Happy New...!
Commentary
This is the Sunday when we celebrate Jesus’ baptism. This is not Pentecost. And yet, as we consider the scriptures assigned to us this day, we still observe that the Holy Spirit is central to all that we read. Neither is this Sunday the one we designate as Trinity Sunday, yet the reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is unmistakably woven through what we read and preach this day.
In some traditions, the baptism of Jesus enjoys a fair amount of celebration. In most Protestant and non-denominational churches in America, however, I suspect that this Sunday and its theme receives scant attention. For at this point, our liturgical calendar loses the wind that was at our back.
For weeks now, you see, we were mostly on the same page as the culture around us. Oh, to be sure, there was a distinction lost between Advent and Christmas. Still, our own sense of anticipation and celebration of Christ’s birth in the church was vigorously aided by all the festivity of the season that surrounded us on every side.
And while the larger culture’s celebration did not support us much for the two Sundays after Christmas Day itself, at least we still had so much to sing.
But now we come to this. It is the middle of January, Christmas is shrinking in the rear view mirror, and we are endeavoring to turn our people’s attention to the baptism of the Lord. And we find that we have no help in this. Nothing else in the surrounding culture has put this subject on folks’ radar. A dozen, much-loved songs of the season do not immediately spring to mind. Nothing about daily life in the New Year has got our people thinking about this matter.
The fact is that Jesus’ baptism is reported by more Gospel writers than Jesus’ birth is, yet still this seems to most people to be a rather obscure event. We have seen nativity scenes displayed in front of churches and homes during the past month, but does anyone put out baptism scenes? Do our children put on baptism pageants, recalling piece by piece the various elements of the story? No, for as remarkable as this event is, it is a tough sell in most of our churches.
In music, in decor, in familiarity, our liturgical calendar enjoyed a lot of help for the past six weeks or so. But now we are cut adrift. It’s the middle of January. It seems to most people to be no season in particular. And inasmuch as that is the setting in which we preach, perhaps that may also be a part of the message that we preach.
Isaiah 42:1-9
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah has a number of songs about "my servant." The identity of that servant is not uniform or always clear, however. Is it Isaiah? Is it Israel? Is it Cyrus? Is it some other historical figure? Or was it to be the Messiah?
The answers, of course, do not need to be mutually exclusive. Now a certain sort of textual critic might insist on the original meaning and understanding, but be unwilling to go any further than that. Later layers of interpretation are looked on skeptically as the sort of theological mischief that faith yields. But the underlying issue is what the reader/interpreter makes of God's role in the writing.
Such a consideration is a non-starter for some students, and that's understandable. To make allowance for divine input in a text opens it up too much. It ceases to be a controlled experiment for the scientific mind, you see, once you bring in the possibility of God.
That said, we can hardly take seriously the biblical text without allowing for the possibility of God. And so we are presented with the prospect of an additional layer of meaning. Beyond what the human author intended, and beyond what the original human audience had the capacity to understand, perhaps there was another meaning known and intended by God. In literature, we routinely allow for a distinction between the knowledge and perspective of the author vis-a-vis the narrator and the characters. But will we allow God to be the author of the biblical text?
Of course, Jesus himself encourages this sort of reading of the Old Testament. On Easter Sunday evening, when the risen Lord appeared to his disciples, he said, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44 NASB). The references to the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms is a comprehensive way of identifying the collection of books we know as the Old Testament. It recalls the Hebrew acronym Tanakh, which refers to the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. So it was that Jesus was making the remarkable claim that books written perhaps 500 years, 700 years, a thousand years before he was born were written about him. If that’s so, that certainly exceeds the conscious understanding of either the human author or the original audience.
Luke, then, adds this narrative detail to that Easter Sunday event: “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44 NASB). The provocative implication is that their minds were not opened before and that they did not truly understand the scriptures before. In other words, only when they saw Christ in the Old Testament did they really understand the Old Testament. And that suggests, then, that for all of the ostensible open-mindedness of the historical-critical method, there is some understanding of the scriptures that will always inevitably escape that approach.
So it is, then, that this passage from Isaiah 42 — coming several hundred years before Christ — was not originally about Jesus. Yet we understand it in retrospect to be, at least, messianic. And, as a result, we understand it to have been fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Acts 10:34-43
I remember this episode from Acts 10 being presented to us when I was a seminary student. The professor explained to us this passage's significance at three different levels. And he must have done it well, for all these years later, his observations remain with me.
The first significance, of course, is the immediate context of the story itself. It is about Cornelius and his household hearing the gospel and responding. For the people in that home, that was the greatest significance of the occasion, and we must not let the additional layers of significance blind us to this most fundamental layer.
Beyond that, though, there is the larger theological significance. Cornelius et al were Gentiles. Up until this point, however, most or all of the believers were Jewish. And while Cornelius had come to acknowledge and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there remained an all-important ethnic boundary between Jews and Gentiles. The boundary was ingrained in the Jews of first-century Palestine, and consequently it was ingrained in the first Christians.
The Lord started to show Peter a new thing, however, in preparation for this encounter. Peter’s epiphany on that point is indicated in the opening remarks of his speech in this passage. And then, just beyond the scope of our selected passage, the Spirit's coming on those in Cornelius’ household provided supernatural confirmation of God's will for and acceptance of the Gentiles. This event, then, represented not only the personal conversion of Cornelius and those in his house, but also the beginning of a certain kind of conversion within the early church.
And then, finally, this episode from Acts 10 may also carry some textual significance. The observation that our professor shared was that an outline of Peter's recorded speech would be essentially the same as an outline of any of the synoptic Gospels. And so this speech may give us a sense of the relationship between the gospel and the Gospels. In other words, we can imagine from this brief sermon how the preaching of the early church might have evolved into the Gospels, for the latter may have simply been written elaborations of the former.
In the end, then, we have a passage with personal, theological, and textual significance. We see how Cornelius came to Christ. We see how the gospel came to the Gentiles and how the Gentiles came into the church. And we may get a peek into how the preaching of the apostles came eventually to be the books that we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthew 3:13-17
The baptism of Jesus always strikes me as a unique event in the history of the world, for it is the only recorded occasion I can think of when all the persons of the Trinity were made manifest to the physical senses. The Son, of course, was there in the flesh. The Spirit appeared in the form of a dove. And the Father's voice was audible. It is a remarkable occasion, and that is the occasion that we celebrate this Sunday.
Matthew begins with a bit of geography. Galilee was that northern region in first-century Palestine where Jesus grew up (Nazareth) and where most of his early ministry eventually took place. But the move to meet John at the Jordan represents a move south, and perhaps as far south as the Judean wilderness.
John’s reluctance to baptize Jesus — indeed, his recognition that the baptism should flow in the other direction! — evidences John’s understanding of who Jesus is. And in this respect John serves as a kind of a role model for all of us. For while John is arguably unique in the history of the world, still his sense of calling can be broadly embraced by all of us. John knew that his importance was derivative — i.e., he was not important by himself, but insofar as he prepared the way of the Lord. And his demurring at this moment of the baptism fits that profile, consistent with his declaration that “One is coming who is mightier than I” (Mark 1:7 NASB), his concession that “I am not fit to remove His sandals” (Matthew 3:11 NASB), and his recognition that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30 NASB).
Jesus’ response about fulfilling all righteousness, though unexplained, seems to satisfy John. And taken within the larger corpus of the New Testament, it reads like a truly profound statement. After all, how many times is the word “fulfill” employed to apply to some aspect of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, or resurrection? We touched on this principle in our consideration of the assigned Old Testament lection above. Perhaps, therefore, we could take virtually any picture from Jesus’ story in the Gospels and put this caption beneath it: “to fulfill all righteousness.”
Meanwhile, the moment that Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism is when this baptism is distinguished from all others. After all, how many scores of people did John baptize in the Jordan River during his ministry? Same human officiant. Same water. But not the same result.
The moment represents an intersection of heaven and earth. Mathew reports that “the heavens were opened” and that there was “a voice from heaven.” The Spirit coming down, likewise, suggests that intersection of Earth with heaven. And it is just right that the baptism of Jesus should be such a moment, for the baptism thus symbolizes a larger Christ event. Jesus himself represents — is! — an intersection of heaven and Earth!
Finally, there are the words spoken from heaven. "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." That concise, meaning-packed sentence could give rise to its own Christological sermon series. Within the present limitations, however, suffice it to say this: God himself has born witness.
The Christian faith, you see, is dependent upon witnesses. When John’s Gospel reports the crucifixion of Jesus, we read, “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe” (John 19:34-35 NASB). When Paul proclaims the gospel to a crowd, he includes this statement: “For many days (Jesus) appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:31 NASB). And, of course, Jesus himself instructed his disciples, saying, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses...” (Acts 1:8 NASB).
So the Christian faith is dependent upon witnesses. The fascinating truth of the occasion of Jesus’ baptism is that we are not left merely with the testimony of John, or one of the disciples, or some bystander. No, for God himself bore witness that day. God spoke, declaring who and what Jesus was!
Application
Unless there happens to be a birthday or anniversary in your family that makes this date special, there is something terribly ordinary about January 12th. The festivity of the Christmas season is now well behind us. The lights are down and the decorations put away. And even the excitement and hoopla that accompanied the beginning of the New Year has faded considerably. Perhaps some of the earnest resolutions of twelve days ago have faded, too.
This weekend represents the height of excitement, of course, for a handful of NFL teams and their fans, Apart from that rather transient importance, however, this is an exceedingly ordinary date. And it is on this date that we remember and celebrate the baptism of our Lord.
The timing may be perfect. Perhaps it is helpful for us to celebrate Christ’s baptism on an ordinary day, for it may well be that it occurred on an ordinary day. Indeed, our other, more flamboyant celebrations of events in Christ’s life may be misleading to us in this regard, for they may distract us from the look and feel of the original context.
Everything about the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism suggests that it happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly one day. There was no fanfare, and no countdown. There was no crescendo of excitement and preparation. Suddenly Jesus just appeared there among the throngs who were coming to be baptized. And, for probably everyone other than John and Jesus themselves, it appeared at first blush to be just one more person coming to be baptized by John.
I am reminded of the phenomenon of a sonic boom. When an ordinary plane flies overhead, we can hear it coming in the distance, the sound grows as the plane nears, if it is low to the ground we hear it loudly when it is overhead, and the sound dissipates as it flies away. When a supersonic jet passes overhead, on the other hand, there is no such aural preparation. If you don’t happen to see it coming, you will be unprepared for it, for you cannot hear its coming. And then, suddenly, boom! An explosion shakes you to your core as the unperceived jet is suddenly overhead.
So it is with the baptism of Jesus — and perhaps with so much of the work of God. “No ear may hear his coming,” as the poet sings.1 He came to the Jordan without fanfare or build-up. To an outside observer, it probably looked at first just like the dozen or so baptisms that preceded it. But then, all of a sudden, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, the Father spoke, and we discovered that it was the Son!
Alternative Application(s)
Isaiah 42:1-9 — “Good News for Bruised Reeds”
We moved into the community as newcomers on the first weekend of July. Our new home was not actually our house — it was the church’s parsonage. And so we did a good deal of exploring in the midst of all of our unpacking and arranging.
It happened that we discovered in the basement an American flag. We thought it would be just right to put it outside for that 4th of July weekend, but we didn’t find any flag holder device attached anywhere near the door of the house. Accordingly, we opted simply to stick the pole into the ground out front, and thus fly the flag in that simple way.
We went out to run some errands necessary to setting up housekeeping, and when we returned, the pole had tilted just a bit. With the lean, the lowest corner of the flag was touching the ground. We tried to straighten the pole, but it was definitely an imperfect system.
When we got inside the house, we saw a flashing light on our answering machine. Our first phone message in our new home! We played it only to discover that it was not some warm welcome from a neighbor or church member. Instead, the stern voice asked, “I just drove past your house and was wondering when you were going to get the American flag off the ground.”
It was pretty dispiriting. We went outside, pulled the pole out of the ground, and put the flag back on the basement shelf where we had found it. Our humble little effort at a patriotic gesture had been criticized. Our dimly burning wick had been quenched.
I don’t relay the story with any desire to make you into a jury member, seeking a verdict for us or against the person who left the voicemail. I later got to know the woman who had called. Her husband was a World War II veteran who had participated in the Battle of the Bulge. I respect her allegiance to and carefulness about the flag.
The point I want to illustrate is how easily a fragile thing can be crushed. We were just trying to do our little bit. It was imperfect, to be sure, but we were trying. The criticism we received, however, made us retract our humble, little effort entirely.
All sorts of efforts we make in life are, in some way or another, bruised reeds. They are fragile and imperfect. And it does not take much to break a reed that is already bruised, to snuff out a flame that is already smoldering.
Here, then, is this lovely affirmation, which we take to be descriptive of Christ. He does not break bruised reeds. He is so altogether gentle and compassionate that fragile and imperfect things are safe with him.
1 Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” UMH #230.
In some traditions, the baptism of Jesus enjoys a fair amount of celebration. In most Protestant and non-denominational churches in America, however, I suspect that this Sunday and its theme receives scant attention. For at this point, our liturgical calendar loses the wind that was at our back.
For weeks now, you see, we were mostly on the same page as the culture around us. Oh, to be sure, there was a distinction lost between Advent and Christmas. Still, our own sense of anticipation and celebration of Christ’s birth in the church was vigorously aided by all the festivity of the season that surrounded us on every side.
And while the larger culture’s celebration did not support us much for the two Sundays after Christmas Day itself, at least we still had so much to sing.
But now we come to this. It is the middle of January, Christmas is shrinking in the rear view mirror, and we are endeavoring to turn our people’s attention to the baptism of the Lord. And we find that we have no help in this. Nothing else in the surrounding culture has put this subject on folks’ radar. A dozen, much-loved songs of the season do not immediately spring to mind. Nothing about daily life in the New Year has got our people thinking about this matter.
The fact is that Jesus’ baptism is reported by more Gospel writers than Jesus’ birth is, yet still this seems to most people to be a rather obscure event. We have seen nativity scenes displayed in front of churches and homes during the past month, but does anyone put out baptism scenes? Do our children put on baptism pageants, recalling piece by piece the various elements of the story? No, for as remarkable as this event is, it is a tough sell in most of our churches.
In music, in decor, in familiarity, our liturgical calendar enjoyed a lot of help for the past six weeks or so. But now we are cut adrift. It’s the middle of January. It seems to most people to be no season in particular. And inasmuch as that is the setting in which we preach, perhaps that may also be a part of the message that we preach.
Isaiah 42:1-9
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah has a number of songs about "my servant." The identity of that servant is not uniform or always clear, however. Is it Isaiah? Is it Israel? Is it Cyrus? Is it some other historical figure? Or was it to be the Messiah?
The answers, of course, do not need to be mutually exclusive. Now a certain sort of textual critic might insist on the original meaning and understanding, but be unwilling to go any further than that. Later layers of interpretation are looked on skeptically as the sort of theological mischief that faith yields. But the underlying issue is what the reader/interpreter makes of God's role in the writing.
Such a consideration is a non-starter for some students, and that's understandable. To make allowance for divine input in a text opens it up too much. It ceases to be a controlled experiment for the scientific mind, you see, once you bring in the possibility of God.
That said, we can hardly take seriously the biblical text without allowing for the possibility of God. And so we are presented with the prospect of an additional layer of meaning. Beyond what the human author intended, and beyond what the original human audience had the capacity to understand, perhaps there was another meaning known and intended by God. In literature, we routinely allow for a distinction between the knowledge and perspective of the author vis-a-vis the narrator and the characters. But will we allow God to be the author of the biblical text?
Of course, Jesus himself encourages this sort of reading of the Old Testament. On Easter Sunday evening, when the risen Lord appeared to his disciples, he said, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44 NASB). The references to the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms is a comprehensive way of identifying the collection of books we know as the Old Testament. It recalls the Hebrew acronym Tanakh, which refers to the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. So it was that Jesus was making the remarkable claim that books written perhaps 500 years, 700 years, a thousand years before he was born were written about him. If that’s so, that certainly exceeds the conscious understanding of either the human author or the original audience.
Luke, then, adds this narrative detail to that Easter Sunday event: “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44 NASB). The provocative implication is that their minds were not opened before and that they did not truly understand the scriptures before. In other words, only when they saw Christ in the Old Testament did they really understand the Old Testament. And that suggests, then, that for all of the ostensible open-mindedness of the historical-critical method, there is some understanding of the scriptures that will always inevitably escape that approach.
So it is, then, that this passage from Isaiah 42 — coming several hundred years before Christ — was not originally about Jesus. Yet we understand it in retrospect to be, at least, messianic. And, as a result, we understand it to have been fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Acts 10:34-43
I remember this episode from Acts 10 being presented to us when I was a seminary student. The professor explained to us this passage's significance at three different levels. And he must have done it well, for all these years later, his observations remain with me.
The first significance, of course, is the immediate context of the story itself. It is about Cornelius and his household hearing the gospel and responding. For the people in that home, that was the greatest significance of the occasion, and we must not let the additional layers of significance blind us to this most fundamental layer.
Beyond that, though, there is the larger theological significance. Cornelius et al were Gentiles. Up until this point, however, most or all of the believers were Jewish. And while Cornelius had come to acknowledge and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there remained an all-important ethnic boundary between Jews and Gentiles. The boundary was ingrained in the Jews of first-century Palestine, and consequently it was ingrained in the first Christians.
The Lord started to show Peter a new thing, however, in preparation for this encounter. Peter’s epiphany on that point is indicated in the opening remarks of his speech in this passage. And then, just beyond the scope of our selected passage, the Spirit's coming on those in Cornelius’ household provided supernatural confirmation of God's will for and acceptance of the Gentiles. This event, then, represented not only the personal conversion of Cornelius and those in his house, but also the beginning of a certain kind of conversion within the early church.
And then, finally, this episode from Acts 10 may also carry some textual significance. The observation that our professor shared was that an outline of Peter's recorded speech would be essentially the same as an outline of any of the synoptic Gospels. And so this speech may give us a sense of the relationship between the gospel and the Gospels. In other words, we can imagine from this brief sermon how the preaching of the early church might have evolved into the Gospels, for the latter may have simply been written elaborations of the former.
In the end, then, we have a passage with personal, theological, and textual significance. We see how Cornelius came to Christ. We see how the gospel came to the Gentiles and how the Gentiles came into the church. And we may get a peek into how the preaching of the apostles came eventually to be the books that we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthew 3:13-17
The baptism of Jesus always strikes me as a unique event in the history of the world, for it is the only recorded occasion I can think of when all the persons of the Trinity were made manifest to the physical senses. The Son, of course, was there in the flesh. The Spirit appeared in the form of a dove. And the Father's voice was audible. It is a remarkable occasion, and that is the occasion that we celebrate this Sunday.
Matthew begins with a bit of geography. Galilee was that northern region in first-century Palestine where Jesus grew up (Nazareth) and where most of his early ministry eventually took place. But the move to meet John at the Jordan represents a move south, and perhaps as far south as the Judean wilderness.
John’s reluctance to baptize Jesus — indeed, his recognition that the baptism should flow in the other direction! — evidences John’s understanding of who Jesus is. And in this respect John serves as a kind of a role model for all of us. For while John is arguably unique in the history of the world, still his sense of calling can be broadly embraced by all of us. John knew that his importance was derivative — i.e., he was not important by himself, but insofar as he prepared the way of the Lord. And his demurring at this moment of the baptism fits that profile, consistent with his declaration that “One is coming who is mightier than I” (Mark 1:7 NASB), his concession that “I am not fit to remove His sandals” (Matthew 3:11 NASB), and his recognition that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30 NASB).
Jesus’ response about fulfilling all righteousness, though unexplained, seems to satisfy John. And taken within the larger corpus of the New Testament, it reads like a truly profound statement. After all, how many times is the word “fulfill” employed to apply to some aspect of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, or resurrection? We touched on this principle in our consideration of the assigned Old Testament lection above. Perhaps, therefore, we could take virtually any picture from Jesus’ story in the Gospels and put this caption beneath it: “to fulfill all righteousness.”
Meanwhile, the moment that Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism is when this baptism is distinguished from all others. After all, how many scores of people did John baptize in the Jordan River during his ministry? Same human officiant. Same water. But not the same result.
The moment represents an intersection of heaven and earth. Mathew reports that “the heavens were opened” and that there was “a voice from heaven.” The Spirit coming down, likewise, suggests that intersection of Earth with heaven. And it is just right that the baptism of Jesus should be such a moment, for the baptism thus symbolizes a larger Christ event. Jesus himself represents — is! — an intersection of heaven and Earth!
Finally, there are the words spoken from heaven. "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." That concise, meaning-packed sentence could give rise to its own Christological sermon series. Within the present limitations, however, suffice it to say this: God himself has born witness.
The Christian faith, you see, is dependent upon witnesses. When John’s Gospel reports the crucifixion of Jesus, we read, “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe” (John 19:34-35 NASB). When Paul proclaims the gospel to a crowd, he includes this statement: “For many days (Jesus) appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:31 NASB). And, of course, Jesus himself instructed his disciples, saying, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses...” (Acts 1:8 NASB).
So the Christian faith is dependent upon witnesses. The fascinating truth of the occasion of Jesus’ baptism is that we are not left merely with the testimony of John, or one of the disciples, or some bystander. No, for God himself bore witness that day. God spoke, declaring who and what Jesus was!
Application
Unless there happens to be a birthday or anniversary in your family that makes this date special, there is something terribly ordinary about January 12th. The festivity of the Christmas season is now well behind us. The lights are down and the decorations put away. And even the excitement and hoopla that accompanied the beginning of the New Year has faded considerably. Perhaps some of the earnest resolutions of twelve days ago have faded, too.
This weekend represents the height of excitement, of course, for a handful of NFL teams and their fans, Apart from that rather transient importance, however, this is an exceedingly ordinary date. And it is on this date that we remember and celebrate the baptism of our Lord.
The timing may be perfect. Perhaps it is helpful for us to celebrate Christ’s baptism on an ordinary day, for it may well be that it occurred on an ordinary day. Indeed, our other, more flamboyant celebrations of events in Christ’s life may be misleading to us in this regard, for they may distract us from the look and feel of the original context.
Everything about the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism suggests that it happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly one day. There was no fanfare, and no countdown. There was no crescendo of excitement and preparation. Suddenly Jesus just appeared there among the throngs who were coming to be baptized. And, for probably everyone other than John and Jesus themselves, it appeared at first blush to be just one more person coming to be baptized by John.
I am reminded of the phenomenon of a sonic boom. When an ordinary plane flies overhead, we can hear it coming in the distance, the sound grows as the plane nears, if it is low to the ground we hear it loudly when it is overhead, and the sound dissipates as it flies away. When a supersonic jet passes overhead, on the other hand, there is no such aural preparation. If you don’t happen to see it coming, you will be unprepared for it, for you cannot hear its coming. And then, suddenly, boom! An explosion shakes you to your core as the unperceived jet is suddenly overhead.
So it is with the baptism of Jesus — and perhaps with so much of the work of God. “No ear may hear his coming,” as the poet sings.1 He came to the Jordan without fanfare or build-up. To an outside observer, it probably looked at first just like the dozen or so baptisms that preceded it. But then, all of a sudden, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, the Father spoke, and we discovered that it was the Son!
Alternative Application(s)
Isaiah 42:1-9 — “Good News for Bruised Reeds”
We moved into the community as newcomers on the first weekend of July. Our new home was not actually our house — it was the church’s parsonage. And so we did a good deal of exploring in the midst of all of our unpacking and arranging.
It happened that we discovered in the basement an American flag. We thought it would be just right to put it outside for that 4th of July weekend, but we didn’t find any flag holder device attached anywhere near the door of the house. Accordingly, we opted simply to stick the pole into the ground out front, and thus fly the flag in that simple way.
We went out to run some errands necessary to setting up housekeeping, and when we returned, the pole had tilted just a bit. With the lean, the lowest corner of the flag was touching the ground. We tried to straighten the pole, but it was definitely an imperfect system.
When we got inside the house, we saw a flashing light on our answering machine. Our first phone message in our new home! We played it only to discover that it was not some warm welcome from a neighbor or church member. Instead, the stern voice asked, “I just drove past your house and was wondering when you were going to get the American flag off the ground.”
It was pretty dispiriting. We went outside, pulled the pole out of the ground, and put the flag back on the basement shelf where we had found it. Our humble little effort at a patriotic gesture had been criticized. Our dimly burning wick had been quenched.
I don’t relay the story with any desire to make you into a jury member, seeking a verdict for us or against the person who left the voicemail. I later got to know the woman who had called. Her husband was a World War II veteran who had participated in the Battle of the Bulge. I respect her allegiance to and carefulness about the flag.
The point I want to illustrate is how easily a fragile thing can be crushed. We were just trying to do our little bit. It was imperfect, to be sure, but we were trying. The criticism we received, however, made us retract our humble, little effort entirely.
All sorts of efforts we make in life are, in some way or another, bruised reeds. They are fragile and imperfect. And it does not take much to break a reed that is already bruised, to snuff out a flame that is already smoldering.
Here, then, is this lovely affirmation, which we take to be descriptive of Christ. He does not break bruised reeds. He is so altogether gentle and compassionate that fragile and imperfect things are safe with him.
1 Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” UMH #230.
