ ministry lasted about three years and for most of those three years Capernaum was home-base.  He appears to have kept coming back there.  He may have even had a house there.  Before he started his ministry, he lived in Nazareth which is in the land of Zebulon.  Both are in the land of Galilee which Matthew or Isaiah rather calls the land of the Gentiles.  Matthew here is quoting from Isaiah and he is proclaiming that Jesus’ presence and ministry there in the land of the Gentiles, Galilee, is a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy that was given nearly 700 years prior.  Jesus’ real presence there and the Gospel of the Kingdom of heaven manifested in healings, exorcisms, teachings, and forgiving was the reality of God’s light shining on a people living in darkness, a people living in the land of the shadow of death.  Well, guess what?  There’s more to this picture than meets the eye.  Please allow me to give you a little history lesson.

The lands of Naphtali and Zebulon had a lot going for them.   There was a major north-south trade route running through them.  They had the best agricultural land in the Middle East.  And, they had the very lucrative Galilean fishing industry.  One would think that the people there would be wealthy because they could produce a lot of food and had a major trade route there to get it places.  But that was not the case.  

When the northern kingdom of Israel fought with the southern kingdom of Judah and other surrounding kingdoms, which they often did, the majority of their battles were in Zebulon and Naphtali for control of that valuable land.  Whenever Assyria, to the north wanted to attack Egypt to the south or vice versa the fastest route between the two was along that trade corridor.  Armies trample things.  Moreover, gaining control of the area of Zebulon and Naphtali guaranteed a good food source.  For most of their history the people of Zebulon and Naphtali stayed occupied by people from away.  They were beat down and poor and most of what they produced was taken from them to feed invaders.  

In 722 BC, Isaiah’s day, Assyria sacked Israel and sent most of the people away into exile and resettled the land with foreigners.  Thus, it was called the Land of the Gentiles by the rest of the Jewish people to the south.  By Jesus’ day a Jewish population from the south had moved up.  Finally, in Jesus’ day the Romans occupied the whole nation and the people of Naphtali and Zebulon still suffered the most of all the peoples in the Jewish nation for all the same reasons.

It was to and among these beatdown, not much reason to hope, poor people that Jesus began his ministry.  It was to such as these that he came first.  It was to such as these that Jesus began to proclaim, “Focus on God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”  It was there that he called a handful of poor, disheartened, and probably embittered fisherman to be the first of his disciples.  Together, they walked all over Galilee while Jesus taught and proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and it was more than just talk.  Jesus healed every kind of sickness, the lame, lepers, and even cast out demons; and at one point he told a man his sins were forgiven and at another point he calmed a storm and ultimately cast out a legion of demons from a man across the lake. That’s about a thousand, the size of a legion in the Roman military.  It was to these people that Jesus came first and readily ministered and proclaimed the Gospel of the present reality of the Kingdom of God.

About this word Gospel, the Greek word we translate as Gospel was the word the Romans used for an announcement of imperial “good news” as it pertained to the Roman emperor.  They were announcements like “Caesar had a son” or “Caesar defeated the Gaul’s” or “Caesar is now to be worshipped as a living son of Zeus.”  When the Romans came to Galilee, to Zebulon and Naphtali, they would have proclaimed a gospel to them, an announcement of imperial “good news”.  It wasn’t “Focus of God, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  It was, “Submit, for the kingdom of Caesar is at hand.  You are now under his blessed rule.”  They backed it up with legions of Roman soldiers who were very good at bullying local populations.  But Jesus, on the other hand, he came proclaiming that God was now delivering his people and proved it by doing things that only God himself could do and say just as the ancient prophets had centuries ago prophesied that God would do.

Jesus called the people to repent.  I say focus on God.  Repent is a word with a lot of theological baggage.  “Repent” wasn’t a warning to get yourself right with God so that things will go well for you now and after death.  It was a call to focus on and get on board with what God is doing in your life right now.  It’s a call to have faith and hope because God is among us delivering us, putting our lives to right, healing us, saving us so often from our own demise but just as often from the bad things that just happen to good people.  The Greek word for repent actually means “to become with-minded”.  To become with-minded with God is to have faith/hope and to become an active participant in what God is doing.  If God is really acting in your life, then to become with-minded with God in his actions is to have faith/hope and get onboard with him.

I don’t know about you folks, but this wows me.  It is in those places in our lives, in our very selves where it seems that we are living in darkness, walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death that the Father sends the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit to deliver us, to heal us, to set us free.  Therefore, it is important that we be aware of what those places are in our lives are.  What we are in bondage to and yes, these things will probably be the result of our own doing and yes, since they are of our own doing, we will be very reluctant to own up.  On the other hand, we also suffer from things that are not so much our own doing; illness, hurtful relationships, over-bearing employers, wayward children, and so forth.  If we want to see where God is at work in our lives, then we should look in the places where we are being beat down and made to be impoverished both internally in our emotional and spiritual worlds and in the externals that we should first look.  It is to our weakness that the Father sends the Son in the power of the Spirit so that he may bring deliverance and healing.  Remember, if Jesus had gone first to Jerusalem, the city of strength and power, they would have killed him right off the bat.  So also, if the Triune God of grace came first to us in what we consider to be our strengths, we would try to kill him too.  It’s our nature.  Therefore, look for Jesus in your Zebulon and Naphtali areas.  It is there that you will likely find that the light of salvation is dawning upon you, that he is with you to heal, strengthen, and uphold you.  Amen.

I Came. I Saw. I Abided

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John 1:29-42

In the ancient world one of the things you did to introduce someone of importance was to use titles…extravagantly.  Looking at the Gospel of John and how John introduces Jesus, we find some pretty hefty titles - “Lord” (that’s shorthand for God), “Lamb of God”, “Son of God”, “Rabbi”, “King of Israel” “Messiah”, and “Christ”.  These are some hefty credentials.

If you were a 1^st Century Jew these titles had a particular significance for you.  They all refer to Jesus being the One the Jews were expecting God to send to deliver them from Roman oppression and finally establish the Kingdom of God on Earth once and for all.  And John makes things even bigger than that. At the opening of his Gospel John calls this One the Word of God become human; the very speaking of God become human; indeed, God himself become human.  If you were a Jew, these titles claimed without a doubt that your God himself has intervened at the cosmic level of Creation to come himself to deliver you as this man Jesus of Nazareth.  That’s pretty huge.

If you were a non-Jew, and particularly a Roman, in these titles you would hear a rival challenge to the divine authority of the Roman Emperor.  The title Son of God was particularly interesting because Caesar himself claimed to be the Son of Zeus, the greatest of their god’s.  Other titles like Lord and Saviour were distinctively reserved for Caesar as well.  So, John opens his Gospel introducing Jesus as truly being who Caesar deceitfully claimed himself to be.

That Caesar thing said, one of the things we should do if we want to read John’s Gospel in a way faithful to its original context is maybe we should be listening for ways in which John compares Jesus to iconic Roman emperors such as Julius Caesar.  Taking up this task, one of the most famous things Julius Caesar said and which everybody knew he said was, “Vini, vidi, vici.” “I came, I saw, I conquered.”  

This phrase was probably the most iconic pop-culture dude-phrase in Western history up until Frank Sinatra sang “I did it my way”.  I can imagine it being like the bragging slogan of a professional wrestler who is trying to portray himself as being all-powerful, invincible, and without rival.  “I came, I saw, I conquered”.  Just a imagine any sports figure in an interview and the sportscaster asks very benignly, “Tell me about yourself”, and he answers in his gruffest, most intimidating voice, “I conquer.”  Well, maybe I watched too much wrestling as a kid.

If “I came, I saw, I conquered” was a well-known pop-culture phrase describing the epitome of what it was to be powerful in Jesus’ day, maybe it’s not too much too much of stretch to say that John was dropping a little pop-culture reference into his Gospel to do a little compare and contrast at describing the way of Jesus’ disciples are to live and what it is to be a true person.  John writes, “They came and they saw where he was staying and they abided with him for that day.”  They came, they saw, they abided.  What makes a person truly a person isn’t conquering others, but rather abiding with Jesus - being in a disciple’s relationship with Jesus the Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel, Spirit of God Anointed One, Lord of the Cosmos is what it is to be truly a person.  

John leads us to notice that instead of the word “conquer” we get the word “abide” or “remain”.  Jesus unlike Caesar does not conquer.  He rather invites people into a relationship with him.  “Come and see,” he said and they came, they saw, and they abided.  As a side note, John later in his own life does use the word “conquer” to describe the followers of Jesus.  In the Book of Revelation, a book very much about what it was to be a Christian in a Roman world, John often says that those who conquer are those who have been martyred for Jesus.  

But here, instead of conquer John uses the word abide, a word that he uses over forty times in his Gospel.  The word in Greek, meno, has a wide range of meaning from quite literally meaning staying in a place to the more metaphorical meaning of enduring through trials, standing your ground in faith.  Meno is a relationship word, a hospitality word about keeping space and time in the life of another and welcoming others into your own life meaning stay with me, abide with me, see how I live, know me.  

In John’s Gospel meno is a very theologically significant word.  The Holy Spirit descends and abides on Jesus and also upon and in…us.  We abide in Jesus and he in us.  God the Father abides in Jesus and Jesus in him and they in us and us in them.  So, abiding in Jesus means we are partakers of the triune life of God, the relationship of God the Father and God the Son in and by means of God the Holy Spirit.  We are bonded, glued, grafted to Jesus by the presence of the Holy Spirit with and in us so that we participate in his relationship with God the Father as beloved children.  Just as Jesus is the Beloved Son of God so are we beloved by God as his own children.  Not like little children but as adults in the family with who bear the responsibility of living honourably as members of the family of God.  Abiding in Jesus is where we discover this utterly transforming, personally re-creative, relational knowledge about ourselves and one another.

John further describes abiding in Jesus as being where we grow and become like Jesus.  In John 15 Jesus talks about himself as being the True Vine.  He says, “Abide in me” that we may bear fruit.  If we keep his commandments we abide in his love.  The life-creating word of God, which is Jesus abiding in us, is “faith” or better yet, “faithfulness”.  I think the word loyalty is probably the best word to use because it keeps things purely relational where the word faith can be co-opted and reduced to being simply religious beliefs.  If you are loyal to someone it means they can trust you just as much as you trust them.  Abiding in Jesus in “loyalty”, in the Holy Spirit bonded relationship with Jesus and each other, this is discipleship.  Abiding in Jesus we find prayers answered.  Those who do not abide in Jesus abide in darkness and even experience “the wrath of God.”  Abiding with and in Jesus is where we hear this word that God loves “even me” as his own beloved child.  

So, what is it then to “abide”?  Abiding is maintaining a relationship with Jesus.  It is spending time in his presence.  It is living according to his teachings.  And, it is something we do together.  My grandmother, Mawmaw, was one of the people who unknowingly taught me what it was to be a beloved child in the family.  This was something I would not have learned if I had not spent time with her.  I’m not going to claim that she was full of wisdom where if you needed advice on what to do or life was overwhelming and you needed to know how to deal with it, just go see Mawmaw and tell her what was up and she would speak the words of wisdom that would be exactly what you needed to hear and it would fix everything.  That’s not how she was.  When I was a child, she did all the things that grandmothers do for grandchildren.  Held us, fed us, played with us, read to us, befriended us, made us each feel like we were her favourite.  As a grew up, and could start making the choice of whether I wanted to go see Grandma and Grandaddy, I had to think why it was I wanted to go see them.  Mostly, it was because it was home.  If you went to their house, they were just so happy you came.  Grandma would cook you a meal.  Sit with you while you ate.  And she would talk…talk your ear off really.  Tell you stories about family you didn’t know, bring you up to speed on the family you knew, most of it was the same stories you heard the last time you were there.  But, the clincher about being there was I knew with Mawmaw I was dearly loved and always, always welcome and she absolutely cherished the time she spent with me, with each of us…and dang it that’s what love is.

When I speak of abiding with or in Jesus, it is like time with Grandma.  It is time spent with a Presence who is unconditionally loving and hospitable.  The meal, the feast, is God’s Presence.  God is a Presence in our lives about whom we just have to accept the fact that God is here and simply choose to acknowledge and come to grips with it.  From there, we must strive to always be mindful of God’s Presence and turn that mindfulness into prayerfulness.

Here's something I do that’s like going to Grandma’s kitchen.  My day starts before everybody else in the house get’s up.  I go downstairs, get a coffee, and sit on the couch, and start reading the Bible.  But, it’s more than that.  I give space to God.  There are empty sitting spaces in the living room, two recliners and the other end of the couch.  To me, those seats are for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and we are gathered as Us.  I give space, I open myself for God’s Presence to be there with me.  Being open to the Presence of another is key to be open to the Presence of God.  I share what’s on my mind, no holds barred.  It’s very emotive.  

I also give time for God to speak.  You never know when the voice in the back of your head may be God speaking, but also don’t simply assume that it is.  Sometimes God will just speak.  I read some Old Testament, some New Testament, and several Psalms.  I pray for everyone in these churches and a lot more.  I also use a Roman Catholic prayer resource based on the Psalms that is used by many throughout the world.  Finally, I will just open the Bible and read what’s on that page.  All that reading and praying is a lot like sitting at the table while Grandma natters on about people I don’t know, but whom I have a relation.  Yet, somehow in the midst of it all.  I get the sense that God has heard my prayers and has addressed me.

Finally, abiding with Jesus is something we cannot resign to being merely our own personal relationship with him.  Abiding in Christ must also include our relationships to others.  With my family and friends and even with people I don’t know, I try to be as Grandma was with me as best as I can.  There is nothing I cherish more than spending time with my family, cooking a meal for them.  If they give me the opportunity to natter on I will and it takes a lot of patience on their part.  Mostly, I will just be silently with them, being mindful of God’s presence, and praying for us.  As best as I can figure, that is abiding in Christ.  It is a much more beautiful way of being than, “I came. I saw. I conquered.”  Jesus is with us.  Rest assured of that.  Abide in him always.  Be mindful of his Presence with you and be prayerful.  Amen.

Up from the Water

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Matthew 3:13-17

When we think of baptism we think of water.  No doubt water is important to us at a very basic level.  No water, no life.  Water is the determining factor in there being life on earth.  Our bodies are 60% water.  If we go more than three days without water we will begin to physically die.  Improper hydration of the body has its effects.  If we are under hydrated our mental functioning suffers.  We become depressed.  Our joints will hurt.  Too much water dilutes other important chemicals in our bodies causing weakness, disorientation, muscle cramping.  You can get drunk on too much water, but it takes gallons and who wants to pee that much.

Water is also an important symbol in the faith narrative of the Bible.  Let’s look at a few starting with the Creation story of Genesis 1.  This account appears to have developed among a people familiar with standing on the shore of a large body of water such as the Mediterranean Sea and taking in the horizon.  The image is that in the midst of a great Sea God created a bubble in which we live.  When God began to create, his raw materials were deepness, darkness, formlessness, emptiness, and…water – the primordial Sea of Chaos.  In the midst of watery Chaos God brought forth an ordered world and filled it with life.  Water is an important symbol of Creation.

In Genesis 2 we find a second Creation story which seems to have been developed by an inland people familiar with the desert wilderness feature of the oasis.  The Garden of Eden was an oasis formed around a spring, natural well, which was the head of four rivers that carried life giving water out into the rest of God’s creation.  We also find this River of Life image in the writings of several of the OT prophets and the Book of Revelation where a river of life-giving water is flowing out of the Temple in Jerusalem.  This is the life-giving and healing water of the Presence of God found in the spiritual life of relationship with God.

Water is also a symbol of cleansing.  In the days of Noah, God’s good creation became so corrupted with humanity’s Sin and evil that it needed to be radically cleansed.  So, God opened the skies and the ground and flooded the bubble with those primordial waters of Chaos and as they receded humanity got a new start.  

Water is also a symbol of deliverance.  By plaguing the Egyptians God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  For the finale, God parted the waters of the Red Sea to let his people through to safety and then destroyed their powerful foe, Pharoah and his army, by letting the waters collapse back on them as they tried to pursue.  

Finally, water is a symbol of future hope.  After God’s people’s Wilderness Wandering, God parted the waters of the Jordan River so that the Israelites could cross into the Promised Land and settle it.  God brought them out of the transitional and difficult life of trial in the wilderness to life being filled-full according to God’s promise to Abraham to make his descendants a great nation that would be blessing to all other nations.

Looking here at Matthew, it's in the waters of the Jordan that we find Jesus being baptized obviously as a symbol of a new beginning for God’s people in the Promised Land.  But, all these symbols of water are at play.  With Jesus there is New Creation, New Beginning.  Flowing from Jesus is the Live-giving Water of the Holy Spirit present with us.  With Jesus is found the cleansing water of forgiveness, of knowing we are accepted and beloved by God.  Jesus and his way of life is deliverance from the slaveries that overtake us when we don’t live life on God’s terms.  With Jesus is found a foretaste of our future hope of when God has finally intervened to heal his good creation of the disease of sin and of evil and death and filled it with a deeply personal knowing of himself.  It is in the profundity of all these symbols, these images of water that we find Jesus rising up in a clear image of resurrection.  

But wait a minute.  Water is not the only thing we need to consider here.  We must also note the opening of the heavens and the Spirit of God coming to alight on Jesus in the form of a dove and also the voice of God.  Jesus’ baptism is actually a moment of self-revelation by God very similar to the revelation of God we find present in Genesis at the beginning of Creation.  There God was mostly unseen.  But God spoke the Word, the creating Word of God that the Spirit of God who was hovering over the waters brought about.  

At the beginning of John’s Gospel this Word of God is what John says became flesh as Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:1,14).  Jesus is the Word God speaks that brings everything into existence.  

At Creation God spoke the Word amongst the words of what he wanted to come into being.  The Spirit brought them about.  Then, once Creation was filled with life, in the midst of all that life God placed an image of Godself – humanity – and then God said “Very good.”  

Here at Jesus’ Baptism, we see Jesus, God the Son, the Word of God become a human.  He is God filling full God’s own image with God’s own very self.  Jesus is the culmination of God’s very good Creation.  As Jesus comes up from the water of Jordan, the waters of future hope fulfilled, the Spirit of God alighted on him in the form of a dove to remind us of the Noah story and how Creation was washed clean of our turning from God.  At that moment God the Father speaks and the “Very good” that he speaks over his filled full Image coming up from the waters of New Creation is “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” 

This moment of Jesus’ Baptism is a self-revelation of God.  We have to note that God reveals God’s self here as Trinity, a Three-in-One/One-in-Three mystery.  Reflecting on that, we can say that God is a communion of persons (God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and at the heart of this communion is belovedness.  The Three give themselves so selflessly to each other in love that they are One yet Three but One.  I don’t want to get too theological here but God reveals God’s own essence to be a community of belovedness.  

Therefore, to reflect upon how this should matter to us: we are created in the image of God.  The image of God found in us is a capacity for living together in communities of belovedness – such is the importance of marriage and family.  True community is found in persons selflessly giving themselves, sharing themselves such that we find a unity in love arising in our relationships.  This is why things like self-emptying, serving, and helping and striving together to be all that we can be are so foundationally important to our own self-discovery and the survival of God’s very good Creation.  Noticeably, self-emptying, serving, helping, and striving together are things so totally given a backburner in this me-oriented world of individualism and self-actualization.  The result is that our attempts at being in functional community always just seem to culminate with a sourness of self-gratification that hurts others and fractures community, indeed mars the image of God we are created to bear.

To close, Jesus is the New Human around and in whom we find the New Humanity that has the capacity to truly be the image of God in God’s very good creation because this New Humanity is filled full of the Presence of God.  We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  The water of creation, of life, of cleansing, of deliverance, and of hope are embodied in Jesus.  He is central to God’s purpose for us and his whole creation.  It is in relationship to Jesus displayed through following him that we discover that we each are a beloved child of God, a belovedness that is confirmed in the fellowship of those who follow Jesus and who love in the way he loved us, laying his life down for us, serving us, healing us.  In the midst of our following him together, we find ourselves daily being created anew by the mysterious presence and work of the Holy Spirit who alights on us and fills us.  In the community of faithfulness, we imbibe of the water of new life.  We find ourselves forgiven and cleansed of shame and guilt in the living-water of the welcoming hospitality embodied in our fellowship.  In the living water of this fellowship, we live in the realm of hope where God’s will, reign, and love are open to all and where it is becoming here on earth as it is in heaven. 

So, let us not underestimate the importance of the fellowship we share in self-giving love as followers of Jesus.  It is in the midst of our Christ-like, Holy Spirit enabled love for one another and for the community around us, in the midst of our serving and helping one another that Jesus yet again rises up from the water of his Baptism and the world receives of moment, a glimpse of who God is.  What a difference it would make in this world if the only God people could see is the God whose essence is a Communion of Belovedness in which all can come and be welcomed and loved.  Let us come up from the water and let God’s self-revelation be evident among us.  Follow Jesus in the Jesus was of self-emptying serving and helping.  Amen.